just dropping by to say what a beautiful sunset we have tonight !!

Uke Fest GB

Its taken a week but I think that we have now recovered from the Ukulele Festival of Great Britain which was held at the usual venue in Cheltenham.

There was plenty of beer, lots of ukes, 

 Some amazing artists

 a big busk with several hundred players

 and an open mic stage which proved to be too small for this group of uke lovers

I managed to make new friends and weave a mandolin strap during the weekend

I even managed to find a video on you-tube......look out for the lady holding the drop spindle in the opening scenes !
This is the third time that we have been to this festival and this was the best one so far!!

Prickles

Hi,
 On Sunday I dropped into town on my way to the windmill and came across this cute little creature raising money for the Hedgehog Rescue, Appleby, Nr Scunthorpe (uk) who posed for me in return for a donation :-)

I had agreed to drop in on the Woolly Outlaws who were giving a spinning demo up at the windmill and give them some support. As usual coffee and cake were in evidence as were the cd drop spindle used for teaching.

As you can see, people were being quite productive, I did a little spinning on my drop spindle then headed off to catch up on the gossip with the miller who was busy keeping an eye on the machinery inside the mill.

This time he was looking a little floury as apposed to previous photos where he was simply looking wet!!

This sign caught my attention on the way to the carpark !

I hope you all had a good weekend, speak soon xx

365 Photos

Good morning, I've just realised that this is post 901 !!!

I may not have been blogging but I have kept up with the photo a day challenge although it has been difficult at times.

The link is here, there are good photos and bad snapshots !!

loom bands

We have tried various crafts up at the youth centre but at the moment the big trend is for loom bands. I am always amazed at the amount of excitement that a pile of small elastic bands can produce and how productive a small group of teenagers can be!!

However, I have found another use for them, they stop the threads slipping off my inkle loom when I'm warping it up and I've used them to attach my scissors and thread ready for our next trip.

The teenagers have a more traditional use :-)

I will be back soon, have a great weekend !!

weaving.....

We are off to the Ukulele festival of Great Britain soon and I usually rock up with my spinning wheel and spend the day in the cafe in Cheltenham town hall whilst he wanders off to do various workshops. At the moment we seem to be workshop free and trundling round my wheel is more difficult these days so I'm planning to take something else.

I mentioned this to one of the musicians who is playing there and he said that maybe I should take a loom this year, an inkle loom would be easier to carry and I just happen to have another celtic strap on one that was recently started.

In the Sunday, the uke players get together and busk en mass outside Waterstones in the centre of cheltenham so I thought that maybe I would hide inside somewhere like Costa with the the small loom and work on this.

well, that's the plan at the moment :-)

Gate to Southwell 2014

So what have I been up to ?

Well! Yesterday I headed into Nottingham early to catch the start of the Gate to Southwell which is a procession of morris sides from Nottingham to Southwell stopping at a few hostelries on the way. At Southwell they present monies to the  church and have a short service complete with dancing. A better account of this can be found herehttp://www.dolphin-morris.co.uk/gate.htm, and the short story is that for various reasons this year is the last time this event will happen.
As we have followed the dancers in the past and know one or two of them, we decided that I would attend the start of the day and we would both show our support at the final procession up to Southwell Minster.

I'm trying to post this from a local coffee shop so if some of the links are a bit strange, I apologise.

a big hello to anyone still reading this.

Hi !

Its been a while since I posted here and I'm not sure if anyone will still read this ! Time has been taken up by illness and family leaving me without any real creative drive for several months.

However, I am slowly crawling my way back and there is a band on the inkle loom and lace on the pillow....more about that in the next post.

I am also working as a volunteer with young people, sharing crafts from friendship bracelets to origami with a lovely bunch of teenagers.

Hopefully life is settling down again, I have one exam to get out of the way then I should have a bit more crafting time.

Thanks to anyone still out there reading  xx

BTW I am still doing the photo a day this year, not missed one yet, really proud of that!

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My computer has been playing up so here is a quick update

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I hope you like them !

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elephant

Hi, I'm working in an elephant design that's easy for  teenagers to sew with little or no experience. Designed to be strung together and hung on the wall.

Next I'm going to look at felt brooches for them to work on.

Next step for today is to put together kits ready for Wednesday night and add to my session bag which already includes several peoples knitting, granny squares and a lace pillow with a half finished bookmark on it.

And they wondered why I laughed when they suggested I took the banjo along as well!!

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Still raining in the UK....

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Another dark, wet day so I just grabbed a shot of my favourite fast food and retreated back indoors.