The Turtle Moves

A Little Ice Music

So, our Norwegian weekend.

We flew in to Oslo, where we had a couple of hours to wander about and admire the architecture, the blue skies, the buskers playing the most beaten-up hammer dulcimer I've ever seen and the cold! Brrrr. We were still dressed in British winter clothes, so high- tailed it back to the warmth of the station fairly swiftly, where we caught our train to Geilo.

 

 

We had a lovely log cabin to stay in, and we soon got the thermal underwear on, so were well-equipped to enjoy the snowy beauty.

Also the husky sledge ride alluded to in the previous blog.

And the Ice Music Festival, which was the hook upon which this holiday dangled. The amphitheatre is carved out of snow, the musical instruments are carved out of ice, pictures painted on sheets of ice and lit from behind by candles decorate the outside walls of the arena and candles set into holes in the snow line and light the path to the venue.

The whole thing is magical.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we took a beautiful train ride across the Hardangervidda plateau. We passed through the highest station in Northern Europe at Finse (altitude 1222 metres) and some stunning scenery to reach journey's end at Bergen where we had to get our flight back home.

 

 

 

                                                                                                            Altogether the best Christmas present I've ever had, and a completely unforgettable and inspiring experience.

 

Huskies

No craft activity of any sort has been occurrin' by here - because we've been on Holiday! To Norway! We went on a husky sledge ride! I 'drove' the team of huskies (actually, they dragged me along behind them, on one occasion quite literally)! Enormous fun was had, and minus 22degree temperatures were survived. It was very, very pretty, and I'll show you some photos when I've managed to sort some out. We only got back today, and you know what it's like with digital cameras - click, click, click, click ..............

It's Owl Right Now

Happy Hogmanay to you all!

Here we are at the end of the year and we're having a relaxed and cosy quiet time in together, just me and my Lovely Husband. I thought I'd show you these sweet little Owl decorations before everything gets taken down and cleared away for another year. I do get quite frantic to clear everything away and get Back To Normal as soon as the last vestige of festive jollity fades away. That's usually 2nd January!

Anyway, the Owls are hanging among the Christmas cards on the dresser in the kitchen/dining room. I made them this year from a pattern in this lovely book. (I also made a splendidly Swedish - looking Christmas cake frill from the same book.) It is full of easy and effective decorative ideas and of course was also recommended by Lucy in Attic 24, a creative lady with a splendid eye for colour who I mention on a regular basis. Apart from anything else, you can follow links and Flickr feeds from her blog and get lost in worlds of colour for hours on end - a useful resource when you are at a loose end, but with no particular energy to do something creative yourself. There is always justification for browsing inspirational material, whatever form it takes. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Anyway, it will soon be 2012 - a whole new year in which to make more felt/crochet/cuddly things, play with our grandchildren, go for walks, sing songs and generally enjoy life. I wish all the very best of whatever you need to you all.

Happy New Year!

Season's Greetings

 

Happy Christmas!

The tree's been brought in and festooned with home-made elves and angels, the holly and ivy is twined around the door and splendid husband has gone mad with fairy lights round the trees in the garden. To put us in the festive mood even more thoroughly, we attended our gorgeous grandchildren's school nativity service in Falkland Church  this morning.

Teeny children dressed as angels, shepherds, wise men, Mary and Joseph. There was not a dry eye in the house. Gorgeous Grandaughter did one of the readings, and very beautifully too.

Bless.

Retro Cuddlies

Hello folks,

While I was trawling E-Bay for soft toy patterns several months ago, I came across some kits from the late 70s. I couldn't leave these potential chaps languishing in the virtual auctionhouse so I made my very small (but successful) bids, and so they've been waiting in my workroom for me to bring them to life. This week, having finished with the mega craft-fair/Christmas lights/doing stuff for an ungrateful populace things which filled my time in November I thought I'd better clear the decks of this year's projects. So I made a Clothkits Giraffe and Pocket Doll and these splendid 1970's vintage Microkits of an Owl and a baby Hedgehog.

I have to say that sewing the back and front of the Owl together was the biggest leap of faith in the patternmaker's art that I have yet undertaken - it was very difficult to picture the final reverse 3-D effect. But it worked!

These chaps are not going to any craft fair stall - they're probably quite rare by now - and they've cheered me up after a week of feeling a bit wrong-footed. So hopefully my lovely grandchildren will tell me I've Done Good.      

Now to prepare for Christmas. My fabulous family are gathering here this year, so it's time to get out the decorations and put batteries in the singing Santas (splendid grandson can't have grown out of the fun of creating Noise in the Hall, surely?)

Have a lovely festive season y'all.

By the way, this blogging is being accompanied by the sound of the Incredible String Band - My Lovely Husband has brought a tranche of our beloved vinyl down from the attic to convert it to CD and i-player versions. If you haven't encountered this wonderful music and invention, can I suggest you check out three recordings: the eponymous first LP; the 5,000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion; and The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter. On Elektra Records if I remember rightly.

This is what we were doing in the Sixties - and I was there, and I can remember it. Peace, friends.

 

 

 

Stars in the house

Hello everyone,

I've been crocheting stars in every spare moment over the last month (the Craft Fair on the evening of our town's  Christmas Lights switch-on is upon us this week).

I've been crocheting stars while travelling to and from Cheshire and Wales (mentioned a couple of blogs ago). The drive from Llandudno to Westmoreland Services is an 8 - star journey. (My Dear Husband was driving on that leg of the trip, and then I took over, so no stars between the Lake District and Fife.) I've crocheted on trains and buses, in the living-room and in the kitchen. I've got lots of stars now!

I do hope the Fair goes well. I think I have the absolute Acme of sales gimmicks this year - my lovely grandchildren are going to man my table for me. I will be free to run around making sure everything else is okay, and two gorgeous moppets are going to sell all of my Christmas crochet and needlefelt. How can this possibly fail?

Oh, I've been needlefelting Santas and snowmen and punk angels as well.

Chaps like this all sold well last year, so I must stab wool assiduously all day tomorrow and Build Up Stock.  Maybe.

Or maybe I'll go out into the garden if the sun is shining like it did today. We have to grab all the daylight we can up here in the Dark North you know. Otherwise we retire to the back of the cave and hunker down until Spring.

 

 

Stir it Up

Hello again!

I have been industrious today, and have made my Christmas Cake and Pudding. Here is a picture of the pudding mixture. Note splendid things like bottles of Brandy and Porter, and not a bag of flour or sugar to be seen. This is The Most Excellent Christmas Pudding Recipe Ever. My mum found the recipe in the 'Scotsman' newspaper back in 1962 and we've been using it ever since.

It requires steaming for 6 hours the day you make it, and then steaming again for 6 hours on Christmas Day. This ensures a beautiful glossy black exterior and a rich, moist, light interior. It always turns out of the pudding basin easily and is greeted with Cries of Approbation from the Assembled Company.

When the kids were still living at home I used to do this cooking during the October Half-Term Holiday so they could be around to give the mixture a stir and make Good Wishes while they did so. These days I do all the making of Good Wishes for the family members who will be eating the pudding on Christmas Day, but they are very fervent and heartfelt nonetheless, and I'm sure they will come true.

The Cake turned out fine this time. The first attempt collapsed because I had managed to lose my large cake-tin, so the mixture was too deep in a slightly too small tin AND I was too rushed so tried to man-handle it before it had properly cooled. (Note - when a rich fruit cake recipe says 'allow to cool completely in tin' - DO THAT THING. The very rich mixture means that there's only just enough flour/egg/butter mix to hold all the fruit/nuts /peel together, so if you don't let it set and solidify you'll end up with very tasty crumbs.) Not to worry, my husband, son and son-in-law happily cleared up the evidence of that particular faux pas. I always find that a chunk of Unexpected Fruitcake is very acceptable to the male of the species, don't you?

 

Lights! Action!

  The Craft Fair we've been organising finally happened yesterday evening. It was a success! All the stall-holders turned up on time and there were loads of people coming through the venue for the whole three hours that we were open.

 Outside in the streets the Christmas Lights got switched on successfully with no blow-outs. The DJ did his stuff and the kiddies' rides people didn't fight with the Glow-sticks sellers. Upstairs in the venue, the various school-kids sang their carols and danced their dances without falling off the stage. A total result.

Even better, I sold every single one of my daft needle-felt Christmas angels, santas, snowmen and penguins along with a good few crochet snowflakes. All those hours of various types of preparation were well worth it.

We might even do it all again next year.

Crochet Snowflakes

There are many many free patterns out there on the internet for knitting and crocheting all sorts of things, but by far the most reliable that I have found, for clear accurate instructions, are those on the Lion Brand website. They have many patterns for snowflakes, stars and angels to make as Christmas tree decorations. The snowflake pattern I chose suggested you use white wool , but I reckoned they would be more interesting in a sparkly yarn so I used Twilley's Goldfingering. The picture shows a few of them pinned out on a cork board to dry after having been soaked in a stiffening solution made of a 50/50 mix of PVA glue and water.

I made white, silver, gold, red, green, blue and pink ones and there are more Goldfingering colours to choose if that's not sufficient.

The pattern is easy to follow and works up in less than an hour per snowflake, so pick up your hook and go!

Well, hello girls!

  Over the course of the year I've made several "seasonal" fairies as in the picture on the left - that's Fourth of July Fairy (WonderWoman goes woolly), Halloween Fairy (she of the Pumpkin skirt) and May Day Fairy (decked all out in Spring green), but I thought perhaps a slightly simplified shape might be needed for a whole "flock" of fairies/angels for the Christmas tree, so I experimented with a simple cone shape, and tried a different shape of wing, too - slimmer and more "feathery". They were reasonably swift to make, which is quite important if you need to do a few, and I think they look quite Christmassy. Maybe I should sprinkle them with glitter, what do you think?