Samsara's Scribblings

Got to Dance!!

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:59:00 +0000

Hey, I’ve been spending alot of time dancing recently…I started a new tribal class which is great fun and I still go to my regular bellydance class!

Of course this inevitably means that a lot of my crafting time has involved costume-making, some of it easy, some of it quite challenging!

I thought I’d share some of last years projects with you.

So this was my most challenging project – a 25 yard skirt for twirling about at tribal class. This inevitably turned into a 24 metre skirt since we are metric here in the UK. Now, maths is not my strongest point. Not at all, no siree! I found loads of great tutorials and formulas on t’internet which made absolutely no sense at all to me. In the end I sat and drew pictures. Eventually my doodling provided me with something I could actually work with (although I had to go to the fabric shop twice because I didn’t buy enough fabric the first time hee hee!)

So I had to learn to gather and sew humongous amounts of fabric. Seriously, I literally drowned in fabric at times. The fabric is a lovely cherry red colour and is light enough to swirl when I spin. I think I almost lost the will to live at one point when I was serging the seams, and I have to confess that I couldn’t face the thought of rethreading my serging, so I used the black thread that was already in it. Which was okay because most of the serging was on the inside. But then I had to serge the hem and by this time I was *keen* to ~~see the back of this project~~ finish!

So I just carried on with the black thread and bugger me, it looks fab! That little edge of black along the bottom looks fantastic cascading down the side of the skirt when I tuck a hem into my waistband.

Now I know why you pay so much for 25 yrd skirts; they are a huuuuuge commitment of time, stress and angst! This might be the last skirt I ever make *lol* I’m not completely happy with it; my perfectionist’s eyes are drawn to the many imperfections in the skirt, but I figure that it’s good enough for class practice. I don’t think I would ever wear it for a performance!

Okay, so I really wanted a pair of melodias but they cost, so when I came upon a pair of black velvet stretchy pants tucked away in my wardrobe, I thought they would make a fine pair of tribal trousers, only they just weren’t wide enough!! So I took the side seams apart and slotted in some black satin fabric

Then, to make them look pretty, I added an appliqued design and some beads and sequins.

Of course, any practice needs a twirly shimmy skirt two and I made a couple of those…

This an asymmetrical hem, elasticated waist handkerchief skirt made from a lovely black lace. It helps create a lovely layered look when you add another scarf or belt on top.

And then this one which I adore, is made from glitter dot fabric – silver on black – it’s gorgeous and really sparkles in the light!

I needed a tribal coin bra for my first ever tribal performance, so I found a black bikini bra (fantastic by the way, since the clasps and straps on a bikini top are designed to be worn.

And because I had some time over Christmas, I raided my scrap back and created this long shimmy belt with side ties and a lovely beaded back swag!

I also made this for fun – and mainly because my fringe was doing my head in and getting in my eyes at dance practice!!

Soo, these are some of the pretty things I’ve been crafting over the last six months *lol*

Hippy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 21:37:00 +0000

Well, I for one am very glad that 2011 is over; it was a truly rubbish year for lots of reasons. Sadly the Uberhound passed away and left a very big gap in our lives….we adopted another puppy to help to fill the void, but sadly the puppy died of parvo virus four days after we brought him home.

Our holiday to the Forest of Dean was a very subdued affair, particularly as we’d chosen it because there were lots of places for doggy adventures.

But life goes on and we went to lots of places (although we didn’t see any wild hogs like we wanted to).

We even went on an old steam train

We also visited Puzzlewood where they film Merlin – what a great place!!

The Barefoot festival that I volunteer at with a friend was as good as usual…in a new bigger location and the usual fab cabaret and fire show.

Halloween was a fun night – we dressed up and scared all the local children

The Autumn term was really manic as usual, we had an OFSTED visit, plus observations, so that pretty much took up the whole term.

The Hafla was great although very exhausting as I’d managed to put myself in a position where I was doing 5 dances, including my very first Tribal performance! This involved four costume changes!! *lol*

Alot of my pre-Christmas time was taken up with crafting a pair of fairy wings for my friend – I was quite pleased with the results!

Christmas was great, as was New Year. I fully intend to spend alot more time crafting this year and have kicked the New Year off to the right start by organising the first Winter Hippy Swap on Craftster, so hopefully there’ll be some more creations to show you soon!

L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Tue, 31 May 2011 16:45:00 +0000

Yep, I know, it’s been ages since I blogged; as in the Noah and the Whale song…Life Goes On…sorry about that. A gentle nudge from Cazz reminded me that I have been neglecting my dear old blog and all the friends who come and visit me here! I blame work and life and the internet, and all the good and bad things about real life.

So what have I been up to since I last visited my little corner of the blogiverse? Well, lets talk about the fun things since work is too boring to experience it, never mind to relate it to someone else!

Well, I continue with my yoga classes (once a week) and my belly dancing classes (in full practice mode at the moment since we have a month before the next Hafla and I have 3 choreographies to remember!! That is no mean feat, let me tell you, since I am a girl with very little mental RAM – those who know me will understand my poor memory! I’m also doing some Tribal Fusion classes so I’m trying to learn some ATS dance vocabulary – cues and transitions, that sort of stuff!

And because a girl can never have too many dance accessories, I crocheted a pretty hip shawl with a beaded fringe.

And you can’t really see, but there’s a lovely silver thread plied through this variegated grey yarn – the beads are a faceted black which catch the light.

I’ve also made a pair of black satin tribal style pantaloons and a few shimmy skirts. I’ll get some photos of those another time…

This has not been all however! I’ve been on a bit of a painting bug recently…. trees have been in my mind alot…I painted this one in the New Year

You can’t really see it in the photo, but there’s a tiny black cat sitting on the hill – well, Pippin had to get in there somewhere didn’t she! The trees have been blown around like that quite a bit this year; it’s been a windy year so far.

Then I painted this as a leaving present for a friend..

It’s actually a pen and ink drawing, on watercolour board, embellished with glitter, tiny jewels and angelina fibres, and then framed.

I also had this next one in mind since my holiday to Lyme Regis last year…

It’s acrylic on canvas with sparkling inclusions.

M and I went to London for the day and did the London Eye, the London Dungeons, the London Aquarium and Platform 9 3/4!

I’ve been out and about Geocaching with the Uberhound (especially now the weather’s got nicer, and I have a fancy dandy gps to help me now – an after Christmas treat!)

And the weather at Easter was so nice that M and I risked an early holiday and took the caravan to Glastonbury for a week! What gorgeous weather we had!!

We visited the Chalice Well gardens…

We climbed the Tor twice (and met a friend up there- what are the chances of that?!)

We browsed the shops in Glastonbury town (and bumped into my mum and her friends – what were the chances of that??!!), we spent a day in the Abbey grounds

We went to Wells for a day,

we did a bit of geocaching, we went to a Medieval Fayre and we visited Stonehenge!

We really didn’t want to come home!

Oh yes, I’m in the middle of organising the Hippy Swap Round 5 on Craftster too….

Anyway, that’s kind of what I’ve been up to…more next time!!

A Happy New Year to you all!

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 16:43:00 +0000

Well, here we are, the start of another year…I hope that your Christmas was a special one, and that your year to come will be happy, and healthy, and as prosperous as it can be in the current economic climate!

I remember that I didn’t show the card that I designed for school; it’s a photograph that I took last year with a bit of Photoshop tinkering. It looks nice all printed up and glossy and it’s nice knowing that all the parents, business associates, etc will have received one this year.

I was very fortunate this year to receive a new computer which hooks up to the TV that I got for my birthday so that my little craft and work station is truly multi-functional; I don’t really watch telly much, but I do watch DVD’s, and stuff on the internet more, especially when I’m working. It’s such a cute little PC and it fit's right onto the shelf where all my stuff is stored. Apologies for the wires n stuff, but it’s stashed in it’s home now and I didn’t get a chance to photograph it before it was hooked up in it’s new home of Christmas day. The keyboard is usually stored on top of the tower since I usually use it on my lap.

I also got a new graphics tablet which hooks up to it and will help my budding Photoshop skills (okay, they’re pre-buds at the moment, but I’m working on it!) The PC came with PS Elements already on it so I can practice with that first. I have the main program on disc somewhere ready to whack on when I get around to it. I’ve also managed to network it with the main PC so that I can access all the files on there, so even when M’s playing a game, I can still get on with work *sigh*

I also received a rainbow maker; a handy little solar powered thingy which you sucker to a window and the mechanism turns the crystal round and reflects rainbows around the room! I already had one, but it’s old and it doesn’t turn anymore, so this one will go in it’s place and give me rainbows again!

I got a cute dragon incense burner which is guarding the telly downstairs at the moment…

What’s that he’s guarding? Why it’s our fossil collection…all the fossils we found on holiday this year!

and a make your own amethyst crystal tree (with free glue gun!)… and some lush bath bombs…

Even my Secret Santa gifts were awesome this year, I had a bundle of beads (which will always go down well with me!) and a cupcake book (which I am putting away somewhere I can’t see it for a while since it is now time to Watch What I Eat (codeword meaning I gotta shift the festive flab – you know what I mean…all those Christmas dinners…all those munchies…all that sitting around gaming!)

I managed to complete SuperMario Galaxy at last and also Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince which I got for my birthday (on the Wii)! I have played Wii Just Dance a few times, but it’s no fun on your own, so I’m gonna see if I can get the girlies together for a girlie night… this will be a mission in itself since both of my best friends work shifts, usually nights and most weekends! This makes it hard to see them at the same time since their shifts rarely coincide, and hard to have a weekend night with them since their days off change from week to week *sigh*

I always try to do a little recap at the end of a year and reflect on what I’ve achieved because it’s really easy to look back and only see the bad things.

So here are some of the projects I’ve done this year!

I’ve learnt Tunisian crochet, I’ve made chutney for the first time, I made elderberry jam from the berries in our garden, I went fossil hunting, I danced in two haflas and I started Geocaching. We bottle-fed some baby lambs, hand fed some deer's, we went to Alton Towers, spent two weeks in Devon and a long weekend in Norfolk, I marshalled at a festival and went to the Rage Against The Machine free gig in Finsbury Park. I’ve organised and participated in some swaps, we eventually had our floor laminated and celebrated lots of birthdays. It’s been a good year!

Here are some of the photos that I’ve taken over the year that I love!

Hope your year has been as good as mine

A Very Merry Yuletide…

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 21:45:00 +0000

Well, here we are, it’s nearly Christmas and I haven’t blogged for aaaages! Sorry if you’ve been a regular reader awaiting my crafty updates, but this last term has been very very time consuming! But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been creating, ‘coz I have!

Soo, what have I been up to since my last blog, which was my Blogoversary?

Well, I went to the Barefoot Festival with some friends. I volunteer there every year; it’s a festival of dance and other goddess-y things,

There’s always a great show on the Saturday night, followed by an amazing fire show

M and I went to Lyme Regis for a holiday in the caravan. The weather wasn’t great; in fact there were alot of days when I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face! But we did some fossil hunting along the Jurassic Coast, finding lots of great fossils

We went to the Donkey Sanctuary, Monkey World (also a sanctuary) and lots of other great places.

Term time has been really busy; observations and OFSTED visits have been very much the order of the day…very stressy! Still, I have been able to get some therapeutic crafting done

Trousers have been embellished…

And brooches have been made – these are some reclaimed jumpers, felted and then needle felted and embellished.

This brooch I love, it’s made from scraps of netting with a shisha mirror and some beads…it goes really well with my black velvet swing coat!

I’ve really been getting into Geocaching this year as well. It’s a kind of treasure hunting…you follow the clues to find the cache (usually a box with some swappy things inside, and a log book to sign)

I normally go with the Uberhound…it gives our walks a purpose and I’ve been to some lovely places this year that I knew nothing about before! I usually take my camera and I’ve got some great shots!

We also had our annual Christmas Hafla where I ended up dancing three dances!

So, the last couple of months in a couple of photos!!

I promise not to leave it so long before I blog again…

4th Blogoversary!!

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 09:59:00 +0000

So today is my 4th Blogoversary! Yay! I can’t believe it’s been going so long. I know that sometimes I don’t have so much time to blog, but I’m afraid that work has to come first, a teachers time is not always her own, even when she’s finished school and is at home! It’s been a fun journey and it’s not over yet, so here’s to many more years of random scribblings…

Anyway, I’d like to invite you to a virtual party to celebrate! The party will be held here, a beautiful hall lit with fireflies, high in the trees of an enchanted forest.

There will be a sumptuous banquet followed by dancing and everyone will be provided with guest quarters for the night so you don’t have to worry about getting home afterwards! Wear your sparkliest clothes and your best shoes, and you can eat and drink what you want because nothing today has any calories. The only thing you’ll need to bring is a cutting of your favourite flower to plant in the memory garden. Leave me a comment to let me know what you’ll be bringing. I planted mine this morning…sunflowers, my Dad’s favourite flower.

The Happy Happy Hippy Swap…

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:09:00 +0000

Each year I organise the Hippy Swap over on Craftster. It’s become like a tradition; I finish school, I have more time for crafting and sitting for hours staring at a computer screen trawling through crafty sites…you know how it is! The weather has been quite nice here, so I’ve spent alot of time in my garden, digging and planting, and moving stuff around. Look here, this is the first ever water lily to grow in my tiny water garden (big water filled bowl) and it’s soo pretty! It’s a dwarf water lily.

I’ve also done a little bit of crafting for me. This was an old t-shirt that’d been sitting around waiting for me to finish. I’d done a little bit of re-fashioning on it, cutting on the crew neck (which I’m really not find of) and creating a v-neck, trimmed with pink and gold gauzy ribbon. And then I ran out of inspiration….it sat there for quite a while waiting for the right idea. Anyway, after doing a couple of refashioning workshops, I decided that what this t-shirt needed was a bit of appliqué. And so the butterfly t-shirt was born. Or rather, sewn.

I freehand drew a butterfly outline on some paper, transferred it onto Bondaweb, ironed it to some pretty pink fabric and cut out the butterfly shape. Then I ironed it onto some purple fabric and cut round it so that you could see the purple round the pink. I made a body and some spots out of the purple fabric too and ironed them on.

Then I embroidered round them using a blanket stitch and some pink and gold threads. I also added some gold sequins for a bit of sparkle. Much better!

So then I concentrated on my hippy swap package. I can now post photos because my partner’s received the package and I’ve received hers! Because my partner was in the UK, I knitted a nice warm hat for the cold weather which is very practical for this country. This is the Meret by Woolly Wormhead, it’s one of my favourite patterns. I made it a slouchy hat…

with a combination rolled/ribbed edge.

I used a lovely warm brown…

I also needle felted and embellished this felt brooch, made from an old fulled jumper. It has green sequins and beads along the edge. I love needle felting, it’s so therapeutic stabbing away!!

Since my partner is a beginner belly dancer and wanted a coin belt, I decided to make her one. Her favourite colours were very autumnal, greens and browns and golds. It’s wonderfully jingly!

I also used some decorative ribbon and sequin strands for some sparkle.

I made sure that even the ends looked good!

And because you just have to wear flowers in your hair when you’re dancing, I made this lily hair clip. I used a flower from a cheap ‘pound shop’ artificial ‘bouquet’ and coated the edges in glitter glue…

Then I glued a spring clip underneath, making sure to hide alot of the clip in the leaves. I like to tuck flowers in my hair by my ear and I find the flowers on clips stay better than on bands.

My partner likes to write notes and lists in a notebook, so I also made her a felt notebook cover which she can take off when the notebook is full and change to another notebook. I covered it using the ‘paper fabric’ technique I learnt at a workshop a couple of months ago, and then embellished it using embroidery threads, flowers and sequins.

Hopefully using felt will make it quite durable…

I also used Angelina Fibres on it which are such fun to work with!

The notebook is just a cheap and cheerful A5 hardback notebook.

I sent along one of the rainbow light bulbs from my shop, because they are just so damned hippy-ish!

And in the spirit of eco-friendly hippy crafts, I upcycled an old Ferrero Rocher plastic box, and decorated it using glass paints.

It looks lovely in the sunshine.

I’m kind of an overachiever and I do tend to spoil my swap partners, and well, hippy crafting is such good fun, that I had to make some extras for the package, but I’d agreed with my partner that we’d do extras, so that was fine and dandy. I made a green and brown beaded necklace with a Celtic pendant, since my partner loves all things Celtic, and greens and browns….

I had planned to do a bit of hippy-like appliqué, but I just couldn’t find the right image, then I noticed that I had some green fabric left from my belly dance costume that would go really well with this top, and some green organza that complimented it really well, and the top sort of morphed and became a sort of woodland fairy type of top instead.

I made some ruffles by tearing two strips of fabric which were much much longer than the bit that I wanted to embellish. I sewed a running stitch along the middle of each strip and pulled so that it gathered it up. Then I sewed it into place. I did the organza one first, then the satin ruffle, the I sewed a faceted bead every cm or so. The fabrics should fray and look pretty….

I also painted an ash catcher green, then decoupaged it with a sunflower and sparkly Modge Podge. I varnished it to make sure it was durable. This didn’t photograph so well, so you’ll have to take my word for it that there’s a sunflower on it!

To see what I received in return, click here. We were both very happy hippies!

Happy Hafla and Bellydance Superstars!

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 21:23:00 +0000

So I finished my costume just in time! The Hafla was on Thursday night and I finished my outfit at lunchtime on Thursday. My bra was covered and embellished with ribbon, lace, sequins, part of an old earring and some coins. I took the straps off the bra and replaced them with ribbon, covered the back straps with ribbon and replaced the hooks with D rings and voila!

I made a coin belt using the same fabric I used to cover the bra with. I sewed ribbon, bells, sequins and coins on it. I also made an overskirt from embroidered organza, I cut two panels and sewed them onto two pieces of ribbon, which I tied, one back and one front, over a plain black skirt.

Here’s the finished outfit!

The shoulder straps crossed over and the back and fastened through the D rings!

And another shot just for fun!

The Hafla was so much fun! This was Demi’s first ever solo performance…

The Cairo Cats performed this beautiful dance that kept everyone entranced…

Cairo Cats

Louisa did a cheeky little Egyptian dance…

Fulya was fabulous as always!

There were so many fabulous dancers

Truely inspirational

and all shapes and sizes..

A couple of nights later, we went to see Bellydance Superstars at the Raqs Britannia in Sheffield. Sadly we weren’t allowed to take pictures (boo!) but again, it was a great night, although a bit too polished and choreographed. I did feel like it had been choreographed to a format, even the tribal sections. It was all very slick, and dancing to die for, with immaculate performances, but I felt it was just that, a performance. There was no soul in it, no heart…maybe I’m being over critical, but the dancers were all very young, very slim, and very similar. Their personalities didn’t shine through. And to me, that’s what dance is all about!

Funky Clothes and Festival!

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:16:00 +0000

Unless you’re a hermit, or you happen to live in the USA, you can’t have failed to notice that the World Cup has started. The Football (soccer) World Cup. If you’re a footie fan, it’s kinda a big deal. Me, I don’t give a damn. I used to be indifferent about it, but since I live with a footie fan, I have grown to hate the ‘beautiful game’. I hate the way it turns sound, sensible men into drunken argumentative idiots. M is a football fan. He loves it. L-O-V-E..LOVES it. *Sigh* He even invested in a 42” tv just so that he could see each special moment. So, I have planned an alternative itinerary for the four long weeks that the Cup is taking place. Friday afternoon there was a Crafternoon workshop in embellishing t-shirts. We had to take a tee to work on; mine was a deep purple skinny-fit job from Primark. Cheap and cheerful and a terrible fit. I hated the way the sleeves bit into my arms.

I drew out a dragonfly design onto paper, traced it onto Bondaweb, then onto fabric, cut it, ironed it onto my tee, then embroidered and embellished it. I used a different fabric for the wing and a sparkly thread to sew it onto the shirt with a blanket stitch.

I cut and frilled the sleeves using a lettuce stitch. Much more comfy.

I love the fabric I chose for the body of the dragonfly, especially the placement of this skull on the head, giving it a deaths head moth appearance. Then I sewed little bead antennae and sequins onto the wings to give it a little sparkle.

It’s already a much loved garment! Now, sometimes I maybe trawling the internet and I’ll spy something which I just have to have, like these yarn and needles charms. How cool are they? Immediately I thought ‘stitch markers’ and lo and behold, they became stitch markers. I also bought some 8mm jump rings because I know from past experience that I don’t have any stitch markers in that size, so now I’ll be prepared :)

I teamed them up with these scrummy pink sparkly beads which have been sitting in my stash for ages!

And remember I told you about my stitching workshop (customising charity shop finds), well I went online and ordered myself one of those freehand embroidery feet for my Brother sewing machine and as you can see, it’s already been put to good use! This is just playing, stitching turquoise organza onto dark blue felt with a swirly freehand stitch in yellow.

Then I had a small piece of calico tie-dyed with yellow, blue and pink which I embroidered onto yellow felt, embellished using embroidery thread in a dark blue spial running stitch, then freehand stitches a sunburst design on using gold thread. More when it’s finished!

I also spent one happy evening during a football game embroidering embellishments onto this plain purple dress and watching Terry Pratchett’s ‘Going Postal.

I’d bought this pink shisha and embroidered ribbon at the Birmingham Rag Market and decided to use it on my dress.

Then pinking out the green and yellow from the ribbon, decided to make them my accent colours. I embroidered a yellow flower onto the centre bodice using a shisha mirror and chain stitch, and used a running stitch to create accents round the edges of the bodice and neckline..

and round the pockets…

and along the double hem…

It’s such a pretty dress, I’m going to be wearing it alot this summer I think!

I also went to the Leamington Peace Festival with friends.

The weather was scorching hot, so we all burnt to a crisp!

And just to prove the nice weather we’ve been having, just look at Midsummer Day’s Sunset! Happy Solstice to you :)

Parties and workshops!

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 20:59:00 +0000

Well, the last couple of weeks have gone flying by, yes, literally flying!!! All my students are getting to the end of their courses, which is good, but very very bad for my bank balance! I shudder to think of the upcoming financial drought…my credit is about to be severely crunched! Still I’m hoping that I will be able to get enough summer school work to tide me over; after all, I still have a mortgage to pay, and there are soo many things I want to, no need to do over the summer, especially now I have no lesson prep or marking to be doing!

Myself and some friends took advantage of the £10 train ticket offer to travel for a day out to Hereford, supposedly quite a bohemian place, but the train broke down and we ended up in Birmingham for the day, where we made the most of it and had a nice lunch out and then spent the rest of the day fabric and embellishment shopping in their huge, crazy fabric market.

The social side of summer has started to kick in – we’ve had one birthday barbeque already, in beautiful glorious sunshine which is damn rare for England. We had the usual foodfest, complete with birthday cake, pass the parcel and goodie bags! After all, why should kids have all the fun! If you’re not familiar with ‘pass the parcel’, you start off with a gift, wrapped up, then you wrap another layer of paper round with a tiny gift in the wrapping, then another and another until you have a giant parcel of many layers and tiny gifts. Then you pass it round the circle to music, which is randomly stopped. If you happen to have the parcel in your sticky little mitts when the music stops, then you get to take a layer off! We like to put lovely little chocolates or pretty nail files, nail varnish, make-up, pens, stuff like that between. It’s such good fun and everyone goes home with a gift. I got the centre gift in one of the parcels, a lovely scented candle. I made a really nice glass necklace and pendant for Lorraine, whose birthday it was, but stupidly forgot to take a photo before I gave it to her – doohh!

I also spent nearly two weeks making the goodie bag gifts, little bottle cap pincushions in a rainbow of colour. They have an embroidered and sequined flower on the botton, and chain stitch border round the edge, and a lovely ‘iced’ top so that they looked like little birthday cakes, or cupcakes.

The day after that, myself and a couple of friends went to a Make and Sew workshop ‘Customising Charity Shop Finds’ – you know I’m well into that! We learnt lots of wonderful techniques using Bondaweb and Transfoil. The first thing we did was use strips of bright fabric, stitched together and embellished. These can be used for embellishing all sorts of things.

Then we tried an appliqué and free hand stitching technique using stabiliser,

then a patchwork-y type effect.

We also made little fabric roses! It was such good fun and I came away with loads of ideas and a burning desire to spend lots of money on more fabric, bondaweb, threads, transfoil, etc. I did come home and order a freehand foot for my Brother sewing machine.

The very next day, M and I went to London for the day; we’d got free tickets to see Rage Against the Machine in Finsbury Park! What a great day that was, only it took us four hours to get home! Four hours! We probably could have walked it in that time! There were quite a few bands playing, The Gallows (a punk band), Roots Manuva a London Rap artist, Gogol Bordello (I love their sort of gypsy anarchist sound, and I love their track ‘start wearing purple’) and a DJ to play between bands.

The weather was lovely, despite dour predictions, we had a very light shower about halfway through the day, but we’d brought light jackets with us.

There are days when I feel up to the mosh pit, but today I was happy a bit further back with space to dance! Luckily they had big screens so that you could see exactly what was going on on the stage.

The finale was amazing – I swear that Zack de la Rocha, the lead singer of RATM looks exactly the same as he did years ago when ‘Killing in the Name of’ was Number One the first time round (and yes I saw them live on that tour too!

The day was amazing and all the better because it was free! Proceeds went to Shelter which was excellent. Getting home was a nightmare though, the Tubes on Sunday end a lot earlier than in the rest of the week, and the police were being typically over cautious and closed off all the Underground entrances except one. Then they had mounted police filtering 40,000 tired and drunk party-goers onto one Underground platform! What a recipe for disaster! The Tube station is literally 2 minutes walk from Finsbury Park and yet it took us over an hour to get onto a train! We managed to get the very last Tube of the night and barely made it back to Euston for our last train home! Then that train terminated at Milton Keynes because of ‘engineering work’ at Northampton, and we had to get a coach back. A journey which would take us an hour by car took us over four hours! We got in at two o’clock in the morning and then I had to be up at six thirty, for an eight thirty lesson. I was knackered! God knows what London will do when we get the Olympics!

Holiday in Hunstanton…

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:11:00 +0000

So things are absolutely crazy here at the moment. Have I said this before?? Can’t remember…my brain is trying to do an impression of a black hole here…all intelligent thought has been eradicated by the mindnumbingly boring task of the multiple marathon. Read, tick, read, comment, read, tick, sign, blah, blah, blah! When the words and images start to blur together I take a break, but I’m under time pressure here, we’re already behind schedule because of the volcanic ash disruption… aaarghh! I have to be fair and accurate, this is someone's future I’m deciding here….

Sadly my tribal classes have finished, but I think I may have found another tribal troop so I plan to start those after half term now my lovely students have finished classes and I can get to a six o’clock dance class. I do still have my Turkish/Egyptian belly dance classes though, so I get to sparkle once a week for now. This is the class which will be having the Hafla in approximately three weeks – wow, so quickly! We’re practicing our choreography like mad, but I think we’ll be ready in time. We usually are. Now comes the first dilemma – what to wear!? I have a very colourful banded circle skirt which I’m thinking of wearing, but I need to decide on a top and accessories. I’ll have to have a dress-up session.

I also have a ticket for the Raqs brittania night – Bellydance Superstars are performing in Sheffield, England the same week as our Halfa, so I need to decide what I’m wearing to that too. And save up money for the souk of course! Although I probably won’t be able to afford much! Sooo excited to see them!

Anyway, we’re now in summer half term – hurray for holidays, unpaid though they may be. M and I decided to go to the coast for the Bank Holiday weekend. We stayed at a Deer Park in Snettisham in Norfolk. We went early on Saturday and came back on Monday. We managed to cram quite a lot into our weekend though. On Saturday, since the weather was wet (Bank Holiday weather, suprprise, surprise..) we left Joe in the caravan and went to the Sealife Centre in Hunstanton and admired the fish, otters and seals

Our visit coincided with otter feeding time and you’ve never heard such noisy scolding as a …pack?…what do you call a group of otters?…of hungry otters!

The aquariums were lovely, some of them were really colourful, M was particularly taken with the viewing pool of stingrays…

Since we were sans cannine, we spent an hour in the beachside bar admiring the surfers. It was too cold and wet to walk along the beachfront.

On Sunday we took advantage of our location on the Deer Park to to the activities onsite. The first thing we signed up for was bottle feeding the lambs!!!

Isn’t he adorable!!! And if you thought the otters were noisy, these little guys were even noisier! This particular breed to sheep have only two teats, and commonly have twins, so when a ewe has triplets, the extra lamb is bottle fed to make sure that it develops well. We all had a bottle each and the lambs were let out half a dozen at a time, to charge out looking for a bottle. That was just the funniest sight! And boy can they chug a bottle! We got to feed three or four lambs.

The next thing on the agenda was the deer safari. We all sat in a customised trailer with seats and were towed round the park by a tractor. The deer park is right on the edge of the Sandringham Estate where the Queen lives sometimes. The farmer said that all the land round that you could see belonged to the Queen except for this bit that the deer park was on. We had regular stops allowing us to see the deer. They’re busy shedding their winter coat at the moment.

The first baby had been born a weekend or two before, so we timed it well. Apparently the mothers hide the babies in the rushes for ten days to protect them from predators, so we lucky to be able to see a couple. Some of them were still hiding though…we just caught a glimpse of them hiding! We also got to hand feed some of the deer from the trailer!

In the afternoon, we went to visit a friend of mine who has hand built an Eceni Village with her husband! This is the sort of place Boudicca would have grown up on. They’re both living historians who travel to schools to re-enact periods in history.

All that lovely yellow you can see is woad, you get the lovely blue colour from the stalks and roots.

They have quite a few buildings now, the men's hall (or tavern!) where one of the altars was, also the weapons etc.

The houses were quite cosy inside, they'd been well insulated so they all they needed were tiny fires which were enough to keep them warm.

One of the houses (called the moon house) had a lovely bedroom…

There were some sheep, goats, chickens etc which live there too, and the fleece from the sheep and goats are collected to weaving. Jo uses the natural dyes from the plants about to weave the garments and fabrics onsite.

We then headed back to Hunstanton to walk along the front with Joe, enjoying a handmade ice-cream, then onto Norfolk Lavender, which sadly was shut by the time we got there!

Sadly the gas bottle ran out late Sunday night, and faced with heavy rain on Monday morning and the prospect of no morning cuppa or food to keep us warm, we decided to head home after an exhausting, but very enjoyable weekend!

Highlights – bottle feeding the lambs, feed the deer

Lows – the weather…sigh!

The Great Bluebell Hunt

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:17:00 +0000

Around this time of year the English countryside plays host to the wonderful Hyacinthoides non-scripta, which to you and I is known as the English Bluebell, a glorious deep violet blue scented flower which dominates the woodland round here. In fact we have many of England's most beautiful bluebells woods right here in my native county. It’s illegal to pick any wild flowers here in Britain, or to dig up any to move them to your garden for example, but each year many people go in search of the glorious swathe of blue and that wonderful scent.

Sadly the English Bluebell is under threat from the prolific Spanish Bluebell which looks similar, but does not have such a gracefully curved stem (the Spanish is completely straight) and has no scent. Saldy, even when the two are cross pollinated, the strains of the Spanish take over. I went with my sister and Mum to a local English Heritage site where we could stroll through the bluebells woods, and the gardens of the manor house.

There were many different varieties of chickens strolling about..this cheeky chappy caught my eye…

And these darling hairy piggies which I’ve been trying to find the breed name…they are sooo cute! If you know what they are, let me know!

These are definitely not native to Britain, but they were certainly pretty to look at!

The garden were full of stunning flowers

And lovely little surprises at every step…

The weather was beautiful. Sadly it’s been chilly aswell. I’ve found some cultivated English Bluebells at a local garden centre, so I’ve planted some which will hopefully give me my own little bluebell wood next year!

I have also been having fibre adventures as well as floral adventures. I finally finished my Mosey Legwarmers! Yay!

I love the cabled back ‘seam’

I ran out of the lavender yarn before I got round to the pompoms, so I chose this lovely lilac colour to make them

and then so it didn’t seem odd, I crocheted a ruffle at the bottom in the lilac. I really like how it turned out….

I also crocheted a tribal fringe belt which I found on Ravelry here

I’ve been doing a Tribal Dance class for the last month, so tribal accessories have been in my mind a lot recently. I don’t have any dancewear in green, so I used some stash yarn to create this. I actually really love this belt now it’s finished and I think I’m going to use some of the left over yarn to create some matching falls, or to plait into my hair in long pigtails.

The yarn is a mixture of acrylic, fancy novelty stuff, cotton and chenille. I fancied a mixture of textures and colours.

Love it!!

And then ‘cos I was on a roll, I took apart several silk flowers, and mixed them together for a hair slide.

And then because I obviously have startitus at the moment, I started this Tribal Tassel Belt which was on Craftster ages ago. I’ve had it bookmarked for ages and finally got round to starting it. I’ve had to learn Tunisian Crochet in order to do it, and not just any old Tunisian Crochet, but double sided Tunisian crochet no less! You use a long crochet hook with two hooks, one at each end!

But look at the gorgeousness that it creates!

I love that you get a different effect on each side.

Yes, I know, I succumbed to my favourite colours…

Ash, Rings and Wings

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Mon, 03 May 2010 07:12:00 +0000

Well, it’s been an unusual couple of weeks. Unless you live in Europe, you probably won’t have taken much notice of an Icelandic volcano eruption, but over here, particularly in the UK, it’s caused chaos! Why is that you may ask? Well, it seems that volcanic ash is not very good for aeroplane engines. And as that cloud of volcanic ash was headed our way, planes were grounded and airports closed. Even the RAF weren’t taking chances, and in my mind, that’s be good enough for me! For almost two weeks, our skies were quiet and unmarred by the sight of plane trails. It also coincided with the most beautiful warm weather…coincidence?? I wonder!

Of course this has meant that thousands of Britons have been stranded overseas, unable to get home. As it was the Easter holidays/Spring break, many of our students had gone home and were unable to get back. We also had teachers who had gone abroad for a holiday and not been able to get back. Some of our students have only just been able to get flights now, and some are still waiting. I’ve had classes of perhaps only one or two students. Our GCSE students were supposed to take the first part of their exams on the 24th, and we had to get special dispensation to postpone it. I’m sure it will all be okay in the end though.

The warm weather has meant that everything has leapt into blossom, my cherry tree is starting to look glorious! We planted grass seed and bulbs out over the holiday, but I’ve had to water regularly, and the ground is dry and cracked, so yesterdays rain shower was welcomed by the garden.

I drove home from yoga the other night to see the most stunning full moon; huge with a glowing ring of light around it. I grabbed my camera when I got home and experimenting with different settings got these shots.

This one was taken with a different setting about half an hour later, partially obscured by a tree.

And then this one was taken much later, high in the sky…

I’ve spent spare moments over the last week reconning an old fleece top that I had acquired, I loved the colour, but it was a plain boring v-necked fleece top, so I had some ideas in the back of my mind and attacked it with a pair of scissors to create a shrug style fairy top.

It was really easy to do, I cut down the V at the front and then scooped under the bust, and round the sides to a point in the back. I was watching Ugly Betty at the time, so maybe I got a little Mode style inspiration…

I also cut the sleeves to a point.

I serged around the raw edges, then added the finishing touches, beads, and then appliquéd wings on the back! I totally love it now!

I’ve also been knitting away creating my Mosey legwarmers..

On The May Day Bank Holiday, M and I decided to take a day trip. It would have been nice to get away for the weekend, but we haven’t got around to getting a tow bar fitted on the car yet. Anyway, we decided to go to St. Albans for the day, which was one of the oldest Roman settlements in Briton (after Londinium). The weather was nice and we spent a lovely day strolling around the market, where I bought a lovely flower pendant, and the Cathedral…

and then we went to the Verulamium Museum, which showed how the Romans lived along with some of the stunning mosaics that their homes were decorated in…

I could totally live with one of these on my floor!

There were lots of displays with artefacts discovered by archaeologists (my friend was on a dig here when she was an archaeologist). I was fascinated by these key rings..keys that were worn on the fingers and is probably were the expression ‘key ring’ comes from!!

And a mosaic floor, still in situ with the hypocaust (under floor heating) exposed at the corner.

It was a lovely day out…

Tales from the Riverbank…

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:50:00 +0000

I can’t believe that a week’s gone already! It’s flown by at supersonic speeds that would have put Concord to shame! And what a week! I’ve managed to keep to the Pledge as sworn to uphold in my last post; yes folks, it’s been over a week, and I’ve not succumbed to the digital temptations of the FB games. Do I feel virtuous? Well, just a little :)

It’s been a lovely week; spring has peeked through the covers and has decided that it’s time for her to get out of bed. I have actual buds blooming in my garden. The forsythia is stunning in it’s yellow glory.

I mean, how could you not feel a surge of happiness when greeted by such a burst of colour in the morning? Even the bamboo has flowered!

Joe and I have managed to take a stroll along the canal in the sunshine

We said hello to the wildlife we met on the way

We revelled in the quietness…

I even managed to get Joe to pose for me!

I’ve also managed to get out and about this week, I walked to the cinema one day to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D which was amazing, and then on Friday I went out to lunch with some friends, to celebrate Pippa’s birthday. I gave her the heart brooch along with a candle that I’d made a decorated with sequins.

And I also made these for the party bags

Lots of these very cute felt necklaces.

I think I saw something similar on the ‘net ages ago, but I don’t remember where, so I can’t credit it.

I cut three circles out of felt, each one getting smaller…

then I used an embroidery needle to thread them onto some nylon coated wire…

They look very cute when worn…

Everybody loved them anyway and we had a great time! I think my hips need a little me time to recover though, all you can eat buffet is nice, but it does tend to make one overindulge!

The best thing about last week? We bought a new car!!! Hurray!

It’s big enough for Joe to fit in the back, more than powerful enough to tow the caravan and was in our price range! So I’m now mobile again!! Woohoo!

Spring has sprung….

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:51:00 +0000

Hello my wonderful bloglets, I hope you had a lovely Spring festival, whatever you celebrate. I have two, count ‘em, TWO whole weeks off to catch up with some much needed crafting therapy! And yes, I’ve been very productive! See, I’ve had an epiphany. A big one. And I’ve taken the pledge. Well, not THE pledge, but a pledge. No alcohol involved folks promise, couldn’t involve alcohol anyway since I’m not allowed to drink very much as it interferes with my meds. But I digress. After my Dad died I realised that I really don’t see that much of my family, except at family get-togethers. And the family members that usually host those get-togethers are aging. Y’see most of my family are spread all over the country. My mum and siblings are the only ones here in my town. And I do want to keep contact with my family. I don’t have any kids and are unlikely to have any and I don’t want to be alone in my dotage. So I succumbed to Facebook. Aaaahhh, does the penny start to drop?? Anyway, all my family are now now networked on Facebook, me, mum and my brother and sister, my uncle and aunt, all my cousins…some of the older generation don’t seem to have got the hang of it yet, but all my generations and younger are fully embracing the virtual family network. I like seeing what terrible things my second cousins have got up to at Friday nights parties, I’m amused at my cousins ramblings and I like seeing holiday photos ‘n stuff….you get the picture? So that bit is wonderful, I’m back in touch with friends and family that I’d kinda drifted away from. But then, I discovered the games on Facebook…Fairyland, Farm Town, Vampire Wars, School of Wizardry…so many fun games, so little time. And there-in dear readers, is the crux of the problem. My crafty life was beginning to suffer. My blog was suffering. I’m sure you guys have noticed?! So I have decided to drop the games, well, all except Fairyland which I’ve kept to have a little flutter when I have the time. I am still playing the Wii, and my NDS, but as for FB games, since the weekend I’ve only been on Fairyland and I’ve not gone on any of the other games. And look what I’ve been doing instead!

I’ve painted several new batches of bulbs for my eBay shop…

I call this colourway Mardi Gras because it’s so vibrant and fun…

I also completed this…

Isn’t it pretty? It’s reclaimed fulled sweater felt, space-dyed with Kool-Aid, and cut and serged to fit.

But to fit what? Hmmm. See the adorable felt flowers all lovingly hand sewn on.

Any ideas? Well, this is my very old laptop which had been languishing in the loft for years, since I got my fancy all singing, all dancing, widescreen laptop in fact. I needed one for work, to work on, to show students tutorial videos, resource pictures and stuff like that on. So I didn’t want to bring my good laptop, but I figured that this one would do fine. I slapped in a new cmos battery and Hey Presto, I had an up and running laptop again! Yeah so the students laugh and take the piss out of my ancient laptop, but I guess it’s never going to be nicked. It’s running XP on it, but it’s only got a CD drive, so I can’t load Windows 7 on it like I’ve got on my other laptop. Of course because my lil dinosaur gets carted around all over the place, he needed a lil jacket to protect his lil old arse. Admittedly his arse is rubber coated, but well, y’know how it is! I like pretty and functional, I’m Arts and Crafts through n through me!

What else have I been doing apart from dinosaur cosies? Well, I finally got around to finishing this apron top which I started last summer. It’s made from scraps and I literally used every scrap that I had of this fabric. Please excuse the leaning model, I think she cracked one of her legs in a Series of Unfortunate Events involving M and a Dyson.

There wasn’t even enough for ties at the back, so I did a cross-over popper fastened back, with decorative buttons.

It actually fits me better than it does Chi’anna (my grey girl model) and was a fit n pin job. No patterns were used in the torturing of this fabric!

Saturday M’s mum lent us her car for a car shopping trip, so we had a little tour round the car showrooms and found a car that we liked and that amazingly enough was in our price range! Hurray! It’s a 2lt silver Skoda Octavia estate which is big enough to tow the caravan easily, I can fit Joe in the back and should be great for all our needs. Sadly because of the Bank holiday, the paperwork has taken a little longer to sort out, so we get to pick it up on Saturday!! Hurray hurray! I’ll have wheels again next week. Hmmm, where shall I go?? I can’t wait to get back on the road.

Sunday my Mum had us all around for an Easter Sunday lunch. My Mum loves to cook and boy is she good at it! She makes the most amazing cakes, she doesn’t tend to follow recipes, it’s all instinct! Thanks to Mum and her amazing culinary skills, we all love food and sadly,none of us can carry it easily. You know the old expression, ‘a minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips’? Well, they could have been describing our family *lol* So with my health problems, I’m maybe a little more aware of my weight and try to keep it under control than the others, so I watch what I eat and try to exercise regularly, my brother and sis haven’t quite got it under control yet, so they’re a bit heavier than me, but I tell you, dinner on Sunday was awesome. Vegetarian lasagne for the girls, surf n turf for the boys, garlic bread and salad, with cherry pie and/or chocolate cake for dessert. A heaven that I don’t often allow myself. So yes, I pigged out! Hee hee!

I made up for it yesterday though, I walked Joe up to the post office and back, to post off all my eBay sales, and then in the afternoon I went to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D. No-one else was free, so I went on my own, which was cool, although the place was packed! I’d have struggled to find a couple of seats together. I just love Tim Burton, and Johnny Depp always puts the cherry on the cake! The weather was so nice yesterday, it was a nice stroll across the fields to the pictures, just me and my mp3 player.

And what have I been doing today? Well I finished on of Mosey. Looky here…

Such a pretty cabling pattern..

On Friday the girls and I are going out to celebrate Pippa’s birthday. We’re going to Red Hot, the local all-you-can-eat international cuisine place. We’ll do our usual party bags and it’ll be fun fun fun. Wonder what mayhem we’ll cause this time :) So this is what I’ve made for Pippa. It’s reclaimed fulled sweater, the same one that I used for my laptop bag actually. I’ve needle felted different coloured roving onto it, then embroidered and sewn beads and sequins onto it. I haven’t made anything for the party bags yet, that’ll be tomorrows projects.

Wow, look how much you can get done when you don’t allow yourself to be sucked in by online games! Catch you all later!

Catching Up On Old Times!

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:58:00 +0000

Well, I never meant to be gone so long! This term has been crazy, and sooo busy! But let me tell you, I haven’t rested on my laurels. I had a visit from an old friend and her daughter who’d emigrated to Australia two years ago. Lola was a wee baby when I last saw her, and here she is, all growed up at the ripe old age of three years old. Joe’s bigger than she is, but after a hesitant introduction, here she is teaching him how to make pompom’s (we made pompom chicks and I hyped her up with double chocolate cookies – hee hee!). I was a touch jealous of her trousers though, almost makes me want to cut up my vintage candlewick bedspread….almost!

I bought my mum an MP3 player for Mothers Day and made her a case for it. She was going on a cruise to the Dominican Islands, so I gave it to her early. It has vintage sari ribbon decorating it, and a long cord so that she can wear it round her neck! Poor ole Mum, she went down with bronchitis on her cruise and was too ill to enjoy it!

I’ve been treating myself to the odd bunch of flowers just because it’s starting to feel like spring!

I’ve been embellishing an old hoodie with handspun yarn…

Just simple chain stitch flowers, French knots and blanket stitch.

And I’ve had a card making session or two, with a mixture of new and recycled embellishments.

I found a very cheap online craft site and have treated myself…..

A friend gave me some clothes that she couldn’t get into anymore, so I’ve been taking them in and up. One of the thing she gave me was a beautiful brown and aqua tie-dye skirt which was about three sizes too big for me, I took it in and made this from the scrap, a vintage button and some matching ricrac. The edges of the fabric will hopefully fray and look all raggedy.

The car’s had a few mishaps this month; I accidently took off the bumper whilst reversing it out of a space (yeah, embarrassing, I know!), then the damn thing conked out last week, so I’m now without wheels and it’s torturous! Just as I’m coming up to my holiday too! I’ve really been missing my yoga and dance classes, but the last bus stops at 6 o’clock and there’d be no way of getting there or back, and believe me, my wages don’t stretch to taxi journeys everywhere. The bus is bad enough, costing me £40 a week in bus fare! I certainly don’t pay that much to run my car for the week and I can use it safely at night too! Pah! Hopefully by the next time I speak to you, I’ll have arranged a loan, and I’ll be showing off a new (to me) car!

Roll on Spring holidays!

New floor!

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:02:00 +0000

So we had our new floor done! Hurrah! After three years, possibly longer, the laminate floor which had been sitting in a pile at the side of the room has finally been laid! We paid a lovely guy to do it and it took him almost two days (which is a surprising long time considering the miniscule size of our living room) and was a bitch to do apparently! The floor isn’t even and the wood was slightly bowed (although we think it was like that when we bought it, which explains why we were unable to do it ourselves all those years ago!)

Look how lovely it looks! We bought a new rug to compliment the sofa and the floor, and we’ve sat and admired it all for many days now!

We found these lovely little purple flower lights at the same place that we bought the rug (John Lewis for any interested Brits)…

We’re so happy with it!

So this has all spurred me on in my creative endeavours! I have a pair of jeans which are actually a size too big for me now, but with a belt and a longer tunic top look fine. I embellished the hem with some felt flower appliqués….

I even stitched some on the bum pockets!

I’ve also been making brooches from some felted jumpers, some coloured fibre, and assorted embroidery threads, sequins and beads :) This one’s for me, in multi coloured shades of pink, purple, lilac, turquoise and emerald, to go with my lovely new purple coat

and this one’s a gift for a friend! It’s in swirly tones of green, turquoise and purple…

needle felted and embroidered details….I think there’s going to be more of these in the future!

Snow Joke…

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:35:00 +0000

Aaarghh! No snow! Well, no serious snow anyway; not enough for the schools here to declare a ~~legitimate holiday~~ snow day, so poor ole Samsara had to drag her unwilling arse to work. It’s not that I hate work or anything, in fact usually I quite enjoy teaching; some days it’s like free entertainment. Today for example one of my art students asked if he could ‘go to toilet, to do poo’. Um, well of course you can ***, but that was too much information. So *** was gone ages, then eventually he came back to class informing me that ‘poo not come’, grimacing and patting his abdomen'. English is not his first language by the way, and sometimes I wonder whether he’s actually paying attention in EFL classes at all! Two minutes later he announces that ‘I go try again’. Great news, I’m so glad you feel comfortable enough with me to share details of your bowel movements, especially before lunch! Still at least there’s not much marking to do since universally most students ‘forgot’ their holiday homework! They have to hand it in next lesson though, so they’ve ended up with more homework than usual this week. Yes, I give homework out on the first day back. Harsh Miss eh?

Anyway, enough of the ‘back to school’ stories, I have been very very productive this weekend. Yes indeed, I can tell that you’re impressed. Enjoy it folks, once term’s in full swing again, I will probably won’t have much time for crafting until half term, which we worked out today is only 24 working days away!

Yesterday, as promised, I hennaed my hair and am now sporting a lovely coppery mane.

I frogged and then finished my Retro Rings Tam, using doubled DK (UK) yarn and an 8mm hook.

It’s quite chunky and hopefully will be quite warm.

I’m planning on wearing it this week. Tomorrow if the outfit allows!

I embellished my long sleeved tunic dress by sewing an organza ribbon along the bottom hem with a decorative herring bone stitch in a black and grey variegated thread

then I free embroidered a wavy line in silver thread a couple of times, and embellished with multi-coloured sequins which I piled up in sets of three to create a flower like embellishment.

Yes, I went with multi-coloured in the end. I had planned to do silver, but I think the little splashes of colour go very well with the black dress. It’s alot more striking than you can tell from the photos. Black doesn’t photograph well, especially using a flash which I’ve had to do since it’s dark here from about 3.30pm and I don’t finish teaching till 6pm!

I even had time to cut out the felt flowers and leaves for my jeans. Remember last year I embellished a pair of jeans with felt flowers? Well, they were too big for me in the end, so I sold them and now I have another pair of jeans to recreate the much loved embellished jeans.

And hopefully, this is kind of what I’m aiming for…

Obviously there’ll be embroidery and sequins and beads and stuff…You know me…

Have a great week!

There’s No Business Like Snow Business…..

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:27:00 +0000

It back to school time…no, wait, maybe not….it’s snowed….can we open schools with snow on the ground? Yes…no…um, we’re not sure…okay, you teachers come in and see if any students turn up….

My first class on Tuesday morning started with an astounding four students! Wednesday it dropped to three students and we went home early because it started snowing quite hard and we were worried about buses not running and students being stuck. Thursday I had the grand total of one student! The new term has really started off gently!

Still, I really don’t mind as it’s given me the chance to finish Mum’s snowball Boa, a wonderfully cuddly and luxurious looking scarf made from pompoms!

And then, because I also had a giant pompom maker, I whipped up this huge pompom using scrap yarn that was too short for anything else. Okay, so I just wondered how big it would be. It’s next to a regular sized cotton reel for comparison! The colours are a bit random, but this is just a tester.

The other projects I’m working on are hopefully all short and sweet ones. My last projects were all looong term and I feel like I need some instant gratification, so I’m working on the Retro Rings Tam ( a crocheted hat) which is actually taking me alot longer than I thought. I didn’t have any worsted weight yarn, so I doubled up some DK (sport?) yarn hoping that it would be okay. Actually I guessed it would make it a bit bigger which I wasn’t too bothered about because I wanted a slightly slouchier hat than the picture showed. I’m pretty near the end of it now and it’s not big enough. It’s not even near big enough to fit on my head and I’m pretty average head wise. Pah! I’m going to have to undo it all and re-crochet it using a bigger hook. This is already my second attempt because the first time I used a hand painted yarn which was lovely, but not enough of it because I ran out when I was almost finished! And because it’s a US pattern, the yarn weights and brands are completely alien, so sometimes it’s guesswork as to substituting. *Sigh*

I’ll get it sorted; the actual hat doesn’t take that long to crochet once I get going, it’s the frogging and redoing which is taking the time!

The next project in my WIP’s bag is Mosey from Knitty, a pair of thick cabled legwarmers which look really warm and cute with their pompom decorated ties. I’m not really obsessed with pompoms at the moment, well sort of a little bit, I guess. Anyway, I’m using the same yarn as I used for my BPT Hoodie since it’s another cable project, I love the colour, and I have probably a couple of huge balls left of this stuff.

For those of you who haven’t checked out the pattern yet, this is hopefully what they will end up looking like! With any luck I’ll finish them in time to wear them this winter *lol*

I’ve just done the first part of the ribbed cuff, made the eyelet holes, and am now carrying on the ribbing, it has to measure 9 inches, so it’ll fold over nicely. This is quite a nice easy knit so far, a no-brainer and quite therapeutic. Whether that will change when I start cabling I don’t know…

However, it’s not all yarn projects in progress at the moment. I bought a nice black long sleeved tunic dress from H&M which will look great with either jeans or tights and boots, but apart from a bit of lace trim, it’s quite plain.

So with the addition of some of these embellishments I plan to pretty it up a bit and add some sparkle!

I did think about using lots of colours on it, but I figured that using silver would still allow it to be teamed with almost anything. Hopefully I’ll finish it in time to wear it for school on Monday, although there’s more snow predicted for Sunday and Monday…fingers crossed eh? Tomorrow I plan to spend the day doing some more well earned personal maintenance. I had the time today to get on the Wii Fit Plus and try out the new additions to the game. I love the Rhythm Kung Fu and the Rhythm Parade, but I couldn’t get the Step routines to work. Hmmm. Will have to do a bit of research and figure out why. Tomorrow I’m going to henna my hair using the Lush henna red that I’ve had sitting there over Christmas and just haven’t got around to. I have to devote the whole day to sitting there with my head wrapped in cling film – delightful but the results are definitely worth it. It smells divine and I love the red in my hair! I once used a chemical semi-permanent colour on my hair and although it looked nice, I hated the way it made my hair feel afterwards, so brittle and harsh feeling. I swore then never again! I’ve always used henna, and I always plan to! Luckily I’m not quite grey enough to need to do this on a regular basis, I just like the colour. Whilst I’m waiting for the colour to deepen I can carry on knitting and ponder on my next projects. I have lots of ideas in mind, lots in my Ravelry queue and lots in my mind; ideas are never a problem, it’s having the time!

I know many of you hate the snow, but this girl’s hoping for more of the stuff so I can get a paid holiday *lol* So much to do and so little time!

2010 an Odyssey…

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:08:00 +0000

Happy New Year folks! I hope your New Year got off to a great start? How could it not with such an amazing Blue Moon to herald in the New Year! It was glorious and so bright. Just as the moon was starting to rise, I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of it and it was huge and heavy, sitting on the horizon. Sadly I didn’t have my camera on me at that time, but I managed to get a few shots in after the magic hour…

We had a great night playing Wii and seeing in the New Year.

So as always, I like to do a little recap on the past year, it helps put the year in perspective. Even the worst years have silver linings when you look hard enough. I like to remember the positive things, the successes and the achievements rather than the failures or disappointments. So what have I achieved this year? Well, the thing that is most memorable about this year is my flying lesson! What an amazing experience and certainly one I’ll never forget!

I’m most proud of the fact that I passed my TESOL qualification and I now teach EFL for a few hours a week. This was particularly an achievement because of my stroke a year and a half ago. I also now teach full time, having got another teaching job as well this year. Sadly, my jobs are two part-time, hourly paid jobs which equate to full time hours but without full time benefits like holiday pay. Sad, but true, but I still count it as an achievement. We also managed to get a holiday in this year, the first for years. It wasn’t without it’s hiccups *cough*clutch*cough* but our visit to Cornwall was lovely and we managed to get to Eden which was great. Actually, we got two holidays if you count our weekend in Glastonbury which was so relaxing.

So what else have I done? I’ve lost almost two stone this year, bringing me back down to my pre-TESOL weight, I’ve been to see a musical in London…

I was a volunteer steward for the Barefoot Festival, a festival of dance…

I danced at two Halfas and went to Alton Towers with my Sis…

I finished my first cable project and a number of other outstanding WIPs. I did a lot of reconstruction and embellishment projects, and some jewellery projects. I cleared a large part of my garden and made a little seating area which hopefully I’m going to improve this year. There is more, but I’m not going to bore you with all the little details. You can look back over my blog for those.

So, plans for this year? Well, this week we’re finally getting our living room floor laminated. Hurray! That’s a major outstanding project. I’m going to get out and about more, and now I have Pearl to guide me (my new SatNav), there should be no problem there. I’d also like to play around more with my mini microwave kiln because I haven’t had much of a chance to do that this year. Too much work and not enough play time makes Samsara a very frustrated girlie! I’m going to go to more festivals and parties, get away more in my caravan, and hopefully get a bit fitter. I’d like to de-clutter my house a little this year. Like many crafters, I’m a terrible hoarder. I’m going to try and getter a better balance in my life, between work, creativity, social and virtual (I discovered Facebook this year and spend way, way too much time on there *lol*)

Well, that’s all I’ve got at the moment. I’m not one for making ‘Resolutions’, I just have things I’d like to do if I get the opportunity'; then I don’t beat myself up about things if I don’t manage them! So, 2010, a new year and a new beginning, another chapter in my personal odyssey. Bring it on!

Yuletide Blessings

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:47:00 +0000

Well, I hope you all had an amazing Christmas? I’ve had such good fun. It’s officially been a white Christmas here, although the snow has now melted. I went to see Avatar in 3D on Christmas Eve with M. I gather there’ve been lots of arguments about the social implications of the film, but if you take it on face value, it’s a visually beautiful film; just what you’d expect from a James Cameron film. The night-time scenes on Pandora are particularly beautiful! We’ve also seen part one of the new Doctor Who Christmas special, The End of Time; I can’t wait to see part two, the Master and the Time Lords return, and David Tennant steps aside for the next Doctor! I’ll be sad to see him go, he’s been an excellent Doctor, but I’m interested to see the new Doctor, especially as he’s a local lad (from my town). M and I have been playing Super Mario Brothers on the Wii, which is great fun and allows us to play co-operatively. We managed to complete a particularly difficult world last night and we were jumping round the living room in a mad victory dance afterwards!

I was totally totally spoilt this year!! Not only have I had a lovely Christmas day with my family, but I had some fantastic gifts; I’m almost speechless with the awesomeness of my gifts!

M gave me a TomTom Pearl, a girlie SatNav in a pearl colour and pretty swirls all over the casing. This is fabulous because my sense of direction is truly appalling and since my last SatNav lost the will to live, I’ve kind of been avoiding driving into the unknown. She also comes with a handy little satin pouch to carry her in. She has lots of extras which do things like directing me to the nearest garage/police stations/vets and will direct me on foot or by road…she’ll also give first aid directions, what to do in the event of accidents, etc. Fantastic! I envisage Pearl and I will have some amazing adventures together!

I also got Wii Yoga from my Mum, some funky gardening gloves and a lovely embroidered purse,

a GorillaPod (an articulated tripod) for my digi-SLR, from my brother. This has got moveable grip able legs which will wrap round tree branches or railings, anything like that.

My sis gave me an Indian style necklace and a bracelet, also some green glittering liquid liner and a fun sign which states that women and cats do what they want, and men and dogs should just get used to it! I’ve hung it where M can see it every day just to remind him*lol*

And my friend G gave me a lovely copper and glass seahorse wind chime with glass beads, and a cat calendar

M’s Mum gave me a snug-bug blanket; a huge blanket with sleeves so that I don’t get so cold in the evenings, especially when we’re lounging on the sofa with a movie! She also gave us a huge tin of Quality Street chocolates, I’m going to be as fat as a barrel by the time I get back to work!

And then when I got home, M surprised me with gift number two; a Blackberry phone!

I then had to whip up a little sock for it to protect it, so I knit this up in double quick time on Boxing day, whilst M & C watched Laurel and Hardy.

I just used a 3k 1p rib in the round and used a 3 needle bind off to secure the seam. It fits nice and snug!

In fact I’ve been knitting like a fiend for the last week or so and I’ve finished a couple of major projects which have been WIP’s for quite a while! I finished these basic ribbed socks.

I also finally finished my BPT Hoody!! Woohoo! Celebrations are in order! This has taken me almost a year and a half to knit! Other projects have kind of got in the way. It’s a bit of a sad story that goes with this hoody, I started knitting it the day Dad died, as a way of keeping my sanity whilst coping with all the chaos involved with the death of a parent, and also the long process of repatriating a body from overseas, since Dad died on holiday in France. Sadly it’s a little big for me now since I lost so much weight, so I might shove it through the wash to see if I can resize it a little. Failing that, I may try lining it with fleece or something, or using it as an overcoat. I’ve got to find a long zip for the front too.

The oversize hood is wonderful though and gives it a nice Elvish drape round the face.

My current WIP is a snowball boa for my Mum; a scarf made from white pompoms.

There’s something very appealing about pompoms, isn’t there?

Pom pom, tiddly pom!

I’m dreaming of a…….

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:46:00 +0000

White Christmas? Yep, there’s only three days to go and the snow is falling, all around us, children playing, having fun…Oooops, very sorry, just slipped into a musical interlude there! It’s beginning to feel alot like Christmas here, cheesy films on the telly, Christmas music on the radio (apart from the Christmas number one being Rage Against the Machine; awesome!), snow, decorations….

Doesn’t the snow make everything look fresh and clean and pretty?! Especially when you don’t have to go out in it! I’ve had great fun watching the cars trying to struggle up the hill in the snow. We’re just not prepared for snow in this county; we generally don’t get extremes of weather being slap-bang in the centre of England here!

In fact, for the last few days I’ve felt like I’m living in Narnia.

Joe, of course, loves the snow!

So being in my house all day, cosy and warm with no *ahem* work to do means that I’ve been so productive and creative! Take today for example, I had to stay in for a courier delivery and I’ve cleaned my living room, made fudge, lentil soup and winter spice sugar scrub, knitted half a sock, finished one book and started another. Honestly, I’m like a demon at the moment! Hmm, wrong word maybe? But honestly, I’ve just got so much done since I’ve broken up for the holidays!

Look, here’s a couple of elasticated bracelets that I’ve made for gifts from my oddments bead box..

And this I made for my sister for Christmas!

I even made a cute box to put it in!

I painted some lovely rainbow light bulbs which are available in my eBay shop…

I also made this necklace for myself out of beads I’ve had around for ages!

Tomorrow, since I don’t have to stay in all day, I’m hoping to get out in the snow again for a lovely snowy shutterbug walk with my new camera! Wednesday I’m visiting my Aunt with my Mum and Sis, then we’re having a girlie shopping trip to Blue Water, the massive shopping centre near (ish) where she lives, and then hopefully M and I are going to see Avatar in 3D in the evening.

Hope you’re enjoying the build-up to your Christmas?!

Markets and Parties

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 23:10:00 +0000

So where has December gone? It’s just flown by! My friend G and I went to a Victorian Christmas market in the city of Lincoln where the whole city was closed off to traffic and the streets were filled with Christmas stalls and stall holders in Victorian costume. We had such a great day, filled with mulled wine, roast chestnuts and shopping. The cathedral looked so pretty at night that I had to get a shot!

It was another friends birthday and we held a double party; a birthday and Christmas party all rolled up together, with the usual food, secret Santa, pass the parcels, party bags and silly party games. What a great night!

This was my contribution to the party bags, you know those little packets of tissues you can get, I made little fabric wallets for them and put a packet of tissues and a holder into each party bag. Luckily I already had some Christmas fabric in my stash! I have some of these which I carry around with me and they really protect your tissues from disintegrating in your bag!

I also finished and posted Lana’s poncho hoodie! Hurray! With the crazy workload I’ve had this term, this has taken me ages! I really hope that Lana likes it. I received my side of the personal swap; Rox sent me a bunch of steampunk jewellery, some Kool-Aid and a beautiful purple scarf.

To be fair, I used a much smaller hook for Lana’s because she’s only about 5, so there were many more stitches in this than in the adult one.

Now I’ve finished this I can crack on with all my WIP’s, so I’ve done alot more of my BPT hoodie and I’m really hoping to get that finished before I go back to school so I can wear it now the weather’s cold!

I’ve been really creative recently, now I’ve got all my reports and marking out of the way. I made this for me last weekend. I love the simple combo of black and silver.

I love these Balinese silver beads, they’re just ornate enough to compliment the simpleness of the black leaves. I also used silver twisted bugles and silver and black seed beads as spacers.

Remember this Fimo focal bead I bought from a bead fayre back in March? (I think it was March anyway). I finally got around to creating a necklace with it.

I though the leaf fimo beads perfectly complimented the focal bead, they even had the same colours in, and the square glass foil beads perfectly complimented the focal bead.

I haven’t worn this yet, but I can’t wait to!

Another installment of Decembers creations will follow, I don’t want to overload you with photos *lol*

Birthdays and Bellydancing!

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:03:00 +0000

Okay, so my birthday has been and gone…lots of celebrating occurred, lots of food was consumed, and I had some amazing presents including this fantastic camera from M

It has an amazing 14 megapixels and an amazing zoom facility. I’m sure my ‘babies’ will become sick of my photographing them, but hey, I’ve got to get used to it; it has tons of settings like this lovely soft focus portrait setting!

I got some wonderful presents from family and friends, and made some bead pendants to put in the party goody bags.

The Christmas Hafla took place on Thursday night and even though my cowrie embellished choli had been finished, the belt that I ordered didn’t turn up until the day before, and then it was faulty!

The woman said she’d send me another one, but I knew it wouldn’t turn up in time, so I decided to wear something else instead. Not bad for being thrown together on the night!

I took my new Digi SLR to the Hafla with me to get some practice in using it in action. Here’s one of some of the girls (we had a professional one done too, but we won’t get that for a few weeks)

As always it was a fun night out, the dance went wonderfully and I got some great shots with my camera. Can you believe that our youngest performer was eleven!

Our favourite tribal troop!

I have two days of term left! I can’t wait for a break!

Baaad blogger!

noreply@blogger.com (Samsara) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:07:00 +0000

Yep, I’m a bad blogger! I haven’t been here for absolutely ages; that terrible thing called ‘real life’ has reared it’s ugly head and seriously cut into my personal time! I’ve been really really busy, but I have managed to cram some socialising and crafting into my hectic schedule. So what have I been up to? Well, friends and I went to the local fireworks display on November 5th, a night traditionally called Bonfire Night (or Guy Fawkes) here in the UK. Guy Fawkes Night is an annual celebration marking the downfall of the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605, in which a number of Catholic conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, attempted to destroy the Houses of Parliament, in London. Usual celebrations include bonfires on which a ‘guy’ is burnt (a stuffed human effigy – yeah I know, pretty gruesome eh?), fireworks, toffee apples, and sparklers. When I was little, we used to have a bonfire in the garden (made from all the garden rubbish collected from putting the garden to bed for the winter, fallen leaves, trimmed shrubs and pruned branches, stuff like that), jacket potatoes were baked in the bottom of the bonfire in foil, and Dad used to set up fireworks at the bottom of the garden. It was great fun! Nowadays more people go to organised displays, so M, G, G’s son K and I went to a local display where there was a huge bonfire, a display and a fair with lots of rides.

There was much oooo-ing and aaah-ing!

And much fun was had by all!

Most of what I’ve been doing lately has been recon stuff because I’ve lost weight and now a lot of my clothes don’t fit, so I’ve been taking stuff in, running repairs and chopping stuff up.

I tried on my outfit for the Hafla last night (only two weeks away now!) and this tribal top that I bought in the summer and I’ve nearly finished embellishing doesn’t fit me any more because I’ve lost more weight, so I’m going to have to take it in. The cowries tassel belt that I made at Christmas which would go perfectly with this outfit slips completely off my hips now, so I’m going to have to take that in too!

I made a mock-up for some stocking filler tissue holders the other day too- I think I’ll make them in Christmas-y fabric since I just found some in my stash! I bought some multi packs of pocket tissues too, they’ll be perfect for the goodie bags at the girls Christmas party!