Demo Time - Plastic Bags.

Before she went on holiday, Magdalena had been doing some crochet with plastic carrier bags. It had us all curious. Five minutes before home time she tried to explain to us how to cut up the bag in preparation. Not easy in just five minutes. So now that she is home she kindly gave us a wee demo.

We all brought bags and scissors so that we could join in. It involved the cutting away of the bottom and handles and then folding.

It was then cut much like you would cut to make a Chinese lantern. Magdalena then demonstrated how to ensure that you end up with one long strand of carrier bag.

It really does work. You can see Magdalena here rolling up her now carrier bag yarn.

Everyone managed it successfully too.

You can see here our hard work paid off. I will say though that if you want the full carrier bag to ensure that it isn't torn somewhere before hand. Otherwise you end up with a smaller ball (voice of experience here).

Elaine started working with it straight away. It has quite a nice effect. You could also collect other bags to give it a striping effect.

We had some finishes too. Our youngest member had her very first finish. You can see Amilee here proudly showing off a lollipop she made with her craft kit.

Janice has been growing some tomatoes and brought some of them along for Helen. Margaret has also been growing tomatoes but they don't last long enough to be brought in.

Janice also finished this lovely baby jacket. Everyone has liked it so much that there are a few people planning on knitting one up.

One of our newer members, Audrey, had been wanting to knit socks. She is primarily a cross stitcher but she does knit too. As I was already teaching sock knitting a few others and a different pattern I was only able to talk her through a few bits with Dawn helping her with the rest. Not that she needed it. From me all she needed was some advice about the heel and a week later there was a pair of finished socks. They look fantastic. Looking at the toe you wouldn't know this was a beginner. Very impressive!

Carolin is going on her Caribbean cruise soon and has just finished a smaller bag to go with her beach bag. She used the same flip flop fabric and adorned it with buttons. Unfortunately her sewing machine went to sewing machine heaven in the process but it didn't stop her from getting it finished.

Jean also had a finish. She made this lovely card for me. Knowing my love of camper vans it was perfect. Thank you Jean!

Roberta has been busy knitting up baby hats. Well, the first three were done in crochet and look lovely. I especially like the flower. The rest are little preemie baby hats.

I also had a couple of finishes. I stitched this little owl hanging. It came free with a magazine and was supposed to be a keyring. However, I decided that I wanted it as a little hanging instead and I chose not to stuff it. I also finished my last pair of mosaic socks. These ones are for my dad.

Next week we have another busy one. We are having a show and tell. Just a fun way for everyone to bring along finishes they are proud of and let us all have a nosey. There will be no judging as it's just for fun but there will be a raffle with some prizes.

More Great Ideas!

I have to apologise for the lateness of this post. This was supposed to be from the Tuesday before the lovely Helen's post. On the sunny side you get two posts in one week. Truth is I have been trying to get a video of a demo to work without much luck. So it has been stalled. As soon as I can fix it you will see our latest star of youtube.

Janice has quiet of late as she has been working away. She had quite a lot of things to show us. This beautiful quilt was actually made from fabric she picked up on our swap night. I wonder if the person who put it in for swapping would like it back now.

She also used some scrap fabric to make this lovely quilted laptop cover. I love it. Love all the puples. As well as quilting and knitting it would seem that Janice is also a cross stitcher. Good words to live by on that sampler.

Roberta has finished these two lovely baby blankets for her charity shop. A customer requested them and gave Roberta the yarn. These were stitched up in next to no time.

I also had a finish. I knitted another pair of mosaic socks. This time for my sister (hence the small feet). I had of green left over from the last pair and she requested that pink was also used. Actually quite like those colours together.

Helen has been enamoured with the mosaic pattern and requested a lesson. Here she is starting them (although she has almost finished the first sock now). This is the first pair of socks Helen has knitted with any sort of pattern. It even has Isabel thinking about having a go.

 We also had two more scarves for the scarf charity. The first one was knitted up in a lovely purple by Janice (told you she had been busy). The second was crocheted by myself. I wanted to try the bobble crochet everyone was doing and this seemed like a perfect way of having a go.

We also had a demo of shrink fabric from Helen. It is this demo we have on video so you can see the full effect. As soon as I have it working I will post it here. You can't really see the fabric shrinking just from a photograph. I can tell you though that it was a great demo.

Caroline also had us intrigued with all these bits and pieces. It would seem she was working on something for the shoebox charity. She had quite a production line going.

This lovely needlecase holder was the result. She is making quite a few of them for Linda. I love the little motifs on the front.

Elaine also brought some samples along. Her sister has her own nail art business. She is willing to give a demo for anyone interested. My personal favourite is the Cath Kidston. I will email everyone the details of that soon.

There will be another two posts in the next week as I will be giving July's member of the month interview. So look out for that.

Gartmore!

As promised this post is going to be all about Gartmore. First of all I have a little amendment to make. It has come to my attention that I may have left Margaret off the list of people who were there on that first night. Sorry Margaret! However, she was there and has rarely missed a night since.

Gartmore is in a lovely place just outside Stirling. Sock lady Ginnie came up with the fantastic idea of going there for our second anniversary and we have been ever year since. We already have 2013 planned. You can see why we miss our sock lady. She comes up with all the best ideas.

The point of Gartmore is that you get to relax, do a bit of crafting, a lot of chatting and a lot of eating (you don't go away hungry).  From the start we had got lots of ideas from each other or sought out help from others in the group. This was the first time though that we started giving demos and lessons.

In our first year we got crochet lessons from Donna. Most of us learnt the granny square here. We also got an inadvertent Japanese patchwork demo from Val. Lastly sock lady Ginnie gave us a lesson on sock knitting.

We learnt a lot and most importantly we had a lot of fun. We did go back after all.

The second year I gave a small sock knitting lesson to Dawn and Elaine. I think Donna took part in some of that too. Elaine showed off some of her cake decorating skills and had us making iced roses. That was definitely a little bit different. Then Donna gave us more crochet lessons but this time different stitches and different ways of doing the granny square.

I am afraid I wasn't there last year but Isabel and Helen reported back between them. Everyone got to have dinner in a different part of the building this time. It made for a lovely change of scenery. Izzi taught everyone how to make these little purses. Elaine taught everyone to decorate cupcakes with butterflies (not real ones obviously) and Roberta gave a few people some lessons on crochet.

Another aspect we love about Gartmore is the scenery. If you get tired of sitting on your bum the grounds are lovely for a walk and most of us at some point took advantage of that. We did have to keep an eye on June though to make sure she didn't add any of the rabbits to her collection of pets.

This year we have more lessons planned and we are all looking forward to it. I think there is a slightly larger crowd going this time.  It will be good fun.

Tomorrow I am going to showcase the rest of our events all in one. Tomorrow is also celebration day (well one of two).