Royal Welsh 2019

Royal Welsh 2019 

Its that time of year again - Royal Welsh Show. We are very lucky to live in such close proximity to this brilliant agriculture show. One section of the show is the Homecraft section. This to me feels a bit like the shows forgotten cousin - its never mentioned in any of the advertising and 

This is my third year of entering (I have also entered the Winter Fair). The first year I think I entered about 5 things and didn't win any prizes but it was fun to enter and when dad said on the day we went - "you're mum always wanted to enter this" I was so glad i had made the effort. One of the classes was a Cross stitch castle and the one I started on is still not finished! Husband said after that year you need to be more prepared and start earlier.........

Year two I entered 9 items and came home with 5 prizes and according to my calculations i was second place for the overall prize. I was so much more prepared this year and had completed everything in plenty of time........the same cannot be said for this year. 

For some silly reason - probably because I was so close to the overall prize last year I entered 10 classes this year and it was only a week before they were due to be handed in that the first piece was completed!! As you can guess husband was not very happy and got a bit stressed himself.

So this last weekend and week i have woke up early and gone to bed late just to try and get things finished before and after work. I was actually aching yesterday from too much crafting! haha

Heres what I entered.......i'll try and link to supplies when I can. 

First piece completed was "framed pebble picture" - the day before I had been to Hobbycraft and bought some lovely new baby paper so used that to back the pebbles and then added flowers from Wild Orchid Crafts to compliment the design. the shadow box frame is from Hobbycraft too. Think once I get some more pebbles i will be making a few more of these, perhaps to sell if anyone thinks they are good enough,.

Second piece was "an item made from driftwood". I was at Hwgga Studios and Katja mentioned that she had been given a load of driftwood. My ears perked up and she was lovely enough to give me whatever pieces I wanted. With a bit of glue from my glue gun I stuck all the pieces together to create the word "home" I then got some screw in hooks and screwed this into the bottom of the driftwood to allow somewhere to hang your keys. 

Third completed piece - "a mosaic". I had seen some beautiful designs on Pinterest for mosaics and had even collected some plates from nans that would have been perfect but I didnt find any other tiles to go with this and then ran out of time. So I entered this coaster from Hobbycraft . I originally got an owl one but it didn't turn out very well - and i gained some injuries - the instructions say use a scissors but don't do this you need something a lot stronger. I used a jewellery tool that I found in mums stash of stuff and put it in between a jacket to soften it and stop it flying off too far! 

The fourth entry was a special one for me. I didn't really care what it looked like as it was just an excuse to make one as I want to give it to my nan after the show is over. Its a "twiddle muff" which are designed to support dementia sufferers as it allows them to "twiddle" and reduce any restfulness and anxieties they have. I looked up patterns for this but in the end kinda did my own thing. The yarn I used was a soft yarn from Aldi which I just double crocheted a block until I thought it was big enough. I then attached a crocheted flower, buttons and some yarn. I also found these beads in Tesco and have never really used them so i spelt out nan and put it on some string which enables it to move up and down. I'm not sure how much nan will actually use it but as she was a big crafter when she was able I want to still give it to her. 

The fifth category was "A 2020 calendar". A lovely lady who i used to work with knew i did a lot of  crafts and cross stitch and one day she turned up to the office with some Winnie the Pooh cross stitches that she had once bought but never used and one of those was a Winnie the Pooh and friends calendar. I therefore decided to stitch this for the category - and as it specifically said 2020 calendar i added a little paper calendar on the bottom. I had bought the frame off Amazon but it was only Saturday night I finished it (with entries to be handed in on Sunday) so hadn't actually looked at how it fitted. So this caused a lot of issues Sunday morning! hubby ironed it for me and as i hadn't had time to wash it the creases were not coming out very easy so we sprayed it with some water and then ironed and the creases were starting to come out - hubby decided just one more little bit and from nowhere appeared a black smudge!!!! Luckily it was right on the side and so it was covered a bit by the frame. I was un-doing the back of the frame and managed to cut my thumb on one of the clips - its still sore today! So i almost got blood over everything. Then we couldn't get it so that it wasn't showing the card behind and as i didn't have a big enough piece of  card we had to bodge some to fit behind. At the last minute I added the felt stars to cover the corners of the mount behind. I love how it has turned out - I think the kit has now been discontinued which is unfortunate as its such a lovely piece. 

The 6th entry was for "a baby blanket" I saw a completed blanket in a Facebook group and I just had to make it. Its made up with a c2c stitch but its a graphgan so there's a lot of colour changes. It was meant to be 9 squares but i ran out of time! then the two out of the six i completed were smaller so i had to leave them out. I really like the finished piece - but the joining and boarder have let it down. I think i'm going to keep this one rather than give it as a present. 

The 7th entry - I finished the blanket at midnight so had all of Sunday morning and early afternoon to complete as much as possible. So I picked a cross stitch card thinking it wouldnt take me long - it took soooooo much longer than expected. I had picked out a new baby card from World of Cross Stitching magazine and then added some paper to back it and then lace and a heart charm from Wild Orchid Crafts

The 8th entry was for card made from paper and card - perfect for me with all my card making. However, I ran out of time!!! so i just found this pig one in my stash and entered that. 

I failed to complete two categories - "Item including pom poms" and "bag for life". Lesson for next year - don't enter so much!! (remind me of that in May next year!!) 

Prizes

Although I entered with the hope to win overall and on entry i didn't expect to win anything I got one red card next to my cross stitch! There was 300 entries in total in the handicraft and I would encourage anyone to enter! I have now got the categories for next year and hubby has said no more than 5! We will see.....

Crafters will travel!

Crafters will travel!

As any crafter will know – there is never enough time to complete all the projects you want to complete!!! So when it comes to facing a long car journey my first thought is always – that’s a lot of time I could be crafting! Therefore, since I started Cross Stitching about four years ago I decided to try taking it with me to do in the car! I live in Mid Wales and so the roads are not very straight!! Once we get onto a dual carriage way or a motorway the craft comes out! It also makes the journey go a lot quicker! 

As anyone who knows me could tell you we travel a lot! Between seeing friends in different parts of the country, nights away and a bigger trips we are on the road a lot! So I have worked out the best way to do this and how it is best transported!

I have now found that crocheting is easier than Cross stitch in the car as you aren’t trying to focus on those little squares – it’s easy to lose count as you go over a bump in the road!

In August last year I got a new job which meant I was in the car a lot for visits to people’s homes around the county – so if I have a few visits in the same town away from the office I will ensure I have some form of craft in the car in case I have 10 minutes between appointments!

However, my anxiety does affect this a lot! It sounds so silly as I’m here telling the world about my crafting but when I am on a plane or a train etc. I like to be in the window seat so that my husband will sit between me and other people as a “barrier”. This is until I get the confidence to start and then I can’t stop! One year I was even stitching on the platform waiting for a train and a woman was so intrigued by what I was doing she almost fell over!!!  

For my cross stitch I have found a small storage box which I think was from our local haberdashery – it’s perfect for each project and keeping the bobbins neat, it can store a scissors and a highlighter pen! I have also purchased a thread cutter for plane journeys to avoid taking scissors. However, I would be careful travelling to America as I have heard they take needles off you!!! (Surely more harm can be done with a belt buckle than a little needle!)

Tesco were also selling these cute little bags for life – they are a great size for carrying a project! They sold them for 25p in the end so I think I bought 4!

I have yet to work out how to take my card making stuff with me!!! Haha

Therefore, if you ever receive a cross stitch off me who knows where your gift has been!  

Crochet Workshop

Crochet Course

My mother-in-law is one of my biggest “fans” and is always in awe of everything I create for her. Last year I told her I was attending an evening crochet course and she mentioned to me she wouldn’t mind learning a new hobby. Now, if you tell me something like that I WILL find a way to make this happen!

The crochet course I did last year was with the wonderful Vicki from Miss Gregory’s GorgeousGifts and was over a few weeks in an evening. It was a brilliant way of learning the basics of crochet and gives you a good grounding to go out in to the world of crochet! I found it so beneficial to have somebody there to show you what to do and look at your work finding out where you have gone wrong – you don’t get that with a YouTube video.

So early this year Vicki announced she was running a serious of day workshops in our local town of Rhayader as well as her evening courses. Mother’s day was fastly approaching and my husband always struggles with thinking of good gifts to give her. So I suggested paying for her to go on a beginner’s workshop as an early mother’s day present. The husband thought this was a nice idea and of course I had to go for support! I saw Vicki post about it on Instagram which led to my friend seeing it so she came along with her mum too.

The day workshop was “Treble Crochet and Granny Squares” and was held in Quillies in Rhayader. The room was perfect, really bright and a good amount of space for the eight of us on the course. They also provided tea, coffee and home-made biscuits! The owner of the shop even arranged lunch for us at the local café.

Vicki began by teaching everybody how to hold their hook and about tensioning. We then learnt how to make a chain and then proceeded into the granny square learning about treble crochet. Vicki went around everybody and ensured that they were doing it right and giving words of encouragement. In the afternoon we were also shown about joining squares and blocking.

Vicki knew that I was confident in being able to complete the Granny Square so she showed me a book of granny squares (now waiting to be purchased on Amazon!!) and told me to pick one and try to make it. I picked one with a flower in the middle that the petals were raised up upon as I was always curious how this was done. I also made a little flower from the book – which I forgot to take a photo of

I loved seeing complete beginners find the love of crochet and smiled as they purchased hooks from the shop and some yarn from Vicki. I can see why she does the workshops!! I spent a lot of the day supporting my mother in law and I think I need to work on my teaching skills as I just wanted to take over and correct her mistakes for her but its something to work on if I want to do workshops in cross stitch or card marking in the future.

If you are within driving distance of Rhayader or Builth Wells and are a little bit curious about crochet have a look at Miss Gregory’s Gorgeous Gifts as she has all her workshop dates on there.

There is one problem with the workshop……………I want to crochet everything now and have a lot of Cross Stitch to complete amongst other things before July. I started another C2C blanket with some soft yarn I had and last night had to fight with myself to pick up the cross stitch not the crochet!!