If you go down to the woods today....

Watch out for monsters!! Here are my latest creations, Agatha (a witch with a heart of gold and a desperately bad hair do), and George (not sure what he is but he lives in the deep dark woods and doesn't say a lot).


Thank you for all the well wishes, I recovered and managed to make 16 of the new brooches for the knitting and stitching show, which appeared to be a bit of a hit as they'd all gone by the time I did my stint on the IFA stand on Sunday. I'm teaching a scarf making workshop tomorrow, then I've a full day of felting on Sunday (City and Guilds Course). Then just a few more orders to finish and that's it! No more work until after Christmas. I'm hoping to use the time to develop a few ideas I have bobbing around my head (as well as some Christmas shopping). I'll also be getting the blog and the website a bit more up to date, I want to show you some of the work I've been doing on my course - I have been learning new techniques. There's a new programme of workshops to go up on the website as well.

But right now I'm off to make myself a big cup of tea, it's soooo cold here today, and I'm doing my best not to whimp out and stick the heating on straight away, what with the 30% increase in fuel prices!!

Feeling Grim

I think I have sinusitis, which is really inconvenient as I have orders to full fill and Christmas fairs to get ready for and I feel like crap!

Here's a new design, I learnt the technique on my City and Guilds Felting course and after playing around a little, I came up with this design. I'm really pleased with them, it's soooo nice to make something new. I'd like to have a go at making some hair bobbles using the same technique, so I best go and dose up on Sudafed, only two hours to the school pick up!

Remember, remember

The Fifth of November.... OK so I'm a little late with this post, but we recently got a new camera, more of an everyday camera rather than the big beast which I use to take photos of my work. This new camera has a firework setting so I thought I'd test it out. Most of them are rubbish as you have to anticipate the explosion in order to capture it, but I got a few good ones, however I did spend most of the display looking at the camera and not the fireworks so I don't think I'll bother again. I've come to the same conclusion about the kids school plays, you spend so long trying to get a decent picture of your child being cute up on stage that you actually miss the performance. Now I just sit and enjoy, and do (not so) discreet waves!

Ute left a comment asking if the Norwegian was too scratchy. It is a little more scratchy than the merino, but not too much. I wouldn't wear it against my skin in something like a scarf, but it's great for the soaps as it makes a fantastic scrub.

Stones

Well half term has been and gone way too fast, we spent most of the week in Killarney in Ireland visiting family. It's such a beautiful place, even when it's raining all the time! Mike and I got to climb a very small mountain on the first day (without kids), the views were amazing, but it was a bit nippy on the top!!


The only bad thing about the holiday was that I missed an opportunity to be in The Guardian!! I have listed my workshops on the School of Everything, it's a UK website that is free to use and is a bit like a workshop and classes directory. The Guardian were doing a feature on it and as I'd recently had a student attend one of my workshops by finding me through the site they wanted to feature me, but this all came to ahead whilst I was in Ireland which was no good as they wanted to photograph me, as you can imagine I was gutted. Hey ho, I'm sure they'll be other opportunities.


Now the kids are back to school it's time to start felting again. I've made these felted pebble soaps using Norwegian wool (I find the Norwegian doesn't pill as much as the merino and it creates a really nice scrub). I managed to get my hands on some wooden soap dishes wholesale so I'm selling them as a set. I've listed one on etsy, one on Folksy and one on MyEhive.