*OUT NOW* Crafter...oo magazine

I'm so excited to tell you all about this fantastic new magazine

it is the brain child of Kerry aka pennydog
and she has worked so hard on this
It has seventeen craft projects by regular members of crafter...oo our friendly craft forum, business advice and more all for the very reasonable price of £1.50 an absolute bargain!

click the link below to try before you buy

http://www.crafteroo.co.uk/smf/index.php/topic,8765.0.html

I have a tutorial for this vintage map pendant in the magazine

and i have decided to give the pendant away
to a subscriber to the magazine
a winner will be drawn at random

click the link below to buy it now

http://www.crafteroo.co.uk/smf/index.php/topic,8757.0.html

so exciting :)

Doctor Who Finale

The Wedding of River Song

Oh my goodness this last episode had better be good!
I'm so excited about watching it tomorrow :D
I really love River Song i think she is my favourite character and
Matt Smith is my favourite Doctor - i never thought i would say that!
Like so many others i just couldn't imagine anyone being as good as David Tennant
but i love the way Matt Smith plays him.

here's the prequel to tomorrow's episode

a word out of place

my newest map pendant
i told you i was addicted!

oops!
i got that a bit wrong!
good job this wasn't a soldered pendant . . .

amazing what you can do with magic tape
totally removes your error
without any damage

all fixed

i've been singing Amazing Grace to myself all day :)


http://www.etsy.com/listing/82103596/i-once-was-lost-vintage-map-pendant

YOU are my world

i'm a bit obsessed with making these pendants right now!
i'm finding it very relaxing
and the style is very me but a few years back
i was obsessed with the rub-down letters when i worked in the craft shop,
i bought sheet upon sheet of them so it's good to be using them again!

front-side

flip-side
{i love seeing the back of the stitching}

i still didn't decide what to hang them on
but they look really nice on a length of lace

this one is available in my Etsy shop right now

http://www.etsy.com/listing/81847745/you-are-my-world-vintage-map-pendant?ref=pr_shop

i will definately be making more
because i love them!

map pendant

wow i actually made something today

i started it ages ago
and it just kinda sat there on my desk
so today i pulled it together with a few stitches

i'm not sure it's finished
so it'll probably hang around a bit longer
but it's a start eh?

i like it
but
i think it "needs" something
what do you think?

dusty old things

We had a dusty old things day yesterday

we took the kids to a very dusty collection of war time memorabillia

http://www.cobbatoncombat.co.uk/

now this is a really a cautionary tale

all this amazing stuff and there really is an unbelievable ammount of it
is one man's collection gotten big time out of control

my daughter had been {much to her disgust} as a school trip when she was younger and to her suprise had absolutely loved it and has been nagging us to go again for years - the boy is very into weapons and fascinated by the World Wars so we thought it would be a good trip out

he loved it and was realy interested in it all and as my daughter has recently
learnt about the wars in history she could tell him lots about what he was seeing

here they are trying out an air raid shelter!
they have a huge ammount of tanks and interesting vehicles
and in the past you were allowed to climb up onto them
but unfortunately and obviously much to the owners annoyance
health and safety now forbids this :(

It was unbelievably dusty there and could've done with a damn good spruce up
with a giant feather duster and an industrial spray can of Mr.Sheen,
i'm definately not a fussy clean freak but it pushed even my boundries.

*******

On our way home from our annual Dawlish holiday last week we stopped off
at this fantastic antique/junk shop
i saw this amazingly steampunktastic
blow torch

how extremely cool is this?

i especially liked this dial/gauge thing

and this little twisty handle thing!

but i didn't buy it!

I kept thinking about it
annoyed with myself for being sensible and not buying it
so we went again on our way home from the war collection

and

i didn't buy it again!!!


There were so many cool and dusty and rusty old things there that i ended up
buying nothing again!!!
Me and my daughter did spend a couple quid on some bits of old jewellery
but nothing really special.

this was cool, i guess it was a predecessor to a photo copy machine?

my son loved all the old cameras
there was a big box full of them
and a massive old victorian one

collections of old bottles
all dusty and bedecked with cobwebs

rows of old clocks

but by far the most interesting thing to us
and old wooden tray

containing a poor little bird skeleton

all in all a very interesting day
full of dusty old things!!!

Bideford Heritage Day

I completely forgot to blog about this!
My town had another Heritage Day
this time celebrating our Elizabethan heritage.

My son made a ruff with this lady
and proudly wore it for the rest of the day!
I love that he still loves dressing up,
as a toddler he was always dressed up as something/someone, most often spiderman
and as he's got older he has got more creative in his choices .

we found out about lots of different aspects of Elizabethan life
we played the first ever patented board game and other games
we learned about what and how they cooked
and of course what they wore

both my children tried on the outfits
The boy was a bit shocked to hear that boys around his age still wore dresses!

look at this face of determination!
There was a lovely lady who showed us how to prepare the wool for spinning
and let him have a go at carding and then producing a yarn by hand he loved it!
She also showed us the different plants used to dye fabrics
and my favorite, buttons of the period!
There was also lots of ladies spinning wool which sparked my daughter's interest
as she has kept my Grandma's old spinning wheel
maybe one day she will learn how to use it.

It was a lovely way to spend a few hours with my children and it is so nice that they are both so interested in history and of course the heritage of our home town.
Bideford has a really interesting history which i've only really come to appreiciate as i've gotten older, it is the same way with my own family history, my Mum was always really interested and has done a lot of work tracing our family tree as did my Dad's Mum, i was never interested at all and pretty rude saying "who care's that's boring" but now i find it all fascinating!