Vintage Fair at Bridlington Spa

Thank you all for your concern over Bob in the last post and how he was looking a bit chilly. You will be pleased to know we visited the seaside again on Sunday and enjoyed wall to wall sunshine at the vintage fair in Bridlington. He certainly warmed his whiskers up!

Lovely old cars outside the front and a barrel organ to set the mood.

Inside the selection of stalls was great, obviously nowhere near the size of the York racecourse event but I was more impressed with the choice of stalls than the ones I've seen at the York city centre vintage events in recent times.

Vintage clothes are always quite expensive these days but I did find some well priced items and some of the Hornsea pottery was a realistic price too.

I treated myself to one or two little things, this is what I scooped up;
Quite a nice old tea towel, I like my vintage planes.

A pretty crinoline lady plate and some doillies.

A stall with a great selection of vintage children's hankies, I remember having some of designs on sale so I couldn't resist Pinky & Perky as I know I used to have this hanky.

Then I found a wonderful stall selling old beer mats and antique labels and advertising cards so I snapped up these which will work lovely in a forthcoming fabric design of more memorabilia.

And finally, I found these fabric samples which are lovely quality from a fabric book, quite big pieces the size of a fat quarter for a pound each.

That was my trip to the vintage fair.
Hope everyone enjoyed the sunshine as it seems to have vanished again!

A cold trip to the seaside

Bob and I had the pleasure of going to Hornsea on Monday as I had a dental appointment, I like going to the dentist as he's good fun, although it's tricky laughing when your mouth is clamped open!

We then went for a stroll on the prom although it was rather chilly and windy and difficult to believe it's late May. Some brave souls were on the beach with ice creams but we had a car picnic instead.

I hadn't been to the north end for a while so these were new to me, some sort of compartments with sensory gardens in them and wildlife information boards, I imagine quite nice on a sunny day.

Monday finished with our monthly networking group of ladies at the pub in Bishop Burton, lots of new faces so good to see numbers picking up.

Tuesday I went to the opticians, I don't like going to the opticians, not because of the optician who's different every time at Specsavers, I just don't like the eye tests, that puff of air gets me. It turns out I hadn't been for 5 years as they'd forgotten to send my reminder and I didn't think it was quite that long but it was.

I also find it very difficult to get used to new glasses, last time I opted for the second pair of sunglasses and another pair and basically I didn't wear them. I was convinced the prescription was different in the extra pairs although they said not when they tested them after I couldn't get used to them. It just means lots of money was wasted with 2 extra pairs I never used.

Anyway I spent almost 3 hours in there yesterday choosing frames, I wanted pretty much the same as I had got used to in shape so that I didn't have to spend ages choosing but things have changed such a lot and I've finally picked 2 fresh sets of frames. This Red or Dead one is going to be the main pair and then I went for a second pair of reactions.
Fingers crossed they are going to be ok.

A recent cakey offering!

I haven't had much to blog about recently, I seem to be busy with a number of work, play and life related projects at the moment but nothing yielding results just yet.

So it's a quick catch up with some cake. I made this cake the other week and I have called it my Vanilla Black cake, Vanilla Black was a wonderful veggie restaurant which used to be in York a few years ago but they relocated to London, boo hoo!

My cake consists of 2 sponges, done to a victoria sponge recipe.

They are sandwiched together with chocolate ganache, warmed cream with a good quality dark choc melted into it and beaten.

Next, mix up a bog standard vanilla buttercream icing and spread liberally on and around cake if you have plenty for the edges.

Next the fun bit, I've been wanting to try out a doily pattern for ages so I scattered cocoa through the holes and here it is.

I did share it with some family members as it was quite rich and it lasted a full week with small portions.

On a different subject, birdies.... they have returned, Ruby is back on the scene and hanging around for food again with her new man who I've named Ralph. He's a bit photo shy so no pic of him!

This year mr & mrs chaffinch are still around but new birdies on the block are tits, both blue and great. One chappie is rather cheeky and comes up to the window like Ruby and I've called him Graham the great tit.

Do excuse those disgusting window ledges, please bear in mind this is a rented house and my landlords do not seem to know the meaning of the word maintenance or how to offer a nice house for rent. Why give your tenants a nice house when they seem to put up with living in a hovel and still pay the extortionate rent! I never thought I'd be here this long is the answer to why I'm having to put up with these conditions.

There's been an overnight bunny tragedy. I saw the smallest baby bunnies I'd ever seen yesterday, their eyes were barely open so I'm guessing maybe only a day old. There were 4 or 5, some a bit weak and weedy and only 1 quite active one. Usually I see the mother come to them but they really did seem to be alone and stumbling around on the gravel parking area, no shelter, no grass to eat and no mother in sight. The area where the nest is was in a raised border and this is where they attempted to get back to last night but they were too small to jump up the little raised wall into the border. Loathed to intervene incase the mother returned and our scent was on them, we made a small ramp up the wall in the hope they would crawl back up. 
The last I saw at dusk was the weakest bunny struggling to walk as if it's legs were not formed properly, the others went in a corner out of my view, I thought an owl or weasel may come for them overnight.
This morning when I went outside I found the smallest one which was not a surprise were it had last been but I was horrified to find the other 4 all dead in a huddle near to my car. I guess they had starved and frozen overnight, it was such a sad sight but this must be a case of the mother completely abandoning them for some reason. Nature can be cruel, unfortunately for me it goes hand in hand with the bad vibes I feel living in this place, I just don't like being exposed to this as it puts me on a real downer.

So I think this brings me full circle to the point I need to make a weekend cake to cheer myself up. It will be courgette lemon cake with cream cheese frosting.

Have a good weekend folks!

A design which has evolved into a skirt

Way back in 2009 or '10 when I was on the textile course, I doodled some plant like ideas using Honesty Pods as the theme. These became a stitched piece of textile imagery using threads, sheer fabrics and solufleece, see below

From here I then turned the work into a digital format which I made into a repeating pattern, see below

I'm not convinced that the repeating pattern was terribly easy on the eye and therefore I didn't develop it further but I did still like the overall feel of the Honesty Pod imagery.

So, last autumn I approached Skye Batiks with a slightly simplified version and said they could use it if they thought it would work printed in the batik style. 
To my delight they said yes and hoped it would turn into something for this years collection.

And here we are, only about 6 months later since the batik artists got hold of it and worked their magic, my design has evolved into a range of wrapover skirts in many colours. Last week I was over the moon to receive the purple and blue skirt you see in the photo.

Beautiful quality as always, thanks Skye Batiks.

http://www.skyebatiks.com/

A nice afternoon to start the Bank Holiday weekend

Today I was up bright and early making a second batch of buns for the craft fair as I'd had a bun disaster the night before. I tried a new bundt baking tray thing and everything stuck and the buns wouldn't pop out so this morning I stuck with good old fashioned fairy cakes!

I finished packaging my crafty wares and set off at lunch time ready to blast off at 1.30pm. The Cass Hall in Driffield was a lovely little venue, nice and bright and airy.

How spooky is this, I met 2 ladies from Blogland, Tanya who had organised the event and Louise from no. 23 blog, it was great to put faces to names. I should've got photos of the other stalls but I only remembered to take a shot of mine. Louise makes wonderful little bears and animals with very detailed accessories, she had a pig with a handbag and in it an ipod! Tanya had some very quirky pincushions with mini 3D structures on them.

This is my stall.

I also met Kath from Little Houndales Knits, her stall had some luscious wool and groovy needles with big polka dot bobbles on the end. Kath has her own range of wool from their sheep, soft and delicate colours.

I bought these cute mini 10g balls of wall to make a few crochet flowers with, a great way to experiment with this patterning wool.

http://littlehoundalesknits.com/

I did quite well for a small event like this, lavender bags went well, textile brooches, sheep brooches and pincushions.  I think they did quite well raising funds on the cake sales so hopefully a good afternoon for all and a nice way to start the long weekend.

I came away with this sweet little cup of flowers, have a nice weekend everyone, looks like the weather will be kind to most of us.

Small cake and craft event on Friday

I'm having a stall at a Cake Break event on Friday afternoon to raise some funds for MS.

This is a good opportunity to take some of my sample and test pieces which I like to sell cheaply as I quite appreciate times are hard and people don't have a lot of money to spend on non essential craft items. 
I'm sure if folks come along and have some cake and buy something for a £1 they'll be quite happy.

This is my basket of bargain, £1 items.

I'm also taking a few new things to test the market with. These are some fibre felted needles cases.
I have used recycled wool jumpers, felted some fibres in and then machine embroidered before shaping into the cases.

These are not very original as I saw some crochet apple coasters like this on Pinterest and thought I would do a version as a brooch.

I have lots still to finish off and label and then there's a cake or some buns to make too, busy day tomorrow!