Monday, October 31, 2011

Rock making

Yesterday Mel, her DBF, my DBF and I went off to Blackpool for the day and we came across a rock shop that did demo's and we caught one of them just after they had started.

The start of a stick of rock, there are two colours there but the darker one is hard to see.
To the right of the man (out of sight) is the machine that adds in the flavour, we were at the other end to him and there was a brick wall in between it and us but we could hear it :)


Keeping it moving


Making the letters


All the letters made.
Those white lumps are the mix with the flavour added


Wrapping the letters up 


Adding the outer layer, it then going in the machine in the background which keep the main lump moving as he works the smaller bits.


Starting it off


Cutting sweets which were put in a bucket and passed around the crowd watching


The piece I got, it was still warm and chewy


Making the lengths


A better view of  the lump being drawn out


The lengths


Cutting the lengths into sticks of rock


Sticks of rock


The measure/ scissor thing used to cut the lengths.


All the lengths were then put into boxes to go off and get wrapped

Thursday, October 27, 2011

For Mum

These have been my recent projects while at DBF's.
The coasters Mum asked me to do a couple of years ago and it took me far too long to get round to them


Every year my parents would take both girls to Northampton for the balloon festival and one year she bought this card to stitch herself.
A few weeks ago Mum was having a sort out and came across it and asked me if I'd stitch it for her so off it went to DBF's to be done as soon as the coasters were done.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

TUSAL time & weekend update

Here's my update for the new moon.

This time there are orts from Birds & Bees, the coasters I worked on at DBF's (need to post them), Winter Wingding, Quaker 6, Winter Wonderland, Basket of Apples, UFO RR, Nova, Hot air balloon card (another at DBF's project that I need to share), Mary Wigham, an ornament for DBF and of course various colours of KO and nymo from beading.


I know it's almost the weekend again and I'm only just posting last weeks update, bad blogger!

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Pendle Witch country

On Tuesday I went on a coach trip with the WI to Lancashire for the day.
First stop was at Boundary Mill then we headed across the car park to have lunch and in the entrance was a huge fish tank so I took a couple of pics.



Then we got back on the coach for the tour of Pendle Witch country.
It was a wet and miserable day so I didn't get many decent pics :(

Pendle Hill


Replica of Malkin Tower, home to one of the witches


The display in the Discover Lancashire centre back at Boundary Mill after the tour


Pendle Hill from the cafe over a coffee and scone

Monday, October 17, 2011

Weekend project update

I completely forgot to post a progress pic last week so here it is.

Quaker 6 progress Oct 8/9


And from this weekend

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Some finishing

I had an unexpected day at home last week so I took advantage of it to get a few things finished finished that have been hanging round for a while and I've not really had time to do.

First is Chocolate Covered Cherries, this was an exchange project over on Needlecraft Haven over the summer and although I finished the stitching almost on time and did most of the finishing it took me until last week to put the ribbon on hangs head in shame
It's a freebie from  Casey Buonaugurio and the backing fabric is in the background


Then I mounted my Christmas Carousel Horse in the card it came with, now I just need to remember to get a frame for it


Then I framed my Sunflower finish from earlier in the year.


And lastly I stuffed and closed this pincushion, I finished the stitching on it years ago and it spent the next couple of years in the bottom of Mum's work box waiting for her to stitch it together on her machine because when I finished it I wasn't friends with mine!


And lastly I want to Thank all of you that took the time to comment or email me about Toby.

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

R.I.P Toby

Toby left us yesterday to cross the rainbow bridge

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Snowman Bauble HD


You may remember me finishing the panels off here here and here and last week I finally got my butt into gear and put them together.
It wasn't until I went looking for th epics that I realised just how long it's been half done, I know it was over 12 months since I finished the last ones but I didn't realise it was 2 years since I started it!!!

So I went from the seperate panels in the links to this


to this after I'd done the netting round the top.


When I took it show Mum and told her I wanted to get some of that stuff you drape on the Christmas tree to put in the bauble because it didn't look right she handed me various bags with angel hair in so I used up the last bit of the gold she had and it suits it perfectly don't you think.

Monday, October 03, 2011

Weekend Stitching X 2

Last weekend after finishing Kaleidoscope I decided it was time to work on one of those PHD's that turned up when I was looking for something else last year and I know it was easily doable in a weekend even with travelling home from Wales and unpacking etc.

So Christmas Carousel Horse went from looking like this when I found it


To a handsome fella all finished.
I just need to mount him in the card that came with him now and hopefully I'll get that done this week.


With finishing him off that meant I needed to decide on another PHD to work on and so I spread out the likely ones on my bed and got MEl and her DBF to help my choose.
In the end we settled on Runekeeper as it was one of the oldest I have and I could see me finishing it by the end of the year.
Only it didn't work out that way :(  when I came to get to get started on Saturday I couldn't find the tin with all the mettallics in for it and after an hour of searching I gave up and accepted that it just wasn't Runekeepers time yet.

So back I went to the drawers and in the end I went with Quaker a 6 Mains.
I started this when we moved to this house in July 2008 and it's been worked on a few times since then.
The most recent pic I could find of it is here but even that was out of date, I'd finished most the alphabet when I picked it up.

Here it is after 7 hours over the weekend.

Sunday, October 02, 2011

Fairy Falls

When we got out of the car and looked at the info board we saw several walks and the shortest one was to  Fairy Falls so we decided it was worth a look.

So from the bottom up we go




Looking down that hole seems to be quite deep


I can't figure out how I managed to move this pic over to one side!


The Falls. If you follow the link above I took this pic from the bench you can see in the first pic




We spotted a bridge over the river when we turned round to head back down so we went up on it and got rewarded with this view.



I hope you've enjoyed your quick visit to one tiny corner of Wales :)
The rest of the holiday we either hung round the caravan, went in to town or wandered round a market but no matter we still had a lovely time (and I finished Kaleidoscope but you already know that)

Saturday, October 01, 2011

September Progress and October Goals


For September I said
Finish at least one project besides the map  I finished Kaleidoscope and Christmas Carousel card which I have yet to post
Get an ornament done  Not unless you count the Carousel

For October I'd like to
Get at least one ornament done
UFO RR
A finish would be nice 

I stitched for 95 hours 31 minutes last month, had 4 finishes, 1 new start and a couple of beading projects (one of which I need to post!)

Current PHD total = 36