Wonderful weekend

Wow what a wonderful weekend I've just had and after spending the last 3 months feeling really rough and battling a nasty virus and all the upset of the market debacle, I once again feel wonderful :0)

I have been organising a Charity Craft Fair event in our local town, I wanted to provide local crafters with the opportunity to sell their beautiful handmade wares at a reasonable price because everywhere I've looked, craft fair tables are sooooo expensive. The margins when selling things you've lovingly crafted are so tight that if you have to spend £30 on a table at event you've probably actually cost yourself more than you've made! 

So after lots of advertising a group of us excitedly got together for our very first fair on Saturday and what a roaring success it was, we raised £122 for our local Special Care Baby Unit and had a marvellous time selling the things we so enjoy making, and for me it was a relief to recoup a tiny bit of the outlay I'd spent on everything for the market stall that I'd been let down on last minute. All that stock and the money tied up in it, ready to launch a business that wasn't going to happen was laying so heavy on my mind.

We've decided it was so fab that we're going to do it every first Saturday of the month. More than anything else its a chance to socialise and meet like minded people , discuss methods and share ideas, we'll never make our first million from it as there's not many pennies to be made from crafting but it's fun none the less and I met some really fantastic people with some amazing ideas.

He'res my stall

Lots and lots of yummy crafty bits, plus if you look carefully, a sneaky cup of tea!

C2C

Now is it just me or has anyone else never come across C2C Crochet? I had honestly never heard of it before, or perhaps I've just been living under a bucket?! One of the Facebook groups I joined had a lot of members talking about colours for their C2C, which combination worked well, which yarns and size hooks to use etc, so I got brave and asked what C2C was, and what a revelation it turned out to be.

C2C stands for corner to corner and is a fab method that produces a beautiful blanket that crochets up really quickly. Once I got the hang of it, there's not actually really too much to master, I motored along and was really really pleased with the result. The work chequers back and forth and produces a basket weave effect.

I used a mish mash of yarns from my stash and used up a few oddsies that I'd been saving for this sort of project, a mixture of different DK's that I crocheted double strands on a 5.5 hook to make it thick and cosy and the result is brilliant.

I simply love it! It's definitely a new addiction and probably the first of many!

Just had to share

When I came down stairs this morning, (all my monsters still tucked up in the land of nod) everything was still and peaceful, so I popped my little bootie down on the sofa to enjoy it for 5 minutes and that's when I noticed this

This is Skye, basking in the window on the other side of the roman blind, enjoying the morning sun sat next to my vase of daffodils, I thought it made an extraordinary photo and just wanted to share it with you!

And once the blind was up.............

Baby Skye Blue, making the most of this sparkly new day!

Have a great day xx

Happy Mothers Day!

Mothers Day here in the UK this year was a warm sunny event but annoyingly I was still laid up in bed with this stupid bug that's been lurking about however by the afternoon and a good dosing of meds I managed to make it up to see my own Mum.

I wanted to give her something that shows I care rather than just buying her a bunch of flowers or some boring old chocolates, so I decided to make her something especially for her.  This time of year, spring, is just beautiful in the UK, the weather is improving and if you dodge the April showers, the days are getting longer and warmer. The hedgerow song birds chirp out a happy melody and the spring flowers are popping up all along the way.

I love being outside at this time of the year, the warmer air, the buzz of bees, cows back in the fields and the promise of hotter weather on the horizon are all good for the soul! And of course Jasper pup thinks so too as it means more walkies!

I think spring flowers are just beautiful, so delicate and well just "happy" but my favourite has to be the daffodil, throughout the whole of spring, I have daffy's in my living room window, they're just so bright, happy and welcoming, and my very favourite of the spring blooms.

My Mum and daffodils make me happy so I decided to put the two things together to make her something really special for Mothers Day, and with the help of Lucy's Blog at Attic 24 I made some beautiful daffodils

Very easy to make, and as you would expect from a Lucy tutorial, very easy to follow, but the result is fabulous. What this picture doesn't show (this is after I blocked the petals) is the sweet little fluted effect on the trumpet that you get on real daffodils.

I added some buttons to the insides of the trumpets to embellish them and then put the whole thing together on a white wicker heart

Her favourite colour is green so I this tied in nicely with green buttons and ribbon and it sat with the yellow of the daffodils really well, and it was especially lucky that the heart in the middle which says "best Mum" was green too. I hadn't planned it really, but it all came together beautifully and she was very pleased with it.

It's got me onto thinking about making one of those beautiful wreaths that Attic 24 is so well known for, perhaps all my favourite springtime flowers and a couple of chirping birds to remind me how great spring is when we're in the depths of a gloomy winter?

Long time no blog.............

It feels like forever since I last blogged, but I've been incredibly I'll with the nastiest bug. I realised its probably been hanging on since the beginning of the year and 4 months on I'm still doing battle with it. I am however starting to feel a little more human even if my brain feels like its full of cottage cheese and thought it was about time I updated my blog.

After the disaster with the market, I decided to turn those bitter lemons into sweet lemonade and hatched a plan. I'd consider myself a bit of a passivist and would like to consider myself as also a bit of a philanthropist. I could never be a hard nosed business woman stepping on whoever gets in the way whilst climbing to the top. I'd rather do good by good people and have a conscience I can live with. I was incredibly hurt and upset with the cut throat way the whole market business was conducted in, it felt like they had no care that a family with a special needs child had spent all their very hard saved for savings on stock before telling them 10 days before the start of the market that they didnt have a stall, and when I wrote to them explaining the whole situation they didn't even grace me with an acknowledgement, but on a positive note,  it made me even more determined to succeed in a compassionate manner.

Luckily a friend from years back had witnessed via my protestations on Facebook and also felt I had been treated very badly and offered me the function room of their Inn free of charge so I could set up a craft fair. As you can imagine I was absolutely over the moon! My initial plan was to hire a hall and split the cost of the hire between any local crafters who wanted a stall, but then Simon jumped in with his offer. It was never my plan to make anything from holding the fairs, I just wanted an opportunity to sell my items at a reasonable price as everywhere I looked, stalls were so much. So now we have a venue for a regular craft fair on the first Saturday of every month (April's is on the second Saturday as a friend is hosting one this Saturday) and as the hall hire is free, I've asked each stall holder to contribute £5 for their stall and each month am going to give the proceeds to a local charity.  This sits well with me as it helps others already trying to help the less fortunate, and gives local crafters and artists a chance to sell their goods at a reasonable price. 

So despite feeling rough, rough, rough, this week I've dosed up on meds and worked really hard, all of which would not have been possible without Skye's invaluable help!!!!!!

And I think I'm finally ready to rumble

Boxes and boxes of stock, over 100 balls of yarn, 2000 buttons, fat quarters, threads, ribbons, pins, scissors, poppers, sem rippers, stitch markers and everything else precious stashed in my tower of boxes. I'm really excited and really hoping this is the start of my dream of running a craft shop and gallery to display local crafters work, with a studio attached so I can share my skills to teach others what I love best! 

When life gives you lemons................

I'm feeling rather fed up with life at the moment, it's one of those periods where just about everything seems to be going wrong  :0(

I received a phone call on Friday evening that absolutely knocked me sideways and has really left me reeling. As you probably know from my previous posts I've been really really exited about my new community project and accompanying market stall, in fact the last 3 months of my life have revolved around researching it planning it, choosing the best suppliers etc and then with one phone call to tell me there had been a mistake, the town hall clerk shouldn't have told me I had a stall, it was down to the market committee to decide and they'd decided someone else could have the stall, everything came crashing down. All my well laid plans now lie in tatters and the dream of starting my own little local business gone. 18 months of hard saved savings, spent on stock that is no good to me now. Completely derailed is an understatement :0( 

The saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade and after a weekend of despair (what am I supposed to do with £800 of stock tailored for a little town market stall) I have picked myself up, dusted myself off and.......................... Shelved everything, for now.   After the health problems I've had the past few weeks, some of which I can say was probably caused by the stress of trying to get a business started, I have decided to be kind to myself and give it all a rest for a bit and go back to what I know and love and what makes me happy, crochet, sewing, crochet, sewing! And then when I've made enough lovely things, I'll run a few little craft fairs in the summer for me and my fellow crafters to sell our wares.

I've decided to forget about the town hall, forget about the committee that has destroyed my all plans, forget about the market and for now forget about the craft group and instead use those lemons to make medicinal lemonade and get myself back up on my feet and firing on all four cylinders. I truly believe everything happens for a reason, at this moment in time, that reason is unclear as yet, but in time I know it will reveal itself when the time is right.

What a disaster!

Note to self: Do not ignore a headache

I wish I'd taken my own advice as I very nearly caused myself a major problem. If you remember back along I was complaining of a pain in my neck and shoulder on the left hand side that was really painful. I thought it was just a pulled muscle or I'd slept funny, then I kept suffering with the worlds worst headaches and was taking to bed early every evening as nothing was helping to ease the pain, then my left arm kept going numb and tingly, yet I still ignored it. Well on Wednesday after a fabulous walk along the beach with Jasper dog I experienced excruciating stabbing pains in my head, started being sick and was terrified by what seemed like a shower of glittery iron filings slid down the side of my eyes. I don't remember driving home but headed straight for the doctors surgery who immediately sent me to the emergency admissions unit where they performed a lumbar puncture and brain scan and discovered the source of my pain. 

(How about this for a bruise! This is where they did the lumbar puncture, it got worse and went through a beautiful range of rainbow colours but now is starting to fade.)

And what a good job they did, I have been suffering with chronic migraine which contributed to intracranial hypertension for several weeks and had it been left, long term could have seriously damaged my eyesight. Now who feels like an idiot! Why oh why did I leave it so long, but then again, who dashes to casualty with just a headache? I guess I just thought it was maybe a stress type tension headache as my eldest is waiting for heart surgery for the third time on his mitral valve, and my youngest is waiting on an appointment at Great Ormond Street for his genetic anomaly, and both of these have been playing on my mind somewhat.

So after 5 days of morphine, anti-sickness drips, rehydration fluids and bed rest they have finally discharged me home and I am trying to take it easy. What a palava, and next time I will take my health far more seriously!

To be fair, I did feel very rough and I must have been bad as although my husband brought my crochet in for me, I just couldn't concentrate on it and completely lost all interest in it. Wow, serious alarm bells ringing when I don't want to crochet!

Since being home I've picked up a project that I started before I got ill and have been slowly plodding along with it, but to be really honest I'm a bit fed up with it, I think it's more me than the pattern, I'm sure if I felt 100% I'd be brimming with my usual enthusiasm for it. When I saw this beautiful bear I just had to make one.

Isn't she beautiful! She's Lollo the African flower bear by Heid Bears.  She has a lovely blog which is really worth a peruse but beware it will make you want to make everything!

So far I have done my body

And my head

She's still waiting for her eyes, but I can't drive due to my stupid head at the moment so I'll have to get them later, and my little man insisted I use a black bear nose as it looked like Jasper dog's!

And I've just started on her left foot

I bought a big batch of unbranded bamboo yarn for my stall, but when it arrived I realised I hadn't read the details properly and what I thought was DK was actually 4 ply. I panicked a bit, thinking people wouldn't want to buy 4 ply so I decided to make Lollo out of it to show my customers how lovely it is when worked up. It is soooooooo soft and smooth and such a joy to work with, it's 70% bamboo and 30% pure cotton and just beautiful. As it's un branded by the manufacturer and the care label is completely in Chinese have had to put my own labels on it. I'm working it on a 3mm clover amour hook. The pattern calls for lots of different little crochet hooks which I didn't have and in my haste just wanted to get going so decided to do it all on a 3 and its coming out OK, I'm sure the designer would want to shoot me though!

If you would like to make a Lollo you can purchase the pattern very reasonably on ravelry:

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/lollo-the-african-flower-bear

And the blog can be found here:

http://heidibearscreative.blogspot.co.uk

Enjoy! Xx