WOYWW 495–Lots of Flowers

I am sorry I didn’t get to visit many desks last week but I’ve been so busy this week. We’ve had a lot on, and I’ve also been making lots of flowers for my current mystery project which has a fairly tight deadline, as well as working on other parts of it which can’t be revealed yet. My stuff arrived from Ebay so I can crack on now.

I’ve made mostly roses, and a few single-piece flowers, in three colour schemes – dark purple, turquoise, and brown. Here is the complete set so far – I am hoping to make a few single-piece turquoise ones as well.

Individual sets.

Please scroll down for posts with further details of these flowers, and more pictures.

These little embroidery frames also arrived from Ebay on Monday – I had used my last one a while back.

They are an ideal size for small cross-stitch projects for gifts.

The outer ring is rubber and clips into the inner ring, and you can work in the frame, then back it, and hang it. You can get them in lots of colours – you can see my other ones – but I like the woodgrain effect best. Smashing little frames! I like to keep a few in stock. A few months ago I got a new cross-stitch programme for the computer as my old one does not work with Windows 10.

Sourdough

Some of my best sourdough this week! Following some online advice about shaping the loaves twice at the end, instead of once, they ended up with a lot more tension and didn’t collapse. Apart from this final shaping, I have found that the less I handle the dough during the day, the better the result. Developing too much gluten makes the dough wet and sticky and causes it to collapse.

On the top photo, you can clearly see the ridges made by the bannetons. This shows up more on a white sourdough loaf.

Health Update

Partial good news on the pants front! My tirade on the phone evidently bore some fruit, because despite them telling me the second pair would not be sent out till Friday, they arrived on Thursday! What’s more, they fit. So at least I was able to put a clean pair on and I can just about manage with two pairs until they get on with the remaining ones. After the GP’s prompt response to my email, promising an instant further prescription, I am hoping to receive the third pair (and even a fourth if the GP has indeed written me a prescription for two more) sooner rather than later.

Kitties

We’ve had more problems with Ruby getting out. My hubby was out on Monday morning – fortunately only locally, and I looked out of the kitchen window to see Ruby on top of the inward-sloping mesh on top of the garden fence, which is supposed to keep them in. She was clearly distressed and couldn’t get down. I went out and called her but she wouldn’t jump, and I was terrified of her catching her paw again, as she did a couple of weeks ago. I immediately called my hubby on his mobile and he came home straight away, went into next door’s garden armed with Dreamies and enticed her down, and carried her home. She was very subdued for the rest of the day.

He had a good look along that fence to see if he could discover where she was getting out, and found that one of the fence panels is quite rotten, and she’d forced her way between the top of it and the bottom of the mesh where he hadn’t put in enough staples. I suggested he looked for forensic evidence in the form of “hair and fibre” (I watch too many detective series!) but he couldn’t find any of her fur on the fence. It was an extremely small gap and I was surprised she could get through, but my hubby said kitties are like octopuses and can squeeze through the smallest holes. They are as curious as octopuses too. Both kitties are now temporarily banned from going outside at all until he can get this fixed. He ordered a new fence panel straight away, which has been delivered, but he will have to work on it to make it fit the space.

Amazingly, each time Ruby has got out, Lily has come to tell us! She was extremely distressed that time Ruby got her paw stuck. Earlier on Monday morning, she was sitting on the windowsill outside the kitchen window, crying plaintively, and I thought she was just asking me to let her in through the window, which I refused to do. I think that Ruby was already out, and Lily had come to tell me, and I was too stupid to realise what she was saying! She gets very distressed if her sister is doing something wrong or is in trouble. She is like the responsible older sister who cares very much about her naughty little sister, and Ruby isn’t nearly as bright as Lily, and she never learns! You’d think that after she got her paw stuck, she would have learnt that she is likely to get hurt and frightened if she goes over the fence. So far the kitty defences have been very adequate, and hopefully the new fence panel will do the trick – she’s only been out that side of the garden.

Some friends of my hubby’s in the village where we used to live, who recently lost the second of their two elderly black kitties, have just got two new kittens – tabby and white this time. Next time we are over in their direction we shall call in – I can’t wait to see them! I remember when they got the other two, and I completely fell in love with the little one who has just died, and was tempted to put her in my handbag and take her home! She was always the smaller of the two and utterly adorable. I can’t believe how fast the time has gone and those two darling little black babies are now no more, having lived a good long life. It’s so devastating when they go, isn’t it. They grow up so quickly and you don’t want to miss a moment of their adorable kittenhood.

Have a great creative week, everybody.

WOYWW 476–Daubers and Sourdough

A bit late in the day to be posting for WOYWW but better late than never. I seem to have been rushed off my feet all day.

Two partial successes this week.

Having seen a Youtube video on how to make your own ink/paint daubers, I thought I’d give it a go. My hubby had a length of plastic pipe of the right size which he has given me, and he bought me a cheap pair of pipe cutters. You can see the pipe cutters on the desk, and the end of the pipe on the left – it goes the full length of the desk that way, practically to the door!

No problem to begin with – I’m able to cut the pipe easily. When we went to Teignmouth I bought a couple of packets of cosmetic wedges from the pound shop. The trouble is, they are really cheap and nasty, and not big enough. I’ve made 3 daubers (you can see them in front of my tape tree on the left) but had to glue the foam in. Also, the foam is not firm and dense enough so the daubers are too soft, and I think that foam is soon going to shred. I think I’m going to have to buy some decent ones.

No other activity on my desk – as usual, too busy with other stuff at the moment! This is getting tedious…

My other partial success was another batch of sourdough. Esmeralda, my starter, simply took off in this hot weather, and was ready to make some bread at the weekend. Here she is, raring to go. Full of lovely bubbles and as lively as a cricket.

Before feeding her for the last time, I removed some and added it to the rest of the discarded starter, kept in the fridge, and made a double batch of sourdough starter crackers. They are cracking! Deeelicious.

They weren’t quite done after the stated time so I left them in a bit longer, and unfortunately some of them caught…

Even though they’re a bit burnt, they still taste good, and are as crisp as anything. Smile, and just imagine they are chocolate.

Sourdough ready for its first proving. It’s slightly glossy with a light coating of oil.

Esmeralda all ready to go in the fridge for a week. I can tell she’s not happy about this – wot no food till next weekend?!!! But I am not making bread more than once a week, and I shall end up with a grossly obese Esmeralda and far too many crackers to bake if she doesn’t go to sleep for a bit. Before I use her again, I shall take her out of the fridge 12 hours before to let her warm up a bit, and feed her. That should put a smile back on her face.

The sourdough knocked back, shaped and put in the bannetons ready for second proving. This time I shaped them according to the instructions and they did develop a nice gluten membrane on their tops to help them keep their shape when tipped out. I did this first thing in the morning.

This is how they looked at lunch time. I should have baked them then, but decided to leave them a bit longer. A mistake.

Over-proved sourdough. When pressed lightly with a finger, they did not spring back. Danger of collapse.

I forgot to photograph them when I turned them out. Three of them had stuck on the bottom of the banneton and this damaged the nice pattern when I tipped them out. They didn’t seem to spread much, even though they were over-proved, so I think I’ve got the shaping right this time, at least.

Here they are in the oven.

Baked. You can see the damage where they’d got stuck. They didn’t rise enough in the oven and the cuts with the blade I made immediately before baking didn’t split apart as they should.

Here is the bread, sliced. Not quite as open and glossy a texture as I wanted, but the bread tastes excellent – my hubby and I ate a whole loaf for supper! (They aren’t very big loaves…)

This whole thing is a gigantic learning curve. I am learning by my mistakes and things are improving each time, so hopefully the next batch will be really good.

For those who were interested in our Tyntesfield trip last Tuesday, I’ve managed at last to finish editing all the photos (there were a lot) and I’ve done a blog post. Tons of photos. It’s a fabulous place.

Kitties

Two nights running of Trolley Dolly photos.

As usual, Ruby on top of Lily.

The night before last. What a tangle of arms and legs! You can’t sort out what belongs to whom!

Then, last night, for absolutely no apparent reason, the trolley was no longer in favour. They settled down on a box of old clothes and other stuff that my hubby is going to sort out.

I decided many years ago that there’s no accounting for kitties.

Middle Eastern Food

The Middle Eastern meal that I cooked for my friend went really well. Unfortunately I forgot to take any photos – there’s always a rush on at the last minute when plating up – especially if you’ve got several dishes, keeping everything hot, etc. etc. Anyway, I cooked a chicken and chickpea dish and a lamb tagine, and lots of roasted vegetables, all served with couscous, and afterwards I made Turkish coffee, the highest roast coffee beans ground to dust with several whole cardamom pods, and sweetened, and served in tiny cups from my brass coffee pot. With the cardamom it tastes like liqueur. Absolutely sensational. The recipe was given to me many years ago by a Syrian junior doctor who was working with Dad, and I find to my delight that it is also in my new Claudia Roden book which my hubby gave me for my birthday.

Tonight we are going to her place and she’s cooking kibbeh for us  – I haven’t had this before and haven’t cooked it yet. She has Lebanese blood and her father used to cook amazing Middle Eastern food, apparently. So we’re in for a treat. I’m taking along the Turkish coffee kit.

Other Cooking

I’ve got a big stock pot on the stove, full of all sorts of veges and bone broth, to make a rich thick vegetable soup. Every time I prepare vegetables and cut off stalks, outer leaves, etc., they don’t go in the compost but I blanch them and put them in the freezer. Then, when I’ve got a nice bag full, I make soup from them. Today I also added carrot, sweet potato, butternut squash, onion and celeriac, and lots of fresh herbs from the garden. Last week I made a pot of bone broth and that’s the liquid in this soup. It will be very thick indeed once I’ve blended it in my high-speed blender tomorrow, but that’s all to the good as it takes up less freezer room that way, and I can make it drinkable with extra stock or water. Should be tasty. Very healthy too. I had hoped to cook another Middle Eastern chicken dish today as well but time ran away because the electrician came, and then another visitor. I didn’t get out of my kaftan till lunch time!!

Another Amazing Find

After having my little Jewish Prayer Book returned to me recently, another wonderful thing happened this week, through watching The Antiques Roadshow on TV. See this post to see why this picture is important to me.

In between all my busyness at the moment I am exhausted – yesterday I spent most of the day on the recliner, alternately resting and completing the editing of my Tyntesfield photos. I need to pace myself a bit better at the moment but there seems to be so much on. We’re out with our walking friends again on Friday. I think I need a week off with nothing arranged!!

I really need some time for art…

WOYWW 472

Contrary to my expectations, I managed to do a bit at my desk this week. This coming Saturday we are going to a party to celebrate the 100th birthday of a delightful Jewish lady who regularly attends our Christian Friends of Israel meetings. She is truly amazing for her age and you’d never guess she’d reached 100! I didn’t have much time but decided I must make her a card and a present.

On my main desk is her card so far.

The papers I am using were given to me for my birthday by a friend, and she’s delighted that I am putting them to immediate use. I have used the Die’sire butterfly card dies I bought at the craft show in February – at last I am starting to use some of the stuff I got then! I have cut the mat layers from some of the decorative papers I had for my birthday and the base layer is a thicker gold embossed card with the words “Congratulations” all over it. I will cut a “100” from gold card on the cutting machine and will use one or both of the ribbons you can see on the left.

I have also managed to clear a space on my office desk, which is now marginally tidier than it was before – ready to start last month’s accounts once I get time.

I’ve still got a lot of sorting to do as I’ve got far too much junk in there that should be shredded.

I decided to make a little embroidered frame for the 100-year-old’s birthday present.

You can see the original one on the right, which is normally hanging in the bedroom. I started the other one at the weekend and finished the cross stitch last night – been working flat out! – all that remains is to outline it all in black back-stitch and to tidy up the back. I am sure I shall get both this and the card finished in time for Saturday.

The design in an original one that I did several years ago – the Hebrew word “Shalom” in English and Hebrew, the central letter of the Hebrew becoming the “L” in the English, worked in rainbow colours, mixing the threads on the needle to get the graduation of colour. I designed it using a programme called EasyCross, which I have not used for years, and which I have subsequently discovered does not work on Windows 10, and which has been discontinued, and the company has gone out of business. I have purchased another cross-stitch design programme which I have yet to get to grips with. I managed to open the original “Shalom” design and do a screen grab and print it but it was covered with dotted lines and the colours weren’t right – I’ve had to edit it quite a bit with coloured pencils and notes. Eventually I shall redo this design, and my other EasyCross designs, into the new programme.

Ongoing Computer Stuff

The sorting out of my various hard drives and back-ups has had to take a back seat until after the weekend as I’ve got to get this birthday stuff finished first. There are still hard drives and cables all over the sitting room floor! At least I’ve managed to sort out the recovered back-up that I did last week.

Bread

On Friday I went to an Erev Shabbat (Sabbath Eve) meal at a friend’s. We had a wonderful evening and I made some new friends. He had done the table most beautifully.

I offered to make the challah (two plaited loaves of enriched egg bread) as he would not have been able to get any locally.

Somewhat lumpy at the ends! Next time I must remember to taper the ends of the long sausages of dough before plaiting them!

This is the challah cover that I made many years ago.

The Hebrew words are the blessing before bread: “Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”

This week I also made my first attempt at making sourdough bread. This is the starter I made, from organic rye flour and kefir whey (I had made some kefir cheese by straining the kefir and reserving the liquid whey which is full of goodness).

The starter takes several days to develop, during which time you feed it daily with more flour and water (or whey).

Here is the resulting sourdough bread that I made yesterday evening – I started it on Monday evening, leaving it to prove overnight, and knocking it back yesterday morning, and leaving it for its second prove all day in the fridge until we got back from our day out – sourdough takes longer to rise than normal bread, and long slow proving improves both the flavour and texture of the bread.

It was so successful that by the time we’d finished our supper, there were only two slices left!!!

This is definitely something I shall be doing regularly. It’s not much trouble to make, but you just have to think ahead a bit and allow extra time for all the proving. You can keep the starter going more or less indefinitely, like kefir.

New Stash

Today, the friend who gave me the lovely papers for my birthday, turned up with a carrier bag absolutely full of craft goodies that she’d bought for me at a coffee morning – it was like Aladdin’s Cave opening it all up!

Lots more papers, cards, stamps, embossing stuff…

Also in the bag was this gorgeous Docrafts folder, absolutely stuffed with clear stamps.

I am overwhelmed – so much stuff to play with, and also with her kindness, thinking of me and buying me such a fabulous present! She said she got it all for an absolute song. What a treat, and what a lovely surprise.

Kitties

Can’t leave you without a kitty picture. Here are Lily and Ruby watching me intently from outside the kitchen window.

Ruby in particular likes to jump up there, in the hope that I will let her in through the window – which I don’t want to encourage!

They are both still really enjoying being in the garden all day, and doing quite well with the cat flap, but Ruby keeps forgetting how to use it! They are better at going out than coming in, probably because they have more incentive to go out, as they are both little garden addicts these days.

So you can see I’ve been very busy this past week, and this will continue for a while until I can get on top of things again. At least I’m being creative again!

Have a great week, everyone.

WOYWW 456

Not a lot on my desk today because I cleared it last night. I can’t tell you why there’s a CD case on my desk today – it’s part of my mystery project, which, by the way, is coming on nicely.

I can show you a work in progress background for the mystery project.

The next picture is not part of the mystery project but a spin-off from it.

I’ve been experimenting a bit with my Distress Stains. I’ve got loads of them but rarely use them because I don’t like the delivery system – the dauber top gives a really streaky result. Some time ago I came across a tutorial on how to remove the dauber and transfer the contents into a spray bottle, and I’ve wanted to do this for ages. I think I will get more use out of them in this form. I put a couple of colours in spray bottles and eventually I think most of them will be transferred. The above samples were produced initially by cleaning off the stencil, and I added more ink pad and Distress Stains – not sure what I’m going to do with them yet. In real life they are quite shimmery, with the Delicata White Sparkle stamp (which is more silver than white) and the Antique Bronze Distress Stain.

A few days ago the new rack arrived for my craft boards. I wrote a post about it here. It’s lovely and substantial and works a treat.

Here it is in position. Already I am finding a huge difference, having the boards in the rack, and the partitioned box for all my bits and pieces.

It’s so cold again today! Whatever I do I can’t seem to get warm. We are getting most unusual snow in Torquay – we are more accustomed to mild weather which suits our palm trees! Here’s a view from the bedroom window earlier today.

Everyone goes on about the snow in such a negative way. I know all about falls and broken hips, and burst pipes, and traffic problems… but I can’t get over my childhood excitement at the sight of snow and how magical and beautiful it is.

The forecast says we’ll get most of the snow tomorrow, and then it should get warmer.

Kitties

On Sunday I was alone in the house and heard the most almighty bang, and thought a bomb had gone off in the street! Then I remembered the kittens were running around upstairs, so I went up to investigate. This is what I found in my hubby’s room.

It was a beautiful heavy glass bowl that had been given to him as a present by our old church in Plymouth when we left in 1999. I think it was Ruby. Lily was wandering around on the landing looking smug, as if to say, “It wasn’t me…” and then Ruby appeared, looking scared and guilty!! I told them both that I’d come closer than ever, today, to selling them on Ebay.

Here are a couple more videos.

On Sunday, the kittens were 9 months old! I can’t believe how fast the time has gone, and how big they now are.

A few days ago, we were a bit concerned about some new behaviour – they’ve had several spats, with growling and hissing, and Ruby arching her back and turning her tail into a bottle brush. My hubby thinks she’s trying to assert herself and become the boss cat. Up until now they’ve been nothing but loving with each other – two sweet little sisters who have always got on, so it’s a bit disturbing. Yesterday and today, however, they seem to be back to normal. I suppose it’s all part of growing up.

Health Update

I now have a date for my operation – Wednesday 28th March. I have to turn up at 7.30 a.m. – horrendously early! However, I’m not going to believe it’s actually happening until they pump the anaesthetic into my arm, going by their past record for postponements. I shan’t know until the day whether they will agree to give me a PICC line from the outset. If not, I shall insist on having one the moment the first cannula fails as I don’t want a repeat of what happened last year.

On the letter it tells me I will be in four nights. This is a standard letter for this sort of operation and doesn’t really mean much, as they will always judge each case individually, and given my previous experiences, it’s likely that I’ll take a bit longer to recover than the average, because of my ME. Also, like for the first operation in 2015, I shall be in over Easter, and this means that four nights on will take us to Sunday morning, which is Easter Sunday, followed by Easter Monday which is a bank holiday, and last time, the same thing applied, and there was nobody to discharge me until the Tuesday, when the pharmacy also re-opened, and they won’t send you home without your drugs. So I think I shall be in for a minimum of 6 nights.

My hubby is going back to the fracture clinic tomorrow. Hopefully they will tell him he can drive again. Yesterday the car went in for servicing and MOT, which means it should also be in tip-top condition for its return to the road, just like my hubby haha!

So we’ll have a few weeks of normality before I go into hospital. We are going to enjoy it while we can, and if the snow permits it.

Meantime, I am cracking on with my mystery project in the hope that it will be finished before my operation.

Studio Organisation - Rack for my Craft Boards

As part of the mini-re-organising of my desk, I have bought a rack to hold my various craft boards so that they are tidy, easily accessible, and take up less space. Up until now they have been in a heap, and the one I wanted was always at the bottom, of course. When I got my new scoring board, this was so large that it was not convenient to store it flat.

I found this rack on Amazon. It is metal, and quite substantial, and has three nice wide slots so it will hold a lot. It is really designed for kitchen chopping boards but I thought it would be ideal in my studio.

It has nice non-slip feet too.

Here it is in situ, with my boards in place. The photo was taken from the side. Above it, you can see the cup hook with my two heat guns hanging – another space-saving idea. The cables are a bit of a pain but there’s not a lot I can do about that.

There is room for the Cuttlebug in front, and I have also pushed the partitioned wooden box a bit further to the right, giving me a few more inches to play with on the desk.

In the rack, from back to front, I’ve got my new purple scoring board, a smaller Crafter’s Companion scoring board, my Tonic Stamping Platform, my envelope punch board, my paper trimmer and my ATC glue gun.

I think this is going to work really well.

I am thrilled with the partitioned box too – this is already paying dividends with everything within easy reach, instead of constantly falling off the shelf. I’ve taken the home-made ink blenders out of the ice cream box and put them in this box instead as they are in constant use.

The pull-out unit on the right is now freed up for cutting. I’ve also got some boxes of paper scraps on there at the moment but they aren’t a permanent fixture.

Craft4Crafters Show 2018 in Exeter

Yesterday I went to the Craft4Crafters Show at Westpoint in Exeter. I was thrilled to be taken by a friend and her mother, and another lady came too, and along with my wheelchair and a box for purchases, it was a good thing they had a big car!

This was the first time I’d been to a craft show for several years. Last year I was ill, ditto 2015, and during other years I was reluctant to ask my hubby to drive me because he was already doing so much for Mum and looking after me, and hardly had time to enjoy his retirement after he stopped being so busy with work. This year he would have driven me, except he’s still not driving after breaking his leg. Anyway, thanks to my lovely friend, I got there this year, and I had the most wonderful time. After the previous couple of months being so horrendous, this was a real treat for me, and my credit card had a real outing too!!

Now I’ve got my mojo back, I was keen to find things to help with current projects, in particular my mystery project – and I was looking specifically for dies, stencils, papers… Before we went, I had been on the show website and made a list of the stands I definitely wanted to visit, and also a list of things I wanted to buy – alongside this, I made a list of things I’d already got, so I didn’t inadvertently buy any duplicates; for instance, I wanted to stock up on some of the new Distress Oxides I hadn’t yet got. I went armed with my little notebook with the lists, and this was a great help, because it’s easy to get overwhelmed by everything and lose track of what you went for!

The first stand I visited, I found a Hunkydory scoring board (in glorious purple!) which I simply had to have – for years I’ve been using a Score Pal one but it hasn’t got enough lines on it and they are always in the wrong place for what I want. This new board has inches on one side, with divisions every 1/8 in. and on the reverse, centimetres, so everything is covered.

It is quite thin, and has a handle on top, and I think I may store it vertically which will take up less space. I’m thinking of having some sort of rack to store my various boards – envelope punch board, cutting mat, paper trimmer etc. so that I can pick them out as I need them, rather than having them floating around on the work surface, with the one I want at any given moment always being at the bottom of the heap. I need to do some serious studio reorganising, I’m thinking.

I stocked up on loads of double-sided tape (very cheap in bulk, three different widths) – I’ve been getting through loads of that recently, especially with my mystery project. I also got some more plain heavy white cardstock for card bases.

On the website I’d seen an intriguing tool I was very keen to look at – a Gyro-Cut, which is a craft knife with a rotating blade and an erganomic handle. I was able to try it out and loved it! After trying some basic cuts, I attempted cutting around a more complex stamped image, and the man said I’d done a very good job for a first attempt! So in my bag it went.

In the discount package I got with this tool, I got a bottle of glue for making the cutting mat tacky, to hold the paper in place while you cut. He said one coating was good for many repeated uses, and it could also be used on the back of stencils to hold them in place, and it would leave no residue on the unglued surface. I asked if this would be suitable for electronic cutting machine mats and he said yes – many people asked him this. It is water-based, and easy to apply. I have always used 3M spray photo mount for this and it’s horrible to use – really smelly, and hard not to get it on the surrounding area, and initially it makes the mat much too sticky, which damages the work when you try to remove it. I think this new glue will be very useful indeed, and he said that the bottle would last for ages, but I could always get more from their website.

Blendy Pens – these amazing water-based pens can be attached together so their colours blend, and as you use them, the colour gradually changes. I’m not quite sure how I am going to use these yet, but they were so intriguing, especially as in the kit was a little bulb-operated air brush which can be used with other pens as well, and he threw in a pack of stencils too. I shall have fun playing with those. Exploring online, they seem to be directed exclusively at children, and I can’t find any info or videos showing adults using them for serious artwork, but I think they have potential.

I got another Really Useful Box (4 litre size) to store my growing collection of Distress Oxides – it will fit nicely on the shelf with the other two that I keep my Distress Inks and Archival Inks in.

On the left-hand side, stacked up, are the Distress Oxides I already had (the complete set of the initial launch), and laid out are the new Distress Oxides I got yesterday. I didn’t want to get others in the range because several seemed very similar, but I think I have now got a good representative collection colour-wise.

I got some very nice mixed media stencils.

Leaf dies, frames, backgrounds, doilies, edges etc.

I particularly like the two doily ones, because they are made up of several dies that can be used together, or separately, or in different combinations, giving you lots of options for different borders etc. I’ve not had a lot of experience dealing with this sort of thing and I’m looking forward to experimenting.

I found some gorgeous quilling dies – something I hadn’t come across before – you cut them out and roll the pieces up with a quilling tool to make really quick flowers. I want to make a lot of these for my mystery project.

I didn’t buy the only stamen die they had left – the pretty ones were old out, and anyway, I can use something different. One option is just to roll up a plain strip, giving a flat surface onto which you can attach a gem or other suitable flower centre. The lady on the stand gave me a personal demonstration of how the flowers are constructed.

They also had dies for making easel cards, but the dies can be used for other purposes as well. Like the doily dies above, there are several in the set, and you can mix and match, and create mats, borders, windows, delicate frames, etc. etc. Again, I can’t wait to experiment with these. Leann Chivers, who designed them for Crafters’ Companion, and whose Facebook video I’ve linked to above, produces so many variations with stunning results.

I got an absolutely gorgeous 8 x 8 paper stack by Trimcraft (who I’d never heard of before) called “Gilded Winter” – all very subtle beige and cream with gold, glitter and embossing, and some double-sided. Fabulous patterns.

Here are some examples of the papers.

I bought a few separate sheets of 12 x 12 papers with a weathered wood plank design which will make fabulous backgrounds for projects. They are double-sided with a surf wave pattern on the back which I’m not so interested in but it’s very pretty. These are by Kaiser Craft and they are from a collection called Sandy Toes! They were produced in Australia, where they certainly know all about sand and surf.

I bought a mixed pack of Wendy Vecchi’s Clearly for Art which I’ve wanted to get my hands on for years, and a small pack of vellum. The pack of silvery glitter card was a freebie thrown in with some of the Distress Oxides that I bought.

Finally, a few oddments – I only bought one stamp, a peacock feather one which I really liked. Some stencil glue (bought before I saw the sticky mat glue) and some fabric glue, some gold embossing powder and a set of fine tip applicator bottles. That about wraps it up!

One thing I’d been looking out for, and which seemed in very short supply, was punches. Last time I went to a craft show there were lots to choose from. I am missing a few in my series of incremental circles and was hoping to fill these gaps, but I can always find them online, I expect.

I am going to have So Much Fun playing with this lot!

As for the rest of the show, there were quite a few demonstrations going on but I didn’t spend too much time on them because there was so much to see and we didn’t have much time. Also, especially at the beginning, there were so many people crowding around and I couldn’t see anything at all from a sitting position. I did stop at one a bit later when the crowds had thinned out somewhat – this lady was creating tiny miniature canvases with a paint pouring method that looked like marbling, using thinned-down gesso into which she poured different colours of fluid iridescent paint, and after minimal stirring she poured this over the canvas with beautiful results.

On her table she had lots of pieces that she had made, not just with this technique but mixed media, and she was happy for me to photograph them.

Gorgeous, aren’t they.

This was a beautiful altered book she’d done.

I didn’t take as many photos as I’ve done at previous shows, but several stands caught my eye – mostly textile ones, although I didn’t buy anything in that line this time. There were some stunning quilts.

These juicy colourful trims caught my eye.

Aren’t those Paisleys just delicious? There was also quite a bit going on with Indian textiles – braids and trims, sari fabric, etc. I photographed some beautiful embroidered panels. Lots of gorgeous bright colours!

Other interesting textile pieces included some smaller items made from patchwork.

You can see that it was mostly vibrant bright colours that caught my eye!

The same felt makers were there that I’d seen at the County Show – as usual they had their stunning Lion and Lamb hanging which I’d seen several times before (I took this photo on a previous occasion):

This year they had a new one – St. George and the Dragon!

I took a photo from the side as well, so that you could see just how 3-dimensional this is:

It’s huge, as well! A fantastic piece of work. Is there anything people can’t create?

There was a stand dedicated to MosaiCraft – what the man described as miniature Lego – you press tiny cubes of plastic onto a spiked grid and make a mosaic following a chart rather like cross stitch. While this wasn’t something I was interested in doing, their stand was quite impressive:

Apparently you can submit a photo and they will pixilate it, and create a chart for you, and make up a kit with all the tiny pieces you will need to make it.

I loved their disclaimer – also made with this method:

Nice Celtic knot panel above it, too, and how about that amazing tiger?

I had to photograph the sign for this stand, simply because I loved the lettering.

One one of the papercrafting stands, there were lots of stunning cards that people had made from the various products – so inspirational! When I see stuff like this I think that I could actually enjoy card making more than I do…

(The card in this photo, like the white one in the photo above, had a window – when I edited this photo I removed what you could see through the window (part of the wall behind, which was distracting) and replaced it with black. I love how the flowers and leaves trail across the aperture.)

One of the cards (which I didn’t photograph) had a piece of embossed acetate over the aperture, which caught the light and sparkled. Beautiful! Soooo many ideas…

It was all laid out pretty well, with most of the papercrafting stuff near the entrance, and the textile stuff (quilting, embroidery, sewing, knitting and yarns etc.) towards the back of the hall, so that people could concentrate on their particular areas of interest without having to search high and low for the stands they wanted to visit. There were other stands dotted around, with miscellaneous things not necessarily related to craft – Cats’ Protection was there, and Bicton College (agricultural), the RSPB, and a man demonstrating a knife-sharpening tool; there were herbs and spices, and sweets, and some beautiful clothes, and kitchen ware. I recognised the man on that stand because a couple of years ago I bought a set of kitchen knives from him at the Devon County Show – I proudly showed him the scar where his amazing bread knife nearly took my finger off in September 2016!! I told him that I used three or four of the knives at least once a day, and how pleased I was with them.

The four of us split up so we could do our own thing, and arranged to meet for our sandwich lunch, and again at the end, but we did keep bumping into each other along the way!

I was impressed how many disabled people there were at the show. It’s great to know that however limited one’s mobility may be, one can still be creative, and often one has more time for it when more active pursuits are out of the question. Before I was ill I hardly had any time for it. They had buggies that you could hire for the day but I was happy with my wheelchair which is more compact. So many people came up to me and complimented me on my wheelchair decorations and quite a few wanted to know how I’d done them. I get a lot of comments every time I go out, but at a craft show or an art exhibition, the comments tend to be more informed, and there is more appreciation of the amount of work involved.

After having such a rough time recently, today has been a real treat. It was so great being amongst all those lovely folks too, all with a common interest, and we had some nice chats with various people. Altogether a really good day out.