Gartmore Part 2

Apologies as this post has quite a lot of photographs. Believe it or not this is me being strict with how many I am posting. After dinner Elaine was going to give a class on making sugar flowers. Elaine is our very talented cake decorator. Before the class though you can see June taking advantage of the light coming through those big windows

It was also time for Jan's dinner.

Elaine's friend had also come along for the class.

These are an example of some of the flowers Elaine has made. All out of sugar. The thistle in the middle was from the cake she made from our first challenge.
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Elaine starts by showing us some of the items she uses. She had already prepared the wire with buds for the stem and centre of the flowers.

She uses icing sugar to stop the icing from sticking to the perspex.

After cutting out the flower shape she uses a sponge and roles it round the edges to make the smoother.

This is the first one attached to the bud.

After building up layers of the flower it should look like this.

For the carnation Elaine cuts out three different sizes of the same shape. You don't need to smooth the edges of this one.

When the layers have been attached the carnation should look like this.

Once the sugar glue (also edible) dries Elaine then adds some colour.

Unfortunately my camera didn't pick up the colour but this is what it should look like when finished.

Alison was the first to go up and have a go. She is currently smoothing the edges of the first flower shape.

Patsy was next. Here she is having cut out the first flower shape.

Roberta was the only other brave soul to have a go. Here she is adding some sugar glue.

Alison proudly showing off her finished rose. You wouldn't know this was her first attempt. I'm afraid that I didn't get finished photo's of the others. Hopefully I will be able to when Elaine drops them off to them tonight.

The rest of the evening was spent knitting and chatting with another tea break in between. It wasn't long before some of us trooped off to bed although I think some stayed chatting until 1am.

Next post will be about Sunday and lessons from the lovely Donna.

Gartmore Part 1

Our weekend away to Gartmore has sadly been and gone. We did however, have lots of fun and there are plans for a third year. I don't have quite as many photo's as last year but not far off it. So I am going to have to do this in parts which I will post over the course of the week. As you can see from the sign above we got a friendly welcome to Gartmore.

Helen, Margaret and I were the first to arrive. We quickly dropped our bags off to our rooms. We then settled in the foyer with coffee and biscuits while we waited for everyone to arrive.

It didn't take long for us to make use of the space. In fact we had a room next door to ours with a large table for us to spread out any big projects we were working on. Roberta took advantage of it to lay out a crochet blanket she has been working on. She is attaching granny squares as a border to make it larger.

Isobels goal was to make a quilt in a weekend. She used the large table to set out her cutting matt and prepare the material she was using. The lovely lady helping her is Patsy. She came along as Ally sadly took ill and couldn't come. Patsy is a knitter too and, fingers crossed, will be able to come along to the group soon.

Izzy's sewing machine was set up in the main room which allowed her too chat whilst working away (also allowed us to do our nosy as she worked away).

The rest of us settled on the comfy couches and worked away on our projects. Donna was finishing off some baby presents. Patsy was knitting a jumper but she was using two different patterns. Cleverly putting together the bits she liked from each. Roberta was working on another crochet blanket. Alison was working on her bird cross stitch. Helen was knitting a pair of socks for herself (and quite rightly too). Margaret was knitting a baby jumper for a friend. Magdalena was knitting a lovely jumper for herself. Dawn (who is there somewhere, honest) was knitting beautiful baby bootees. Lastly, I was knitting a blanket for myself.

Oh, and baby Jan was there to keep us all right. Here he is making sure his mum's knitting meets his approval. He kept us all entertained through out the weekend.

After lunch I started my sock knitting class. Dawn wanted to learn to knit cuff down adult socks. Elaine also wanted to learn and so I offered it as a class. Dawn has been taught toe up socks and Elaine learned to knit baby socks at last years weekend so this was really just a refresher. I don't have any pictures of finishes as it will take more than a few hours to teach but I promise to take photo's when they are finished.

During the lesson Dawn showed us a unique way of storing the extra needle until needed. Donna also joined the class when she needed help with her first pair of patterned socks. I enjoyed taking the class and hope Dawn and Elaine enjoyed it too.

After a busy day we were spoiled with a large dinner. By this point June had, thankfully, been able to join us. June had brought along a few animal cross stitch projects to work on. She spent the hour before dinner sorting the threads a teddy bear kit.

After our lovely dinner we had another class which I'll update with in the next post.

So excited!

The next update and it's only Wednesday! I know, occasionally I just like to throw you a little. I actually only have one finish to show you. This scarf was knitted by Margaret. She used up some leftover wool she had and has donated it to the shoebox charity.

We are all pretty excited about this weekend away. There will be three classes. I will be teaching a sock class. Donna will be teaching us how to crochet hexagons and Elaine will be teaching sugar flowers. I'm looking forward to these classes. Lets hope the rain stops for the weekend.

I don't know if you noticed but we have a new addition to our sidebar. I have added links to other craft blogs. Basically if any of our members have their own blog I will link it there. So far we have two linked and the belong to Dawn and Monika. Let me know if any of you have one to add to the list!

Two Weeks In One!

Apologies for the delay. Had some problems with blogger and then when that was fixed my trusty laptop decided to play up. Not to worry, it's all fixed now and I can finally upload everyones finishes from the last two weeks. Big congrats to Helen who finished her first quilt. It truly looks amazing! After a few lessons on how to use her sewing machine she played about with different stitching methods. The end result is amazing. She did something similar with the quilted book cover she made as a birthday present. She used variegated thread for that one.

Dawn made this amazing card for the Glasgow Fort team from ourselves. It was to say a big thank you for our birthday vouchers. She's outdone herself I think.

Josephine is back and her exams are all finished. She's been getting some help from Dawn with a crochet blanket. Meanwhile she finished this lovely baby set also in crochet.

I have to confess I have noticed Elaine and Linda working on these the last few weeks and have been wondering what they are doing. Their work recently moved office and so they made little name hangings for it. I know the photograph doesn't show but the lettering is done in cross stitch.

Last but not least we have some scarves for the shoe box charity. Roberta made another one using the fluffy black yarn. The others were by Margaret who took the opportunity to use up some yarn she had lying around.

More excitingly we have Gartmore this weekend! Prepare for lots of photo's! There are going to be three classes this time rather than two. There are also a few people coming along who couldn't make it last time. I think it's a safe bet that we are all looking forward to it!

Knitted Metal!

Yes, believe it or not his bracelet was knitted using wire and beads. Caroline bought the kit a few weeks ago and we have all been watching as she has worked on it. It look fantastic and it doesn't feel at all scratchy when wearing it. Caroline is now working on a lace poncho - also in purple.

Stephanie knitted up this lovely baby set. Sadly this will be going in her box with all of her other finished items as she had no plans as to who she was knitting it for.

Roberta also had a couple of finishes which she gave to the shoebox charity. The first is a scarf which is amazingly soft. She knitted it using yarn she got at last weeks swap. The second is a baby jumper which was originally intended for her grand daughter. It's going to be too big which is why she gave it to the charity.

As you all know the Fort were lovely and gave us vouchers. After lots of suggestions as to what to do with them we are going to raffle them off amongst the group. It's just 50p for a strip and then that money raised is going to this years charity which is the Shoebox charity. I will do the draw on the 31st May that way everyone has time to buy tickets if they want them.

We Are Three!

A little short post this time as there were no knitting finishes to photograph. We did however, celebrate running for three years. We had a swap night. The above photo only shows some of what was brought along. Just about everyone went away with something. Alison even picked up some yarn and knitting patterns of some lovely tops. Roberta got some very unusual yarn that she's knitting up as a scarf. I don't really know how to describe it other than it was fluffy. Hopefully we will get a photo when she is finished. Both myself and Donna baked and not much was left over of the goodies or the baking.

We did receive some Hobbycraft vouchers to celebrate from the lovely management team at the Glasgow Fort. We were all moved by it, so nice of them.

Not all of the celebrating is done as we still have Gartmore to look forward to at the end of this month. Not long now!