September and a Wool Show

 My monthly marker this month…

My slow stitched bag tag from The Summer of Stitching by the Bakery Bears, which took an afternoon to put together.

On Sunday (31 August) I visited the Southern Wool Show in Newbury, David drove and while I was there he drove on to Oxfordshire to visit Pendon Museum and he returned to collect me later in the afternoon. 

The Wool Show was held in two grandstands of Newbury Racecourse, and there was plenty of space to move around. As well as vendors (mainly online) selling yarn, there were also feltmakers, weavers, spinners, so a lot of shopping opportunities.

This was my shopping

Some patterns, yarn (of course) fleece, a small weaving loom, French knitting kit, Tunisian crochet hook and beads.

So I’m having a go at the loom, which is big enough to make a bookmark, this kit is produced by 

Tabby and Tweed, who I’ve been following on Instagram for some time. There were 3 colours of yarn, but I’ve started to add in some of my own. Nice easy size to pick up and put down.

There were some ladies from The Kennet Valley Guild of Weavers and Spinners and one demonstrated a cardboard disc with yarn, to make a braid, which was also quite easy to pick up. Where the spare slot is pick up the third yarn on the right to put in the slot, turn the disc to the right until the spare slot is facing you and repeat.

Which eventually makes a basic woven braid. A lot simpler than following the numbers on a Kumihimo disc, genius! (And a lot of fun if you enjoy fiddling!).

The patterns I bought were for fingerless gloves, a jumper using assorted yarns, and ruffled socks (with beads, hence the bead purchase, scarf and cowl patterns.

The French knitting kit I saw right at the end and just leaving seeing a lady working on this and I could not resist this purchase. Usual this is associated with four nails of a cotton reel, so this was different. I had a go but need a lot more practice. Here’s my sample.

You can make out loose loopy knitting underneath.

It’s certainly unusual and I don’t know what use this is, but it’s intriguing, nonetheless.

End of August

 After the hot sunny and dry weather, all of a sudden it has now become autumnal. With going out and about and some looking after my granddaughter during part of this month it hasn’t given me as much time for crafting. 

As part of the Summer of Stitching, run by The Bakery Bears for their Patreon members which has involved a mitred blanket, of which I made a small sample mat and a tote bag, the third part is a slow stitched bag tag.

I used some linen fabric backed with felt. Pieces of fabric left over from the bag were embroidered on and I added embellishments of a hexagon and buttons which came from a clothes tag, which has been in my button box for years. White Stuff no longer put buttons on their tags.

Here’s the bag with the tag along with a badge my friend gave me.  

I went to the Project Linus meet in Dorchester taking two completed quilts and picked up a quilt kit.  There wasn’t enough of the large square pieces so I had to add some from my stash. Right colours but not the right theme, but it will have to do.

Earlier this month I also picked up another kit, this kit for Quilts for Care Leavers at the New Forest Quilt Show so September should give me time to work on this. Something a bit different to work on.

I seemed to have expanded my fabric collection and bought fabrics at the Dorset Arts and Crafts Festival at the beginning of this month as well as at the New Forest Quilt Show.

I’ll also be adding to my yarn collection this month with a visit to the Southern Wool Show as I’m visiting on Sunday 31st.

I’ve finished most of my cardigan and sewn together the raglan seams to be able to pick up stitches for the front bands. Not a lot to see at present, but it should be a September finish. I had found a sock that I’ve been working on and that was finished yesterday. A second sock has now been cast on and well under way.  Just a plain vanilla top down sock using King Cole Zig Zag but is an old colourway which looks somewhat like a Cadbury’s Crème Egg wrapper.

Well, it’s the 31st and I’ve visited the wool show today. It didn’t take long to get to Newbury Racecourse, just an hour and a half. It helped that on Sunday the traffic is quieter as there aren’t many holidaymakers to contend with. I did buy yarn (would be rude not to), patterns, a bookmark weaving kit and a French Knitting kit (the wooden piece with lots of nails, it also can with a tapestry needle and instructions. I couldn’t resist some fibre and not sure whether I might felt it of drop spin it but it’s a reminder of our Yorkshire days from 2008 - 11 as it’s called Elsecar and came from Yorkshire company Wingham Wool Works.

So this has been my August. September will see us going away for a few days and I’ll post about that soon.

Beamish

 During our holiday in July, we took the opportunity to visit Beamish for a second time as the tickets we bought last year was valid for 12 months.  This is near Stanley, north west of Durham. 

There are several sections representing the north country in different eras from Georgian times to the 1950’s which is the latest area reconstructed there. To get around the site there are old buses and trams. I took this from 5he shelter as I liked the fancy ironwork decoration. 

While in the Victorian street we visited the bank and the Masonic Hall, quite grand and important buildings in this section.

I loved the stained glass windows in the buildings

Most of the buildings are from the local area.

Newly painted iron work on the walls outside the cottages (as you can gather by the signs).

A selection of granny square blankets and a tin of threads in the 1940’s farmhouse as households at the time had to make do and mend.

And above is an example of a 10 stitch blanket. I’ve had a go at making this and I’ll show it in a few days time for the month end.

And pride of place is the sewing machine on a table to mend clothes to make them last longer

And look at all those cottage style teapots over the range.

Nearby was the 1950’s High Street with hairdresser, electrical, toy and record shops and cinema.

Then on to Pockerley Old Hall, Georgian village and buildings there.

This is Joe the Quilter’s cottage.  He was accused of murder and his items were sold by auctioned.

I loved the stonework on the buildings 

The old church

And a volunteer (all the volunteers wear period costume) was sitting and sewing. Parishioners of the church would pay a subscription for their box pews and the family names were written on the pew ends.

Buses in the bus garage.

I took a photo of the sign above the printer’s shop for the museum’s tea room. It’s easy to spend so much longer here, such a fascinating place to visit.  The museum’s website is here 

Holidays

 I’ve been remiss about recording the holidays we’ve been on this year (so far). So I’ll start by writing about our most recent to Durham.  We went there straight from staying at my brother-in-law and his wife in Devon.  They’d recently moved to Barnstaple and we tried to get a separate break there but instead we went from hom (Dorset), stayed in Barnstaple then on to Durham (with an overnight stop in Leicester). So we were away from home for 2 weeks, after which we had a lot of catching up to do!

Devon is only the next county, but it’s slow going on the A35 getting to the fastest road and after Exeter there are single carriageway roads to Barnstaple. While there we had a visit to Arlington Court NT, with a tour around the gardens and another day using our bus passes from Barnstaple to Lynton and Lynmouth.

A few views of the scarecrow characters around Lynton and the yarn bombing on the Town Hall

Our travels from Devon to Co. Durham included a stop in the Cotswolds to Hidcote Manor NT with delightful gardens.

And a textile art exhibition by Janet Haigh.

Our reason for heading to the North East again was to revisit Beamish Museum as we had an annual ticket after our visit there last year and didn’t get to see everything we wanted to see first time around.  But we also want to visit Durham and other places too.  We stayed in a cottage attached to the farm house just south of Durham.  At this time I still had stitches in my forehead as I had a fall a couple of days before we went away and we weren’t going home for another week. Luckily the Urgent Treatment Unit at nearby Peterlee Hospital wasn’t busy so I had the stitches removed and my scar looked to be healing well. (See my July post).  We found a nearby Tesco for our supplies for the week and to say this store was huge - this was massive! So it took a while to find where things were!

We enjoyed another NT garden- this time in Crook Hall and Gardens in the city centre. An oasis of calm in a city centre.  From one garden you can see the top towers of Durham Cathedral. Just above the shrubs. From the kitchen gardens at the back a view of the top of the railway pantograph.

There are a few sculptures 

I bought a mystery book from the secondhand bookshop.  The paper did look pretty…

Just out of the city is Washington Old Hall, said to be the ancestral home of George Washington, the hall at one time was divided up into several dwellings. An interesting building. A chance to see a North Country quilt on a bed.

On our return we could see in the distance Penshaw Monument, a rather large folly in the style of the Parthenon 🏛️.  David is unable to climb many steps so I braved the climb up there. He took a photo of me at the top of the monument with a long zoom.

During our stay we managed to visit two heritage railways. The first was the Weardale Railway in Stanhope, near Bishop Auckland. It’s a short railway and we rode on an ex-Northern Pacer diesel unit.

The second railway we visited during the week was the Wensleydale Railway and we went on another Pacer from Leeming Bar station to Leyburn.  They had recreated a Victorian station masters house at Leeming Bar so we had a tour of the station building with costumed volunteer guides which was a nice touch.

So I’m going to leave it here and my next post will be about Beamish.