Category Archives: Uncategorized

Summer is here!

Posted on by
Reply

Summer seems to have descended on us with gusto! I can’t quite believe the change in weather conditions over the last few days. I hope you are all well and staying hydrated.

I did my stall at the school fair last Friday and it was pretty hot. We were outside and this year there was no gazebo to take shelter under. It was also rather windy, so I rather limited the stock I put on the table as I didn’t fancy spending the time chasing it all around the playground! As is usual for this fair, I sold only a couple of cards and lots more little knitted and crochet creatures.

I was disappointed that I didn’t sell any of my newly crocheted keyrings, but I did sell a few of the bookmarks and I have plenty left over to donate to the Guides fundraising evening in a couple of weeks time.

So whilst it’s been crazy hot for the last couple of days and I’ve been hibernating inside due to the farmer cutting the fields for silage, I’ve also been subjected to the nightmare of pile driving in the site that once was a wildlife haven. It’s awful. I’m still waiting for responses from the local planning dept and the construction company – I think I’d best not hold my breath!

To try to take my mind off the noise and vibrations, I’ve been working on a couple of box cards for orders and trying to decide what to make for Bury Show next weekend. I’m also looking out for some more possibilities for stalls, do let me know if you know of anything locally.

Well I’d better get back to my orders. Have a good day.

Happy crafting

x

(No Parkrun again last weekend – too sneezy)

Christmas in June – not for me just yet.

Posted on by
Reply

Christmas has come to all the crafting companies! Yes, I know it’s only June and we haven’t even had anything like the start of Summer yet (in North West England). But that’s the way it is in the crafting world. In order to get ready for the biggest time of the year, we have to start early. Having said that, I’m not quite in the mood for Christmas yet, so whilst I’m keeping an eye on what’s new and going to be ‘on trend’ this year, I’m still working on florals and birthdays.

I’ve committed myself to a few things in the next couple of weeks. First up there is the local Primary school Summer Fair. This is going to be on Friday (June 21st), so not much notice this year. So I am trying to get together a stock of low cost items to take. I’ve had a first go at making bookmarks and I’ve put together a large collection of £1 cards. I’m also trying to do a bit of crochet to take too. I think it’s going to be a busy couple of days/evenings!

I’m also aiming to take part in several of the craft categories at Bury Show. I haven’t taken part for several years as it’s usually the same weekend as my Dad’s birthday. But this year I’m going to be able to have a go. I’ve highlighted about ten of the handicraft classes, so wish me luck on being able to make something for them all.

Finally the week after the show, Crafty-teen is helping out at the local Guide unit fundraising craft sale. They’re raising money for Bury Hospice and Bleakholt Animal Sanctuary. So I’ve been roped in the bring some makes along for them to sell. I think I’m going to see how the bookmarks do at school as I can make those relatively quickly and with a box of letter stickers, they can be personalised too.

So I have a lot going on, making wise (and that doesn’t include the orders I have for some pop-up boxes, my Dad’s birthday and my brother’s 50th coming up too).

Better get back to the crochet!

Happy crafting

x

(I didn’t Parkrun last weekend, too sneezy)

Not a good week

Posted on by
Reply

What a week!
I’ve been quietly getting on with my current crafting project (another time) and all my regular jobs. Then Boom! We were hit on Saturday with the devastating news that construction works are to start on the lovely field opposite. We all knew it was coming at some point, and I think we all became a little complacent as our fight to save it has put work off for twelve years. Alas, as I write there is wanton destruction of habitat taking place. The birds are going mad as are we human residents. The housing company are refusing to ring me back so the Council planning department are taking the full brunt of my disgust. After three days of constant chainsaw and woodchipper noise I think I have finally lost my mind. I am absolutely heartbroken and I can’t put in print what I would like to do to the perpetrators of such utter devastation.


To try to take my mind off things a bit, I have volunteered to be an independent observer for some Year 6 SATs tests in school. That’s not a great place to be either at the moment due to financial issues. But the children all behaved well and coped under the pressure. It’s also given me a little quiet time to calm down a bit (I’m not sure quite how long that will last though). I feel a trip to my local sandwich shop is due after this.


In other news, Crafty-Teen has completed a three day expedition for a Bronze Duke of Edinburgh award. Ans as you can probably imagine I have another washing mountain to tackle, I’m glad it wasn’t me camping out in the storms on Sunday night! Our garden pond flooded within an hour. They all seemed to enjoy themselves though, and were well and truly exhausted when they got back.


I had to escape to find some trees last night so made some flapjacks and gate-crashed Ramsbottom Running Club’s social night in Nuttall Park. It was so lovely to be by the river, listening to contented birds and be surrounded by trees. I even did a couple of kms walking. No running for me, just not in the right frame of mind. Hopefully things will start to get better (although I think we have several years of violating noise pollution and dreadful modern box houses for the future). So much for people thinking about the environment and reducing habitat loss!


I have discovered Greatest Hits Radio over the last year and I am hoping that listening to Simon Mayo drivetime will help drown out the chainsaws. It’s a lot to ask, but a bit of calming music may help focus my mind on a bit of therapeutic crafting. Fingers crossed. Hopefully I’ll have managed to have a more crafting post next time.


Happy crafting
x

(ParkRun Heaton Park, time 45:39)

A quick update

Posted on by
Reply

Once again, I find myself saying “it’s been a while.” This time it really is ages since I put pen to paper and there’s a lot to catch up on.

I’ve caught up on my last musings and I am pleased to report that we still have regular hedgehog visits, but I didn’t get around to making a hedgehog house with the pallets I’d collected. ( They have since been turned into another tiered planter and a box planter). I’m hoping for another good garden year and we now have a new bespoke fence as well as a new hedge down the side of the garden. The hedge means we can still give plenty of access to wildlife and it will give some structure all year round. My husband is obsessed with photinias, so that’s what the hedge is completely made up of. Fingers crossed for the lovely red leaves throughout the winter!

There are some other garden projects to catch up on, but they’ll keep for another time as I have some more interesting news….. I have a part-time job!!! I didn’t see that coming after a rotten few years of applications and rejections, so I’m still somewhat in shock. It’s all happened so quickly as I was contacted following a Father’s Day card post I put on LinkedIn. Unfortunately it isn’t a card-making or even a crafting position, it’s an admin job at a commercial property company in Bolton. So I’ve done a day and a half to see how we all get along. I think it went pretty well so far, everyone seems very friendly and I’ve managed to make a brew and tidy up a cupboard (as well as putting a couple of reports together). The rest of the admin is going to take some getting used to as it’s a whole new area of business for me, but I think I’m okay with the computer work and answering the phone. Let’s see how it goes. I am tired now though, it’s going to take some getting used to!

Hopefully I’ll find some time to do some crafting soon.

Happy Crafting

x

Cards and Gardens

Posted on by
Reply

Woah! It’s certainly warm this week, and I’m hiding inside to avoid the worst of the heat and the pollen? This is certainly the downside of living near several farms, as they are making the most of the weather to do their haymaking.

So I am trying to keep cool and carry on sneezing (not)and I’m too hot to do a lot of crafting, so it’s my chance for a catch up on the last couple of months – if I can remember that is.

It’s been a busy few weeks all around. We had the Jubilee in rubbish weather, but fun was had by all. We went to Manchester and visited the Manchester Flower Show. It wasn’t quite what I had expected but it was fun to go back into the city after almost two years.

I enjoyed seeing the little floral displays around the shops and some larger displays in St Ann’s Square and King Street.

I was lucky enough to get a small bouquet of farm grown organic flowers. They were beautiful and lasted over a week on the kitchen window ledge.

I was inspired to get back out in the garden, giving everywhere a good tidy up as well as planting some seeds. I thought I’d have a go at a little bit of grow-your-own and I’ve planted a few pots with peas, purple sprouting broccoli and radish, to go with my strawberries. Fingers crossed the slugs don’t demolish them all!

I have made a few cards on the cooler days. I started making special cards for a local business during lockdown and have continued to do so. This has been a really great opportunity to improve my skills and to use different styles.

I am particularly enjoying looking through all my stash – it is quite extensive now as I seem to be filling all my available storage space in the ‘office’. With my husband back in his place of work, our office has now reverted to being my crafting space again. It’s a lovely place to be and it makes a real difference now I know where everything is. What I have to be careful of now is not over-filling it. Ha ha!

Time for a cooling drink now.

Happy Summer crafting

K x

Shaped card crafting

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been a few weeks since I last wrote, I’m really starting to wonder where the time goes these days. The joys of middle age have been working their magic again – lethargy, brain fog and lack of focus!

Anyway, I’m here currently back in school covering the office for a few hours while the staff have some academy conversion training! Fingers crossed it’s quiet as it’s pouring down outside. I an hoping to catch up with some of the staff here as it’s been quite a while due to all the lockdowns and me leaving the lunchtime rota.

So what else have I been up to crafting wise? Well, Easter came and went quickly. It was great to be able to spend it with my family and after the holidays were cancelled due to craftykid testing positive for Covid (had to happen at some point I suppose). No symptoms and both me and my husband remained negative. In spite of the very boring school holidays we managed a celebratory trip to Hebden Bridge once she tested negative and I arranged a couple of egg hunts, one at home and one at my Mum’s for my nephews. I was really proud of the one I did at home as I wrote a poem of clues based on the nursery rhyme ‘Round and round the garden’.

Crafting wise I’ve been making lots of cards for us at home and some lovely local orders too. Over the last couple of years, I’ve really enjoyed making different shaped cards. I started making handbag cards several years ago, but I have tried to enhance them recently with more elaborate papers and gems as well as paper flowers.

So I thought I’d have a go at some more shaped cards. My Dad plays golf, so this golf bag card was an ideal format for him. I invested in a collection of plaid papers and they work brilliantly for these cards.

My next attempt ay a shaped card was at the request of a friend wanting a shoe for her niece’s 21st birthday. This was a little more tricky as I had to get the proportions of the shoe and the heel so it looked right as a shoe, but also sturdy enough to stand up. It took a few goes to get the basic shape and then it was a simple (?) case of picking the papers and decorations.

I plumped for a sophisticated elegant look using a collection from Papermania – Midnight Blush. It gives such a soft look , I just wish I could walk in a pair of heels that high!

Well, that’s about all for now. Time to work on some ideas for more shaped cards I think!

Happy crafting

K x

Work-in-Progress Progress!

Posted on by

It’s three months (ish) since we went into lockdown and I have tried to get through the large bag of partly made projects I had hanging around back in March. Twenty items really is too many to have left so long, but I really am all about the knitting / crochet and not the stuffing and sewing.

Having finished the three lockdown lions a few weeks back, I have been steadily working through the other bags and boxes of pieces and my menagerie is growing once again.  Most of the creatures are from kits I’ve had from either Let’s Knit or LGC Knitting and Crochet magazines, and are great for making something a little out of my comfort zone or for little gifts for friends and family.  I have enjoyed making most of them.  I do find that sometimes the instructions can be a little vague – sew legs to body, for instance – so I do make a point of studying as many pictures of the finished articles as possible before committing to the final positions of limbs and features.

So, what have I managed to finish over the last few weeks then?

From LGC Knitting and Crochet magazine, I have made,

Amy the Donkey (design by Hannah Cooper)

Easter Bunny (design by Nicola Valiji)

Safari bear (design by Sarah Louise Read)

and a knitted chick (design by Sachiyo Ishii)

From the Let’s Knit kits, I chose

Sparkle-dash the unicorn (design by Steffi Hochfellner)

And I finally finished an Aldi, So crafty kit of a hippo.

I hope you like them as much as I do.

There is still a way to go, but the pile is steadily reducing which means there is more space in the living room – I actually found my sewing machine this week, which had been buried under two bags of yarn.  So there’s something else to do, hmmm, what to make next……..

Happy crafting

x

Lockdown Life

Posted on by

These last few weeks I have been struggling with the whole lockdown.  Tempers have been running short across the household and don’t get me started on homeschooling an eleven-year-old!

I have been trying to separate home and crafting where possible, but this is equally challenging due to having completely lost my dedicated crafting space.  My husband is working from home and needed a quiet office space, so my craft room is now the office.

We have done a complete redecorate of the space and it has made a real difference.  The whole room feels so much larger and calmer (I have to admit it was rather chaotic).

It was quite a fun project to do, involving removing old nursery furniture (it’s amazing how quickly it was removed from the drive), as well as stripping textured wallpaper and all the associated sanding, filling and painting.  Whilst new plug sockets and painting were being completed by my husband, I’ve had the joy of sorting through all of my crafting materials and associated accumulations!

It’s all been plonked in the front room for what feels like weeks, while I work my way through it all.  I didn’t quite realise how much stuff I have.  It’s been quite interesting to see what’s been hidden in  old cupboards and I might find the opportunity to use some things again in the coming weeks / months.  I’m sure some things will come back into fashion – paper crimper anyone?

After the main papering and painting had been finished, we had a new carpet fitted – what a luxury – it’s over twelve years since we’ve had new flooring anywhere and this feels lovely underfoot.  I was then set free with a geometric paint pattern above the picture rail. I did some practice with tester pots first, just to check it would work!

It took longer than I thought it would and it was very nerve-wracking hoping the paint hadn’t run under any of the masking tape.  Plus the colour choice was different!  It all looked pretty rubbish with the orange masking tape.

The unveiling when quite well, I think.  There are a few little smudges but overall is looks OK to me (It certainly helps that it’s high up).

Since all the painting has been done, we had to wait for Ikea to open for the storage to finish everything off.  We took inspiration for the room from an Ikea Kallax image on their site, so plumped for the Kallax storage solution.  My daughter had fun deciding on the box / door / shelf / drawer arrangement.  It looks great and there is a lot more space to move around in there now.  I still haven’t managed to store everything in there and I’m not sure there is actually quite enough storage for all my bits and pieces – I certainly have more books and magazines than I thought!

Unfortunately, as lovely as the finished room is, there is little chance of me being able to make use of it as my husband is working from home for the foreseeable future.  So I will have to continue to content myself with card-making at the kitchen table and knitting / crochet in front of the television in the evenings (for now).

Happy crafting

x

Life Drawing

Posted on by

Following last week’s post about the arts and craft TV programmes I’ve been addicted to over the last few weeks, I convinced the family to take part in ‘Life Drawing Live‘ on BBC4.  It was the second one in, what appears to be, an elongated series and I hadn’t seen the first one, but I didn’t think that would matter too much.  I have only really done life drawing once before at school, I think it was for A-level in Sixth Form, but it was a very long time ago and I could be wrong there.

Anyhow, it was a two hour programme where we had the tv on as well as a laptop, as we could see the model on the laptop and hence, take part in the drawing challenges.

I can’t believe how quickly the two hours went.  There was a series of tasks, starting with short timescales and gradually getting longer, while the model changed pose for each task based on a well known painting from the past.

I am by no means a particularly good sketcher and people have never been my strong point, but it was good to have a try, although being very self-critical, there are many many issues with the form, perspective and sizing!

So here are my first few sketches.

These were different poses and the task was the sketch them in a very short time, from left to right – 30 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute.  So not very much time to get anything on the page really!  I can just about tell they are people I think.

The next one was a reclining pose supposed to be on a chaise longue.  I think we had  about five minutes to do this one, and I was doing alright until my daughter knocked her drink all over the lounge carpet in the middle of this one, so this is the result of about two minutes sketching.

We were encouraged to switch from charcoal (I’d been using a 2B pencil) to a red crayon for this next pose.  Again I’m happy with the shape of the head and the right arm  but I was really struggling with the proportions.  Fun to use something other than a pencil though.

The next pose was a lady with a cello.  Back to pencil here and I think this was about 8 minutes or so.  I quite enjoyed this pose although she looks like a strange sort of bodybuilder and she really wasn’t!

The Narcissus pose is possibly my favourite of all the drawings I did and arguably my most successful.  I was hoping to get to add his reflection into the water but didn’t quite get around to it in the ten minutes.  However, I think the proportions here are much more realistic than on any other.  

The final pose was one depicting Liberty. The lady had had a mastectomy and was very courageous in both her pose and what she had been through.  She wasn’t as bony around her shoulders as she looks  but I have a little more perspective with the stance then I have in other sketches. I didn’t really do her justice, but it was a reasonable effort in the nineteen minutes we had.

It was a great way to spend the evening, even if my results weren’t all that impressive.  I think I can see some elements of improvement over the course of the class and it was interesting to pick up some tips from the artists on the screen as well as seeing attempts by other people at home.

I was very aware of how long it has been since I picked up some pencils to do some drawing and I was feeling very rusty.  But the drawing pencils I have felt lovely to use again and I feel I really should do some more.  So I’m hoping this irregular series does have another episode in the not too distant future.

Maybe I will get around to having a go at drawing one of my cats one day.

Stay safe and happy crafting

x

 

Garden joy

Posted on by

Over the last few weeks, I have been spending lots more time in my garden.  We saved up a couple of years ago and last year had the garden re-landscaped to a design of mine.  It had been devastating over the last few years as the amount of rain increased and the time taken for the water to drain increased with it.  At some points I think we were flooded for several months at a time.  We even had a regular heron visitor, but the icing on the cake was when we had a pair of mallard ducks swimming around where the lawn had once been!

We took the decision to do something which had to include some drainage solution and I put together a few sketches of ideas we could work with.  It was certainly a big plan and one we couldn’t have done ourselves, but our landscaper was fantastic and he was able to do all the drainage works and (with a few modifications) put my sketches into place.

The garden has now been put into zones.  We have a patio (using stones from the original garden), a border, a wildlife area and a grassy arbour with seat (daughter’s zone).  And I love it.  It’s such a great space to be and somewhere I’m thrilled I have in the current times.

We reused as much as we possibly could from the garden -well what had managed to survive the constant waterlogging anyway and it’s been great since to see what is popping up around the place.  Some of the offcuts from the sleepers used to raise the zones were used to make a seat and a little raised bed which we planted with strawberries and they are doing fantastically this year – we planted the runners from the original plants and they are obviously happy.

Equally happy are the cats.  This is Lily enjoying the sleepers, we often find her hiding under the plants or rolling about on the lawn, which is also doing well now we have better drainage.

My wildlife pond looks good too.  I’m amazed how much life there is in it considering it’s only been there for a year.  We have found several frogs and newts too, as well as lots of little bug life – pond skaters, water boatmen and whirly-gig beetles are a regular sight.

I have taken the time to plant some seeds this year too.  We have a patio up by the house and the rest of the garden is down a few steps and as we face south it is a fabulous sun trap.  So I have decided to see what comes up from several old packets of seeds from the garage.  I love poppies and I was pleased to see this little beauty pop up in a trough of seeds for the bees – although not much else seems to be joining it at the moment.

Before we ended up in lockdown, I bought some seeds from Aldi which had several different vegetables and herbs in.  I only planted these broad beans about a week ago and they are already showing their faces.

I am so pleased with the way everything is growing so well this Spring.  And I hope I will see some more flowers soon as well as the blossom on the trees.  Fingers crossed we also get some rain to add to all the sunshine as I could do with a few days indoors catching up with all my indoor projects too!

Stay safe and happy crafting

x