My Creative Space

My Creative Space today was ever so slightly hi-jacked at lunch time when a text message reminded me of a deadline I had forgotten about.

The simple question "Is your bear ready for the Teddy Bear Trail ?" lead to the one word answer "oops"

I've mentioned a few times about our various window competitions here in Alyth.

The teady bear trail is slightly different in that there is no prize for any shop keepers. The idea is that by having a Teddy Bear theme in all our windows over the summer will encourage people to take a walk around town, looking in windows and answering the questions on an entry form along the way. The hope of course is that people will become more aware of what is available in local shops and will therefore be more supportive to local businesses.

This years teddies will all have different flowers which have to be identified.

The long answer to the question was that my flower was ready but Teddy ( who I had decided, perhaps a little rashly, to knit ) only had one arm, his head was in the bag with his ears and his body was only half stuffed. Poor Teddy.

So this afternoon, instead of making jewellery, I was knitting, stuffing and sewing him all together.

Before he got down to work, posing in the window with a fetching button-hole flower, he had a wee shot on the rocking horse.

To be honest, he is a wee bit chubby, and his head is a wee bit wobbly but he is quite a cutie.

I hope people will recognise what kind of flower he is wearing because for once in my life I actually followed a pattern for this one.

Feel free to answer that one but unless you are prepared to walk round Alyth on a rainy summer afternoon there's no prize for getting it right.

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Short attention span ??

One Pattern

Three crochet hooks

Three very different yarns

Three unfinished cowl / scarfy creations.

I don't think calling them 'scowls' would be a very good idea.

I like to think that I have been product testing, or working on design development, or simply multi-tasking.

Some husbands (who shall remain nameless) simply ask if maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to finish one project before starting another one ?

Maybe a special scowl of my own is the answer to that question.

Just a technicality.............

I'm feeling a wee bit peeved and a big bit annoyed.

Blogger won't let me post any comments on the blogs that I have been reading for the last week or so.

If anyone is feeling neglected by me then please don't be. I'm still reading and enjoying my favourite blogs and hopefully I will be able to get commenting again very soon.

Fiona x 

I wish I was an Aran Cardigan...

He really doesn't look very happy,does he, sitting in the corner with his arms folded.

Maybe I should go back to the start of the story and explain the title.

France '98, to many people was all about football. There was a World Cup or European Cup, or some kind of big football tournament in France that year. But that meant nothing to the Dorchester Family. For us, France '98 was going to be our first foreign holiday as a family and we were really looking forward to it.

To go back even further.. when I was a wee girl, my sister, mum and I always seemed to get a new Aran Cardigan for our holidays. Walks around our campsite after dinner were always preceded by the instruction "don't forget your aran cardigan, it'll be chilly later"

So I decided that for our first camping holiday in France I would be needing and aran cardigan. I started knitting in plenty of time, or so I thought, but it wasn't finished by the time we set off on our big adventure. Needless to say, I somehow survived a holiday without an aran cardigan.

France '98 was so much fun that we soon arranged France '99 and a couple of weeks before we set off I got my knitting out and managed another sleeve. Yet again time got the better of me and another holiday without an aran cardigan passed by. I could go on and on and on about the inch that was knitted in 2000 just before we moved house.. the time I thought about knitting the second sleeve but couldn't find the pattern... the time I found the pattern and finally, the time I admitted I had completely lost interest in the cardigan and didn't even like the pattern any more.

And now, this morning, the last of the aran wool was used to finish off this little chap.

He was allowed to climb on the back of my chair.

Had a wee shot on the rocking horse.

And yet he still looks a wee bit sad. Dreaming, perhaps, about what it would have been like to be an Aran Cardigan.

Was it all too much , do you think, for him to see me start work on a new cardigan this afternoon ?

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Blown Away............

Just as we were getting used to life without snow..

And just as we were getting used to a bit of sunshine..

And just as we were considering putting the warm coats away till next year...

 Blooming gale force winds and torrential rain.

I'm not going out there with my camera just to prove a point but it truly is wild.

Enough, that people have been posting local road reports on facebook with photos of fallen trees blocking the roads to Perth and Dundee, but I just saw a photo of an upside-down trampoline in the burn. Some poor children in Alyth are going to be very upset to find out that their trampoline has flown over the garden wall and drowned.

Hopefully normal life will soon resume.

 x

Our Creative Spaces

This week I have spent a fair amount of time rooting around in the "change tin".

I think everyone has one of these where various family members drop their loose change. The denomination of the loose change depends very much on the person doing the dropping, the size of their purse, or the depth of their pockets. You very rarely find anything more than a twenty pence in ours, though occasionally a fifty pence appears. However, for what I had in mind, I was happy with the selection of one pence pieces at my disposal.

I was inspired by a Creative Space which I found last week and wanted to make a special bracelet for myself. Wendy at littlegreenbums had been playing with loose change too.

This is what I made.

I chose five pennies from five special years, representing five special people in my life.

I drilled two holes in each coin, filed and tidied the holes, polished all the coins with my favourite new toy... a perfect little mini drill with polishing attachments... then linked them all with little copper coloured jump rings. I was so pleased with my special bracelet that I went back to the change tin and found five special coins for my sister.

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My Creative Space

Today I was working on a special order for a customer using my super funky French Knitting bobbin.

Everybody seems to have a different name for this particular craft.

French Knitting, Catty tails, Ratty tails, bobbin knitting, dolly knitting, are just some of the names I have heard of.

Anyway, my little bobbin, dolly, thingamyjig is a long way removed from the hand made thingamyjigs that my sister and I used when we were young. Way back in the 'olden days' .. possibly before the invention of plastic.. when thread used to come on wooden bobbins, we waited patiently till mum had finished two reels of thread. My dad hammered four small nails into the empty reels and  voila !! our own little knitting thingamyjigs. Somehow we never really made anything other than long knitted tubes which could be used as scarfs for our dolls.

Todays project involved fine wire and cute little square beads and became a pretty little necklace.

My customer was passing by just as I finished and I forgot to get a photograph.

I'll just have to do another one now and be sure to get a picture.

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