Season of mists.....

Well it's beginning to seem very autumnal now, and that suits me just fine.  Yes, I love to have some sunshine - especially living where I do - it's so beautiful.  But then I start thinking about log fires and woolly tights and puddings with custard.  Each season has its own delights doesn't it? 

Its been such a long time since I wrote a post and so much has happened.  The school holidays have been and gone in a flash - and I'm having to use my calendar to see what I got up to! I had three days at the Minerva Arts Centre Summer School in Llanidloes, learning all sort of stuff from Sandra Meech. We then went off to Derval in France - Llanidloes' twin town - for a visit with the Llanidloes Twinning Association.  We had a fun, action-packed five days.  The travelling was tiring but the welcome we had was wonderful.  And in the midst of all the excitement, our first grandchild was born!! Little Orla is so gorgeous. Here's an early photograph:

Of course, she wasn't supposed to arrive until after we came back from France but babies always surprise you don't they?  Since then we have been making the six hour round trip on a regular basis.  In between I managed to finish the cot quilt I started in June.  it was a pattern from Helen at Bustle and Sew and I'm very pleased with how it has turned out:

The little woodland animals are so sweet aren't they?  And the colours fit beautifully in with her bedroom.  Now I just have the nursery curtains to make before she moves out of her parents' room and into her own.

I also managed to make a little boasting book for her doting father to take back to work after his paternity leave. It's just a 6x4 photo album but I think it looks good:

I missed the August Funky Felters meeting but managed to make the one at the start of September where we mad some bowls. Mine was less than successful as I did not make my layers thick enough around the resist so now I have to decide how I can tinker with it.  Maybe it needs to go in the washing machine. Perhaps if the fibres shrink it will thicken up a bit.  Or I may have to do more soaping up and add more layers.  We shall see.  But I'm not putting on a photo until I've cracked it.  Felting is such a forgiving craft you can nearly always rectify your mistakes.  You may just not end up with what you intended to do in the first place but that's half the fun - it's like alchemy.  

Hopefully I won't leave such a gap between this and my next post.  Thanks for reading x

Bloggers Block Broken

I seem to have had a bit of a writer's block recently so this blog has been sadly neglected.  However, I've managed to get a few things finished and so the pressure is off for a little while.  It's so lovely to have a bit of sunshine isn't it? I'm optimistic that Spring is here at last, although we could still have a cold snap.  The fields in Mid-Wales are full of the most gorgeous lambs and I love to watch them playing together in little gangs of woolly gorgeousness.

I've finished a couple of wall hangings recently which will hopefully go into the Quilt and Stitch exhibition at The Minerva Centre in Llanidloes.  I'm just a novice - some of the work is totally stunning!! 

Some of us at Welsh Heritage Quilters have been making small quilts to go in shop windows in the town to advertise the exhibition and I have done one for a wonderful shop called Ooh La La which sells all sorts of goodies.

Funky Felters have been busy too, making items for Wonderwool Wales 2014.  Our theme this year is clothing and accessories.  Some of my fellow felters have made coats, hats and all sorts of wonderful things, but my true love is nuno felting so I have made a couple of scarves which I hope will pass muster.

 This one was a really old chiffon scarf that I must have had for twenty years, but now it's had a new lease of life!

This one I made from muslin and a mixture of merino wool fibres and mulberry silk.  It's so light, soft and warm.  Of course, I couldn't resist a bit of stitchery and I have used up some old pearl beads to prettify it.

On the reading front, I've been absorbed in a couple of Joanne Harris books.  I so enjoyed Chocolat that I also read a sequel, Peaches For M. Le Cure and another novel set in Lansquenet called Blackberry Wine.  Lovely gentle reads.  I've also enjoyed a Bernard Cornwell called Gallows Thief which is pretty old and a great read.  It was sort of a cross between his Sharpe novels and a Georgette Heyer which sounds weird but the time setting is similar and so is the 'flash' language they use.

I'm beginning to think that my days are so filled with sewing and suchlike that I don't really have time to attempt to instil the basics of the English language into teenagers' brains, but the teaching pays the bills and I have lesson planning to do.

Thanks for reading this blog post.  I'll write again once the urge is upon me!

It's a miracle!

Finally I have found the strength to sit down at my little computer and write a blog post.  I can't believe it's taken me so long but with one thing and another time has flown by - as it does when you get older and spend more time snoozing than doing.  Christmas has come and gone in a flash and seems, now, like a distant memory.  Tomorrow I go back to work and begin the merry round all over again.  

So how have I been occupying myself, you ask.  Well, apart from the aforementioned snoozing (I think I must have been a hibernating creature in a former life) I have done a few things.   Shopping for Christmas presents took up a lot of time, although a lot of it was done online this year.  However did we manage in the days before online shopping?  It's so painless - spend tons of money in the blink of an eye and then parcels arrive at your door as if by magic.  This was followed by wrapping sessions which I have to admit are a bit of a bore.  Several hours of my life I can never get back.  Then I cooked my little socks off all through the festive season and hopefully managed to satisfy the ever hungry mouths belonging to my son and son-in-law. Yesterday, however, we took down the cards, decorations and Christmas tree.  This took approximately eighteen  minutes and was a lot quicker than it took to put them up.  Now, like Mother Hubbard's cupboard, everywhere seems bare.

On the sewing front, I made some lovely new curtains for the guest room and a bag as a present.  Felting wise I discovered a really exciting technique at a workshop with Mandy Nash who is really a jewellery designer but teaches felting as a sideline!  At our December Funky Felters meeting she showed us some wonderful German woollen fibres that are terrifically hard wearing and strong but which felt really easily.  We did a 2D piece of slashed felt and I can't wait to do some more.  I've put a picture of my effort below:

It consists of 16 layers of fibres with a plastic resist sandwiched in the middle of them to allow you to slash through the top eight layers to reveal the fibres underneath.  I absolutely loved the technique and have lots of ideas of things I want to have a go at.

I was originally going to do this post ages ago and entitle it Hole in One.  That was because I had just read a novel at one sitting about a detective called Harry Hole.  However, I failed to do that and have now read several more.  Hole in Six doesn't have quite the same ring but they are such a good read.  They are written by a Norwegian author called Jo Nesbo and are brilliantly written crime thrillers about a detective, Inspector Harry Hole (say Hole-a) of the Oslo police.  Because they have been translated in the wrong order I didn't read them chronologically but I would recommend them if you are a fan of Ian Rankin, Stig Larsson etc.

For Christmas, my husband bought me (with a little help) two brilliant textile books.  The first, by Maggie Grey (link to blog) called Dissolvable Delights, is about sewing with dissolvable film and I am itching to have a go at this.  In July, I am booked to go on a workshop with Lynda Monk called Exploring Creative Surfaces at the Quilt Association's Minerva Centre in LLanidloes (thanks Georgina!) so I also got her book - Fabulous Surfaces - which has got me really excited. Only another six months to wait!

The weather is so dull and gloomy, I've not been out and about much.  I have, however, discovered the joys of pinning!  Why have I not used Pinterest before?  It's a brilliant way of collecting together related ideas so that you can compare them with each other.  If you haven't tried it, here's a link to my boards .

If you've stuck it out this far - well done!!  Thanks for reading.

A whole week of felting fun....

It seems like such a lot has happened since I last posted here.  Last weekend was this year's Wonderwool Wales, held at the Royal Welsh showground near Builth Wells - about 35 miles from where I live in Powys.  The felting group I belong too, Funky Felters, had an exhibition of our work there over the weekend so I was there for two days. On the Friday we set out our work which took a very tiring four and a half hours, but it was well worth the effort!

The following day I was back again (on very sore feet) to view everyone else's work and all the amazing trade stands.  Too much to see, so little time to see it - which was fortunate as I still managed to spend far too much money on gorgeous items like merino wool and mulberry silk from Adelaide Walker, beautiful buttons from The Textile Garden and all sorts of lovely stash from Oliver Twists. 

This weekend, as it was a bank holiday, we took our touring caravan further north in Wales to Dolgellau. It was only a short trip to see how our 10 month-old Border Collie, Gwennie, got on as a caravanning dog.  She was absolutely brilliant so no doubt we'll be off again on another trip soon.  We went to Dolgellau so that I could go to the Fubky Felters' monthly meeting.  I managed to make a small clutch bag (not quite finished yet) and nuno felted some lovely red organza with black merino wool to make a triangular scarf, which I am quite pleased with. 

The scarf has really got me thinking about other things I can make and I can't wait, now, for some more felting time.

Thanks for reading.  All comments really appreciated!!

Where did the Easter holidays go?

Goodness knows where the holidays went!  They disappeared in a flash.  The house in Staffordshire sold and we finally moved all the rest of our furniture to Wales on a very snowy day.  The words 'quart'and 'pint pot' spring to mind here but it is all squashed in to be sorted out at leisure.  The children, who both moved out ages ago, came and had a massive sort out of all the stuff they had never taken with them.  So now the garage is full of stuff to go to the tip.
It's been quiet on the sewing front since I last posted, but I did have a day with the Funky Felters and finally got to do some nuno felting.  I used an old, black synthetic chiffon scarf and some pink merino wool tops, along with the remains of a skein of Colinette Point5 wool.  The result is a beautifully soft, warm and lightweight stole which is pictured below and I'm very happy with it,  It was a NIGHTMARE to felt and took ages.  I felt like I'd gone several rounds with Mike Tyson to produce it, but it was worth the effort!!

I ended up taking the stole home to complete the felting process, during which I was ably assisted by our beautiful Border Collie, Gwennie!

Our daughter is getting married in October so there are only six months to the big day!! It's very exciting and  I can't avoid the diet for much longer :-(   I seen to have a lot to do over the coming months.  No details as it's Top Secret, but suffice to say I have enough sewing and decoupage to keep me occupied until the big day, added to which is the temptation to make my own Mother-of the-Bride outfit.  The ones I've looked at/tried on so far seem to be horrifically overpriced which really grieves me when I know how much the mark up is on these garments.  Just the very mention of the word Wedding seems to say to retailers "Treble the price - these idiots will pay anything!".  Well not this idiot, except as a very last resort.

Spring appears to have sprung at last.  In fact, I have to admit that today was the first day since the end of October that I wore a pair of shoes to work as opposed to boots.  Don't get overexcited though - I still had woolly tights on!  Let's hope the warmer weather continues - it was almost tropical today as we reached the dizzy heights of 14 degrees C.

Thanks for reading my ramblings!

It's amazing what a deadline can do.......

So today I have been really busy putting the finishing touches to some of my felt pieces.  I'ts a Funky Felters day on Sunday and we have a deadline to meet.  We are putting on a display of our work at Wonderwool Wales which is at the Royal Welsh Showground near Builth Wells on the 27th and 28th April.   I have redone the stitching on the poppies piece I did ages ago, added bits to the underwater piece and finished the piece I did at last month's Funky Felters Day.

Hopefully, between us we will have enough to fill the space we have been allocated.  Most of the felters are much more experienced and creative than I am so I hope I don't let the side down!