UKBC & New Coffee

Last week it was the UK Barista Championship finals down in London. It would've been great to go and watch as it was all part of a 3 day coffee festival but I was too busy with design work and London is way to busy a place for me to particularly want to visit.


However thanks to the wonders of the internet I was able to follow the finalists with some live, online streaming although a bit intermittent with the slow connection here.
I had some local interest in the 20 finalists, we had Gordon Howell & Steve Dyson from the coffee shops The Attic & Spring Espresso which I frequent in York. Also in the final and who ended up coming overall 3rd was Howard Barwick who did some of my barista training when I did a mini course the other year, excellent result for him. Another name I recognised in the last 6 was Dale Harris who works with HasBean who I usually buy my subscription coffee from.

They all did really well as it's a high pressure performance both pulling your shots and talking about your coffee infront of 5 or 6 judges. They get 15 minutes to serve cappuccinos to 4 judges, then they serve espressos and finally, the creative bit is for them to serve their own signature drinks. Some weird concoctions were being served for the signatures, coffee with rhubarb, a version of cola and coffee, Steve Dyson did coffee with oranges as it was synonymous with York and chocolate oranges! Interesting stuff.


I am currently between subscriptions with my HasBean coffee, it's brilliant coffee but having a delivery of fresh beans every week is starting to get expensive so I'm taking a coffee break for a while and have taken this opportunity to broaden my coffee horizons and sample a mini pack from another roaster, this time Union coffee.

It's a selection of S. American coffees and so far so good. Having been without coffee for a week it was good to crank the machine up again as I was having withdrawal symptoms!


Some coffee links:
Best cafes in York, with proper baristas & fine coffee


http://harlequinyork.com/

http://www.springespresso.co.uk/


http://www.perkypeacockcoffee.co.uk/


Coffee roasters for online purchasing:


http://www.hasbean.co.uk/


http://www.unionroasted.com/

http://www.jamesgourmetcoffee.com/


http://www.origincoffee.co.uk/

Origin coffee have very groovy packaging!

Festival of Vintage - Part 2: Purchases

Here's what I bought at the festival:
I have always loved printers hot metal type since using it back in my college days at Leeds so I couldn't resist buying a few letters which of course are pretty expensive these days as we've moved into the digital age:

Staying on a metal theme, this dinky little mini Hovis bread tin (ex bakery), a bit pricey at £5 but I'll really enjoy using it one day when I have an oven hot enough to cook bread!

Ceramics next, saw a lot of Hornsea Pottery, mostly run of the mill Heirloom range and over priced so nothing to tempt me but I did get this hand painted Norwegian plaque for a good price, cheap due to the chip on it but I love the design.

Onto fabric and trimmings, I really had to control my purse. I'm so intrigued as to where the sellers manage to find such brilliant vintage fabric, it has to be said that the stuff in charity shops is just not that exciting when you see what the vintage fabric sellers manage to source.
I bought this groovy piece which is French linen

Below is some vintage Sanderson from a lady I often come across at vintage fairs around York and she now has a website
http://www.sagodesign.co.uk/

Went halves with Sally's friend on these French sparkly sequins from Sago Design.

Lovely ribbons

I love these vintage cards & labels I found and I'm sure they will get used in a fabric design

Lastly, two small vintage linens just because they were only 50p each.

Phew, that's it!

Festival of Vintage - Part 1: Stalls

Last weekend saw the second Festival of Vintage at York Racecourse and my first time attending on the recommendation of Sally at Lavender Attic blog (I got to meet Sally & her friend at the festival too which was great).
Bob came along in my handbag although it turned out to be a bit busy and noisy for him.

Sally was right about this being a great event, it was the best collection of vintage I've come across at one venue, but let's not forget it was £6.50 to get in so expectations were quite high.


I was in vintage fabric heaven, the stuff was everywhere and even being used as tablecloths on non fabric stalls.
Here are some displays of fabric, I must apologise for many out of focus photos, not sure if it was a wobbly hand with excitement or the light inside the racecourse stands.

Here we see vintage fabric on a record player stall, I loved the colourful old record players

There was a brilliant exhibition of vintage textiles with samples by the likes of Marian Mahler, Eames & Shirley Craven, some bits were for sale but huge price tags, I saw one metre for £160!

Below is a piece of rare Bauhaus fabric.

These next 2 photos show some of the groovy furniture for sale. I really could have gone mad buying stuff but I thought I was quite good and stuck to what I'd taken with me in cash. Part 2 of my posting will show my purchases.

Finally, a picture for Sally as I know she likes crinoline ladies and I saw this lovely little bag on one of the war time display stalls.

A lovely day was had by all, lots of vintage homewares, ceramics, clothes as well as juke boxes, vintage cars, fashion shows, music and some of the people looked fabulous dressed in their 1940's outfits, well recommended.

Saturday York, Monday Hornsea

Look at the beautiful weather in Hornsea today when I made a flying visit to the dentist, first proper sun and warmth in 3 weeks!


The weekend was a washout with lots of flooding around York but I did have a wonderful day on Saturday at the Festival of Vintage. I met up with fellow blogger Sally from Lavender Attic and saw and bought some lovely things which I shall be processing in the next few days.
Working to a tight deadline on some exhibition stuff for the next couple of days.


If you want to see some of the vintage festival, Sally has uploaded some pics on her blog, I'll try not to duplicate any when I do mine.

http://lavenderattic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/photos-from-york-festival-of-vintage.html

Bob the Bunny kits have arrived!

It seems ages since I decided to create cut and sew plushie kits of the legend that is Bob the Bunny.
But at last they have arrived, Bob & some of his bunny relatives are now printed onto fabric as little sewing projects. As you can see, Bob is very proud to show you how he has been imortalised onto fabric!

The kits are very simple to make, they are all packaged up and available in my Folksy shop for anyone who would like their own little Bob or one of the bunny family. Other colours coming in the next few weeks, Bob is currently in his burrow working on those!

Sample - Welsh Goddess of Spring

It's always nice to receive samples from a project you've worked on and especially when it is as lovely as these. A fabulous smelling soy candle & fragrance spray from the Celtic range by the Archangel Studio and this one features the Welsh Goddess Blodeuwedd.

I wish you could smell the lovely mix of grapefruit & rose, these are some of the best candles I have come across, not overpowering with the scent like some of those shop bought ones, theses are just right.
I don't think these are available yet on the website but there are other fantastic fragrances at:

http://thearchangelstudio.com/

My customer has a gift for mixing sacred fragrances and some of the ingredients come from her own beautiful garden.


I should point out that I haven't done the Blodeuwedd painting, my job is the finished artwork for labels & other packaging.

Google, Haberdashery & vintage finds

Isn't Google brilliant today, it's an opening zip. Where would all us crafters be without zips (although I must say I'm not great at putting in zips so try to use other fasteners in preference) but thank you to Gideon Sundback for creating them back in 1913.

To continue on a sewing, haberdashery, fabric theme I'm just about to get going with some new work for a forthcoming exhibition with the title Menagerie at Gallery 49 in Bridlington. I'm in a bit of a whirl at the moment for getting something done as I need to take work by the 3rd May and as yet I haven't started work, other than get some bits of stuff out this morning.


Whilst routing around for things I found this lovely woven ribbon I haven't used yet.

I think the back is almost as lovely as the front.

Here are some fairly recent charity shop finds which may find a use in the artwork.

Excellent quality Anchor silks just 20p ea. Below are vintage hankies gathered over the months and I have a few ideas for chopping them up to make things.

It's funny how your taste can change, I didn't used to like crinoline ladies but I really liked this tablecloth, it was almost immaculate until I washed it and then some holes appeared in the cloth, I guess it's the age and it was thin in places, maybe I should hand wash next time.

These are just some lovely and very cheap things I found in the under a £1 section in a charity shop in Brid. We have teapot cover things and little lace coasters.

And finally, to finish on a haberdashery theme, I just loved this resin & button jewellery which is in the gift shop at Wolds Village, Bainton. 

Hornsea Pottery AGM

Yesterday was the Hornsea AGM & get together at Hornsea School. I'm sure it's normally a sunny day for this meeting but it absolutely tipped it down & hailstones too.
The meetings pretty much follow the same format, there are people with stalls set up selling their surplus Hornsea pottery, we have an auction table, a very well donated raffle table and we have a talk.


Compared to last year there were much more interesting pieces up for auction.
The lamp I've highlighted on the picture below is quite rare and went in the auction for over £550 which I was quite amazed at,not that I know anything about the lamp or it's value.

I liked the leaf butter dishes on this photo below but they went for more than my purse contained as they were sold as a pair, I might have been able to stretch to one if sold separately, hey ho. I was quite interested in them because I've tried a similar technique with leaves when I used to do ceramics.

These are some of the other auction items below.

We then had a talk by the legendary potter & designer, John Clappison who talked about some of his early inspiration for Hornsea pieces and then his latest muramic work which he brought to the auction.

Below are the latest pieces of work by John Clappison, muramic dog plaques which he said were Fido. These limited edition pieces of work sell for between £80 - £100 approx. They are lovely pieces, very graphic in style and superb colours and surface pattern work.

So what did I buy, well I only spent £1 in the auction and I got this espresso set although it's only 1 cup & 2 saucers but the design is new to me.

From one of the stalls I bought these, an Impact egg cup and one of the birthday mugs, I love the witch & cat illustration on this one.