A trip out! To Shrewsbury Folk Festival

I'm at Shrewsbury Folk Festival, first big outing in public, (apart from local shops for food) since Feb 2020.

It was very nerve wracking at first being around so many people(even outdoors) , but I rapidly remembered what to do, and I'm really enjoying myself, now.

So good to be chatting to people, in the sunshine. Musicwise, Sekou Keita and The Longest Johns were particularly good. 

Then listened to The Spell Singers doing a sound check. Some of the songs they individually sang were pricelessly funny 

Lost Words Spell Singers were fabulous, Jackie Morris did a wonderful painting of two Red foxes while incanting the Fox spell and "her band" jammed along, ( to get that joke, you'll have to go and see them live!)

And we were treated to two new Songs, based on the newer book The Lost Spells. Which were also wonderful.

Lovely to see Robin Stenham after, really wanted to stay to the end for Show of Hands, but couldn't face leaving at midnight then driving two hours to get home.

Next year, I'll take the caravan and do the whole Festival weekend.

Companion animal I wish I had

Celestine and the Hare needlefelting workshop at blue ginger gallery, Cradley

@andtheHare

Totally utterly fabulous day last Saturday at blue-ginger gallery in Cradley attending a needle felting workshop with the very lovely and oh so wonderful Karin of  Celestine and the Hare. Karin took 11 of us through the process of turning woolly stuff into fabulous needle felted creatures using sharp pointy bits of metal :)

Having a fabulous time at felting workshop with Karin and a group of Norty Chokliteers.

We went from this

 Taking shape ...

I took Harriet Bear along to meet her sister Emily :) Harriet, Tiger Tim, Victoria Weasel and Betty Sloth Bear were all made by Karin :) As was Hector Weasel, but he stayed at home with Compostman

  

 Karin showing us how to make a tomten  and telling us stories while needle felting at the same time!

 

Part made creature - still no idea what it will be ...

I wonder what I am making?

Lunch break :) The food at blue ginger is excellent, as were the cakes

This is one of Karin's creations :) How fabulous ! A sheepdog :)

 

 Meet Cyril Squizzer :) I made him, I did!

Tiger Tim, Victoria Weasel, Betty Sloth Bear and Harriet hug their newest friend.

We all made such lovely creatures at this workshop

 
Here are our results after less than 6 hours of work

(whispers -we would have done them faster, but we had to chat to each other and laugh a lot and eat delicious food made by Sue and the lovely people at blue ginger gallery  and chat and giggle and eat choklit - did I mention I had the most enormous fun day with lovely Karin and the other people attending? )

If you get the chance to go on one of Karin's workshops or to see her demonstrate her art, do go. She is wonderful, as are her creations. And if you have not yet joined us at the most marvellous Tribe of Celestiner Chokliteers  go and have a look at her Facebook page  :)







and the Hare insisted and so we were not allowed to spend all the time needle felting. ell you, cruel! )

Boxing Day jigsaw puzzle fun

Another one found lurking in the "Scheduled" box, but not published!


So, after Compostgirl spent Christmas afternoon absorbed in a small jigsaw, Compostman and I spent a lot of Boxing Day absorbed in a larger one!

 Fiendishly hard. Really really really hard.

 But SO satisfying when we slotted the final piece in to place :)

Needlefelted small creature

Needlefelted small creature struggling with over large writing equipment. Should I use my greenwoodworking skills to make her a smaller pencil?

View from my office desk

 #gardening  #wildlife  #bumblebees

I have spent a lot of time working at my "desk" recently, sometimes sowing seeds, sometimes doing some paperwork - but mostly sowing seeds or pricking out and potting on many many small plants.

My version of hot desking. If I get up, I have a job to sit back down sometimes! Cassi Cat is a faithful companion, even if she does steal my seat at every chance.

My "office window" has a lovely view and I am even provided with an ever changing background soundtrack.

And I have wonderful floral arrangements right next to my desk.

Just round the corner is an amazing, naturalistic, art installation which climbs up the office wall and moves with the slightest breeze from the air conditioning.

And I am provided with a variation on the office fish tank to look, at if I want to rest my eyes from my work...

Bumblebee on Columbine

and on Solomon Seal

I think I am very fortunate to have such a wonderful office :)

Playing in the Wood

Cute chick flicks :)

Nutmeg has been teaching the chicklets to dust bathe ( and nearly buried them a few times!)

And Blackie caught a worm - almost as big as him/her. S/he ran around peeping with excitement and fell over it a few times :)

Of crochet and curses.

 I started crocheting back at the start of May. Unlike knitting, where I was taught the very basics as a child by my granny, I never learnt to crochet. But after getting into knitting again I decided I wanted to learn to crochet, so with the help of Bron at The Wool Garden in Newent, I started on my first ever granny square.

Despite her excellent teaching it was still all a bit of a struggle for me and that small granny square caused a lot of cursing and unravelling and re doing! 

I looked on YouTube for help, but it did not make it any clearer to me. But then I bought a fabulous little book on crochet , which made what Bron at The Wool Garden had shown me click into place. I need diagrams as well as hands on tuition, obviously!

After a couple (really, just two more) of small practise squares I settled on the colours I wanted to use and the pattern I wanted to end up with and started crocheting my blanket. Confident, or what? (Foolish me!)

I decided to crochet one large square rather than lots of small squares, because I wanted to and because I am an awkward so and so. This made my task harder I think, also, because if  when I made a mistake I would have to spot it and correct it quickly. If I didn't - I would have a lot of unravelling to do! More of that later...Suffice it to say I should have done lots of identical granny squares - it would have been so much easier! But I wouldn't be told.(There's a surprise!)

I picked up my crochet most nights while sitting on the sofa. I took my crochet with me sometimes when I went out, and did odd rows while waiting in cafes or in a car park. I did this until my work in progress got too heavy and bulky.

I guess you could say I got hooked on crochet.

This is what it looked like at the end of May

And this is what it looks like now. I have another three rows of the red to add around the outside and then I will repeat the three rows of gold, then red, then cream, then red, then green, then red. And then I will see if it is big enough for what I had in mind.

I chose the colours to blend in with the sitting room and because I really really like them. I didn't have any of the gold wool when I started, which is why it appears part way through, but I like the effect. The wool I am using is Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino - some bought from The Wool Garden and some bought on line from
Fingers and Thumbs.

It is already really heavy and I have had to stop working on it over the last few hot and humid days because it was just too warm lol. But I am really enjoying working on it, even if it is going to be the most expensive blanket ever ( I justify this to myself by calling it an heirloom blanket ha ha) and even though I am a bit OCD about any mistakes - last week I cursed and un ravelled 3 rows when I spotted I had missed a stitch ( or whatever the correct term is for crochet!) That is a lot of crochet time and unravelling!

But I love doing this, just as I love knitting dishcloths - it is practical and I make something useful and I find my mind can drift off and meditate on stuff. I can even watch a TV programme now and crochet at the same time!

I have also started on a few of the items in my crochet book as well as buying several other crochet books and magazines, as well as joining a few sites and following a few blogs about crochet...

Oh dear - definately hooked!

What do you like doing as a craft? Any other crochet fans?

Thank you for reading xx

A walk in the woods.

 We decided to go for a wander around our woods to see what was happening in there - it has been so wet recently that we have not been doing very much in the wood, so when we had a nice sunny day we decided to have a trip "out" into the wood

We found lots of ferns growing, enjoying the extra moisture no doubt!

A very overgrown log circle! It is just cow parsley, but the wet weather has made it grow everywhere!

Compostman soon cleared some space with his scythe

while Compostgirl had fun up a tree :-)

I sat on a log and listened to birdsong

We then went a bit further down into the wood, and found this. It had been a bumblebee nest, sadly ( for the bees ) a badger had taken a fancy to it and dug it out. A solitary bumblebee was flying around, trying to get back in to the underground nest.

More ferns

Going back home

I love our wood