Yarndale....

Eeekkk, I'm so excited! My friend and I will by visiting the very first yarndale festival on the 29th of september. We cannot wait and keep dreaming up all the things we might see when we are there. I am saving up money as I speak, so that I can treat myself when I am there. 

Perfect Evening

I have been to town today, with my little uns. We had a few errands to run, but we did treat ourselves to a couple of nice things for good behaviour. The boys treats consisted of a new 3ds game that he has been hankering for, for months (and he paid for with his own money, that he has been saving) and a magazine of the pokemon variety. My daughter had a new magazine and some colouring things to do over the holidays.

 My treats included two new magazines and a book, Granny Chic, by Tif Fussell & Rachelle Blondel. I have been undecided for a long time, on whether to buy this book or not, but with a brief flick through I am glad that I have. I cannot wait to sit down later, once the kiddies are in bed, with a cup of Earl Grey, some crochet and my new reading material (possibly some chocolate if i'm lucky).

I may even attempt to make this pattern.

Wish me luck.

Janine x

Holidays in Hungary

I'm back......

We have just come back from our adventures in Hungary. It was an amazing holiday and I think it will stay in my whole families memory for a long time. It was my fifth time in Hungary, but it was my 3 year old daughters first time and it was lovely to see her experiencing everything for the first time.

It was extremely hot while we were there, with most days being 40 degrees or hotter. So most of our time was spent in the amazing outdoor baths, that Hungary has an abundance of. A few other activities were thrown in for good measure and some of these included The zoo, The circus, The marzipan museum and visiting lots of distant relatives and friends (as well as eating as many foods as we could). 

I have come back completely refreshed and raring to get going with some new designs. I took lots of photos and collected lots of pictures and sketches. I will be spending the next week collating all my finds into my sketchbook, before I start my initial designs (although I have already made notes of the design ideas that came into my head, so as not to forget them). 

I will leave you all with a few pics....

And so....

Summer holiday's begin!!

 I broke up from college in May, my son broke up on Friday and my daughter breaks up this Friday coming. Although my daughter appears to have caught chicken pox, so may be breaking up a week early! The fiance breaks up this Friday coming too and we will be heading off on our holidays! Hungary here we come.

It will be the first time my daughter has ever been to Hungary and my son hasn't been since he was 3, so it is a massive adventure for them both, especially as we are driving all the way there.

I have so many things planned for the hols 2 weeks away, a few days at my Dads with the kids and plenty of outside activities. I have a National Trust membership and an Ironbridge passport. So pretty much everyday has some sort activity to fill it up.

I am looking forward to the time I am going to get to spend with my family, but not looking forward to the reduced crafting time that will be imposed :( 

I hope you all have a nice summer holidays and will post as often as I can with summer holiday updates.

Janine x

Come and check out the items in my shop, this is just one of my items! A crochet scarf for winter that would also be perfect as a shawl for those warm summer nights.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/123260539/green-crochet-scarf-sage-greens-neck?ref=shop_home_active

deery me!!

Today, instead of going to college as I usually would, I went back to Attingham Park. It was very cold and foggy when I woke up this morning and I couldn't wait to get down there with my camera.

With the light soft as it is with the fog, it has given everything a rather mysterious look.

As I said in my last blog post, the whole reason for going this time, was to find deer.

I went hopeful, but unsure we would find any deer (I have been twice now and not found any). 

We decided to do the WWII walk this time and were strolling along chatting, kind of isolated by the fog, when lo and behold......

 We came across deer!!! And lots of them!!!

My friend Lucy was the first to notice them there in their herd. Even when pointed out to me, I couldn't see them straight away. If it wasn't for Lucy I may have just walked straight past :-)

I think that the fog helped cloak us slightly from the deer and although alert to any noises, they seemed quite happy for us to snap away. 

You can see from the photos, just how foggy it was this morning. What you can't see from the photo's is quite how excited I am, I could hardly contain myself!!!

Now all I need to do, once I have thawed out a bit more, is use all of this research to make my textile piece.

Take care 

Janine x

P.s, Sorry for the really bad pun at the beginning, but I had to name the post with deer in it somewhere and it was the best I could come up with.

Ideers

I have been contemplating a few ideas, in my head for my project at college.

My project is 'Exploration'. I have decided to explore the National Trust. Obviously the first thing that comes 

to mind, would be nature, but I didn't want to be that predictable. 

I do still have one more visit to go and I will be trying to capture pictures of deer (they are somewhat elusive). 

source found here

I wanted to come up with something that had a little more thought into it and as my local National Trust area has a mansion, I thought about looking into the history. 

You could go as far back as medieval times, as the site has been used for all sorts of things. I decided to go back as far as when the site changed to Attingham park. A family named the Berwick's (formerly known as Hill), owned it.

I came across a family crest of Noel Hill and fell in love with it. 

I love the swirly writing the use of deer and a flying horse and I am now trying to come up with a pattern using elements of this crest. 

Here are my ideas so far.

Hopefully next time I might have a pattern to show you.

Take care 

Janine x

Attingham Park Inspiration

Yesterday the boy and I went to Attingham park. It was lovely to spend time with my boy while my daughter  was at nursery. We spent a lovely morning walking through the grounds, finding sticks and other things of interest.

One of the reasons I wanted to go, was to collect inspiration for my college project of 'Exploration'.

For this project, I decided to use Attingham Park and The National Trust, being a member already and having Attingham Park just down the road, makes it easily accessible.

I took my new camera that I had for Christmas and snapped as many pictures as I could.

Here are just a few examples.

A couple of the mansion its self. 

We even found, a mole on a tree. It's what we can see anyway. Can you see the mole?

Mostly I took pictures of patterns and textures, ready to develop into my own patterns for screen printing. 

My favourite are the patterns that can be seen in the water.

I will post the developed patterns in my next post.

Have a good day

Janine x