Drop by and see what I'm working on at the moment!
Listening to a nice bit of soulful June Tabor from a little folky compilation I’ve put together while I’m finishing off my booket.
Wind and Rain is a cheery little gothic piece about sororicide (I had to look that one up) which would sit quite nicely alongside Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads, and yet has this cheery toe-tapping quality. 
Her voice sounds like the wind itself so it does.
I think the folk revival is ensuring that her unique voice is getting the overdue recognition she deserves … June Tabor, we salute you.
How to Knit
I haven’t blogged for a week or so - not just being lazy, I’ve been trying to finish off a small booklet I’ve been working on about knitting basics. Should be finished in the next few days so I’ll post it when I’m done in a .pdf format. It’s the first of 3 or 4 instalments and covers the very basics - casting on, knit & purl, casting off … I’ve been working on it for the last few months and it’ll be good to finally get it out there - check out the free 1940s dress trim pattern!
Knit & Run Stash
This Knit & Tonic article made me grin and rang a few bells … I get so obsessed with one particular craft it almost becomes stressful and I have to take up another craft to relieve the pressure. Admittedly it’s not a professional day job and I’m not writing a book, but you get the gist.
Reminded me too of an article in this month’s Yarn Forward magazine which encourages you to take up weaving if ‘you find yourself in a SABLE position - Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy). The picture on the left is a very small part of my own amorphous and ever-growing Stash - I have to agree with one of the comments on the Knit & Tonic article … I have this horrible feeling that if I took up weaving I’d find I didn’t have the right shades I was after and just end up adding to it. I almost expect to come home and find bits of it trickling out of the door, growing up the side of the house like vines. A knitting horror movie? Now there’s a thought.
Knit Me, Trafalgar Square
Looks like it went well! Congrats Kat, and good luck with your show.
A Cross Heron
Our lovely friends Ged & Wendy have just moved to an old rambling farmhouse in Devon, acquiring 2 kittens, a pig and a couple of hens along the way (much to the delight of their own brood). Ged’s an artist and film art director and Wendy lectures and researches in sexual and social history, so between them they have this great ability to collect and compile unusual things. Their latest is a bunch of heron drawings, created by friends and relatives and it’s completely intriguing - so many different styles and different interpretations, it’s an off the wall and absorbing collection.
I’ve thrown in my contribution with this machine sewed chappie on duck canvas, but he ended up looking a bit grumpy - wouldn’t want to meet him on a dark night.
Knit me flier
Kat Hall has organised Knit Me, a collaborative knitting event in Trafalgar Square this Saturday 14th March - as each person turns up, they have to join onto the main piece of knitting using their own needles, wool and imagination.
An unfeasibly excellent thing to do, although sadly can’t make it myself so am looking forward to seeing the outcome.
Handmade Nation
Looking forward to the release of Handmade Nation, a film by Faythe Levine (”filmmaker, author, independent curator and creative director” - some people are so lazy), but rather disconcerted to see that the only scheduled screenings in the UK are in Birmingham and Manchester (as far as I can see anyway), so I’ve contacted Faythe to find out if there are any more planned.
Looking at Faythe’s blog I scrolled down to her Indie Craft Fair’s section … now it might be that I’m looking in the wrong places, but I’d love to see this kind of quantity, hip-sounding, vibrant and non-elitist network of events in the UK (Urban Uprising, Crafty Bastards etc).
Inevitably, the events where Faythe is screening prove me wrong - UK DIY (”a craft uprising in the North of England”) and the Flatpack Festival (which is taking place as I type), but we need a few more. Near me in Brighton we have the great annual Brighton Craft Fair, Made, but it’s enormous and the kind of thing I have in mind is a smaller, more community based affair.
There’s a bit of a fusty air around craft here (as I’ve ranted many times before) and things tend to reek of ye olde England and country shows, we need a more exciting fair network to get going. The fact that when you Google ‘uk craft fairs’ nothing much comes up doesn’t mean that there aren’t any, just means they aren’t getting the web space, network gossip or press they deserve.
If you’re reading this and shouting out that I’m wrong, please let me know, I’d love to know where and when they are … if they’re out there they certainly need some SEO advice!
How to Make Common Things
Loving the latest addition to my vintage craft library … How To Make Common Things (for Boys). Written by J.A.Bower and published in 1902 by the Society For Promoting Christian Knowledge, this was obviously an attempt to keep the male youth of the day on the straight and narrow (idle hands and all that). There’s also a note that it was ‘Published under the direction of the General Literature Committee’ - how very Orwellian. I’d love to know what kind of age-group it was aimed at - I imagine early teens, as some of the projects are quite involved: ‘How to Make Simple Apparatus for Chemical Experiments’, ‘To Make a Galvonometer’ and, fascinatingly, ‘How to Make A Telephone’. Mind you they weren’t so hot on health and safety then, so maybe there were some scarred-for-life 7 year olds out there (all in the name of religion of course).
The inscription at the front of the book reads that it was presented to (appropriately) Fred Lord ‘for learning and repeating psalms’, although the odds were stacked in his favour with a name like that. The pencilled name on the opposite page is ‘Alan Lord’ so maybe he passed it onto his son. I’d like to try out some of the experiments in the book with my own son, and just hope I haven’t lost him to computer gamedom and cynicism by the time he’s old enough to ‘Make a Needle Telegraph’
Dates me a bit, this one, but in for a penny … back in the early ’90s when all the world seemed young and gay, Senseless Things were the soundtrack to a part of my life for a while. I was into Jamie Hewlett, Deadline and Love & Rockets, and Senseless Things seemed to inhabit the cartoon landscape I wanted to be a part of (escapist? me?) They even looked like they’d been drawn by Hewlett, Keds particularly resembling a Fireball contestant. Cass the drummer is now working with Gorillaz so it all tied in rather neatly at the end there.
Anyway, they were fun and Got It At The Delmar is still a great piece of pop and I’m humming and toe-tapping along nicely while sewing a heron … more of which later.
The Make Lounge
I know from my Sadler’s Wells days that Islington’s a bit of a craft mecca … the Craft Council, Loop, the Contemporary Art & Design Fair, I could go on but won’t. So I wasn’t surprised to see a piece in the paper the other day about The Make Lounge, a cool craft place “where you can ‘meet people and make stuff,’ through evening and weekend contemporary craft workshops”. According to the founder, Jennifer Tirtle, she needed more tactile experiences after hours of being glued to her computer in her day job as a journalist so started The Make Lounge. The idea behind the concept is a series of short craft courses for people who don’t want to spend a fortune on lengthy evening or day courses.
The courses sound great and interesting, titles such as ‘Survival Sewing’ and ‘Knockout Knickers’ kick the dull and dusty out of craft, but also have a practical use. They do parties too - sadly, that would be my preferred kind of hen party and I’d be sending any affianced acquaintances scurrying to the website, but most of my mates are married nowadays.
Cool website too, nice and clear, inventive header fonts …
I don’t get up to town too often at the moment but this would be worth the trip. They do gift vouchers (*HEAVY HINT*).
Laura's Left Hook
There aren’t many things that make me want to pick up a hooked needle, but this is one of them - what a cool way to crochet. I’d like to experiment with these, doing them in different fonts, maybe even some joined up handwriting, but then I am a rotten geek.
vintage cushions
I made some cushions out of a floral vintage pelmet (finished off with some old, small pearl buttons), which ‘Le Magasin’, the stylish antique/coffee shop in Cliffe High Street are proudly displaying in their windows. Rather nicely set off by a bit of rural gothic draped over the back of the chair, although the fur in question doesn’t look too chuffed about it.
![Sirdar \](http://www.skiffvintageknittingpatterns.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/wpsc/product_images/thumbnails/thumb-363.jpg "Sirdar \")
![Easily Made \](http://www.skiffvintageknittingpatterns.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/wpsc/product_images/thumbnails/thumb-362.jpg "Easily Made \")
![Emu \](http://www.skiffvintageknittingpatterns.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/wpsc/product_images/thumbnails/thumb-361.jpg "Emu \")
![Greenock \](http://www.skiffvintageknittingpatterns.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/wpsc/product_images/thumbnails/thumb-360.jpg "Greenock \")