My New Obsession

As if having an obsession for beads and more beads was not enough, and knitting and buying yarn and more yarn until my stash bag is full to overflowing, I now have a new obsession. Spinning - not that futile heavy duty static cycling exercise thing where you pedal like fury and get absolutely nowhere. No! Handspinning.

I attended a half day workshop at my friend Carol's studio in Chorlton, Manchester last weekend. First we inspected a Suffolk fleece to see which bits were best for spinning.


Then we learnt to card bits of fleece to get all the crud, dead beetles and bits of hedge out as well as straightening those curly dreadlocks.


We rolled the carded wool into rollags, which were then stretched out before spinning.


Then came the really exciting bit. Of course, if you aren't into yarn and don't have to cross the road to avoid a knitting shop just to save yourself hundreds of pounds, you won't find this exciting at all, but I know a hell of a lot of people who can talk for hours about a nubbly silk, mercurised pure cotton, baby alpaca or even camel yarn that they covet. So, the next stage was to spin the yarn on a drop spindle. This was harder than it looked as the darn thing kept spinning and unspinning until I got into a rhythm.

Finally, we all had a bit of a go on a spinning wheel. This was a little like learning to drive a car, with hand-foot-eye co-ordination going straight out of the window as the yarn whizzed through the machine's orifice faster than I could blink.


So, here's my first attempt at spinning. Truly remarkable and to anyone but me it just looks like something my cats brought in one night, but it is knittable. I have practised my carding and drop spinning technique daily for the last week and have seen a vast improvement. I no longer spin lumpy fat yarn.


Next step - a spinning wheel. I have one on order! This weekend I'm taking another course with Carol - natural vegetable dyeing. Her workshop schedule can be found at www.beetlefelt.co.uk

Woozle Revisited

Well, what a first week in the Robins household Dinah formerly known as The Woozle formerly known as Dinah has had. She broke out in eczema last Tuesday as well as sharing her fleas with me, so the little critters were zapped straight away. She decided to go on a nil by mouth diet last Thursday and not a drop of food or liquid passed her lips, despite my best efforts. I offered her different flavours, textures and shapes, but no yummy morsel would tempt her to eat. She was wafer thin and looked as though a gust of wind would blow her into the air.


The fabulous heat wave arrived in Manchester on Friday and the sun enticed her into the garden. Initially she had me attached to a piece of string so I couldn't escape or get lost, or so she thought, but after half an hour I was realised from my bonds and allowed to make earrings while following her around the garden (not an easy thing to do, I can tell you, but said pair of earrings were promptly sold).


But the crash diet continued despite the heat. So, on Saturday night, when I was at my wits end after a very tiring but successful day at a craft fair, I told her to buck up her ideas or else it was back to the cats' home. Well, who ever knew that cats understood every word! Sunday morning found her making up for lost time, and she has been stuffing her cute little face ever since and gaining weight.

It's not all good news though. This morning I felt the biggest lymph nodes in her groin and whisked her off to the vets, to discover that the poor little lamb had extremely inflamed gums and a full set of bad teeth, all of which need to be extracted next week. A shot of antibiotics and one of steroids has boosted her no end, so at least I can understand the super-model diet phase she had adopted.


Despite the discomfort she must be experiencing, she has her own bolt hole, my tee shirt cupboard, where she disappears to when it all gets too much, although she hasn't gone there since her treatment this morning. She is settling in well, knows her way around the garden and loves hissy-spitting at Zebra and Dolphin whenever she gets the chance. Dinah the Woozle is in residence.

City of Green

I bought a bike last week, mainly for my daughter to cycle to school on, a round trip of only one mile. On Thursdays she walks to school as she has a trumpet lesson, and so that lovely bike was just sitting there this morning looking forlorn and dejected. I have not cycled for around 25 years but let's face it, it's like ... well, it's like riding a bike. You never forget how.

I live in the suburbs of Manchester, the second largest city in the UK. I'm only 3 miles from the city centre which I avoid like the plague, but only half a mile up the road from my house is the Fallowfield Loop, a stretch of converted disused railway line that runs for miles and miles. This is where I headed this morning on a gloriously warm and sunny day, and this is what I found.



The peace and quiet was amazing. A few people were out walking their dogs and several retired gents were cycling the route. I met a lovely chap with his two small dogs and we got chatting. Turns out he is a creative type, writing, painting, alternative lifestyle and very interesting brain. Manchester never ceases to amaze me. How green is my city!

The Woozle Has Landed

In early December my lovely cat Norman died of stomach cancer, leaving his mum, Zebra, and his brother, Dolphin, searching for him for days. Eventually they cosied up together for a long cold winter. It seemed odd to only have two cats to feed. I've been known to have as many as five at one time, and so my daughter and I decided to visit the local cat sanctuary a couple of days ago and adopt an adult rescue cat. Off we toddled with the intention of bringing home an adult male or even a squeaky little kitten.

Well, the best laid plans of mice and Chicita are always altered by fate, and despite an overwhelming choice of both kittens and adults, it was we humans who were chosen by one lovely female. I was kneeling on the floor as she was let out of her pen, and she promptly made a bee line for my lap and settled herself down. Utterly confused after spending 2 hours getting to know all the cats on offer, and having not even spotted this quiet and gentle mass of black fur in a large pen on the floor, we rushed home to check that daughter's bedroom door closed properly, downed a cup of calming tea and pelted back to the cats' home, keeping our fingers crossed that she hadn't been whisked away by one of the many people perusing the feline collection.


The cat formerly known as Dinah is now officially called The Woozle, a never yet seen but most definitely existing weasel-like character from the Winnie The Pooh stories. Woozle settled in to her new room immediately, drank 12 gallons of milk, ate a few cat bikkies from our hands and settled down in a ball on the bed for the night.


How she could have been named Dinah, heaven only knows. This beautiful and graceful cat has eaten hardly anything since she has been here and is far from a diner. In fact she reminds me of a size zero super model who claims to have overeaten when offered a second lettuce leaf.


It's early days still, and she has just had her first grand tour of the house, met the other guys and done some amazing throaty gurgles. Her vampire-like fangs are huge, especially when she screws up her face to do the hissy fit thing. Zebra and Dolphin are not finding her a threat. After all, she is nothing but a small fluff ball that can't weigh more than an ounce or two.

Twinkle Toes

Every morning this week I've leapt out of bed to find the sun shining on my beautiful garden. Once my daughter has been fed and watered and has set off for school, I get stuck into a few writing briefs (my proper job) in the hope of getting outside and sitting at the table to make some jewellery before lunch time. However, the best laid plans of mice and women are always scuppered by some force greater than that of the mere mortal, and that big glowing ball of light in the sky miraculously runs and hides just as I'm switching the laptop to hibernate mode. Is this one of Sod's Laws or are the elements programmed to annoy? Another of Sod's Laws is the one that states that ten minutes after the entire contents of a washing basket is pegged to the washing line and the washing maid is comfortably esconced behind a bar of chocolate and steaming mug of tea, subtle drops of rain begin to fall, and go unnoticed by said servant for at least an hour before she scuttles outside to find a dripping mass of washing that is now wetter than it was when first pegged out!


Let's get optimistic about the great British summer, shall we? I have high hopes for summer 2010. It's been one hell of a cold winter. My five huge hebe shrubs will flower no more, devastated by the snow fall and persistent frosts. In the fifteen years that I have lived in my house I have never lost a single plant to the cold. So, seriously cold winters usually mean seriously hot summers.


Let's cut to the chase here. My witterings about the weather must be leading to something, I hear you mutter impatiently. Here's my suggestion. When the heat begins to rise, go barefoot whenever you can. Stroll around the garden without shoes, wander the house with your tootsies exposed. Barefoot life is so good for your feet, and strengthens the calf muscles. Now, I find that feet are not the most beautiful body parts but when appropriately decorated they can be turned into sexy features in an instant. What they need is a pair of Summer Barefoot Thongs, a kind of combination of toe ring and ankle bracelet. I first discovered these in my teenage barefoot hippy days, when my girly posse and I lurked around Fog Lane Park in Manchester, hoping to see the eye candy of the day, commonly known to us as the pink shirt gang. Man, those boys were cute! Shoeless and with black and green striped painted toe nails our feet caused quite a stir.


This fabulous foot bling can also be worn on your beach holiday as you dance across the sand at dusk, or for doing barefoot exercise like yoga, tai chi and Nia. If you haven't heard of Nia, watch this space as I intend to write an article about that very subject soon. Oh, and did I mention that these lovelies are available in my Folksy shop for only £13.50?

Hot For You

Last week I had one of the best days of my life. What a thrill it was to hold that powerful tool in my hand and be instructed by one of the nation's finest in her trade. She showed me the basics of this traditionsl skill that dates back as far as the ancient Egyptians, and it was not long before we moved on to the more complicated stuff, incorporating all sorts of little added extras. What an amazing experience and one that I would never have even considered doing let alone known about, this time last year. So, what exactly was I up to? Well, not what you might have been thinking, for a start. No, this was much better than that, although you can work up quite a sweat with this skill too and I did have to strip off some of my clothes in order to get it just right!

OK, enough silliness. I was at a lampworking class - a one-to-one day-long session with lovely Karen Baildon of Cheeky Cherub Designs over in Alderley Edge which is just 10 miles south of Manchester. She told me how she had started out in lampworking by attending a class in Adelaide and she needed to overcome her fear of the powerful torch before anything else. I didn't have a fear of the flame. Perhaps I am a closet pyromaniac or maybe it's just that I'm used to extreme temperatures as I have a ceramics kiln in my house.

Kaz has a funky little studio in her garden where there is space enough for two people to work. She showed me how to make a plain glass bead, before we moved on to making long thin strands of glass and twisted strands of bi-colours to use as decoration. I added dots to basic beads and poked holes in molten glass, refilling it with contrasting colours. We swirled, prodded and tweaked the glass all day.We also experimented using silver leaf, the effects of which are out of this world. Check out the large turquoise bead that I made - the crackly grey patterning is created using silver leaf.

The most important part of lampwork is to keep everything moving at the same time. The bead mandrel is held in the left hand and needs to keep twisting the molten glass and must never be too far from the flame as it will just crack and die if allowed to cool. Simultaneously the glass rod which is melting in the flame must be in exactly the right spot and also needs turning constantly, so the brain is coping with a metaphorical 'patting of the head with one hand and rubbing the belly with the other' kind of multi-tasking. Lampworking is not easy, but once I'd got into it, the hardest part for me was choosing which colours to use. Believe me when I tell you that Kaz has every colour under the sun, and then some. I told her that next time I come to her studio to play with molten glass, she must hide all the colours except my favourites - olive, ivory, orange, turquoise and black. Life will be much easier with that choice. But just look what I made - yes, mine are the ones on the lower string that aren't quite circular but don't they look handmade? Of course, Kaz's lovely beads are the round ones!

So now I have a new hobby that needs a special torch and clamp, propane, lots of rinky dinky tools and of course, oodles of glass in lots of different shades of the aforementioned colours, as well as pots of frit, silver leaf, mandrels and......

Check out Kaz's website for her gorgeous groovy beads and details about her workshops.

Don't Get Despondent

What a weekend! I attended a craft fair on Saturday which consisted of 90% jewellery stalls. Granted, it was advertised as a jewellery and craft fair, but most of us crafters with handmade items were only too aware that around 75% of the items for sale were bought in, and these were the goods that sold well as they were going at market prices. This is the gripe of many real crafters attending these events. We spend a good few days preparing for a fair, making, ordering in materials, pricing up, loading up the car, not to mention making all the domestic arrangements so that life can go on at home in our absence. I always take a packed lunch with me - I'm there to sell not to spend, and like many others I have a child in tow.

I also attended another fair on Sunday. It wasn't a great success but it was my decision to choose to attend it and the organiser is a new friend of mine, so I wanted to support her in her new venture. I take full responsibility for my decision to be there, and cannot believe that serious flack is flying in her direction from some crafters. A degree of maturity and a philosophical attitude is required when we don't sell much at craft events. After all, there will be more craft fairs to attend and more chances to make up for any losses incurred.

I started writing this with a complete feeling of self doubt towards my craft, my designs, the competition from others out there and the fact that I'd wasted the whole weekend, with very little profit to show for the hours (17 of them) that I spent, grinning inanely at potential customers, shmoozing, and talking about my work to people who probably didn't give a damn how to wire wrap a bead. but the upside is that I met some lovely people, Realicoul and Kitty Eden from Folksy for example, networked with fellow crafters, extended my mailing list for any craft fairs that I organise in the future, and was invited to two more craft events.

The despondency I've felt all morning hasn't gone away completely, but I've talked myself into realising that onward and upward is the way to go. Sitting for 17 hours, eating unhealthy food and socialising are things I don't do in my everyday life. Consuming a few green smoothies, a couple of days on my own devoid of humans and a good night's sleep will have me up and running as normal.