Cumbria Life

Phew! I've just been interviewed by Cumbria Life!!! For the Spetember issue. By a wonderful lady Mary Ingham, who was so easy to talk to, knowing me most probably too easy to talk to, as I do tend to babble when I get nervous! Anyway, fingers crossed she can make sense of my rubbish & hopefully an interesting article will come out of it.

The photographer is coming next Wednesday, so luckily I'm in the shop on Tuesday so can pick up lots of nice shawls & things to bring back to the house.

Jan Hicks, who's a member of The Wool Clip has a nice feature in this month's issue, so we're on Wool Clip overload!

Curtains

I'm making some curtains for the spare bedroom I use as my craft room. I absolutely love this room, it has 2 windows & the views are spectacular, as they are from all our rooms; we are very lucky to live a beautiful part of the country.

Anyway, I've wanted to make some curtains from the Laura Ashley toile de jouey fabric for ages, finally got around to ordering it from the internet & it's been discontinued - aaaghhh!

Luckily, I spoke to a really lovely girl in the Workington shop, which is our closest, who rang around & found me some in the Kendal shop, so am busy making them in case I need anymore fabric.

So, today I've cut fabric, interlining & lining & have attached the interlining & fabric together, won't have time to do more tomorrow as I'm in The Woolclip, & then Sunday we've friends for lunch, so will work on them some more on Monday. If I have enough fabric left over I'd like to make a bedspread, so will have to see how they work out.

Hand-Crocheted Jug Covers

These take longer than you think, by the time you've threaded the beads on & then gone round & round, ending up with roughly 120 stitches before you start doing the lacey bits. I can't seem to do 2 the same!

new shawl

This is a shawl that was order from someone at Woolfest. It's in 100% merino in bright red & even if I say so myself I thinks it looks fantastic, am really pleased with the way it turned out.

close-up of the edging blocking

this is the middle scetion, on the left is Estonian star stitch, then on the right is blossom stitch, another Estonian stitch

the whole shawl blocking.

Hayfever & Post-Woolfest!

It's been a gorgeous day here, but the farmers have been cutting & baling the grass & I had to give up sitting out in the sun & come in as eyes were streaming, nose blocked up & itchy throat. I never used to suffer from hayfever until about 7 years ago & now it's horrible & once you start scratching you can't stop, horrible!

I thought I had just about recovered from Woolfest but then some friends asked us to look after their dogs whilst they went to Wimbledon. Fine, no problem, let them out on Thursday night, let them back in & fed them, put them to bed. Then apparently our friends rang up to say they were coming home that evening, however, I was fast asleep on the sofa, husband says we had a whole conversation about it & then I fell back asleep. Unfortunately, I woke up at 6am the next morning & thought I must let the dogs out, so walked round to their house at 7am, noticed their car was there, but thought maybe they took the train, so checked the dogs anyway, all tucked up in their kennel. Got back home, told husband what I'd done.....

Oh dear, this is what Woolfest does to you!! Or me anyway.

Woolfest 2011

My stand with all the shawls, scarves & kits out
This was the 10th birthday stand, with my Indulgence stole/scarf, Marion's Decadence, Jean's 10 shawl pin & Ellie's needle felting cow kit.

Well, we had a fantastic time, 5,000 people over 2 days in the little Cumbrian town of Cockermouth! That's a 1,000 more than last year, phew, I feel like I spoke to all of them!

This is what our stand looked like at about 10.30am on Sat, mad, mad mad...........

Hopefully everyone enjoyed themselves, the feedback from stallholders & visitors alike seems to be very positive, we certainly really had a great time. Nothing nicer than talking to like minded people about topics you enjoy, ie wool & all things woolly!!

The Woolclip stand was incredibly busy but happy! Well done us!

Woolfest Tomorrow!

Still needs a bit of tweaking in the morning.
Nearly there.... This is our Woolclip aisle.....

We've been at Mitchells Agricultural Mart at Cockermouth setting up The Woolclip stall this afternoon, thankfully 1 of our members, Linda, had made the most wonderful cupcakes to keep us going, I don't know how she had time to do it, so hats off to Linda!