Brockenhurst

I had intended to update my blog at least once a week, but as usual real life intervened. We unfortunately had a family bereavement. Then I had an arthritis flare-up, possibly as a reaction to stress. So a few weeks have passed since my last post. I haven't done much sewing, knitting or beading, as the pain has made it difficult to sit for any length of time. However I have been gathering ideas and planning projects.

This Saturday we took a drive into the New Forest. Every April the New Forest Needlework Fiesta is held in Brockenhurst in the New Forest National Park. I haven't been to it for three years so OH kindly offered to take me to Brockenhurst, despite heavy rain and gale force winds.

The show is mainly aimed at embroiderers, which I am not, but it usually has at least one bead supplier exhibiting. We got to Brockenhusrt Village Hall around midday. It was busy but thankfully not too crowded.

There were lots of threads and fabric paints for sale. The clours were stunning.

And of course there was a bead stall. The lovely Fran from Crumpets Farm was selling gorgeous seed beads and Swarovski crystals.

I bought some ribbons and threads and one pack of beads. I will explain more about my plans for using them in my next blog entry.

Horses and cattle roam freely in the New Forest and OH spotted these cattle going for a stroll through the centre of Brockenhurst. Many people have installed cattle grids at the entrance to their driveways in a bid to protect their gardens.

We had a good day despite the appalling weather. I am hoping that I will be able to create some jewellery with my purchases. More details in my next post.

Devon, Glorious Devon!

I haven't had a chance to do any sewing or beading today as we went to Devon to see my family. We met up with my Mum and Brother in Topsham, just outside of Exeter. Both of us were born in Devon and we lived in Exeter for 13 years, so in a strange way it felt a little bit like coming home.

We had lunch in the Lighter Inn, one of our favourite haunts when we lived in Exeter. Then had a walk around. So little has changed since we moved away nearly ten years ago.

This sign has always amused me. The streets are so narrow only a lunatic would try to drive a car up here never mind a LGV!!


It was a beautiful day, if a little blustery and chilly. The scenery is stunning wherever you go in Topsham.



After a few pleasant hours in Topsham we went to Exmouth to visit 'A la Ronde', a stunning sixteen sided house, owned by the national Trust. We met a small furry friend near the entrance, who was basking in the sun.





The house was built for two cousins in 1790 to house the large number of items they brought back from a 'Grand Tour'. It has sixteen sides to make the most of natural light. Both cousins were prolific and skilled needlewomen (the house is full of their beautiful work). They would move from room to room as the day progressed, in order to make the most of every bit of precious daylight.

They were highly unusual for women of their time in that they were totally independent. When they died they stipulated in their will that the house should only be passed down though the female family line rather than the male. It is full of lots of beautiful and unusual things collected on their travels. The most famous of which is the 'Shell Gallery' which runs around the top of the house. Unfortunately it is so fragile that visitors are no longer allowed to enter it. You have to view it via remote cameras and computer screens. You can move around and zoom in from all angles.

If you are ever in the Exeter or Exmouth area I would highly recommend a visit.

Sew!

One of the joys of living by the sea is seeing it out of season. I particularly like going for a walk along the seafront on a cool blustery day!




As discussed in my other blog 'Arthropy' I have got into a bit of a rut, clothes wise recently. To try to boost my confidence I have been doing some sewing. I have found it almost impossible to find anything that I like (and can afford) in the shops. So as I have over 40 years of sewing experience it seems the obvious answer.


Encouraged by OH and two lovely friends I have dusted off my sewing machine. I have had the following pattern in my stash for quite a few years. I have looked it up on Pattern Review and it gets some good reviews.


I am an hourglass shape so Full Bust Adjustments are normally a necessity. I have never done an FBA on a princess seam garment before, so this has been a learning curve. I found a really good tutorial online at Sew, Mama, Sew!


I am going to make a muslin from some dark blue polycotton from my very small fabric stash. I will let you know how it turns out.

Indecision

The weekend before last we took a walk from where we live in Westbourne down through Bournemouth Gardens to the town centre. It was beautiful day, very warm and the birds were singing.


We walked past the rather melancholy lions standing guard over the War Memorial.


Past the beautiful Redwood trees with their wonderful bark.


And past the ornate Victorian water tower.


It was a day which made you feel glad to be alive! I have been struggling a bit with my illness recently so the tranquil walk was soothing.


Surrounded by new shoots and blossom helped me to feel better.


I am really undecided about the future of this blog. I haven't posted for quite a while as I lost the enthusiasm to do so. I will write more about this in my other blog 'Arthropy'.

I have still been creating things and that has helped a lot. A colleague at work asked me to make her some earrings to wear to her daughter's wedding this Saturday. She had already purchased a necklace and I used that as my inspiration. It consisted of a series of cabochons in various shades of red, linked by gold metal daisy shaped flowers.


Taking the flower motif from the necklace I used the Seed Bead Flowers tutorial from Preserve Jewelry Designs as a starting point and added my own spin on it. The earrings were then glued onto gold clip-on earring pads. I also added some 6x14 mm Swarovski briolette drops in Light Siam. Unfortunately I forgot to photography the finished earrings but the above photograph gives you a fair idea of how they turned out.

I created a number of samples to show her before she chose the Seed Bead Flowers. I will probably use the samples to develop more ideas. they will go into my 'work in progress' box for now.


I now have a week off from work. During that time I will try to relax and get my creative juices flowing again. Hopefully that will help me get back on track.

Paper play

The unusually warm weather over the past few weeks means that in Southern England flowers are blooming and insects buzzing around as if it was mid March, not mid January.

I have been having a bit of a break from beading and knitting to play with paper. Just before Christmas OH gave me a pile of old maps and the instructions for making paper ornaments, printed off from a link on the Purple Podded Peas blog. Instead of making the ornaments I surprised him by using the maps to cover a handmade notebook as a Christmas present (see my previous post).. A week ago we went to Hobbycraft and I bought a small glue gun and a 2 inch paper punch in their sale.


The ornaments call for between 45 and 75 circles of paper. There was no way on earth that I was going to be able to cut that number of circles out accurately with scissors! So last Sunday afternoon I sat down with an old copy of 'Mollie Makes', the paper punch and the glue gun.

They are fun to make and I think that they look really attractive. I aim to make a few more and display them in a bowl on the coffee table in our living room.

The instructions can be found here. Whilst browsing through old posts on the 'Rhymes with Magic' blog I came across a kusudama flower ball. It was made from old maps. My mind at once went back to the maps that OH had given me before Christmas.

When I was growing up we did not have the internet and very limited television. Making things was my main source of entertainment. I remember watching a programme on TV in the 1970s, presented by Roger Harbin on origami. I was hooked. I bought several of his books and spent many happy hours creating boats, birds and boxes out of squares of paper. Seeing that kusudama ball brought it all back to me. I took one of the maps, cut it up into 3 inch squares, heated up the glue gun and started to create a flower ball.

Here is the result. As you can seeI couldn't resist adding beads (6mm pearls) to my finished creation. I think that it rounds it off nicely.


Finally I have been making some more notebooks. I think that I have got the basics under my belt, so now is the time to start experiment with different types of binding. I will let you know how I get on.


Now I feel the need to get back to my beading. I am working on an elaborate collar. More about that in future posts.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go...

I can't believe that it is Christmas Eve already! The last few weeks have just flown by. For various reasons this year I have found it difficult to get into the Festive spirit. Work has been quite a struggle, very busy and stressful. Also last week I had a wisdom tooth extracted and so have been nursing a very sore mouth and jaw. I was sedated during the extraction so the 24 hours afterwards is a bit of a blur. OH was great as usual. He took me to the appointment, drove me home afterwards and even took the following day off work in order to take care of me.




While I was recuperating I beaded some Christmas ornaments to give as gifts. The pictures above show two of the designs. The top one is adapted from a design by Lynn Firth and the one immediately above is adapted from an original design by a Canadian beader called Cathy Lampole aka That Bead Lady. I hope that the recipients will keep the baubles and use them each year and when they hang them up they will spare a thought for me.

OH and I don't really bother much with presents for each other at Christmas. We have been together for a long time so just tend to give each other a small gift rather than a large expensive one. I know that a lot of people will find this strange but neither of us is particularly materialistic. I usually try to make him something if I can.

He loves notebooks and has a collection of them. If I see a nice example when I am out and about I will buy it for him. This year I decided to make him a note book as a Christmas present. (I can share this with you as he is now safely tucked up in bed until Christmas morning). I have been fascinated by the art of bookbinding ever since I saw a demonstration when I was a student. A local bookbinder showed us how to re-bind a book. I was fascinated and entranced. Books have always been very important to me. Although I like the idea of Kindles and e-book readers nothing beats handling an actual book as far as I am concerned. So I love the idea of creating them.

I have been on leave for the last few days so decided to put the time to good use. I gathered together some supplies and, following the instructions in an amazing book called 'Cover to Cover' I set about making a notebook.

Those of you who read my blog regularly will know that I have done several City & Guilds beading courses over the last five years. One compulsory element of the course is to produce a sketch book showing your experiments with colour, texture and form. As a result I have collected a small range of different types of paper. So, for the pages of the notebook I used some lovely handmade paper that was lurking in my stash. The cover was made from some offcuts of board, left over from making some display boards for my jewellery. The cover paper was from an old, out of date Ordnance Survey map of Dartmoor. I chose the Plymouth section for the front cover as that is where I was born and brought up and holds a lot of memories for both of us. The front tie is a scrap of ribbon which had been in my sewing basket for a while.

The whole thing came together beautifully. What really pleases me, and I hope will also appeal to OH, is that it is made from odds and ends that I already had lying around. I have also given a new lease of life to the map which might otherwise might have been consigned to the recycling bin.


I love the recent revival in 'make do and mend' and using vintage materials. I think that it is mainly due to my parents' influence. They both grew up during the Second World War when severe rationing meant that you didn't waste anything. I think that some of that has rubbed off on me. Both my Mum and Dad were always making things when I was growing up and I am eternally grateful that I seem to have inherited a little of that talent. Making things enriches my life beyond measure. I hope that it also gives pleasure to the recipients of my handmade gifts.

I wish you all a very happy and peaceful Christmas wherever you are.

Children in Need

This Friday M (aka 'A Girl in Winter') and I took part in a craft fair to raise money for Children in Need. For non-UK readers this is a huge national fundraising event, which this year has raised over £26 million for children's charities. The fair took place at work and proved to be a great success. M provided some beautiful handmade Christmas cards and I donated some jewellery. There were a variety of other stalls selling cakes, Amaryllis bulbs, jewellery, card making and stamping supplies and 'nappy cakes' and other baby things. There was also a tombola, which raised a lot of money on its own.



I took along a few pieces of jewellery that I had made during my City & Guilds courses. Plus I had a rummage through my UFO box. I normally try not to have too many unfinished things lying around. By nature I am a 'completer/finisher' type person. But I do have a small box where I put any things which are experiments and work in progress. The idea is that one day I will revisit them and try to make jewellery out of them. Well, over the last couple of weeks I have done just that. I finished off some beaded charms and a beaded bead and strung the results onto lengths of organza ribbon. I then added some sterling silver clasps. Voila! Some very attractive necklaces. I added some beaded earrings, based on art deco designs, hung on sterling silver ear wires.


M's Christmas cards proved very popular. In my opinion their simplicity was a major selling point.


I found a new use for some vintage buckles picked up at antiques and vintage fashion fairs. Coupled with some pretty buttons they make unusual and attractive brooches.



Obviously the main object of the exercise was to raise money for Children in Need, and we did in fact raise £95. But it also proved to both of us that our craft work will sell. It was also a useful dry run for attending a commercial craft fair.