August 2025

 I finally seem to have a month where I can show some making

Jackie came over and we went to Festival of Quilts with Lisa and did some sewing

I finished a crocheted scarf for my mum

Lovely Janet at church made some baby sets for the under-construction baby

I did some hand quilting on the mandala quilt, but it looks as if you'll have to take my word for it!  It's been put away until the cooler weather though!

I went on a course doing foil embossing - great fun!

I did a couple of shifts at Windsor Baptist Church: we made Trolls and Rainbow Fish

I did a final few patches for Tara

I made these for the new baby: toys but also for photographs to identify their age in days, weeks, months or years.  There will be another cube with those 4 words on (eventually)

I mad a few Gingers for various international August "Days": Lizard Day

And Bow Day

Dog Lover Day

And Zoo Appreciation Day!

Last year I planted dozens of sunflower seeds, replanted the healthiest looking plants, nurtured them, prepared beds for them and planted them in the garden, watered them regularly . . . Apparently for the benefit of the slugs. The few that weren't decimated only grew to 6" and never flowered. This year I have one sunflower plant - it had seeded itself, has been ignored by me (and the slugs?), I never watered it . . . The blinking thing is happy, healthy and taller than me! 

We went to a family wedding and had a great time

(Niki is starting to look pregnant!)

I got ahead of myself with A September Ginger: Talk like a Pirate day on 19th September!

I have stitched an altar topper for the Lady Chapel at Church.  It needs to be ironed, assembled, quilted and bound, but at the end of July it was just fabric off the roll, so not too bad!

AND have completed an I-Spy quilt for a friends new granddaughter

And exciting news for our monthly Stitch and Crafty Church groups:  We don't pay rent for the hall so when another group wanted to pay rent to use the hall every Saturday and Sunday I couldn't object.  The rea hall was a school room (preschool) until last summer then was an unsuccessful boxing club but it finally empty and clean, so the sewing groups and the Repair Café are moving into the smaller hall.  We should be able to leave stuff out, and advertise the space for other craft groups as a studio space - how exciting!!!

And right at the end of the month I attended a Silversmith class with LaJade and made a solver pendant

2024 June

 Welcome my monthly furtle: "Noun. furtle (plural furtles) (chiefly UK) A cursory examination of the contents or details of something."

(Every day is a school day!)

Here comes lots of photos and a few words (do you remember when  you took a photo, waited until you'd taken 24, walked to the chemists, waited a few weeks and then got real photos, in your hand?)

No on that here - a few snaps from my phone to (probably) your phone just like that!

I'm not sure when you last saw my garden?  The unwanted grassy patch has been dug up and replaced with shingle

The plats grew like triffids while we were away

And the raspberries are delicious!

The bit between Brian's grass garden and my bonus garden is still looking a bit sad though

So lets just look at it from the far end, at dusk - so pretty!

I've been crocheting, and the ball was annoying, so Brian came up with a bodge.  I'm trying to make a jumper, so far I have a back and a front, watch this space

I bought a fluffy big jumper in the sale, reckoning I could unpick the peace sign

but bizarrely the peace sign is knitted into the front, despite there being more knitting behind it so in unpicking it I'm left with live stitches.  Drat, another project in the to-be-sorted pile!

However, this was in the "to-be-sorted" pile and has now gone.  It was possibly going to a charity, or to be made into bookends, but has now been swapped (along with some crisp twenties) with a metal worker in the next village . . . 

. . . as he had made this 

Isn't it fabulous!!!!  You understand that I HAD to have it!

2024 March

An early post this month, and I think I've been quite productive this month.

Chertsey Museum ladies made pin cushions in ramekin dishes

 

And I made some simple ones to thank the friends who had cleared out kitchen cupboards and made it possible.  (I hope I remembered everyone!)

The lovely Stephanie is leading the next Chertsey class - we are making felt rabbits, so I had a play in advance:

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole (pardon the pun) on Pinterest looking at "little house" pincushions.  I made a cottage

(a cottage with a chimney)

And then I got a bit carried away: a hobbit cottage;

and then a lighthouse, a beach hut and a birdhouse 😂  I had great fun, and I'm calling it work as I think this could be another class!

Lizzie and I made Mothering Sunday Gingers with violets;

Then a Saint Robin (a marvellous friend and neighbour of mum's);

And then Easter Gingers

I started and finished a Christmas pressie (I moved the trees a bit as I felt the design trees looked as if they were floating)

I finally finished a load of I-Spy quilts and got the names on them

And got a photo from baby Rose's grandma

Another idea for Chertsey classes is a pinch purse.  I had a practice to see if I could work out how to make them, and pulled out some weird paper stuff that claims to sew like fabric.  I'm not convinced it's like fabric but it worked ok . . .

So I tried another version.  This one opens as a hexagon - absolute nightmare to turn inside out (if you use the paper stuff I suggest you make it wrong sides together to avoid the fight)

I spent some money at the garden centre: I bought a Salix - not this one, but inspired by this.

And then Lizzie and I finished the week with a few customer orders,

And that was the end of March!  Hope you had / are having a good Easter weekend