Paperchain Party - Combining house decoration and Christmas Cards in one!

The annual Southwyck Christmas party went well yesterday; caught up with a lot of friends I haven't seen in a while, ate and drank in a festive fashion, and even had an unprompted singalong!.

This year's theme was to make a paperchain to be strung in the living room; each person contributing a link decorated and made however they wanted out of whatever they wanted. If people couldn't be there yesterday, the link acted as Christmas card and they sent them along in the post. There were some fabulous ones made including the prerequisite one with cotton-ball snow, a sewn fabric one containing dried lavender, a möbius loop one from a scientific uncle (heh) and lovely crocheted link with a dangly snowball pompom! This one I confiscated from the chain and wore.. :)

Like sticks of rock made of felt...

Craft club convened at mine last night -  a slightly smaller group than normal, but it was probably best as R taught us how to make felt sausages; this involved lots of hot soapy water, making sushi out of wool 'roving' and drinking lots of wine... in no particular order.. maybe :)

The sausages are then cut into slices to make beads - you can see the concentric layers of the colours you've used like sticks of rock made of felt!

Felt bird workshop

Amy asked if I could run a felt bird making workshop at the launch of The Crafter Culture Handbook in Notting Hill; I assumed there would be a bunch of us who'd contributed projects to the book doing them, but no only me! I felt honoured (or maybe I was the only one to say yes :) ) Anyhow A prepared everything brilliantly; all the pieces were cut out ready, there was plenty of thread, needles, fabric pens and more importantly cupcakes! yay...

Happy St David's Day!

Not that I'm Welsh or anything but M is, so I made him a Leek and Goat's Cheese Tart (without the bacon!) to celebrate... :)

In other news, am doing a swap with this lady; making her a felt ring in return for one of her beaded ones and in April am volunteering for a few days at the Sarah Raven's Cutting Garden - yay! hopefully I will learn some, but it will be lovely to just see the place and all the spring growing that'll be going on...

Loose threads

this afternoon whilst in N London I had time to kill before an appointment, and wandered into The London Bead Company. I wasn't expecting much, but it was one of those shop that seem like Alladin's cave; they keep unfolding more and more things the further you go in. It's a combination of bead shop (at the front) and super good haberdasher in the back with miles and miles of threads! The only thread I've ever used to embroider with was the Anchor tapestry wool and DMC cotton. But here were silks from Kaalund (I thought they only made yarn!), The Thread Gatherer's Sheep Silk (my fave), Cotton Sampler Thread from The Gentle Art*, and Watercolours by Caron. I couldn't resist.... :)

They also have lots of books about knitting, embroidery, quilting, beading (including some Japanese ones) as well as yarn, needles (knitting and sewing) and  loads of other useful things - I definitely recommmend a visit!

*I love that they have grey-brown colour thread called LA Haze :)

Sheep & Snails...

The long awaited 'deviant view of cinema' has arrived. V's new monthly film magazine, Electric Sheep, is launched and a cinema club is planned... Have a go at the Film Roulette - you might win!

Other animals: If you remember the felt snails I made last year, you might be interested to know I've done a tutorial on how to make them for the Plush You! book coming out this November. There'll be a bonus pattern online for a mollusc-y morsel to feed your friend later this year..

Knots...

Just saw that Softies Central linked to me for the french knots on my snails :) They are running a softie competition, so I put in the snails and one of the creatures to see how they fare... good luck felty friends!

Silkscreened fabric... now a bag!

I needed some more project bags for new knitting projects so used some of the fabric I silk screened last year to make this... :)

Snowflake sewing cards

There's something very soothing about threading coloured wool through punched holes... It reminds me how much I love the 'stringing beads', 'drawing with crayons' and 'cutting pictures from a magazine for your scrapbook' pictures in Richard Scarry's Great Big Schoolhouse:)

Eeek!

Getting to the end of all the things I have to get done before our trip including making these little dingle-dangles for the Ornament Swap... must... keep... going...

:)