a grand day out

I spent a very enjoyable day with the UK Hand Knitting Association (www.ukhandknitting.com) at the Design & Technology Show at the Birmingham NEC.

I volunteered to help Chris and her team run a stand, asking teachers for information and feedback about running knitting clubs in and after school. I met Mavis & Janet, two formidable and lovely knitting whirlwinds who help at the association's events and embark on fantastic knitting projects.

As I sat fiddling with my tiny sock, Mavis was knitting an amazing christening shawl without, it seemed, a pattern. I couldn't begin to think of starting such a project, it was very intricate and beautifully made.

I had my first knitting accident - I managed to stab myself, simultaneously, in the hand and in the leg with my lethal, metal dpns. That will learn me. It still smarts a bit.

We taught a few student teacher's to knit and whilst trying to find the M42, I imagined them all huddled on various trains and mini-buses, trying to work out their knits and purls. Teaching people to knit is quite addictive. I've never had an interest that I want to share so badly before and which I think is something we should all at least have a go at, even if we don't want to carry on doing it. My nearest and dearest think I'm quite batty but making and creating seems to me to be a much healthier, saner alternative to simply choosing what someone else has designed or made.

Like gardening and cooking, we need to reclaim handmade skills - Nigella and Gordon are not going to be around forever and we need to keep the skills within our families so that we can survive without depending on celebrity cook-a-longs and tv-allotments.

a good read

As I am now on the world-wide-webby-broadband-super-fast-ness-highway-thingy, I am prone to a bit of frantic site/blog visiting. I have a list of favourites as long as your circular needles and I can while away a fair amount of time just having a look and reading lots and lots of stuff.

Here's one I found earlier - twist collective.

http://www.twistcollective.com/collection/

It's US-focused but very, very good and, I think well-written. It's got some interesting patterns and a wide ranging subject matter - if you like knitting and crochet.

I also treated myself to a sneaky Yarn Forward magazine which has an online presence at http://yarnforwardmagazine.co.uk/. It's a good one if you want to make items that are a bit more challenging and I love the way they offer alternative yarn choices. Having been to Get Knitted and worked out that a very lovely Rowan pattern/jumper would set me back over £100, it's good to have some thriftier choices presented.

I have, worryingly, lost a newly knitted sock. I now have one lone 2nd sock, waiting for its friend. Very annoying. I'm not posting for long as I am going to sort out my handmade gifts for Christmas. I hope the recipients will be suitably thrilled.

a room of one's own

I am one of the lucky few married mothers in the world who has a room of my own. Or so I thought. I had a room of my own when the computer was up the creek. I had a room of my own before my children discovered I had better art supplies than theirs. I had a room of my own before my beloved discovered ebay.

My space is, in theory, mine but in practice it is a shared space. It is also the over-sized cupboard in which everything unrelated to day-to-day life gravitates towards.

I know this is not a very productive post, it is not getting me further along the path of craftdelight but sometimes a woman needs to vent. I am venting quietly in a space not many people are likely to visit. I believe this is healthy, unproductive, but healthy.

So - why have I posted a photo of tangledness? Partly because of the tangledness I find myself in most days but also because I love it's texture and it's energy. You don't get tangles like that by keeping something still. Tangles like that happen in wind and rain and bashing about.

The photo was taken in Padstow (Padstein), a picture-postcard fishing village, deli and restaurant hub of the southwestern extremities of the UK. The buildings and streets are seaside-perfect but the road to the fisheries and the carpark is lined with storage space for netting and fishing equipment. It reminded me of felting and embellishing.

Yes, I know, I'm obsessed.

making progress

I finally got to spend more than five minutes in a row on my college project today. I'm enjoying the course. It's 10 weeks at Cirencester College, just up the road from me. My only bugbear - it's only 2 hours per week. By the time I've got there and unpacked my belongings, it's time to pack up and drive home again!

I've decided to make a book of mementoes and images from our recent trip to Cornwall. I'm using shell-inspired pattern and am using as many techniques as I can throw at it. My idea is to create a book containing elements of seascape and shells with pockets and hidey-holes for found objects.

There are only three weeks left of the course, so I need to devise a way to progress all this quickly and effectively. As I want to use the embellishing machine for the cover, I also need to gather my materials and get going tomorrow morning.

It's an interesting time for me to be doing this as my son is doing his first big 'art' project - school have asked all Year 7's 'what is art?' - how mean is that? I haven't found anyone who can give me a straight answer on that little gem.

secret craft-mag addict

I bought two magazines today - Let's Knit (www.letsknit.com) and Crafts Beautiful (www.craftsbeautiful.com) - both published by Aceville, they both cost a bit, just under £4 each but every month they have a giveaway. There's either knitting needles, craft bags, papers or sparkles for cards and embellishing.

I'm not a great fan of magazine giveaways in general - I once was the unfortunate recipient of some cotton 'summer' gloves from Easy Living magazine - but even if I don't need or want the craft stuff, they're always good to give away or pass on to likeminded crafters.

I have become a bit of a hoarder of equipment and materials for all sorts of crafts. I can pick up almost any item in a charity shop and consider it for possible inclusion in a virtual piece of art or craft. Is the crafting world divided into people who buy specific materials for specific projects and people who acquire materials on the offchance that one day they will be the significant and exact piece required for some great piece of work?

I think so.

There is also another subset of craft-consumers who acquire because they can't bear the idea of said materials being disposed of. The thought of potential craft supplies being consigned to landfill because their owners are too lazy to think of something to do with them or too selfish to offer them on freecycle or just, indeed, leave them outside their front door for someone to take, breaks my heart. What is wrong with these people?

In any case, the magazines I bought today are full of Christmas crafts and goodies - with just about 6 weeks to go, it's time to get making.

pretty, colourful, things of craft

Here's some I made earlier.

I love needle cases. I have a needle case made by mother when i she was at school. It's a precious object. When I was growing up, making is what everyone did. Making wasn't seen as a lifestyle choice - we hadn't been Martha'd. Magazine patterns and advice were anonymous almost, their writers part of huge departments, helping families to make their homes and lives more beautiful as best they could.

I think the fantastic surge in making and crafting is part of our need to share with each other, to connect with our families and friends in a real, human way.

We can all earn the money to buy expensive gifts if we really put our mind to it, if that's what matters to us but making or creating something for someone means we've spent time on them. We all know that time is a luxury because we're too busy earning the money to keep our place in the world. How you choose to spend your time, I think, is a more vivid expression of who you are.

ANYWAY - that's a bit deep for a dismal Thursday - have a look at the crafternoon blog, its author seems to think in a similar way and those of you that come along to some of the wee activities we've been organising lately will recognise the same ethos and spirit.

If I could knit bobbles, I would knit bobbles like these. We visited Eden last week (http://www.edenproject.com/) and this was the surface on the enormous seedhead sculpture in The Core. It was beautiful and enclosed in a space of it's own within the building.

I'd been planning to use seedheads for my textiles project but have skipped to shells as I enjoy the colours more. I'll go back to seeds though at some point as I'm fascinated about their dual role of protecting the seed as it develops and incubates and then releasing it as widely and as productively as possible. There's a bit of a conflict there if you ask me.

I'm running a school art club this afternoon. I've got sketchbooks to work with but no pencils, apparently! I've got an hour (not counting lunchtime) to find some materials to draw with whilst resisting taking all the lovely things I've been saving to work with at home.

maybe one day

If I could quilt, I'd quilt something that looked a bit like this.....

I love the herringbone pattern and the possibility of irregularity.

as luck would have it

If you have no interest at all in embellishers, please look away now.

My latest craft obsession took a turn for the worse (or better, if I'm honest). I dragged myself to college for my textiles course on this wet, weary, dreary day and discovered that not only is there an embellisher available to use, it is only the latest, the whizziest, the most marvellous Babylock EMB12.

I've been having a bit of a time of it recently and really couldn't face faffing about with fabric this morning but I am so glad I did. I would have kicked myself for having a proper chance to work with the lovely EMB12. I won't go into the gory details but you can have yourself a lot of fun with a bit of felt and little bits of yarn, scrim and random fibres.

I've decided to use shells as my project inspiration, partly because I lost my cardoon seed head and partly because I've completed precisely 6 pages in my sketchbook which were then distressed by my son using said sketchbook for his Star Wars drawing on holiday. Easy come, easy go.

But the shells are great and once I work out how to get photos from my camera onto my PC, I'll be showing you some here.

this time, it's serious

I love the name craftdelight. It sums up how I feel about making things and seeing the results of what other people make too.

I have noticed, however, that some people do not delight in craft or making. Some of those people are only impressed by handmade items if they look as if they have been made by machine.

Why is that?

Part of me just doesn't care. If they don't like it, they just don't have to look.

However, for those of you who do love a bit of craft - sewing, knitting, embroidery, crochet, anything that involves a bit of equipment and a bit of stuff made into an item of glorious handmade gorgeousness, please read on and tell your friends.

I've resurrected craftdelight because I'm having a bit of a blog review. I've still got my plans for projectforty.blogspot.com but I have another plan to write more specifically and systematically about the things that interest me whether that's craft, vintage stuff, art or creativity. And, you might be pleased to know that I am going to start labelling my posts so that they become a bit of a resource for anyone who wants to have a little webby-craft-wander in their spare five minutes.

So, read on.

Today's link is a little geeky, a little extreme-craft. A neighbour and brand-new-craft-friend Sue showed me her embellisher and what marvels it can perform with a bit of a felt and some fancy pants yarn/fabric/anything really. After half an hour of playing around, I became an addict. I WANT one and here is the new model...

http://www.babylock.com/sewing/embellisher-emb12/

It's a sewing machine without a needle to thread. It's a layering, drawing, creative dynamo. I am concocting all sorts of plans to get my sticky mitts on one. Hardwork and thrift would be the obvious answer. I am thinking of making the entire family live on some out of date lentils I've had in the back of the food cupboard for a month. Unfortunately, they don't like lentils. I'm not sure they'd go for it - in fact they'd probably go for a takeaway instead and, therefore, blow my embellisher budget into the water.

So...if you don't know what an embellisher is, look at this website. If you don't know and you don't care, I'll give you another link soon.