We made it back from Devon!

We got back from Devon at about 8:00 last night, had a bite to eat and a glass of wine or two, then off to bed - we were so tired!

The journey there was, er, interesting ........ Sy doesn't like single track country roads, so that is exactly where the sat-nav took us! We had to swerve into a hedge to avoid an AA van driving a wee bit too fast while towing a vehicle - it looked like there was room until suddenly we realised that the trailer was wider than the van ........... When we arrived, Lyn said well why didn't you come by the main road.........?!!! We made sure we left by that route :-)

A good time was had by all - Sy made some beads with her melting pot, Karen got lots of Christmas cards done and our hostess Lyn showed us some new techniques for backgrounds. We actually made Karen do something "messy" with ink (though she did cheat and wear gloves)!

I took my cross stitch and some medallions to colour and assemble ........ unfortunately I forgot my magnifier, so couldn't do any stitching - it's a pale colour thread on 16 count aida and I just couldn't see it properly even with my glasses on! So I made up my medallions, which look rather good - I will take a photo and add it to this post later.

So it was a lot of fun, but I am glad I have the day off work - I definitely need to recover :-)

Three Go Mad in Devon

Wow, two posts in the same day.... :-)

KraftyKaren, Karma-Sy and I are going to Devon for a crafty weekend, staying with someone from a craft email list we are all on. After much anguish and trauma, I have finally made a decision on which projects to take with me - I am taking my cross stitch and a lot of stamped medallions to colour in.

Karma-Sy came down from London yesterday and we had fun trying to make a minty sauce like the one at Indian restaurants, the one that comes with the poppadoms. I think we succeeded, will post the recipe next week after we come back. At the moment we are waiting for KraftyKaren to arrive, then we will setting off on our 5 hour drive ........

Hmmm, better start packing the car then :-)

Seriously Underwhelmed

Last week at the Glitter Pot I bought some of the new 'huge' Woodware punches, including the oval and rectangle. Now, I use punches in different sizes mainly to make mats for the next size down. But when I tried out the new rectangle and oval ...... they are NOT THE SAME SHAPE as the next size down!! So they are absolutely useless for making mats. You would think that at the design stage, the manufacturers would have put some thought into this? Surely it would be common sense to have the entire range of punches in a shape to actually be the SAME shape?

So I have to say that I am disappointed in Woodware :-(

"Last one to £100 is a sissy!"

What a weekend! The first one of every month is always pretty hectic, as me and some of my crafty friends have a craft day on the Saturday and go to a crop on the Sunday. Karma-Sy travels down from London, so it makes sense for her to combine the two days into one trip, but it does make for an exhausting weekend :-)


This time was even more hectic than usual, as we had decided to go on a shopping trip to a craft shop, to make up for not being able to get to the Ally Pally stamping and scrapbooking show. Karma-Sy and KraftyKaren had never been to the Glitter Pot (in Scaynes Hill) and I had told them how great it is, so that was where we headed as soon as KraftyKaren got to my place on the Saturday morning. With the battle cry of "Last one to £100 is a sissy!", in we went..........


Well, I came in under budget - ahem - it was a large budget :-) Karma-Sy won the sissy title as she never even got close to the £100 :-) I spent most of the rest of the day admiring what I had bought, and printing photos to make up page kits for the next day's crop.


On Sunday we went off to the crop in Polegate, run by Jilly of Cardinal Colours. I managed to finish two LOs and almost complete four others, they just need titles and a bit of journalling.



I now need to reach my monthly challenge target of 10 layouts, 4 down, 6 to go!

Do I hear the patter of tiny blog-feet?

After months of talking about "having my own blog........" I have finally taken the step! Or the leap from the cliff, depending on how you look at it :-)

So..... scrapbooks and cookbooks? I have been scrapbooking since 2004, after a trip to New York inspired me to record it in a way that was "more" than a digital shoebox of photographs. Though I have been crafting for much longer than that, 20 years or more of mostly cross stitch and a bit of knitting and sewing. Then in the mid nineties, I was introduced to cardmaking and rubber stamping, then scrapbooking - with a little patchwork, furniture painting, decorating objects (long before it became known as "altering"!) and beading along the way.

As of today - it could change without notice! - I have 224 cookbooks, around 180 baking tins (haven't counted those recently) and am famous at work for my shortbread! I like to make my own bread, pizzas, and cook mostly from scratch, though I have found that longer hours at work do mean more shortcuts!

Well, that's the first post, late on a Friday night ..... I have a craft day and crop this weekend, so there will be more to come :-)