Woolfest

Woolfest is held in Mitchells Lakeland Livestock Centre near Cockermouth in the Lake District and is organised by WoolClip as a celebration of natural fibres and all things wool.

This was my first to Woolfest and I really enjoyed my day - although was exhausted at the end of it. The setting in the Livestock Centre is obviously very atmospheric and they have some rare breeds of sheep there too. Everything in the day is related to wool and sheep - even the ice-cream was from ewe's milk - and was lovely!!

As a fundraiser you could hand in a knitted (or otherwise) sheep to be auctioned. This was fun to watch, but I just couldn't bear to part with Woolly so he was not put into the auction - and no other sheep would do for me so I didn't bid either!

There was plenty of stalls with lots of lovely things to buy. Mainly for spinning or felting though this year. I have done a bit of felting but bought some more roving and think I will try out some wet felting as well. There was not that much actual knitting wool there, but I did still manage to find some to buy. A lot of the wool was either aran type weight or lace weight or sock weight and a lot of it was the expensive hand-dyed stuff. I managed to buy some merino 4ply, some sock wool and a lovely lace weight wool and pattern to knit a lacy shawl - no don't ask for a timescale of when it will be finished!!

Back at our B&B we just had to have a look at our lovely purchases.

I did enjoy the day, was a bit disappointed that there did not appear to be many demonstrations at the stalls though. The Saturday was busy but not too busy - in fact one of the staffholders said that the Friday had been busier, so we chose the right day!

The weekend was lovely though and we stayed at a super B&B near Keswick - so had to visit the Old Keswickian chip shop for tea on Saturday!

Wild and Woolly!

Thanks for your suggestions for a name - we decided that he just had to be called Woolly as it was Woolfest we were off to! Some photos of Woolly's adventures -

He really does enjoy a glass of wine!

Woolly was getting a bit fed up being all alone - so my sister made him a friend - hence the title Wild and Woolly!

We had a great time at Woolfest - I will be back tomorrow with some photos and an account of the weekend.

What's my Name???

Hi from my latest felted creation. I am off to Woolfest this weekend with my sister so I had to make a sheep to take with us. Although he doesn't have a name yet - so if you have any suggestions that would be great. Will show off the photos next week of what he gets up to.

What a difference!

Eldest son went to get his hair cut a couple of days ago. He has been trying to grow it long for ages now and it is very thick, curly and wavy - the sort of hair any girl would just love to have. But does he want it curly - no he wants long straight hair. So I thought he would just get his usual trim and thined out a bit. Well it was someone different cutting it this time and what a difference!

To remind you of what it was like before:

What it looks like now............................

He loves it, but the only problem now is how does he/me get it to look like that now - and how much will straighteners set me back!!!! Also I think he just might have to start getting up earlier in the morning to do his hair!

Bootcamp Finished!

Bootcamp finished today and I soo pleased that I have actually finished something on the last day, instead of running way behind as usual.

The last four words were:

Full Bodied - well what else could I have except a nice bottle of red wine!

Hush: thought this was different - as the football is on rather a lot at the moment - the word 'Hush' is often to be heard in our house just now.

'Smooth' - thought of a stone with a smooth surface

The last one was 'Smile' - this is the top of a pencil that we are giving next week to the children who have been coming to JIGSAW as part of prize-giving.

My thoughts on Bootcamp:

well I enjoyed the challenge of taking photos to match a word and will definately try and take more photos over the summer.

a lot of the journal prompts didn't really speak to me, but I jotted down a few points for most of them.

was very pleased that I have actually finished it on time.

will try and put some time in my diary to create on a more regular basis.

still would not call myself an 'artist' though.

If you were playing along what were your thoughts on Bootcamp?

Fly

I have fallen behind a little with Creativity Bootcamp - but I am not stressing! I wasn't greatly inspired with the journal prompts over the weekend, but thought I should try and post a couple of photos for some of the words.

For the word 'Fly' I thought of this photo taken last summer when the boys were out flying their kite on the beach.

For 'ornament' I took a photo of this cheeky chap who sits in my garden.

And for 'Drizzle' - well living in Scotland it had to be about rain didn't it!! Although this year we seem to be getting a lot of sun at the moment, so I used this photo from a couple of years ago.

3 things

Following on from a post at Mel's blog about your 3 favourite things - here are mine!

3 names I am known by:

Fiona
Mum
Mrs

3 places I have lived

Glasgow
Wigtownshire
Ayrshire

3 places I have worked

Newsagent
Insurance Office
School

3 things I love to watch

waves
Doctor Who
West Wing

3 places I have been

Austria
Lake District
Ireland

3 things I love to eat

Cake
Pasta
Chicken

3 things I am looking forward to this summer

going to Keswick Convention
my birthday
going to Amsterdam

How about you, are you going to play along?

Creation

Another challenge from the cyber party at heART&soul was to create something on the theme of Creation. I have wanted to try needle felting a picture for ages, so I thought I would give it a go and did a beach scene. I really enjoyed doing this. The beads were a bit fiddly to sew on though.

Trying something new

Moving out of my comfort zone here to try an art journal type page. Over at heART&soul one of the challenges in the Cyber Party is to create something inspired by the verse from John 1:1 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God". I wanted to try something different from scrapbooking and having been inspired by following blogs such as Rinda's I thought I would get the paints out and try some art journalling.

Fluid

Day Six was talking about how art can be a release, an escape, yet at the same time we can become comfortable with our style and always use the same sort of techniques etc. Certainly in my scrapbooking I am a less is more sort of scrapper and often my pages are minimalist. I find it hard to create pages that have lots and lots of embellishments on them.

In my photography I think I go through phases. I probably still take more photos of the boys than of other things, but do try and take other kinds of photos too.

Todays word was Fluid - which I found rather difficult at first. The only thing I could think of was some kind of  liquid so have gone with this one.

Grow

The word for Day Five was 'Grow', so I thought of the seeds that we planted this year and how some of them have struggled but have managed to grow into little plants. Some of them are now planted out into the garden and some have taken well and are growing healthily while a few have succumbed to the birds,who insist on taking baths in the dirt - there are little burrow-like holes all over the garden!!

Heavy Metal

The word for Day four was 'Heavy Metal'. The only thing that really came to mind with this word was heavy metal rock music - not that I was ever really into that kind of music.

So I made my aspiring bass guitar player son do some modelling with his guitar for me. Here are a few of  the shots that I managed before he got really fed up!!

The other activity for today was to go out and take photos of things that inspire us - well I didn't really have time for this but will try and do it another day - honest!

Cyber Party

This weekend is party time! Over at heART&soul it is party time this weekend. The first Arty Crafty Cyber Party is on! There will be challenges, fun and games and chat. The challenges can be done in any medium - not just scrapbooking. So why not go check it out.

Multi-layered

The word for day three of bootcamp is 'mulitlayered'. I always think of Shrek's reply to Donkey when asked what is an ogre like? Shrek replies an ogre is like an onion - because an ogre has many layers. How true this is of all of us. We all have many layers to our lives, our personalities. Most of us are complex and can show different layers of ourselves at different times and to different people.

I didn't have an onion so took this photo of the layers that make up a red cabbage.

Picnic

The Word prompt for Day Two is 'Picnic'. For me the first image that this word conjures up is being on holiday and eating lunch outside. The boys love to go for a picnic somewhere, although for the last couple of years on holiday picnics have been eaten whilst remaining sitting in the car as it has been raining!!! Maybe this year will be better. The above is a photo taken at St Andrew a couple of years ago on holiday.

Today we were also asked to think about what an 'artist' is and would you call yourself one. The answer to that is No I would never have thought to call myself an artist as to me an artist is someone who is really creative and can create beautiful things - maybe I will change my mind after this course.

What is an artist to you?

Bootcamp begins!

Well actually it began on Sunday, but you wouldn't really expect me to be up to date with something would you????

Each day there is a Daily Thought, a Journal Prompt and a Random Word Prompt.

The thought for day one was about what you want, expect from the next two weeks. Well for one I am NOT going to get stressed by this - honest! I am doing this for enjoyment and to think about what being creative means.

So that I do not get stressed and to try and make this manageable I have decided to use photography as my medium throughtout the course. I will aim to take photos based on the random word prompts, but I will also sometimes use photos that I have already taken before the course.

The first word was 'Ivory' - I always think of the keys on a piano for this word and also the words of the 1982 song 'Ebony and Ivory' by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder.

This photo was taken for a different project I did way back in 2007, which is why it has word 'Music' on it, but as it was exactly what I wanted I just decided to use it again - see not stressing!!!

Now off to read what day two and three are.