Polka Dots and a shopping trip.

I had to go out to the dentist yesterday, but that meant I was in Leicester near big shops with a few hours to spare afterwards. It was very, very windy so most of the time was spent searching for the perfect hat. I don't suit hats, so this was a bit of a challenge, and I almost found my perfect one (one of those knitted ones with ear-flaps and pom-poms on cords) but not quite in the right colour. So I ended up with a nice soft purple one instead. On my travels I paused to pick up some large leaves because of their lovely shape - I'm always interested in using the shapes of leaves in my felt, although any detail does get a bit lost with wet-felting, still, it's always worth a try. I'm not sure whether I got stranger looks while I was picking them up, or while I was wandering around the trendy shops afterwards with them poking out of the top of my bag.
Anyway, in John Lewis (a trip to which was my reward to myself for the dentist, although my dentist is very nice and never hurts me) I found this cheerful and affordable tray, with its lovely polka dots to brighten up my kitchen. And I found it went with my hat and leaves too, not that it ever has to go anywhere again with my leaves and hat.

I wanted it to put all my finishing-off things on, so I could carry it round the house to various rooms where I might find peace and quiet and the opportunity to do some beading and/or sewing, and as you see have quickly started filling it with stuff.

Bird on a hill

This is my latest present to myself. He is from my friend Charlotte's new range, I went to see her at her gallery yesterday and I had to have him and bring him home with me to sit on my kitchen windowsill! His similar friends haven't quite made it yet into the online shop, but I'm sure in time they will. I've really become drawn to little birds recently and am on the look-out for lovely unusual birdy things, so he was perfect.

It's been a very busy week, I've had to make felt in the evenings when the light has been so bad it was impossible to get any decent pictures. Also my trusty camera has been exhausted by me constantly taking photos of things, and will no longer reliably focus. I'm just investigating which camera to get next, hopefully one which can take better close-ups of the felt - it seems remarkably hard to show what the colour and texture is really like, I'm always disappointed by the shots I get compared to how vibrant and rich the pieces are in real life.

But I have had a small production line of lavender bags going, all cut out now but still a few to assemble and stitch:

- each day I plan to finish them all in the evenings while having a nice cup of tea, but my peaceful evening hasn't arrived yet.....

In Praise of Fairy Lights

I really don't like losing the daylight earlier and earlier, but it's good to make the most of the different characters of each season, and when it goes dark I just put these fairy lights on in the hall. They are entwined in the twigs all year round, not just for Christmas, and just cheer the place up no end.


The quilt on the far wall was made for me by my mother in law, to go with the stained glass in the door and windows, which of course you can only see in the daylight:

Autumn Leaf Bag

I found this wooden toggle in the wonderful haberdashery section of my local John Lewis a few weeks ago, and it inspired me to try and design a bag to incorporate it. This is what I finished up with, the leaves were cut out of some pre-felt I had lying around, with some added wisps of colour. It ended up slightly shorter and wider than I thought it would, but that's part of the appeal of feltmaking, I'm never quite sure exactly how new things will turn out, it's as if the felt wants to be a certain way sometimes!

A Gift

I'm taking a short break from work to show you how caring son number two is. He's currently eleven and in school cookery lessons had to make biscuits for somebody and put them in a box. His guitar teacher recently hurt his hand quite badly and hasn't been able to play or teach for quite a while, so this is the gift that my son made for him, all by himself - what a lot of effort went into drawing the guitar and notes, all round the sides too! I was really proud of how much trouble he'd taken.

Felted vessels and seed heads.

I loved making and beading these felt vessels and made several for the Wandsworth Artists' Open House last month.

Feedback was that people liked them, but wanted to find a use for them rather than just having them to look at and hold!
I thought they might be a good way to display dried flowers so I gathered some seed heads from the garden and spent a little while spraying them with gold and silver paint, so that they would look more Christmassy.

(May have sprayed part of the kitchen floor a bit silver too, must scrub it tomorrow.) So I hope that if I show them like this at the craft fairs coming up it will give people at least one idea of what to do with them!

Newton helping

With all the felt-making this last week Newton feels that he's been somewhat neglected and has taken to sitting forlornly infront of the cupboard where his food lives, looking as sad as possible.

Just as I sat down ready to bead my little pots, he decided that this was the time to attract attention by coming to sit on my lap. It's not that easy to bead whilst leaning over a furry cat's body. He also helpfully tried to catch any escaping beads by madly waving his front paws around as they bounced across the table, although his bottom half stayed firmly put.