This blog has now moved to

Last week we had great fun at A Good Yarn , Cleethorpes. It was the Wish Upon a Knit events all week. It was to raise money for When You Wish Upon a Star.  It was very busy with lots of knitting, laughter and cakes. The last being the most important.....we ate a lot of cake. All the cakes were homemade by several of our lovely knitters and were very, very good. Obviously, I found the cakes to be the standout feature of the week! Maybe, I should tell you about the rest and forget about the exceedingly good cakes. Hold on - how about a piccie of ..... cake. Every session had different cake too and of course, we had to test it all. Anyway.... Everyone who took part received a kit with materials for four different jewellery projects. They involved lots of different skills and hopefully, some new ones for people to have a go at. The room looked very pretty, with fresh flowers, white tablecloths and vintage china. The Saturday session was that busy that we had to expand into the shop. Ho...

I normally share something to do with what I've been doing, but for a change I'm going to show you some of Mr's work. His current crafty obsession (and has been for awhile now) is woodturning with the odd foray into carpentry. His latest piece is just stunning. He found a gorgeous plank of naturally edged oak. He has routed and shaped it into two racks and turned some identical oak pegs to make two amazing coat racks. With some polish and elbow grease, we now have two very useful coat racks. One has 4 pegs and the other 5. The 5 peg rack has the pegs put in at an angle for coats and the other we'll use for hats and scarves. Incidentally, I've found it makes a nice prop for photos. With my well worn colour affection.

At a quick glance, it's looks like I'm practising lepidoptery, but I'm not pinning out butterflies but lots of swatches.  I've had that many, that I've had to do them in batches and each time I've started to run out of blocking pins and have been relegated to using dressmaker's pins. I still have more to go. Wish me luck....

I've done plenty of knitting lately but for one reason or another they are secret projects, so I've not been able to share them. I have completed one little project which is a Puerperium Cardigan by Kelly Brooker . I bought some gorgeous Adriafil Duo Plus yarn in the "End of Season Sale" at A Good Yarn  - plus lots of other yarn too, which I'm not going to talk about because I think I have a stash addiction and I'm going to ignore the problem and hope no-one will notice. The yarn in question is absolutely gorgeous, stunningly soft and in beautiful muted colours. So even though there are lots of other projects I should be doing, I had to make a little Puerperium ( which is a welcome to the world gift for a friend's grandchild due in a few weeks ). I decided on making all the buttons different and trying to match the colours in the yarn, not a perfect match but I quite like the effect. The other project that I can share is currently languishing on my needl...

I've been knitting lots recently and have this big pile o' knits. There's lots of different bits in that pile; baby cardigan, baby vest, fingerless mitts, socks, bandana, shawl and a moebius cowl. A pair of vanilla socks (my pattern)... And this is what is currently on my needles... It's a baby vest. It's a sort of a made up pattern, with the inspiration being from a photo of something similar. I do like a bit of stranded knitting! The yarn is Rowan Milk Cotton and is just lovely to knit with but unfortunately has been discontinued by Rowan. The only thing is now I love this so much I want a grown up one for me.

I've always had a fascination with painted rocks. My aunt used to paint for Royal Crown Derby and she painted the most beautiful things, including a large stone, which we use as a doorstop.  With all the trending on Pinterest about painted rocks I had to have a go. This pin in particular inspired me. A long search of the garden later... This is what I did: Clean the rocks well with a toothbrush. Remove any sand or dirt I freehanded the pictures but you could draw them on in pencil first I used a fine rigger brush and acrylic paint to paint the design. Finally, I coated them in a thin layer of glossy Mod Podge. Here's the finished result in the lovely Tulipwood bowl that Mr made for me.

I'm not entirely sure why but I dug my Filofax out of the cupboard and have started using it again. I thought I'd try and add a bit of creativity to it and make it more personal. I bought some washi tape and stickers from Riky and Nina . Washi tape and stickers The packs of stickers are great if you just want a little bit for journalling or scrapbooking etc. Each page has four thicker strips, two thin ones and four circles. I bought a pack of plain and some with cool details ( e.g. the sticker has ticket stubs, barcodes, music on them ). I used the stickers to redo the dividers to something more suitable for my needs. I'll use the rest as I continue to use it. Remade Filofax dividers Then I had a little fun with the washi tape. I bought a cute panda one and some pretty yellow flower tape. Washi tape  I wanted some sticky notes in my filofax but the official one wasn't quite what I wanted plus I had some nice geometric ones already. So I made my own. I used a page from t...