Sunday, December 24, 2006

Knitting theme

The Google holiday doodle has more knitting content than this blog at the moment.
Kangaroos knitting with tinsel, what next?

We are packing up now to visit my sister over Christmas.
Speak to you all soon.

Friday, December 22, 2006

A great celebration ... and freezing fog

We had a great time at the Art Room exhibition.
Everything was ready in time for the opening on Friday.
No pics yet of the display, as I forgot to take my camera in.
It was hard enough to go in without a backpack.
There just wasn't the room to put it on the floor out the back as we had moved in all the equipment and extra furniture.

On Wednesday, I made decorations for the door, inside and out, and the windowboxes.


Thursday was the day of hard graft.
The room was emptied, and we put up the exhibition boards and draped the benches in calico.
Pictures were hung, and descriptive labels were stuck by them.

On Friday morning, I was busy running my monthly CamTAD clinic at my doctor's surgery, so missed the last minute panicking if there was any.

As we opened the front doors to the public at 14.00 our first visitors arrived.
Shortly after 15.00 the mayor arrived a litlte late, having gone to the office and then got stuck in traffic on the short journey to the studio.
He stayed for an hour, talking to everyone, and taking a great interst in the work displayed.

We had a steady flow of people throughout the three days.
Some have shown interest in using the facilities, so we hope to pick up new members in the new year.

This Monday we had to take down some boards, and squeeze in tables so that the evening watercolour class could take place.

Then we came to a major hindrance: FREEZING FOG
Today is the third day, but we have now closed down for Christmas, and will reopen in the new year.
Wednesday was horrible.
I cycled the mile or so six times.
I even resorted to wearing a hat as it was so miserable.
Then I had to damp my hair down to revive the curls, even after ten minutes under a hat.

We couldn't see up to the main road, and any sounds of traffic were damped down by the fog, or drowned out by the sound of the heater.
Only one person dropped in briefly on Wednesday night, and I was glad when 21.00 came and I could get off home.
So last night we decided not to open, and after sorting out some business with Mary and tidying up I was home shortly after 18.00.

Monday, December 11, 2006

Le Art Room exhibition this weekend

Christmas Exhibition 2006

You are invited to join in the celebrations at the 1st Christmas Exhibition of the Long Eaton ART ROOM. This is being held to recognise & promote the wide diversity of imaginative arts & crafts being made by the patrons of our Community Arts Centre since its most successful start-up in April 2006.

The Mayor of Erewash will be joining us at 3pm, Friday 15th December.

Exhibition Opening Times:
Friday 15th December 2pm – 8pm
Saturday 16th December 10am – 4pm
Sunday 17th December 10am – 4pm

At Long Eaton ART ROOM, Mills Studio
Unit 12a Harrington Mills
Leopold Street
Long Eaton NG10 4QE

Looking forward to seeing you there…

Sunday, December 10, 2006

New experiences


We had an outing today.
I had been invited to share a stall at a village craft fair a short way north of Newark.

After a lot of fiddly knitting, I had come up with 16 small sculptural pieces.
I had packed them away for the journey in a plastic tub.
I had purchased some tie-on labels, and suitable bags for packaging.
I even remembered where I had put the safety pins.
My business cards and address labels were there too.

BUT the hardest part came as I displayed them, and had to price them.
After a bit of tweaking I had them looking pretty good on the stand.
Then came the part I had been dreading, working out the figures.
After a bit of thinking, and asking Mary what she thought, I made decisions.
All of a sudden I was much more relaxed.

We were in the dingiest part of the room, and had not brought any lighting.
As it turned out there was a severe shortage of sockets, so we would have had difficulty plugging in.
The image above shows Mary and the stall taken at 13.00 with flash, so it doesn't look too dark.

We had been told that we would be sharing a table with someone else.
But we were offered a tiny table.
We protested gently, and in the end we had two tiny tables.
At first it was bitterly cold.
Fortunately the heating warmed the hall up pretty quickly once it was turned on.

Mary had some reasonably priced felt bangles, and other jewellery.

Much was admired, but none of our work sold.

It was a nice day out, but were we to go again, we would at least take advantage of walking round the village.
Ian (having driven us there) went out for a couple of hours walking around the area.
We never ventured out of the hall.

Friday, December 01, 2006

SP9 first parcel

This is my first parcel from my SP9 pal. It suffered a little in the journey, and only one stitchmarker made it to my house.

The parcel had suffered from a bit of dampness, and may have been partially or wholly opened on its journey.

The yarn is appropriately named "Mystery". Apparently there were some fantastic froggy stitchmarkers there too.

The green tea is superb. I'll have to seek out a local vendor.