Goodbye and good riddance January!

These pictures will nicely sum up January, bleak, wet, grey, damp, miserable, cold. I made a trip across the Yorkshire Wolds today to the lovely Art & Rose Gallery in Pocklington to deliver a few brooches on the theme of Love Tokens for their Valentine selling exhibition, brooch pictures will come later as I need to get practising for ukulele group tonight.

Reworked fabric designs

Not much blogging going on here at the moment. January blues and all that sort of thing, cold hands & feet, wet grey days and lacking in inspiration.
So pleased January is nearly over, my car scraped through the MOT but I've been advised to get new tyres and have the brakes looked at soon, more expense and hassle but hopefully I can wing it until slightly better weather and when I feel like sorting it.

I've been trying to crack on with some Valentine brooches but the day I collected my car something twanged on one of my fingers and a finger on my sewing hand went blue and hot and tingly but calmed down a day later and just looked bruised but it seems to have faded now, it did slow me down though, very odd as I hadn't trapped it.

I've been updating some of my Spoonflower fabrics. There is a new shade in the camping fabric, dusky lilac and a lady has already bought 3 yards to make curtains which I was delighted to hear.

I've also created a yard of camping fabric where you get 4 different coloured fat quarters on the one yard which would be quite good for making a cushion panel, quilting or small projects.

I'm currently researching a couple of fabric printing places in the UK to see if it possible to have the designs printed here and whether that would be cheaper than the expense of Spoonflower in the US. I'd love to have more of my fabric printed so that I could sell bigger than just fat quarters in my shop.

Another design I've reworked is my butterfly waltz below

I liked the lilac of the camping fabric and have updated the above to a slightly more gothic design called Butterfly Skull Waltz, I'm currently waiting for a printed sample.

Mud and stuff!

It's been a pretty soggy week, grey and gloomy and typical of everything I dislike about January. Maybe I should be greatful that we haven't had the white stuff yet!

The lack of maintenance around  here is becoming more visible with this soggy weather, the driveway is in a complete state of potholes and mud, I hate mud.

The driveway comes down hill and if it was my driveway I would divert the flow of water away from the house but what happens is it all comes down the hill and gathers infront of the house. It needs new gravel down too and potholes filling but as usual it's another thing going to rack and ruin.
Our cars are in a right state going up and down through this and the picture below shows part of the 100m I have to drag the bins through to get them on the top road for emptying, it's a nightmare, the wheels get stuck in the mud and the fuller the bin the worse it is.

Something nicer, more new brooches finished and listed in my Folksy shop and then I'm on with Valentines things for the gallery, a chance to go mad with hearts and flowers!

A spot of biscuit making this afternoon with some new cookie cutters.

Winter day in Whitby

I think that first picture pretty much says "Whitby".
It was such a lovely bright and crisp winters day that we decided to have our annual pilgrimage to Whitby. I like to go out of season as it's so much easier to get parked and wander around. That said it was quite busy by 2pm so I think a lot of other people had had the same idea.

I have many Whitby pictures of the abbey and such so I will show a few alternative pics here.

Just near to the whale bones is a compass in the pavement.

After a bit of wandering it was time to warm ourselves with a cuppa at the lovely Elizabeth Botham victorian tea room, I prefer it to a Betty's tea room as it's not nearly as pompous, Betty's is so touristy and over rated (only my view).

Look at the cake display, one of my favourites is the Hazelnut Jap, it's the chocolate sprinkled ones with a button on top.

Of course I'm very selective with my coffee drinking so no way was I having a coffee, but the tea menu is pretty extensive and you can't go too far wrong with tea like you can coffee. I had a very nice Earl Grey with a beautiful round of wholemeal cinnamon toast.

Onwards and upwards towards the old town. I found a very nice fabric shop called Judiths and I purchased these fat quarters.

 A couple of views across the harbour in the low winter sun which created some wonderful rich colours.

I know this is probably a bit weird pic for a vegetarian, but the Fortunes Kipper Smokery is quite an iconic building and probably lucky to still be there as there was a landslide on the cliff behind it last year.

I do love cobbles and quirky, colourful buildings like this.

I treated myself to a couple of bits of jewellery in a favourite gift shop called Ruby Tuesdays, I really like these fun acrylic pieces.

A wonderful day was had by all.

I'm slowly embracing the new year

January is one of my least favourite months so I find it takes a bit of time to get going with things and life in general at this time of year. I'd rather January was over and done with, it's a dark cold month where I have things to sort out I don't like sorting out. There was the boiler to sort out in the house this week, always a worry as it never seems to work again after servicing with it being so old and crappy, next is my car to deal with, service, MOT and tax, it's getting more costly and more hassle as the car gets older.
But anyway, I'm ticking bits off and trying to do some nice things too.

I haven't had many trips out but I went for one last look at the festive shop windows in York just after new year. From the top we have the Hairy Fig on Fossgate which always has interesting displays in the window, some nice handmade looking pixie dolls and a Bettys cake.

I have finished making the Harris Tweed jewellery I started in a previous post, there are a selection of brooches and I made a couple of pendants this time which are going in my Folksy shop soon.

I also got round to using some sea glass which I had beach-combed in Skye last year. I've tried making pendants by wire wrapping the glass, there are lots of YouTube videos giving info on this but it's quite satisfying.

Here are the finished pendants I made.

I have also been sorting out some of my favourite fat quarters and stashing them into vacu-bags for safe and clean storage whilst I'm between projects.

Not that much going on really but I did make the most of the lovely bright and crisp day today and had a trip to Whitby, just need to download my pics.
Hope it stays nice for tomorrow too.