folksy friday

My first ever folksy fridayHopefully if you click the images they will take you to the pages for these gorgeous items.

accidents will happen

I've discovered recently (despite having had children for nearly seventeen years now) that if children do a lot of this sort of thing...
then accidents tend to happen. Such as the splinter Annis got deep in her finger last week. When she showed me it I realised that if I had had a pair of tweezers on me I could have helped. Instead she had to wait until she got home. So finally, after seventeen years I have made a pouch for injuries while adventuring

It is based on Amy Karol's Bend the rules pouch but I have changed the dimensions

and it is very clearly for medical emergencies. Now all I have to do is fill it with tweezers and plasters... let's hope that doesn't take another seventeen years.

Bella and Emily

Bella and Emily, originally uploaded by glassmountain.

I have been sewing rabbits recently, making their skirts and ears out of worn out old clothes and left over scraps of fabric. I hand embroidered their faces and their arms and legs are made of string. But now I have a new challenge, a boy rabbit for my son. I think he will need to wear shorts, a bit more complicated than a skirt but I'm ready to have a go. I have just put these two rabbits onto my folksy shop.

I just love this picture, it's from easter (seems so long ago now!). I have used it to apply my new computer skills to making a banner for my blog. I'm sure most of you out there already use things like picnik (which is what I used) but for me it's a new experience. My handy teenage photoshop user is almost never available for more than five minutes these days so I have had to learn for myself. And for those of you who haven't used this kind of thing, I recommend picnik and about an hour of your time.

My favourite craft books

Ok, this post should really be called 'look I've learned how to make a photograph mosaic and how to put clickable photographs on your blog' because they are all clickable!!! Admittedly they do all take you to Amazon because that's where the books are sold but this is huge progress for me.



These are my absolute favourite craft books, most especially 'bend the rules' which I am using now to teach my nine year old daughter to sew with. The projects are simple but still useful and the instructions are pretty fool proof (there are some errata on the 'bend the rules' flickr group.Alabama stitch book is where I have learned to hand sew, I love love love this book and I truly do want the new studio book too.The glove knitting book has every type of glove you could ever wish for, it really is beautiful and I have made many pairs of gloves from it.I just love the way Suzuko Koseki puts prints and colours together in patchwork style, the log cabin quilt is just so cool, I couldn't have imagined log cabin ever looking so clean and modern.Poppy Treffry's stuff is just fun and gorgeous and makes lovely presents for people (when I can get my machine to perform properly)And finally sewing clothes for children just has fabulous patterns that can be messed with according to how your child wants their clothes to look, frills, ribbons and patches or sober, cool and modern.No doubt over the next couple of days I will find more reasons to create more mosaics, the main one being folksy friday, so look out for more mosaics.And here is where I found out how to do this http://craftbloguk.blogspot.com/2010/03/blog-treasury-template-haptree-mini.htmlI'd love to hear about your favourite craft books too.

red girl with flowers

red girl with flowers, originally uploaded by glassmountain.

I've been doing a little drawing and painting. Normally I turn these into embroideries but J suggested that I do them as drawings instead and I'm a little bit pleased with the result. I'm thinking that maybe they would make nice cards...

May day

May day seems to have been slowly disappearing in the UK since my childhood (not so long ago!) when we had a maypole in the playground and enforced country dancing. I have heard that it's a government conspiracy because it's traditionally associated with workers getting together and agitating but I suspect that it just gets forgotten about in all our busyness.

There are celebrations around May day in Cornwall, Padstow 'Obby 'Oss and Helston flora day but neither involve a maypole. So we felt incredibly lucky to come across a revived May day picnic with maypole just outside Penzance at Trereife house. It was so lovely, completely hand made and nothing commercial apart from nettle cider and pimms for sale (the nettle cider is an acquired taste although J liked it).

Sadly we had no camera over the last week or so (only because no-one can remember to buy batteries!) So these gorgeous pictures are not my own beautiful images but they capture the spirit.

The only stalls were demonstrations of green living. One lovely man had brought samples of water from local springs to try (ones that are regularly used so safe to drink from) and there was a talk on forest gardening. But my favourite thing which we absolutely have to make was the forerunner of the slow cooker, a haybox cooker. You bring your casserole up to boiling and then simply put it in a box of hay all day to cook, no fuel at all! A friend said she's made one in a big chest that will take three pans and is making most of the family meals in it. So we have a plan to make one and I will write more after we have experimented.

And of course the maypole was beautiful, decorated with bluebells and greenery and strings with flags decorated in pressed leaves. There was cornish dancing and beautiful music along with dancing around the maypole. The council were not interested in funding this festival which I can't help feeling was a good thing, better to have willing volunteers and to be able to make it a community creation. I hope you all had a lovely May day too, maybe there's a revival out there.