Wednesday 25 September 2013

Salvage place with a difference

Last weekend I visited a former flax mill which has turned into a salvage showroom and an occasional venue for arty crafty workshops.
Here it is, it's called PASH in Easingwold.


http://www.pashdirectory.co.uk/index.html#

I had wanted to have a nose around as I heard they had things I particularly like from the printing industry such as the printers wooden type trays and hot metal type and sure enough they did have some. The type trays were a bit battered and I must admit when nothing has a price on it I'm a bit reluctant to go asking incase I then feel obliged to buy. I'm such a coward but had I seen any prices on anything then I would probably have had a bit of an idea if it was a sensibly priced place or not.

As is often the case, these places can sometimes be a bit dark so I don't have many pictures.

I took this one because I remembered these clock, timer things from school days and they quite intrigued me, wonder if anyone else recalls them.


And then we have this picture, not taken for the lights but for the wonderful assortment of old tiles on the floor.


They hold some interesting sounding workshops, for example coming up is a hand stitched paper glove and shoe workshop with recycled papers, rust printing, and lantern making, sounds wonderful.

It seems the grey weather has returned and I'm getting ready for cold weather with a couple of new purchases delivered by postie today, Buffs. These are really versatile and make into scarves, hats, balaclava's, basically everything you could need for life in a cold house like ours!



I also had a new fabric sample back from print today, ditsy flowers in pink and newly listed for sale in my Spoonflower shop.


Come back blue skies and sun!

Wednesday 18 September 2013

Lovely day at the craft fair last Saturday

Last Saturday was one of the nicer days in the last fortnight of grey clouds and roofers banging about (it's nearly finished as I type this!). The sun shone and the apple themed craft fair was in the pretty village of Warter which is quite unusual for round here in that it has some thatched cottages, see below.


I got to meet lovely Twitter friend Hilary who had organised this event for the village and I will put a link to Hilary's blog post as I didn't get many photos with manning my stall.

This is my stall being set up in the village hall.


Great that the weather was kind because we had outdoor stalls, traditional apple bobbing and apple and spoon race for the kids and a Morris dancing group.

I made some peanut butter tiffin for the produce stall, it turned out pretty tasty and if you fancy trying the recipe, I picked it up and the beautiful packaging idea from Lemony Loves Baking.

http://lemonylovesbaking.com/?p=1690



On the subject of baking, there was a cake competition for an apple themed cake and the variety of apple cakes that had been made was amazing and they all looked fabulous, I sampled a beautiful cake with glazed lemony apples on top. I should've got a photo before they all got chopped up and eaten but I was too late so I will put a link to Hilary's blog for this.

http://theyorkshirepalette.com/2013/09/15/all-the-fun-of-the-fayre/

I did quite well with my stall, selling quite a few lavender items and brooches.

I also bought some lovely gherkins and got a bag of apples from Hilary's stall which have made into a tasty apple crumble tonight.


It really was a lovely, traditional village fair and nice to see people enjoying themselves in a bit of late summer sunshine.

Tuesday 10 September 2013

Craft fair in Warter next Sat & making things


It's very noisy here as the proper work has just started on the roof but I'm trying to plod on with work and crafts. 

I think this will be the only craft fair I have time for this autumn winter but it sounds a really lovely event as an apple theme runs through.  It is in the pretty village of Warter near Pocklington in East Yorks and the village is quite unusual for round here as they have a few thatched cottages.

I have made a few new brooches


and I'm taking a few festive things to try out, these are Victorian style paper decorations which I've made from old books stained with tea and bits of ribbon.


these are lavender sachet decorations which I've also launched as cut and sew kits in my Folksy shop, I call them Bobbin Baubles


http://folksy.com/items/4439139-Christmas-Cut-Sew-kit-decorations-Bobbin-Baubles

I'm going to be making some chocolate tiffin for the cake stall too.


On the theme of nice things to eat, I made these wonderful little no bake, energy ball, carrot cake bites which I found on the A2K blog. I will link the details below. They are a great little snack when you need a slightly sweet and nutritious pick me up and when a cake would be just too naughty!




Don't be fooled if they look a little like a bird seed ball, they really do taste lovely if you like this sort of thing.

http://allotment2kitchen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/no-bake-carrot-cake-granola-bites.html

Better get back to the drawing board, not nearly as much daylight making time these days and starting to feel chilly!

Tuesday 3 September 2013

It's going to be a long week!

I'll try and sound positive and say the week has got off to an interesting start, can you tell it's going to go down hill fast!!!

Firstly, something lovely. A very talented bag making lady, Michelle, bought some of my vintage style fabric and sent me a picture of this beautiful creation she whipped up in no time.
I'm impressed, I've never tried to make a bag with one of those metal clamp bits, looks too fiddly for me.


There are some wonderful bags on Michelle's website, she seems to find some interesting and unusual fabric to use. If you fancy a look here is her site.



Eventually, I received some new Spoonflower samples which now allow me to sell these latest designs, we have another camping fabric in khaki and the butterfly waltz fabric in pink.




Onto something I'm not really liking, although in another breath, it needs doing badly.

The roof, the tiles, the holes. It's 10 weeks since I told the landlords about the problem and they haven't communicated any response or update to me since. But guess what happened yesterday morning as I was clearing up after breakfast, a van of builders appeared with scaffolding! I knew nothing of their arrival, how nice of my landlord to let me know! How nice of him to check if it was convenient! What if I'd been on holiday, would he have let them in in our absence ! 

It's great that the roof might get done whilst the weather is still favourable and that will be a big worry off my mind as I daren't leave this place for prolonged spells of heavy rain, and I'm not mad with the builders although I do hate having workmen round but I'm really miffed that my high and mighty, snooty landlords can not even be bothered to pick up a phone or leave me a note in the postbox to say this work is about to commence.

I feel better now I'm ranting!

It looks like a big job as the roof is in such a state, they have been 2 days now erecting scaffolding and drilling it into the walls, the noise is bad.


But not only is the noise bad, it feels like I'm in a gold fish bowl, it's so intrusive as they are working on the side of the house and walking along the scaffold past every room I occupy during the day as I work upstairs and down in here. 
Both toilets are starting to feel out of bounds, again the scaffolding is at that level and the toilets have thin glass and no frosting and my nets don't offer much privacy. I'm limiting my drink intakes, at the risk of becoming dehydrated!
My friend said I did right not to appear too friendly and offer the workmen cups of tea or it would delay the work. 

I'm normally quite friendly I should add but this type of enforced situation on the assumption that I am in all the time makes me seethe! Ok so they are not exactly in the house, unless they need to check for any rot in the attic but they are having to trail a cable in for their tools. This place is so weird that there is no power outside or in the garage so we are having to let them use our electricity for the repairs and you can guarantee the landlord wouldn't even consider paying us for that.
Of course, I'm not happy having to have a window open a bit in view of mice. Living in a farm cottage means there's a lot of grain about right now as they are finishing harvesting and with it the mice will start to get active.

I will bat on as best I can, it needs doing, that's what I keep saying to myself!