Toft Alpaca Workshop

This last weekend saw me packing up my workshop again and travelling by various means (taxi, train, bus, foot) to the Toft Alpaca shop, near Rugby. I was a little dead on my feet by the time I arrived, but a friendly and business like welcome - not to mention a fine bowl of creamy latte coffee - soon had me upright and setting my workshop up for the next day. 

 

It's that time of year when people's thoughts turn to Christmas and I'd pre-made a little set of my own trees to act as visual aids and inspiration.

And then I set my sales table up, as I now sell not only my own kits, but tools and supplies now. I couldnt bring my entire range of 52 wool colours (which I have stocked in my Etsy shop) but I brought as many as I could.

I was fully booked with twelve places filled. The shop and cafeteria have a really great, busy atmosphere and soon my little band of needle felters were hard at work creating their own trees.

 Lunch was a superb affair.

I took advantage of the time to pop out and get a quick shot of the stars of the show, the alpacas. There are many more than this, but these two sweeties are near the shop.

Next door to my class, a crochet workshop was going on - making the delightful creatures designed by Toft founder Kerry Lord, in her new book, 'Edward's Menagerie'.

Which contains patterns for all these lovelies dangling here -

Meanwhile, back at needle felting central, I'd opened up my battered suitcase of treasure - beads, findings, threads and everything needed to beautify a Christmas tree.

 

This was a particularly talented class, and by the end of it I was incredibly proud of the gorgeous small forest of trees skillfully crafted that day. As for myself - well, I packed everything up again and made the return journey back home; a very busy two days indeed.

I have just two workshops left this year - one is fully booked, but there should still be places for an acorn making workshop on November 20th at the White Hart pub in Eynsham, West Oxfordshire. Details and booking contact can be found on my website. 

Little Woolies & workshops

Two Oxfordshire workshops this month, the first at a new venue in Bampton, Folly Fabrics - a vibrant, cleanly laid out shop in the heart of Bampton - which Downton Abbey fans may know is where many of the Downton village scenes are shot. (And yes, they were filming for a new show when I was there, but I was working!)

Folly Fabrics are my third supplies and kits stockists and it was lovely to walk in and see everything displayed beautifully alongside my book.

Sharon had made specially themed cakes and biscuits with pink bunnies adorning them. There is always cake at Folly Fabrics and Sharon is a fabulous baker. Too adorable to eat? They were scoffed, anyway!

 Everyone seemed to have a good time.

The next day I was back in my old stamping ground at Fibreworks Oxford, with a smaller class - only three, but it was nice and cosy. Birds were made.

And here's a few things I managed to make inbetween everything. The cat is sold, the fox was a gift, but I still have a couple of the little stump hares in my Etsy shop.

My next workshops are in July - at Chipping Norton Fibreworks on Friday the 18th making Candy Buns and back to Oxford Fibreworks on Saturday the 19th July, making this wee house on a hill, which can double up as a sweet pin cushion. Both shops are also stockists of my kits.

I'm always on the look out for nice shops to stock my wools and kits, so if you know of any, please let me - or them - know. I aim for nothing less than world wide domination.

Queen's Head workshop

Last week I held an all day workshop in Eynsham, one of our old home villages, at the Queen's Head pub. My favourite pub ever, but today we were not here for beer, but to make little houses. There was plenty of chat as the work began, fueled by home made shortbread.

Breaking at one for lunch, Jackie the landlady had laid on little homebaked  tartlets and salad, as the day was so hot.

 

Lovely Alice brought us cones of fresh mango sorbet.

 

And then back to work for a while...

...until afternoon tea, which naturally was scones with jam and cream. Or fruit, if you preferred.

It may sound as if we spent the entire day scoffing, but by the end of a five hour class, every one had made a super house and someone had even made a Christmas pudding. I'm planning a similar workshop at the Queen's Head in September, so if you are interested in pre-booking a place, drop me an email and I'll contact you when the date if confirmed,

Gathering acorns

Is this not lovely? The Mollie Makes team have hand crafted a new weekly digital mini-mag for the iPad. I have to come clean and say that I don't have an iPad myself (nor any other kind of tablet or internet gadget, just my grinding old clockwork computer). I believe there are links and clickable things inside. I was delighted to be commissioned to create a simple acorn pattern, which can be made in 2-3 hours easily.

I was hugely tickled to see the promo video, which features a somewhat larger version of the acorns;

Although if you make the ones in 'Gathered', they should be this big;

There is a great offer of your first five issues for free when you subscribe, details of which are here. 

There have been mumblings and grumblings that it's not available across all tablet platforms; there are plans to expand availability next year, but there various technical issues to overcome. However, everything starts somewhere. From little acorns big oak trees grow.