Ready, steady...........

It' s all coming together...............

Exhibitionism

It is our exhibition this weekend at the Landmark Centre in Teddington. If you want to see these and over 100 other quilts, do come along and say hello.

What to do when you don't feel like sewing - pick up a bigger needle

I haven't felt like sewing anything major for a few weeks, but did want to do something with my hands. A couple of my neighbours have started knitting, so when I found 8 hanks of this 100% cashmere yarn in a charity shop for an unbelievable £2.00, I had to buy it.

In the eighties ( yes, I am that age) I used to knit a lot, and loved the challenge of the patterns by Patricia Roberts . As I was a student, there was no way I could afford to buy the finished jumpers. I was then a bench scientist, and my experiments needed me to to a very repetitive task every 4 minutes, for up to 4h, so there was lots of time in between to knit. This was before the days of ipods, Nintendo DS, itouch phones and the like, remember. I also loved patterns by Sasha Kagan and Christian de Falbe.


So when I decided to knit this yarn, I wanted a bit of a challenge. I found it in this pattern from Cheryl Niamath in Knitty. I've never done a thumb shaping, although have knitted in the round. Lovely beechwood needles from Mrs Moon set me off on the right track.


I knitted these on 3.5 mm needles as I have quite small hands, and also lengthened the main section to 24 rows, rather than 18, as I wanted these to extend up my wrists. The thumb was certainly a challenge, but good photos on cheryl's blog show helped me to understand how to do this.

These fit beautifully, so I think I'll be running up some more in the indigo and cream yarn that were part of the original bargain. What next - a Hanne Falkenberg mermaid jacket perhaps?

Bags of inspiration

We need another bag to go on our bag raffle at our exhibition, so I ran this one up. upholstery weight fabric, so no padding needed, although I added padded handles. Design challenge was to fit the lining while still maintaining the fringing at the top.

External pockets on both sides made by placing an additional piece of fabric over the top before stitching channels through both layers.

The flower is a selvedge strip, pleated then gathered and with loose threads stitched into the middle.

Last day of the holidays - sculptural outing

Last day of the holidays for my younger son, so we had a special outing to The Sculpture Park near Farnham. What a find this is! We spent over two hours there, wandering around the twisting sculpture trails and only saw half of what is on display. There is a huge variety of work in metal, wood, glass, cork and man-made materials. It was very atmospheric, with lots of wildlife flying about and rustling in the undergrowth and we only saw one other couple.

The amount of textural inspiration is incredible, so there will be several posts of photos from this visit.

There is no cafe on site, but across the car park there is a good hotel, The Pride of the Valley where there was a friendly welcome, good coffee and hot chocolate.

London fabric shop finds

In London today for a conference, and the venue happens to be on Edgware Road where I found two fabric shops new to me. The first, Jason's, has the most amazing range of designer silks and fine fabrics. Not in my price range for today , but wonderful to see, feel and dream about. Unfortunately, no pics on their website, and I didn't have my camera with me. but there are some on this blog.

The other, Hadson's , has wonderful wax printed fabric lengths, lovely silk chiffons and fine Swiss cottons. They also have a good selection of end of ranges quilting cottons at £5.00 / metre.

Simon Singh vindicated - BCA drops case

A day of celebration as Simon Singh has been vindicated. The British Chiropractic Association have dropped their libel case against him.. A victory for common sense, open debate and questioning of untested claims, hurray!