French Knots

Yarndale

Like so many others I was at Yarndale on Saturday and it was amazing. Busy, oh so very busy and I'm sure it exceeded the organisers expectations by far. A friend drove and we left early but then were tempted by the thought we were only 10 minutes away from Immanuel Fabrics as we passed Burnley on the motorway....so of course we nipped in...

and a dozen metres of fabric jumped in my bag!

We arrived at Yarndale at 10am and after being directed to the extra car park we were soon inside the Skipton Auction Mart - the pens that would usually hold cattle were overflowing with yarnny delights and ladies keen to look at said yarnny delights. 

Skein Queen was the first ( and certainly not the last! ) stand to catch my eye with it's cornucopia of colour

I just wanted to take so many skeins of soft jewel coloured yarn home with me, just because they were lovely not with any knitting plan in mind.

We had our picnic lunch in the seats surrounding the workshop area and bumped into some wonderful bloggers Cuckoo Unravelled and Pink Milk. Then met a blogger who I have 'known' online since my earliest blogging days 6 or 7 years ago, the talented Lucy Locket who had an armload of covetable alpaca yarn in the most delicious colours. She was, of course, just as friendly in real life as she is on her blog. I also saw Little Tin Bird had a chat with Bunny Mummy and visited Marmalade Rose whose stand was amazing, showcasing her skill, perfect felted pictures brimming with life.

At the centre of the event was Lucy from Attic 24 whose popular blog has reached out around the world through her enthusiasm for crochet. Showing the power of social media for good ,the event connected creative people from all over the country, bringing people together through a shared love of crochet and knitting, many of whom had not attended a similar event before. Yarndale was a celebration of small, independent businesses and Lucy's generous sharing of her crochet patterns on her blog was repaid by an outpouring of crochet support - 6000 granny bunting triangles sent to Skipton from 30 different countries

We all like to feel we belong and belonging to a community of creative bloggers feels pretty good to me.

Even though I was flagging we wandered down through the park in the sunshine, looking at the yarn bombing to have a look at Skipton.

So much effort had been put into decorating the walk into town, as we were photographing the crochet a local lady told us how delighted she was with it, how it was great for Skipton and even though she didn't know Lucy she thought she had done a lot of good for the town. She also recommended a cafe for a drink and some cake so we headed there for a rest and a refuel - Wild Oats Cafe was just what we needed and a slab of carrot cake gave me the energy to get back to the car.

For me Yarndale was a brilliant mix of meeting lovely like-minded people and an opportunity to buy luscious wool from independent makers, all thanks to the power of the internet.

Soggy Sunday

I had hoped to make a scarecrow with My Little Helper up at the allotment today but as it's been raining all day we've had to put it off. He's really been enjoying helping this year and has a row of beetroot and lettuces that he's planted and is caring for. So instead of allotment pottering I thought I'd cheer myself up with some pictures of our caravan trip to Shropshire, the weather was amazing, lots of cowslips

 
 we stayed on a site near Much Wenlock which was very handy for visiting Blists Hill the Victorian town. Mr FK and I worked out that we had visited once before, about 20 years ago and naturally it had changed a lot. The children were excited at the prospect of changing their money in the bank for 'old money' and then planned what they would spend it on.

 

 

 
The children liked the sweet shop best, Mr FK was quite keen on the chippy but I wanted to stay and play in the haberdashers

 
so many little visual treats

 
and cosy corners

 
There is so much to see there, a brilliant family day out with a sawmill, pigs and horses to see, a mine to explore, space to picnic and ferocious schoolteacher to put the wind up the children!

 
 
Since we got back my workshops have been going well and I'm really enjoying showing people how to do things I love. We've done crochet and embroidery and next week we are brooch making. I've updated the Studio blog with all the new summer courses. We are going to be learning how to take better photos with Jane and how to decorate delicious homemade cupcakes with Heather as well as knitting, crochet and a special Learn to Love your Sewing Machine session.

If you are in the Manchester area next Saturday 21st May please call in as I have a Charity Open Day. I have heaps of ribbon, beads, buttons, elastic and fabric and would like as many people as possible to pop in and help make bracelets for the latest Craft Hope project. They are sending bracelets to Orphan Outreach a charity who are going to be working in St Petersburg this summer and would like bracelets to give to the children they meet. A small, simple thing to make and I thought it would be a brilliant use of the Studio. Hopefully we can get plenty made for them, so please pop in!

Autumn Days

 
We squeezed in a weekend away at Carsington Water in the caravan, left home in the pouring rain on Friday and got home in another downpour on Sunday - but in between it was glorious sunshine. We walked from the campsite around the reservoir enjoying watching the boats, someone found it a bit hard going and his legs were tired......

 
What a hard life!

 
We have gathered most of our crops from the allotment, our single pumpkin is now on the kitchen window sill ripening and My Little Helper has plans for it on Halloween. Still some leeks in the ground for later in the year.We've also been planning all the extra things we want to grow next year - more fruit and veg, more flowers for cutting and a herb patch are all on the list. Well we'll see what next year brings, I've covered the parts I cleared this year with old carpets to try and keep them weed free for the spring.

 
Such wonderful colours, they remind me of the gorgeous wool felt I bought from Treefall

 
wonderfully thick yet soft. 

 

I think I might use it to make some more brooches in autumnal shades, such fun playing with pretty fabric and buttons!

 

 

2009

 

I love the New Year, an empty year stretching ahead waiting to be filled like the pages of a new journal. One of the reasons I love blogging is the record it makes of family life, the small everyday things that are so easily forgotten but are so precious.

 

Once the flu had passed we had a lovely family Christmas, visitors and visiting, lots of food, new bike riding, new guitar strumming, film watching and just hanging out together. 

Today feels like a fresh start as the decorations come down ( I'm a bit superstitious so even though the tree came down at the weekend (thank goodness for wooden floorboards that are easy to sweep) and I've taken the rest of the decorations down today, 12th night. So the house is relatively clean and tidy, as long as the doors to the children's bedroom doors are shut! All ready for a fresh start to the year.

2009 promises to be an exciting year as our family grows and we welcome the new baby in the spring. Knowing it will be a challenging year I'm not going to set myself up for failure with a raft of resolutions but I have some goals that I'm going to keep in mind this year

Allotment - I'm not expecting too much this season as bending will be a bit of a problem in the spring (!) but anything we grow will be a bonus. The children really enjoy it, they think it's a bit like Time Team digging for treasure and are really excited at all the bits of china and clay pipe that they dig up. My Little Helper wants to grow potatoes so he can make chips! Hmm not quite the healthy approach I had in mind.

Crochet - 2008 was the year I learnt to knit properly and 7 pairs of socks later my enthusiasm has not waned. So this year I want to learn to crochet, I see a ripple blanket or granny square blanket in my future.....possibly quite a few years in the future!

Simple living - drive less, walk more, get back into meal planning, tackle the clutter hotspots (like the tottering pile of papers on top of the fridge)  no spend days and to address the cash trickle, you know when you get £30 out of the cash machine and somehow it trickles out of your purse without you really knowing what you've spent it on.

Happy New Year to all of you. May 2009 bring you peace and happiness.x   

Just chillin

A super chilled out weekend with friends, I even read the Sunday papers! Perhaps not so chilled for them as they are not used to 2 small children invading their lovely cottage with  noise, arguments, DS games and so on.

 

Saturday was damp, but a rainbow came out to meet us as we went to the ice cream farm for supplies, of course we had to have a mammoth tasting session while we were there - mmm black cherry, clotted cream, strawberry goodness.

Sunday was bright and crisp, perfect Autumn weather. 

Just right for harvesting pumpkins and a wander down the green lane chatting and soaking up the sunshine   

The glorious English countryside.

Of course this morning it is raining again but I have the taste of the ice cream and the memory of the warm sun on my face to cheer me.

Can you hear it?

.............the silence. The clock is ticking and I can hear the whirring of the computer innards but that is all. For the first time in six weeks all is quiet at this time of the morning. We have enjoyed the hols with sewing, swinging, paddling, squelching, reading, baking, film watching plus some bickering, arguing and grumping thrown in to see how much Mummy can take before she locks herself in the loo!

We had a facinating day out at the Green drops and moonsquirters exhibition at the Manchester Art Gallery

 

I think I enjoyed it more than the children! Lots of great activites and lifesize versions of the wonderful illustrations. From dressing up to computer art work it was well thought out.

 

While we were there we visited some of the other exhibitons and one that really touched me was an arrangement of old suitcases and luggage with blank luggage labels for you to write  ' where would you most like to be'. Many, many people had done so and attached them all over the cases, some poignant some fun I added mine to them and tucked it between two cases, a special place I would like to be.

So I will try and savour the silence and look forward to the return of my two, fast growing up, children. If your house is silent for the first time I hope you are finding the transition to school  life as easy as our children.

We're back!

Well, where were we before a week away in Somerset intervened?

Ah yes, sports day and the end of term

a couple of birthdays, so I now have a 5 year old and a 9 year old,oh how the years are racing by ( too fast!)

and a wonderful day out with friends at the Tatton Flower Show. A mooch round the Country Living Pavilion, the amazing show gardens, the back to back gardens that are more realistic but no less breath taking, a tasty picnic lunch and of course some slug food..I mean plants to take home. The weather was lovely, sunny and breezy just right for a flower show so the new wellies were not required.

A wonderful relaxing day, a perfect way for 4 Mums to get ready for the long summer holidays. The children broke up the next day and then we were off to Cheddar for a week. More on that later as I have almost 700 of your posts to catch up on and I can't wait to see what adventures you've been having!