Category Archives: Craft

Higgins and the Robot

Ha! Now that’s got you wondering hasn’t it, and I’m not going to tell you about it till the end!

I’ve got quite a backlog of photos in the camera because all this tinkering with the blog and the studio has meant I’m really behind on posts. I was also full of good intentions to make pretty Easter things (I have to confess to 5 blown egg shells which didn’t get painted LAST Easter -I’ve forgotten the excuse I had then) . It’s been pretty inpossible to find any of my equipment however, seeing as it’s all packed in boxes in the spare room, and I’m trying to bring it all out slowly so I can sort it to avoid the minestrone type mixture of stuff I usually end up with when I’m working.

I did have wool and needles to hand though so I’ve been able to do a little knitting project AND write a knitting pattern so I have been putting in more than my twenty minutes of creativity a day.

Firstly, I managed to get a picture of the Twisted Hazel which I gave my Mother for Mother’s Day several years ago. It’s qite slow growing, and that first year had just the one catkin so it’s doing pretty well now.

The little daffodils sheltering underneath look so pretty. The miniature ones do so much better in this windy spot because they don’t get flattened as easily. It was even warm enough for not just one, but two ladybirds. I’ve only just spotted the second one.

With a birthday in the family this weekend and a celebratory lunch I’ve got the Easter Tree up and ready. This is where the painted eggs are supposed to hanging… Anyway, the little decorations look pretty, and the pink primroses set it off nicely.

Then there were the egg cosies, knitted in my favourite wool. (Hasn’t it gone a long way since I did all that dyeing last year? Time for a fresh batch with new colours very soon)

I’ve put the pattern in the tutorial section which you’ll find at the top under the banner.
And now for that robot… Several years ago a very clever person, someone who got their priorities in life just right, invented a robot vacuum cleaner. It was HUGELY expensive and I said at the time, if I ever win the lottery I’m having one of those. Well time went by …and I still haven’t won the lottery… but the price of the vacuum cleaner went down to a nearly sensible price, and Lakeland featured them in their catalogue and I thought ‘Why not?’ So Kryton came to live with us. He sits under the work top in the utility room until he’s needed, charges out with a triumphant little fanfare when he is switched on, trundles round the room humming and sucking away and spins frantically round on the spot with a blue light flashing when he finds a particularly filthy bit . Once he’s finished he wheels himself back to the docking station and parks himself with another fanfare before going back on charge, the light on top pulsing red like a heart beat. Occasionally we might have a little problem and Kryton stops, gives a mournful little toot and says, in a strongly American accented female voice, ‘Please clean Roomba’s brushes’ . I can’t tell you how disconcerting that was the first time that happened. Anyway, it’s great to be able to drink coffee and watch the vacuum doing its stuff without me and if that makes me sound totally lazy, well…

We also had an amusing moment when Higgins, as a very small puppy, went behind Kryton’s curtain and climbed on top, stood on the go button and rode out on top looking very surprised! Not a lot fazes Higgins, but you can imagine he’s not Kryton’s number one fan, especially when it chases him round the room with the filth detector light flashing. When I got to the end of the studio painting I took the vacuum out to clean the floor prior to painting it and, as Higgins does like to be in on everything, he joined in.

Sometime I must tell you about the day he met a seal…

Something Pretty in the Post…

The trouble is with sitting here at the computer looking at my unfinished studio through the window surrounded with boxes and things I can’t get at it is that it makes me very susceptible to gorgeous things that pop up on the internet. Like an email from Cox and Cox…about their SALE…I mean, what’s a woman to do? I’m very proud of the way I managed to buy so little…Look at THESE…

So cunningly packed too, with a little slot in the plastic to unreel the ribbons through so they don’t end up in a tangly heap.

…and while I was ooohing and aaahing about the clever little dispensing arrangement Tim pointed out the hanger on the back. So Hard Luck, Higgins, I can hang it on the wall away from little dachshund teeth. Perfect!

I also bought a badge making kit which could be fun. The instructions look complicated but as it’s for 8+ I ought to be able to suss it out eventually…

…and – just because – a little wooden dove…

The sun is shining this afternoon so I will save further ramblings for later posts, don fleece and wellies and get out into the garden. Hope the sun shines for you this weekend…

Marking Time…

This is what I feel I’m doing at the moment, marking time, waiting… Waiting for the spring, waiting for my studio to be build, waiting to climb out of the muddle of boxes that surround me in which I have packed all my materials so I can’t find anything…

My sanity has been saved by having some wool and fleece to hand so I have been needle felting pincushions. As well as the two I made as prizes (which I got in the post this morning despite the snow and ice)…

I have made a couple more with a view to selling them when I get my Folksy shop up and running (another ‘Watch this Space’ moment!) It’s a comforting thing to do, needle felting. It’s very tactile, it’s like magic feeling the change from soft fluffiness to springy firmness happening in your hand with just the action of the needle. And the colours are cheerful, just what we need with all this whiteness!

The sun shone yesterday and so Higgins and I managed to go out for a walk. It really hasn’t been that easy in this weather. Higgins is very much a fairweather walker, and any suggestion that we might go out in inclement conditions sends him scuttling behind a chair, or burrowing under his blanket, and I am easily persuaded not to bother myself! However yesterday he was kitted out in his jacket and carried beyond the point of no return so he made the best of it.

I took the steam driven camera along and I’m getting such good results it makes me very frustrated with the Olympus (which is packed up to go back to the shop tomorrow)

As I sit here I am looking out at two very chilly chaps building the studio as the snow blows all around and into the cups of tea I have just taken out. I suppose it concentrates the mind towards getting the roof on, I’m really glad I’m sitting in here at the computer!

The sky looks blue, it isn’t, it’s snowing! I’m looking forward to showing this view in a few months when the sun is shining, the flowers are in bloom and there is a glass of something cool and delicious on the garden table!

A Wimwam for a Goose's Bridle…

When ever I was rummaging through my Father’s toolbox and asking ‘What’s that?’ too many times as a child my Father would tell me ‘That? It’s a wimwam for a goose’s bridle’ and, in the way of children I would go away quite happily, if a little confused. I was quite grown up before I questioned the concept. (Actually, I am embarrassed when I look back at the number of things I accepted without question as a child AND I thought sprouts grew in tiny rows like fairy cabbages although why fairies would like such nasty bitter things…) But I digress.

A while ago I showed you a ‘thing’, a thing given to me by my crafty friend Kit, and made by her talented husband. Because it was from Kit, I opened the present with my mind quite set on it being an amazing tool of some sort, a challenge. So when I saw it, I knew at once it was a loom of some sort, for weaving amazing…things. And it was a challenge, because there were no instructions. There was a second part to the present too, eight reels of Nutscene jute in lovely colours, just what I needed to make the amazing things on my beautiful hand made loom.

So I sat for a while and I puzzled, and I couldn’t work out how to use my incredible hand made loom. So while I was puzzling I photographed it, and blogged about it, and asked if anyone out there knew what it could be. Then Kit came home and I phoned her and said ‘OK, I give up, what is it and how do I use it?’ After a baffled silence Kit said,’Do you really not know? Have you opened both parts?’ and I said ‘Yes, and the Jute string is lovely and the colours are beautiful and I know I can weave something lovely on my special loom but I don’t know how..’

And Kit said’ Oh dear I’m sorry, because you think I’ve been really clever and it’s just that I saw the Nutscene jute in the lovely colours and I knew you would like them and then I said to Bill it would nice to have something to put the reels on so he made a holder out of a nice piece of walnut and I got the little scissors and the little brass thing at the end is a scissor holder…’

And I looked at it and thought, ‘Of course,’ and if I had had a young person to hand they would have said ‘Duuur’.

So there is the answer to the question I posed a few posts ago, and I had a wonderful variety of answers so I was not alone in my puzzlement which made me feel somewhat better. I said there would be a prize, and in fact there are two, one for the correct answer and one for the answer that made me, and lot of other people laugh. So without further ado, the winners are Emma, of Silverpebble who is the clever person who correctly guessed it was for storing yarn, and Hilary, who suggested it was a drying rack for Higgins’ welly boots, both sets, and I so wish it was true!

So Ladies, if you could email me your postal addresses I will send you both needle-felted pincushions made with hand dyed Merino and Blue-faced Leicester wool, heart-shaped appropriately for February and Valentines Day. My address is pennygjatgooglemail.com(replace the ‘at’ with@, I’m being spam conscious!)

(My Mother’s guess was that it was the wimwam for the proverbial goose’s bridle – she didn’t get a prize)

Too Many Cameras…

…and not enough photos. The camera saga continues…sorry, I’m sure it will be resolved, just not sure if it will be this side of sanity. I haven’t been able to get to Norwich to the camera shop so I’m still snarling at the Olympus. In the meantime Tim, who is in the middle of the North Sea, has bought me a second hand Fuji on Ebay. We resolved the fact that it came without the Smart Card because I still had an old one from a past camera lurking in a drawer, complete with old photos I had forgotten about. I have managed a few reasonable pictures this afternoon, and in doing so discovered that the new old camera’s rechargable battery needs to be charged for six hours to do 10 minutes photography. Talk about swimming through treacle…

However, onwards and upwards. This is what I thought was just what I wanted in 1995…

It was my first attempt at ‘Folk Art’ painting, a little desk which belonged to my grandfather and destined for the scrap heap. It’s been in my studio and is crying out for something for something more ..er…restful …in the way of a paint job before it goes into the new studio.

And I have another doll. After I made the Fairy of Sensible Shoes I had to demonstrate how she was made to a class and so had another body tucked away in yet another box which surfaced in the clearout, naked and bald. I spent a whole evening working on her hair. I had some left over sock wool in brown, black and grey so I carefully cut all the grey sections out and painstakingly embedded each strand into her scalp with a felting needle. As I said, a whole evening. How long for Higgins to do his own version of hairdressing?

Thirty seconds…

Some raging, tears and a good nights sleep later I tried again with a new head entirely, without rips, teethmarks and spit. I abandoned the bandana and went for a miniature felt hat…

…with co-ordinating shoes…

I cheated with the socks, I now have a pair of gloves with the middle fingers missing!

Her little cardigan and bag are crocheted with Blue-faced Leicester wool left over from my hand dyed wool/scarf project, and the skirt is from the stash of fabrics accumulated during my recent ‘Polka Dot Period’ (any one can have a ‘Blue Period’), and here she is…

She sits on a VERY high shelf…

The Fairy of Sensible Shoes

Pink Tulips - because I need them!

Creativity has been a bit thin on the ground lately what with all the clearing out and packing that’s been going on. However I have turned up one or two bits and pieces you might like to see, and I thought a couple of ‘before’ pictures might be good so we can all be amazed at the eventual transformations.

I’m hopeless at dates, and the years rush past so quickly I can’t be positive about how long I had my studio. I was certainly using it before I went off to art college as a mature student so it must be around ten years. In that time the prevailing wind off the big field behind it ripped the roofing felt off at least once, and the whole building comprising the studio and Tim’s adjoining shed took on a drunken lean towards the house, making the doors ill-fitting and draughty. As I progressed through college and got bigger ideas and more ‘stuff’ the studio got more and more full and eventually went from being a rather small studio to being a very big cupboard.

You’re probably wondering where the Fairy comes in. She turned up during the excavations – the pleistocene layer I believe – while sorting the studio. About eighteen months ago I was staying with my mother while she recouperated from a knee operation, and the Fairy came into being when I was being creative with a limited supply of materials.

She started as a piece of embroidery, a short length of buff coloured linen and toning coton a broder thread, and grew from the need to give the embroidery a purpose.

Her body is calico, jointed with wooden beads and her hair, Wendesleydale fleece.

Her little socks were knitted with the remains of the lace weight Shetland wool with which my mother knitted a shawl for her first great grandchild. And if you are going to wear socks, well, I’m afraid it’s Sensible Shoes.

As I usually work in colour it was a challenge to use a limited pallette and to forage for materials. Now she’s going to preside over the kitchen while waiting for her new home to be built. She’s already threatened me with several nasty spells if she ends up stuck in a scrap bag again and it’s far too cold for me to end up in a pond with a lot of other frogs.

Planet Penny

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