Friday 30 April 2010

Over the Moon - Folksy Friday No. 8

I hope you like my choices this week. Click on any image to view the item in its Folksy shop.

-o-

Silent Theatre

--o--



Vintage Twist

--o--



Wharfedale Woolworks

--o--
loobytoo

--o--



Taonga Homescents

--o--



Lucy's Happy Place

-------o0o-------

Tuesday 27 April 2010

Inspiration is blooming...

.. quite literally, even in our garden. I have so many ideas - and not all of them floral. I think that the creative tap has been turned on by following the thought process of - 'just look at those', 'lovely colour/shape', how could I reproduce it? What could I decorate with it? What materials could I use? Then off at a tangent - if I made a 'thingummy' with this sort of a fastening/shape/size out of patchwork or felt could I adapt the design to any other purpose. I'm in danger of drowning in ideas and producing very little - but it feels good.

Last week was not very creative. I had a number of things to do which I had put off for so long that the final, final deadlines all came at once! On top of this my 16 year old decided to revive his asthma. I sat up with him for most of one night and had very little sleep for the next two. Now I know that some people can function well on little sleep. I am NOT one of them. I had a dreadful headache, found it difficult to focus(visually and mentally) and just managed to function on a 'do whatever is most urgent', moment to moment basis, to get through each day.

It reminded me of the first 2-3 years of my son's life. He was a lovely, blond haired, blue-eyed, chuckly baby and toddler. He did have the ability to function on very little sleep. About 4 hours in every 24 and even those not all at once. When he was tiny he would sleep for about 2 hours at night and the other two hours of our daily allocation were split into short naps.  The health visitor would say 'You look tired dear.. the housework can wait ...new mums need to learn to sleep when baby sleeps'. I can remember almost shouting at her '  When would that be exactly?' Housework? - not much chance of anything but absolute essentials. I'm not quite sure how we got through the first years of his life. I couldn't do it now but I suppose I am 16 years older! It was such a relief when his sister displayed the ability to sleep 7-8 hours at a time. Her brother, however, three years older than her, continued to wake us up several times almost every night until he was about 10. He then found the confidence to be awake on his own, but only started to sleep through the night at about 12 years old!

Anyway, I'm making up for last week now. I've got too much to fit into one week of planning, stitching, etc so I've taken photos to work from when I can. I thought I'd share them with you.

-------o0o------






















-------o0o-------

I warned you my creative thoughts are a bit random at the moment. All these cultivated (well OK some have self-seeded) flowers and I embroider a brooch based on wild foxgloves. I have been thinking about this one for a long while though!


-------o0o-------

Friday 23 April 2010

Butterflies - Folksy Friday No. 7

I hope you like my choices. Click on any image to view the item in its Folksy shop.

-------o0o-------


Woolly Duck

-o-



Gossimar Wings

-o-


Polka

-o-


Butterfly Vintage

-o-


MinXtures

-o-



Joys of Glass

-------o0o-------



Thursday 22 April 2010

I make bags......

....so why was I sitting in the sun knitting a scarf (yes I know its April, but I can't produce all my Christmas stock in September) with my work and yarn in a re-usable bag from our corner shop? I really must start to enjoy using the items I make. I suppose I feel guilty because it reduces my stock.

On the subject of feeling guilty - my blog has been sadly neglected recently. Unfortunately, there has been a procession of non-craft related issues taking my attention. Its more than a week since I listed a new item on Folksy. And no - I will not be listing Christmas stock yet! With a sense of Folksy community spirit, I have not missed a Folksy Friday, but my blog was not supposed to be a once a week post about other people's work - important though that is.

I'm afraid I haven't got anything very interesting to say today except that I have now begun work on my gallery page. I have used the Haptree mini-treasury template to produce a display of my work, department by department. Everything looks so much better when not listed in a jumbled muddle and I look forward to the day that Folksy allows us to acheive the same sort of ordered presentation.

The first display is now available in my gallery for you to view ( see link bar). I would love to read your comments if you can spare a moment to look.

Friday 16 April 2010

Folksy Friday No. 6 -'Fresh as a Daisy'

I hope you like my selection this week! Click on any image to view the item in its Folksy shop.

-------o0o------


Fleurs De Perles

-o-




Proceeds of the sale of this item will be given to Macmillan Cancer Care

-o-





Sukhi Crafts


-o-




Chain of Daisies

-o-




See the Woods Designs

-o-




Artisan Silver

-------o0o------

Saturday 10 April 2010

Plum blossom

Our plum blossom has just started to burst out of its buds - lovely!








We have had a 'listening out for the phone' sort of day. 13 year old on her first unsupervised shopping/cinema trip with school friend, 16 year old somewhere on the Long Mynd doing D of E Silver expedition - hopefully. ( He didn't quite make it last time - perhaps subject of another post - so we're hoping they'll do it this week-end). Anyway, so far only tele-sales and one miss-directed fax machine on auto-dial!

Not able to go far we've popped to a very small local nursery which we love to visit. The husband and wife team raise tomatoes, herbs and ornamentals in poly tunnels behind their house and serve customers from their conservatory window. They are supposed to be retired but are busier than ever! The best sort of retirement I think! We raise quite a lot from seed ourselves but love to choose some of the main plants for pots and baskets from them. It allows us more variety - its a bit difficult to grow one 'white with pink frills trailing geranium'!

On the way to our greenhouse with our finds, I noticed this blossom. It would be prettier without the wall backdrop. Unfortunately, from a photographic point of view, this plum and its neighbour - a family dessert apple, are fan-trained against our 'almost-south-facing' garage wall. We need to use all our space since our garden is not too big! The apple blossom should be out soon, as you can see the buds are quite fat.

My grandmother used to refer to a plum blossom winter - a cold spell following the plum blossom. This scrap of traditional wisdom we could do without. Particularly since, if it is too cold, the fruit buds can be frost damaged and we do love those plums! We're having a pork casserole with some of last year's crop from the freezer tonight.

-------o0o-------

I've got to decide how to use these blossom photos in my craft work. I have some very fine white yarn but the flowers really are very delicate. Maybe embroidery or applique. I'll have some fun trying out different ideas. Meanwhile I needed a fourth mini-crazy-patchwork brooch so that I would have a set of four to post together on Flickr, so I finished this one this morning:





-------o0o-------


Its now Sunday evening. 16 year old is back from his expedition. He is really quite sunburnt - I do keep trying to explain how foolish this is. Anyway, it seems likely that they will have passed this time. The second of three loads is in the washing machine (our water will be off for emergency repairs tomorrow). Our next joint challenge is to get him through his second year of GCSEs.

-------o0o-------

Friday 9 April 2010

Folksy Friday No. 5

I have been enjoying making some mini pin cushions and have kept some for my own use. I'm enjoying using them and I thought I'd see how many lovely needlecraft accessories I could find on Folksy. I hope you enjoy my selection!

(Click on any image to view the item in its Folksy shop.)

-------o0o-------


Midsummer Stitches

-o-




See the Woods Designs

-o-




Nics Knots

-o-



made by loumms

-o-



it's the little things

-------o0o-------



Wednesday 7 April 2010

This may take a while

At long last, I am starting to work through my list of other on-line possibilities. This week's project, if I can fit it into a week is Flickr. Yes, I am sure it is all quite straight forward to those of you with some general computer 'nouse'. However,  my introduction to computing at college was via a card reader. We had to book terminal time and the computer which we used was housed at another university about 40 miles away. I'm not as old as you might think from these comments. It is frightening to realise that we have got to wherever we are today, from the situation I began with, in fewer than 30 years!

I love to use quite old and traditional techniques in my craft work. I have some 'very old' (1930's) magazines and some older books and I love to visit 'heritage' collections of needlework - such as that at Hardwick Hall. I see stash's of materials, and I have got quite a collection - have completely run out of hiding places and even vertical stacking in corners is a problem in my craft space, as providing endless possibilities. I tend to flit from one project to another in great excitement and have found Folksy an excellent incentive to actually finish projects. I must learn to look at the on-line world in the same way. Full of endless possibilities - some of which I should certainly begin to use. However, as with my real world I must also learn some discipline. I began this morning by looking at some Flickr collections from one or two  Folksy people. I then followed up some of their contacts, marvelled at some wonderful work I would not otherwise have seen, happened across some new blogs, followed some, read several, added to my blog roll, and my sixteen year old has just asked 'What's for lunch?'. Quick glance at the top right of my screen reveals that it is no longer 11 am as I had thought!!! OOPS!

When I have got Flickr to cooperate with me and behave in a way which enables some work to be worth showing you I will edit this post with the details and add a couple of the photos which I have taken for Flickr.

-------o0o-------

Major excitement! I have managed to put a few photos into Flickr. Well, OK only four, but its a start. So here are three of them  (I hope! Blogger is now playing up. I have tried to reply to Pat's comment and it won't publish my comments. Then it did 5 times. Now it just shows one as deleted - the other 5 still show on my dashboard?!)( Flickr account - http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynwoodcrafts)








These are all bags which I have made for my own use. I hadn't really considered the fact that so many of my bags are blue.

-------o0o-------

Sunday 4 April 2010

Got Them All!

We know that this year because we finally remembered to count them!

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE! We have got a lovely bright sunny day. The plum blossom is just appearing, and the cherry blossom is swelling. My husband and I have just been for our usual walk around the fields opposite our house. Plenty of speedwell and celandines, there was a lapwing sizing up various sites on a stubble field - I hope they plough it soon - or leave it until after the nesting season. There were many pairs in that field last year. The local lambs are now quite big. We saw lots of evidence of rabbits but the Easter bunny was hiding! I also saw the usual badger paths - but not much sign of activity. I think apart from these observations we must have been chatting too much. I'm sure there was plenty more to see.

'Did you have an Easter egg hunt with Brownies?'

'Yes - why?'

'They missed some - but the Cubs found them!'

My Brownies and my son's Cub pack (yes -he is a bit old for Cubs - he helps to run it -in theory!!) meet in the same Scout hut. Brownies on Tuesday and Cubs on Friday. Beavers are there on Thursday, they must have been too busy to look. I hope the Cubs were thorough in tidying up after us. We had a bit of a problem with ants last year!





As you can see the plants in our garden have been growing some strange berries! Seventy to be precise - we know because we counted them so hopefully this year we won't be finding the usual gooey, ant-covered, foil lumps later in the year. We hide them for the children, yes they still enjoy it at their age. What is worse, is that so do we. Having found them the children then hide them again for us. I'm not sure which is most fun the hiding or the seeking. As usual, it is the most obvious, 'how-could-you-possibly-miss-that' eggs that are the last to be spotted.

I hope you've all had a lovely day! Easter is a time of renewal in so many ways and the start of the part of the year which I most enjoy. In fact - in some ways it is now that I tend to celebrate my new year - it has far more meaning for me than cold, dark snowy January and my ways of celebrating don't always involve noisy parties!

--------o0o-------

I have been promising myself an opportunity to give more attention to some recycling projects which I have been planning for months. It seemed to chime well with the theme of Easter renewal, and fits well with our life style, so this is my first item formed by re-creation:


-------o0o-------

Friday 2 April 2010

Folksy Friday - No. 4.

I've just got back from bag-packing at a local supermarket. My son has been lucky enough to be chosen to represent North Wales at the Scout World Jamboree in Sweden in the summer of 2011. He, and the other 26 from the unit. are now fund-raising, with the usual parental support. I'm hungry, thirsty and have a tired back and aching legs. I could do with a nice hot bath and something from the selection below! ( Just click on the images to find the item on Folksy).

--------o0o-------


Melusine Soap

-o-


The Sleepy Valley Co

-o-




Bubbles and Bliss

-o-




Saffron Barr

-------o0o-------