Our First Arty Farty Purchase

I've never really understood the whole art thing before. I've never really visited any art galleries or anything like that and have certainly never understood how anyone could be "moved" by art. This is all until we were away on our summer holiday to North Yorkshire in July - we went back to visit the same small place near Whitby that we have been to last year around the same time and also in the winter a few times as well.

While we were there we were recommended that there is a lovely art gallery and cafe in one of the nearby towns. As we were planning on having a walk that way anyway, to Grosmont, the idea of the lovely cakes certainly were a winner for me and my husband as well so why not go and have a look around.

It was lovely, only a tiny little gallery called The Geall Gallery. It's not one of these stuffy horrible places where everyone walks around in silence and there is no atmosphere, it is essentially a little cafe that just happens to have lovely art work on the walls. The major bonus of it (or very expensive problem really) is that all of the artwork that is up and around and about is for sale.

There are a couple of other artists that display their work there but the main one is Chris Gaell. His website is here. As we walked in we instantly fell in love with his work. Neither me nor my husband could believe how real all of the paintings looked and as they are all painted using a palette knife they are also really really tactile. They looked totally different close up to when we viewed then from further away but all of the time maintaining their amazing ability to appear completely real and almost photo-like.

They were slightly out of our price range on this visit to go for one of the large paintings that we really did love. Chris does some that are about 2m wide by 50cm tall and would look absolutely perfect above our sofa in our lovely newly decorated living room. I think that one of these might have to be a treat to ourselves at some point but will need some saving up first. Maybe this will be next years Wedding Anniversary to each other.

After looking around for a while this summer and trying to resist one of these lovely big pictures, I have to admit, we did finally give in and make a purchase.

We were looking at all of his slightly smaller pictures but couldn't quite find anything that looked right or would go in our living room (if we were buying real artwork it has to be in pride of place in our house) so we started to look at his smaller pictures. These are about 15cm x 15cm without the frames so not very big at all - they come to about 20cm x 20cm with the frames although the frames that they were all displayed in in the gallery were a really dark wood colour.

The scenes depicted in the smaller pictures ended up being our favourite scenes but we weren't really sure how just one of these pictures would look in our living room soo...

we might have ended up buying 6 of them...woops!

These were the pictures as they were displayed in the gallery - one of them hadn't even been framed yet

Chris very kindly agreed to change the frames of these as the dark wood wouldn't match anything in our house or especially the living room - he uses ash wood normally and stains this to get the dark finish but he had some untreated wood that he hadn't started to use yet for his frames. He agreed to treat this with a clear lacquer for us so that the wood maintained a more natural finish. This is the final result.

They are up in pride of place in our living room - I love to sit and look at they - they are directly opposite the sofa and in an evening our lamp even points in the right direction to light them up just perfectly. Yes ok, they were a lot of money (if you can't tell, I'm still slightly shocked by our extravagance with these) but they are one of my favourite things that I have ever purchased. I love them so much - they just make me smile every time I look at them and, I know this may sound slightly crazy but they definitely change each day. Sometimes the water in the Beck looks a lot clearer than others and the light coming through the trees in the picture in the top right definitely looks brighter some days than others. I almost feel like these are little windows to the outside where I can see what is happening in each of the places.

And that is definitely enough soppy, crazy talk for today. I'll be posting again shortly with more of my own crafty things and my recent makes.

Sewing bag makes

Ok so now I have a fantastic new sewing machine (and no real clue as to how to use it!) I needed to find something to make with it.

As I said in my last post, I did order the Great British Sewing Bee book along with my machine to give me a few ideas but I think that perhaps going straight from making an apron out of a shirt - and lets face it not really changing too much of the basic shirt its-self to make this - to making something like a dress could be a bit too big of a step for me.

So again, what else to do but to hunt the internet...

...I found this amazing sewing bag pattern online and for free - please find the link to the pattern here

I decided that this didn't look too tricky for a first project and set to work using some of the fat quarters that I had received in one of the Crafty Creatives boxes that I used to receive on a monthly basis.

I chose these two and a stripy red and white as I felt that they worked the best together and I absolutely LOVE the owl-y fabric so this had to be the most visible on the outside of the bag. I chose the stripy red material for the inside as I hoped that this would be the easiest fabric to line up and make the square - I am not sure really if this did make it easier at all of just more obvious when it wasn't quite straight!

This was a lovely project to start with for the first use of my first ever (proper) sewing machine - it now means that I have somewhere to keep all of my pretty new threads, scissors etc.

I was so pleased with the final result that I showed a few people how it had turned out and my Mother-in-Law especially loved it!. I decided to make her one as well as it is a nice project to practice with. She seems really pleased with hers as well. She sent me this photo of the final product all filled up with all of her sewing bits and pieces.

The materials that we chose for her bag were again a couple of fat quarters that I had bought and the lining came from an old shirt donated by my Father-in-law. Another stripy lining so again a little bit tricky to make sure that it was lined up all correctly but I think it turned out ok in the end. The only error that I made with making this bag is that when I was cutting the fabric for the pockets around the edge of the bag I made one of the strips slightly shorter than the other. This piece of fabric must have also not been quite as wide as a normal fat quarter as I wasn't able to quite make the pockets as tall as they should have been - again one is slightly shorter than the other.

The shortened length of the pocket on one side makes a nice little pocket for scissors to be kept in or any other small/flat item.

I do like the way that both of these have turned out and really enjoyed making them. I can't believe how differently they both came out really as they were made following the same pattern (with a few of my own adaptations). These would be really great fun to keep making potentially as gifts and in different fabrics. I would like at some point also to try to enlarge the pattern and make this again. I would need a few more fat quarters and, if I wanted to main components of the bag to match then these would need to be in the same designs but I think that this would be do-able - the trickiest might be getting a piece long enough to make the pockets (as the pleated pocket did use a full length of fat quarter) or joining two along the edge.

Hmmm...I will have to think about it. It might also be nice at some point to add a fastening to the bag, some sort of cover over the open top possibly. Something to decide if I make this again.

I hope that you are all having a fabulous day - keep on crafting. See you soon for the next instalment.

Birthday

My Birthday - it was in April but hey, I'm only 4 months behind in my blogging about it.

It was a very chilled out day really - I didn't really want to do much, just enjoy having a nice peaceful day off with no work to go to and lots of time to do exactly what I wanted. We made some huge sandwiches of all of my favourite fillings and bought a few other treats and went for a walk down to the lake at our local country park.
We just sat there, minding our own business, munching on our goodies and chilling out.

When we got back me and the hubby set to work and made a cake before we had a few people around in the evening. We just made a normal sponge mix in two tins but then we were let loose with the chocolate. We melted down far more than we would ever need to cover the cakes and started decorating (I was eating the rest from a mug after it had solidified again for a few weeks after!)

 A little bit of chocolate butter icing in the middle (my favourite!) and we sandwiched them together.

It was really great fun to make and tasted delicious. I would definitely make it again (and have done since). The only problem with it is when it comes to cutting the slices and serving it. As the chocolate had set so well by this time it was pretty tricky and did make the butter icing in the middle squidge out a little bit.

When it comes to presents I generally have no ideas what to ask for for these kinds of events, although I love them every year and who doesn't love to be spoilt, this year I have to admit that I found it quite tricky to choose something that I would like.

The best suggestion that I could come up with for this was a Kindle - I don't read massive amounts of books every year or anything - nothing compared to what other people with these kind of devices seem to anyway so I really wasn't sure about asking for one at all - I wasn't sure if I would read it at all - it could end up just being one extremely expensive book. As it turns out I have used it a LOT! I love it and sit and read nearly everyday - it is a great way to spend my lunch times at work if I am not able to crochet or knit (it depends who's around as lots of people would look at me really weirdly if I got out my stuff and suddenly started to crochet in our canteen at work.)

So along with this, as I knew I was going to be getting a Kindle for my birthday as this was from Adam - I decided that a sensible thing to also ask for was Amazon vouchers. I thought I would only get a little bit - enough to get a couple of books for my Kindle but quite a few people seemed to cotton onto this idea and I ended up with a substantial amount. I am very lucky.

Having had my tiny little go at sewing with a machine and making my apron I really enjoyed it and thought that this would be something that I could really enjoy doing - especially if I had a machine that was substantially bigger and didn't keep eating my material all of the time!

I had no ideas what sort of machine would be best or what I would get on with the most so - after reading what felt like hundreds of reviews and trying to decide what functions I might actually use on a full-sized machine (I had no idea what I would need really!) I decided to go with this:

It's theJanome 525S and the machine that was used a lot on the Great British Sewing Bee. It seemed to have a lot of good reviews and obviously was chosen to be used on the show so I decided to go for this with my fingers crossed it would be good.

With it I also purchased this Great British Sewing Bee book to give me a few ideas of what I might be able to make and some really basic pointers for how to go about it.

As it turns out, I absolutely love it and have used it loads - almost more than I thought I would. Like I have said - this sewing thing could really get addictive!

Apron

I was very inspired by watching the Great British Sewing Bee over the winter and I think that the idea of re-using things and up-cycling is terrific. I know that this is huge fashion thing at the minute as well - which really isn't the reason why I like it.

I have always hated the idea of waste - I like to re-use as much as I can - I hate throwing anything away: food, clothes etc I really cannot stand being put to waste. This is probably why I have had and worn most of my wardrobe for at least 5 years and am only ever really persuaded to buy new clothes when my Mum takes me shopping! I am still then really awful at throwing these things away even when I then have new clothes. The old stuff is always just the comfiest and most enjoyable to wear!! Oh well - you know me, if I could then I would happily walk around in my PJs all day, every day.

So, with that in mind, as my first project, I didn't end up recycling any of my clothes at all! I decided to cut up and adapt one (or two) of my husbands shirts (old one's I might add - that he really shouldn't have been wearing any more!)

I only had this tiny little sewing machine to use as this was the cheapest little machine that I could find. I had no idea how I would get on with machine sewing, having never really used a sewing machine before in my life.

As my first project and an experiment to see if I was able to use a sewing machine, I decided to convert this old shirt into an apron. Not too much of a dramatic change but my favourite part of the show for The Great British Sewing Bee was always the converting of a garment into something totally different. I also didn't want to waste any good material that could have been used for something better if I wasn't able to create anything at all from it.

Here is the end result:

It's by no means perfect but I didn't think that this was too bad for a first attempt ever of sewing at all with a machine. The thing that I found most annoying was that due to the basic-ness of the little machine there wasn't an automatic tension on it and therefore if I forgot to loop it through the correct bit, or looped it through wrong, I did have a few disasters where the machine ate my material and a load of thread or it would just not sew and would snap the thread all together.

And here begins my new hobby - sewing!

A little bit more of my blanket...

Wow. So it really has been a long time since I last posted and sooo much has happened in my little crafty world since February. I have decided that I need to catch up with everything on here and hopefully the best way will be to post quite a few different blogs over the next few weeks - giving you a couple of days between each to digest and read them.

I guess the first thing that I should give you a little catch up on is my crochet mood blanket - as that was my last blog back in February. I was going through a little bit of a rough time at that point and I think the last meaningful square that I had was the one I made for the day of my Gran's funeral. After a couple of rough months at the beginning of the year and attending two family funerals in the first two months, I am happy to say that the rest of the year has picked up quite considerably.

I have added quite a few more meaningful squares to my blanket.

There's one for February 14th - moving day! The day that we got the keys to our house, a full 2 years ago now!

And I also added quite a few for the Winter Olympics. The Olympics are by far my favourite sporting event ever shown on TV and especially the winter ones definitely have a place very close to my heart. I was never quite crazy enough on skis - either with the idea of flipping myself through the air (I don't like to have my feet leave the floor really if I can help it) or with throwing myself down a mountain at breakneck speed. I will definitely stick to my instructing and concentrate my energies on teaching the sport rather than doing these crazy things myself. Maybe one day I will see one of my students skiing for the British team and get my tiny claim to fame that way!

So these squares are what I added - one for the opening ceremony - I still need to attach the rings to this one but I tried to crochet the square to make the effect of the snow and it's texture.

 I tried this out as an idea for the days when my favourite skier raced. I had the amazing privilege of being able to meet the amazing Chemmy Alcott a few years ago when I was out in Canada working on a world cup race - I volunteered to help with the event before the season really began and I started to teach.

The square its-self I wasn't too happy with as it didn't quite come out the right shape to fit in the blanket but I still like the idea and kind of wished that it had - I have thought about turning it into part of a cushion cover at some point but as of yet this has been added to the list of ideas that I have floating around in my head and not actually materialised.

This is what I ended up with - Chemmy always wears a pink helmet even with her GB kit hence the colour scheme.

There were a few more very good days throughout the Olympics where GB won medals - each day I made this kind of square and then added the colour of the medal around the edge:

I also made another "snowy" square for the day of the opening ceremony of the Paralympics (the same as the Olymics opening ceremony day) - I still need to make the coloured tick-type shapes to add as the logo for the Paralympics

Only a few more special days - Henlow's birthday - 3rd March - this is the day that we got him last year

My Birthday - 9th April - I wanted a very chilled out birthday this year. I received a Kindle for my Birthday from my husband (with a purple cover - hence the purple edging) and we went for a walk with a picnic to the little lake near our house so this patchwork was to represent the blanket that we took with us and sat to chill out on by the lake

And the following day we went to The Deep in Hull for a day out:

This is about as far as I have got at the minute - I am up to 16 May - quite a bit of catching up to do and I have some special squares still to add - mostly around July as this was when we went on our holiday and also when our wedding anniversary is.

It has been far too hot over the summer, especially as the blanket is starting to get quite big and heavy to carry on with the squares but as it is now starting to cool down a fair bit then I should be able to start catching up fairly soon. I have also had a few other exciting projects and new hobbies to start to get into recently so I have been quite busy with these things.

As promised at the beginning of this post, there will definitely be more updates with some of these other things very shortly