Every picture tells a story.

The brooches standing up on their pins have given me an idea. I might make a 'Theatre' someday with felt figures. Watch this space!

Here are 'Ma boys' sitting by the river at Art and Garden.

 Sunday when this was taken was a nice sunny day but Saturday...well.....shall we draw a veil over Saturday? Late friday night it was cancelled due to waterlogged car parking field. Early saturday morning a phone call.."Jackie, Its on again..get out of bed!" I was pleased it was on but sitting all day in a marquee in the rain was a bit reminiscent of childhood caravan holidays in Abergele.

Anyway Sunday was nice and I took courage and did something I have been meaning to do for all the years I've been there. I walked over the bridge.

 And I walked back again. My knees were like jelly when I got back on dry land but I did it.

                                          On the way I caught sight of the minutest bit of garden.

Here's the Summer house with lovely paintings.

Overall it wasn't a bad weekend, its alway enjoyable socially but financially it was very poor.

It was a great joy to meet one of my favourite blog readers 'JP" who came with the other 'JP" her husband.   I also met Sarah and her daughter from 'The Art of Moodling' whose sunny smile exactly matched her blog profile pic!

It was a delight to meet them all and makes it all worthwhile.

Oh AND I WAS on the radio and it wasn't bad at all. I didn't tell anyone because it would have made me nervous if I imagined my Mum and my friends listening. I told my husband not to listen and I didn't mean it but he's very good and he didn't! 

I made him listen on iplayer and he said it was good. So then I listened and do you know what? It was quite alright. I sounded a bit fat though!

I hadn't realised it would be live. They just sat us down, Chris who owns the garden and me, and started talking to us. When the music was playing the presenter discussed the next question. 

So..as well as the crossing the bridge, I've been on the radio.  Bucket list?

Now, this is the inspiration for the title of this post.

Can you tell what the story is?

The bird box covered with much gaffer tape because a few weeks ago the bottom dropped off. The nest, full of baby blue tits,was dangling on a twig below, the cat was licking his lips, the dog was chasing something around the garden, and the parents were having hysterics on the washing line.

 

 We fixed it all back together and the parents came back and raised the babies. The I found one on the path. I think it had tried to fledge and not made it so I stuck it back in the nest and when we opened the box the other day I'm afraid it was dead. It had a kitchen roll shroud and  cremation in the wood burner.

Anyway look whats in the nest.

A little bit of lime green merino wool which Hetty had been playing with outside.

Now here's another glimpse of our garden. 

 The bit I ignore has blossomed. We have a fine show of what some might call weeds but I love them.

 Such a fantastic pink.

 They are taller than I am when I stand on the path.

 Hetty demonstrates.

 Hetty has had a trip out to meet Donald, The Nova Scotia Duck-tolling retriever. I hadn't heard of them either!

 He's just a baby.

 The meeting went well.

 As usual..there are brooches! 

 Brooches for Woolfest and brooches for an order.

 I love the background colour of this felt. I used a horrible orange lumpy felt to start this off and it gave a lovely glow.

I'll be at Woolfest on Friday and on the IFA stand from 1-3 pm.

And finally......

Woolly and Wild

Woolfest is over for another year.
By the time I got there on Saturday afternoon there were only six of my brooches left.
 I added three pendants to them so this is all I could photograph.

They were on the IFA stand and you can see the lovely hanging made by Lesley King to the left. She uses prefelts and makes amazing patterns. Her felt for this piece is on scrim and contains silk fibres and has a lovely sheen to it. Her website is here
You can see my vessels and 'The Bag' here.
Someone almost bought 'The Bag' but decided to be economical!
I told her there would never be another but it was no good...

So its still available.
Here's the opposite side of the IFA stand. as you can probably deduce the theme was vessels!

The  hanging at the back is by Fiona who has a flickr set here.
I met another Fiona, lovely Fiona Dix who has a great blog called Love Fibre. She used to live a lot nearer to me and I didn't meet her then and now she lives about as far North as you can get and I met her yesterday!

We are dog sitting at the moment so Indi had to come with us. I think she enjoyed a few eyeball to eyeballs with sheep like this Herdwick.

She was a bit hot and demonstrated this on the way home when we stopped for a while on the shores of Bassenthwaite.

I wanted to join her I can tell you . It was idyllic and hot and peaceful. I won't break into song but indeed 'the fish were jumpin' , no cotton though!
Further on I saw a heron, and then a bird of prey gliding by and at this point we remembered that this is one of the few Osprey breeding places in the country and I think it was an Osprey. How lucky I was to see it.
Naturally we were quite tired when we got home so we slobbed out watching TV and I was was engrossed in facebook scrabble when suddenly my husband said 'Look out..there's a bat in room.

Indeed there was. It flew around for about two minutes, landed briefly on the curtains and we opened the doors and it flew out.
 How exciting.(I just told my Mum and she's horrified!)
Then my husband did his favourite TV thing ..flicking through the channels and stopped on a film called 'Phantoms' about some horrible giant moth like creatures that fly in through the window and eat your face off.....

I was glad I hadn't seen it earlier.

Driving back through the Lake District yesterday we couldn't help notice how low the water levels were in the lakes, particularly the one which supplies the drinking water for the Manchester area, Thirlmere. There are
islands were there were never islands and metres of dry exposed rock around the edges.
Quite worrying.
It really has been a dry June for which at the moment I am very grateful. A downpour or two would be welcome I suppose.
Its such a great time of year.
I took our canine visitor a short walk the other night and as I walked past the front of our house I noticed the remnants of a rose bush which I thought had been taken out during some work out next door neighbours had done. The branch was in danger of being trampled by the general public and it had lots of buds so I cut it off and put the buds in water. They opened into the most delicate and fragrant flowers and I want to identify the variety so I can get another. The flowers are  small and white (no not edelweiss) with a peachy hint and the gorgeous scent of geranium. Here's a picture.

I'll finish with a picture of some flowers I bought for a friend .
I had just been reading about paeonies on Alice's blog and there they were at the growers so I had to have some. I can't aspire to her turn of phrase and beautiful writing, but I can stick a few flowers in a vase!
I bought bunches of Sweet William , Blue Scabious, deep pink Virginia stock and pale pink paeonies. I added Ladies Mantle and yellow Loosestrife from my own garden.
Mmmm.

What a week.

Hello

What a week.
I have just returned from Woolfest with Margaret who drove, and am sitting reflecting on the past week.
It corresponds with this week last year when I didn't get to Woolfest so I have done better this year. And yes the 'big clean' has been done again.
Plus a major paint job on the kitchen. (Why do these things always get done in a rush ?)
But more later.
So, there I was, cleaning washing ironing vacuuming shopping ironing ironing ironing and there was a knock on the door, and the postman handed me a hoooge parcel from Daisie Davies
She said she had something for me and we couldn't manage a meet up because I was so busy so she very kindly sent it.

I couldn't imagine what it could be in this massive package...but look....can you read it?
Harris Tweed !
Its a thing of beauty, a solid wooden hanger with an engraved brass plate.

Just imagine my tweets hanging from that when I do a craft fair.
Thank you so much dear Daisie, I know you've had a sad week. It so kind of you.

Later that same day.........


My Fellpaintings arrived. This is a terrible photo but I can assure you it is a beautiful painting and I love it and its companion.

Sometime midweek I learnt that I had won this little chap in Michelle's giveaway which she ended early having received only 4 comments. I told her to try again but she very generously insisted I should have him so I'm very excited.

So onto Thursday.(.oh I nearly forgot our romantic evening out on Wednesday taking the old fridge to the tip followed by a supermarket shop, then on Thursday morning taking my elderly neighbour for her podiatry appointment)

On Thursday at 4 pm our first guests of the week arrived.
Our tutor for The Embroidery 2000 workshop on Friday, Carol Naylor and her husband.
This is a small sample of her work. I treated myself .


We had an enjoyable evening together, a meal and a walk, and plenty of wine, and the following day our group workshop in the studio on the bank of the river with a gorgeous garden, where we sat for lunch.

We all made lots of noise with our sewing machines and Carol was so generous with her techniques and materials.

Mine's the little wobbly one on the back row .

Friday afternoon, home, bit of ironing, change beds, quick clean round in prepapration for our next guest who I had never met before, a folk musician who wrote one of my favourite songs.
My husband brought him from the Traditions festival and I met him this morning briefly before I rushed out to Woolfest.

What a great day.
The first person I met was the lovely and talented Jenny Pepper.
The weather was just a bit sultry and I think I was fairly purple most of the day.



But other people were other colours!

I watched a young woman shear 4 young female sheep and one big ram in about 20 minutes.


The fleece was snowy white and beautiful and can you believe it could be bought for £3?


I spent a little bit more than £3!
I bought some lovely dyed silk tops from Oliver Twists.




I had intended to but large amounts of merino tops but I always buy less than I want .
I think I'm intimidated by the volume of it.



I got the colours I need for my next project.
I also met a lot of friends, sold a lot of brooches (Kandj I can't reply to you,I don't recognise the name,terrible memory,but thank you!)and saw a lot of beautiful things.
But, I have decided, that just because you can make something from wool, doesn't mean you necessarily should.
Cheers.

Woolly Weekend ahead

Well, the pictureless post sorts the sheep from the goats!
Thank you those who read and followed the links and enjoyed them and those who then commented.
I succumbed and actually bought something on ETSY! I am one of those annoying people at craft fairs who sells but keeps her hands in her pockets.
It was not always so but I am no longer earning a crust in the classroom so I have to be realistic.
I apply the same stingy attitude to etsy but I just HAD to have a Fellpainting. It hasn't arrived yet but I know a lot of you who visited the site will appreciate how excited I am.

I've had a lovely weekend of walkies with this little sweetie. My son-and-his-ex-girlfriends- shared-dog, Denny..named after Sandie Denny of Fairport Convention.



She doesn't sit still for long so its hard to get a good picture.
She is far cleverer than Willow was, far more obedient but still.....she isn't Willow who was beautiful but it has to be said, fairly thick. The Bimbo of the dog world.
When the above son was little he heard the word 'Bimbo' and asked me what it meant.
I said it usually applied to someone who was beautiful but not very clever.
He said 'Oh well you're not a bimbo because you're clever and you're.......er......er....'


I promised a photo of my goodies from Helen of Cocoa and Blankets. I'm sorry, I was so excited that its all blurred. Just look at these yummy things she sent me. Shimmering blurry colour!



I spent a couple of days on my sewing machine making some brooches to send to Woolfest.
I heard an annoying squeak so I decided to unscrew the flywheel to find out where it was squeaking.
How hard can it be?
Two hours later, having tried every combination of the three components I could imagine, I was on the phone to Bambers in Manchester with my screwdriver in my hand and my machine on its end while he talked me through re-assembling it.

Just in time to get more brooches made.


These are Woolfest Specific!
They are going on the International Feltmakers Association stand.



I wish I'd thought of it sooner.
Just imagine..

tops!
I Love EWE!
fleece!
card!
spin!
dye!
weave!
fibre!

B*******!

See you there Saturday?