Christmas is coming…..

Every single year Christmas creeps up on me out of nowhere! It doesn't seem like more than a couple of weeks ago that I sat and looked at the diary and counted 12 weeks until Christmas and now here we are with just over 4 weeks to get everything sorted and ready for the big day!

I love Christmas and always plan to do far too many things in the lead up to it, most of which never materialise, but this year I have been a bit organised and managed to sort out a crochet bauble pattern and a step by step blog posting for making a really easy pom pom wreath.

Last year I designed the Blitzen Bauble which sold really well at shows, but posting the plastic bauble proved a little hazardous as many of them broke, so this year I have designed a project that can be fitted over an existing bauble, which are available very cheaply. You can download my new crochet bauble pattern by following this link:

I really love the Anthropolgie stores and could spend hours wondering around inside the Regent St store or the shop on the Kings Road. I have quite a few quirky bits and bobs around my house which have come from the store, but I tend to buy things when they are on sale as the retail prices tend to be pretty steep. Anthropologie always have some really lovely Christmas decorations and I particularly like those that appear hand made. Below are some images of some of their current stock of decorations:

Whilst perusing their store on line recently I came across these wonderful pompom wreaths, but with a price tag of £118 I knew they were way out of my budget. 

Pom poms are incredibly easy to make, especially with some of the new Clover Pom Pom Makers and they are a great way of using up bits and bobs of old yarn, so I decided it couldn't be too hard to make my own version of the Anthropologie wreath. I'm really pleased with the results and thought it would make a great blog tutorial - so here goes!

You will need a selection of yarns - I used various brands and weights because I wanted to have different textures and shades within the mix of cream pom poms. This project is quite yarn hungry so make sure you have plenty. You will also need a polystyrene wreath form - I got mine from Hobby Craft. There is a great choice on their web site - I bought the 300mm size for £3.

The first thing I did was make the pom poms. I made 2 sizes using the 'Small' size Clover Pom Pom Makers (there are 2 in a pack). 

Each pom pom needs to be trimmed into a nice shape and you will need more than you think!

Using a few strands held together, wrap the yarn around the polystyrene ring.

Using a knitters sewing needle sew the pom poms in place on the front of the wreath form, sewing through the wrapped yarns and securing at the reverse. I used a Clover Chibi needle as it has a slightly bent end which makes sewing at unusual angles much easier.

Once you have filled three quarters of the wreath, make a hanger by crocheting a chain long enough to loop around the wreath and tie or sew in pace to form a loop. Again I used a few yarn strands held together. 

Sew the remaining pom poms in place, making sure you don't have any gaps. Below is an image of my completed wreath: 

Below are some more wreath ideas from Anthropologie, I particularly like the one with wraps of brightly coloured yarn called Cozy Kindling Wreath

You can use pom poms to decorate your Christmas Tree or create a pom pom garland. The cream garland is from Anthropologie, as is the ready made pom pom braid below:

John Lewis have some great pom pom related stuff in store too, such as the multicoloured bauble below and the fab pom pom tree topper.

I have another polystyrene wreath form and hope to make a multi coloured wreath over the next few weeks. If I do manage to do it I will put the images on the blog, but for now I am going to have a few days rest from making pom poms! 

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Weekend Workshop with Debbie & Jane

Last September Andy and I were invited to a friend's wedding in Bournemouth. We booked a last minute hotel room and headed down to the seaside for what turned out to be a really wonderful wedding reception at a hotel that over looked the sweeping bay. The weather was wonderful and the views out to sea and across the Dorset coast were beautiful. At the end of a wonderful evening we headed back to our room full of the joys of a lovely late summer wedding day.

Caught up in the wedding fever of the previous day we had barely taken the time to look at the hotel we were staying in. We had thought it nice enough, but as we walked down to breakfast on the Sunday morning we noticed just how nice the hotel was. With friendly staff, a contemporary light bar area and a stunning pair of function rooms to the front of the hotel with sea views, we thought what a wonderful venue the hotel would be for a knit and crochet workshop weekend.

When we were checking out of the hotel we asked the duty manager about the function rooms and, even-though he was about to finish his shift, he put his tie back on and showed us around all the Hotel amenities and the various function rooms. We were really excited by what the hotel had to offer and when we got home Andy rang and spoke to the events manager Nicki who told us about the various packages we could book at the hotel. 

By now we were really excited by the prospect of a weekend workshop at the hotel so we spoke to Debbie Abrahams and her husband Steve about our idea and they got excited too!

We booked the hotel for the first weekend in November and launched the workshop via our web site in February to allow plenty of time between then and the workshop date to get the bookings. To our amazement the 26 rooms we had been allocated by the hotel sold out in the space of 3 days and we were able to secure the Bay Suite at the front of the hotel as our workshop room.

When Debbie and I first discussed the idea of the weekend workshop we decided that we wanted to offer participants the chance to have a proper weekend away with a few treats built in and of course some time for walks or a spot of retail therapy. With this in mind Andy and Nicki built a package that included all meals and refreshments, a spa pass and a visit to the Russell Cotes museum and gallery which is situated opposite the hotel.

A few weeks ago, after months of preparation, Debbie, Steve, Andy and myself headed down to Bournemouth for our first weekend workshop. I think we all felt really excited and nervous at the prospect of hosting our very own workshop weekend, but we were soon made to feel calm and collected upon our arrival at the hotel and we set about setting up our workshop room.

Debbie and I had designed a Christmas themed workshop project and we were supported by the new Yarn Stories brand who had made up lovely yarn packs for each of the participants. 

Our workshop participants arrived in time for a bucks fizz reception on Friday evening followed by a lovely evening meal and soon we were relaxed and happy and fully into the swing of what was to turn out to be a very successful weekend.

I really like Bournemouth and the views from the hotel are pretty cool! Despite changeable weather we managed to get some lovely pictures of the beach. If you look closely you can see the surfers in the sea by the pier - I was amazed to see them in the sea in November!

Our weekend went by really quickly and, once the workshop was over, we were sad to be leaving the hotel on the Sunday afternoon. The Hotel staff had been amazingly helpful and friendly and our workshop participants had been a really great group. We had all had a wonderful time meeting fellow guests within the Hotel too - there were 2 large groups of dancers attending events in the hotel at the same time as us, but unfortunately we had to pack our bags and head home!

After the success of our first weekend workshop we are already in the throws of organising another one at the same Hotel next year, so do keep an eye on the web site for more information.

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Knitting & Stitching Show

We have exhibited at The Knitting & Stitching show at Alexandra Palace in North London for the last 5 years. The exhibition centre is only a few miles drive from us here, so it has always seemed like a logical decision to take a stand, especially as we are a web based company and it is good to meet up with our customers face to face.

Knitwear designer Debbie Abrahams and her husband Steve Stowe always come and stay with us for the week of the show as they take the stand opposite to us - having Deb and Steve with us is another one of the reasons we have always looked forward to the show so much as it gives us all a chance to get some time together.

This year the show organisers decided to make the show a day longer - a decision made to ease crowd congestion within the show and ensure that more people have adequate space and time to visit the stands. From a customer point of view this was a good idea, but for us it meant an extra event day and so we set up the stand a day earlier than usual.

I always enjoy setting up the stand - seeing the space change from the grey exhibition panels to the Janie Crow clear and colourful style is a treat and I love it, although I do always get the colliwobbles a few hours into building the stand when it looks like it is never going to come together!

We had quite a few kits to sell at the show this year, including the the Imogen Blanket kit, the Happy Daze kit (which was the 2014 crochet club project) and the Nordnorge bag kit which is now available for sale on our web site - I will blog about that some time next week.

The thing I like the most about the Knitting & Stitching show is meeting avid knitters and crocheters and putting names to faces. It is always lovely to hear positive feedback from customers and get to have a chat. I was really thrilled to meet these 3 ladies who were all carrying their own versions of my 'Boogie' Bag - a design which featured in Inside Crochet magazine back in the spring.

We had a good show, but it is really exhausting exhibiting at such a long event and of course it is really expensive to hire the stand. We have not re booked our stand for next year as we thought it might be an idea to have a year away from the show and return in 2016. 

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Yarndale

The weekend after The Handmade Fair, Andy and I made the long trip up to Skipton to exhibit at Yarndale. Once again the weather was lovely and driving up through the Autumnal countryside of Yorkshire was a real treat - the scenery up there really is beautiful. I was really excited to have been accepted at the show and was probably like an annoying kid as we got nearer and nearer to Skipton - I'm sure I resisted saying 'Are we there yet?' a thousand times!

We arrived at the auction market early afternoon and located the cattle pen which was to be the home of Janie Crow for the weekend. Standing in front of our designated pen I panicked a little wondering whether we could transform the space in a few hours.

We collected our tables and set about covering the stand with the table cloths and sheeting we had brought along - with hind sight white fabric was possibly not the ideal choice for a building used as a livestock market, but it did brighten the space and we did manage not to drop anything in sheep or cow poo as the space had been really well cleaned before set up.

It didn't take long to get all our stock onto the stand and by early evening we were ready to head back to the local hotel for a nice glass of wine and good sleep after a long day.

Yarndale is a new show and this was only it's second year, so Andy and I had absolutely now idea what to expect in terms of how busy the show would be, or how popular our stand would be. We had fitted as much stock as we possibly could in the car, but really hadn't got a clue whether or not we would sell any of it. We had already decided that we would simply treat the show as a weekend away together so it wouldn't matter if we didn't make any profit - covering our hotel bill and our petrol money would be a bonus.

We needn't have worried as the show was incredibly busy - so busy in fact that we couldn't get off of the stand to take any photos until later on in the afternoon by which time our stand looked a little worse for wear! It was fantastic to meet some of my customers in person - below is a picture taken and sent to me by Miriam and one of me with crochet club member Barbara.

Lots of the exhibitors at Yarndale had some really inspirational crochet on display - it was so great to see so many fabulous examples of good crochet. The entrance hall to the show was decked out with the famous Yarndale bunting and there was a great display of crochet mandalas which feature on the Attic 24 blog.

My friend Jo Smith was there and also had a stand. I love Jo's bright colours and her enthusiasm for crochet is totally infectious. Her stand was so bright and colourful - you can see some more of here creations by following this link to her Etsy shop and the image is via the Amjaylou blog.

Amanda Perkins and The Natural Dye Studio (another one of my favourite crochet designers) had a large stand to show off their beautiful crochet creations. The image below is taken from Amanda's blog posting about the show. The blankets are just so stunning!

We had an amazing weekend and made some great new friends. We are hoping to do the show again in 2015 (so long as we get a stand) and I'm already looking forward to it! The Yarndale team have already announced that the show will take place over the 26th & 27th September so make sure you put the date in your diary!

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Indian Summer

I have neglected my blog terribly over the last couple of months, relying instead on quick facebook and twitter updates, so it is time for me to get a little more organised and get back into the blogging habit, after all I have so much to tell you about!

This Autumn has been incredibly busy and when I look back over the past 7 or 8 weeks I find it hard to believe Im still standing, although there has been a week away in Scotland for half term which gave me a chance to re charge my batteries.

In early September I moved to larger space within The Hertfordshire Craft Collective in Radlett. I have had a small space there for a while, but now I have the whole back wall of one side of the barn and will be in the store a few days a week. It has been fabulous having a base to work from away from home for the last few months, the barns are so nice to work in and I have really enjoyed my new routine.

The image below shows the space cleared and ready for me to put my stock and display items in.

These three images show the space full of stock - I chose to focus on my book 'Homespun Vintage' for the first few weeks and you can see a lot of the projects in these images.

We had an open weekend on the 13th & 14th of September which went really well - I even made a cake or two!

The week after the open weekend at the craft barns it was The Handmade Fair, which took place between the 19th & 21st of September. The fair was held at Hampton Court Palace and I was lucky enough to be invited along by Rowan Yarns to teach the 'beginners' crochet workshops.

The Rowan team had spent 2 days preparing their workshop marquee and their display space. The tents looked wonderful and despite a dramatic thunder storm the night before the fair the weather was incredibly kind to us - the fair had a real summer fete feeling with many participants wandering around in summer dresses and sun hats

The Rowan marquee really did look amazing and many people commented on how nice it looked.

I have to admit I felt really daunted by the size of the workshops I had to teach as they were sold out which meant I had a class of 100 participants each day of the show. Thankfully I had the help of the Rowan team of Design Consultants and everything went well. I gave the participants a beaded flower corsage project to make. 

On Sunday I managed to persuade Stuart Hillard and Martin Storey to come along to the workshop and we even had a surprise visitor!

We had a great weekend and it was made all the better by being with some fabulous friends. Below is a picture of me with Suzie Johnson from The Wool Sanctuary (she taught Kirsty to knit on her TV show a few years ago) and Stuart Hillard from the first series of The Great British Sewing Bee. 

I also got to spend some time with Sarah Hatton and the Design Consultant team - all of whom I can't thank enough for their help and encouragement - especially on the Friday when I nearly lost the plot faced with 100 people wanting to learn to crochet!

I am not sure whether the show will happen again next year, I hope it does as I had a great time and would definitely attend as a show goer given the chance. You can find a youtube clip of the film by following this link.

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