Wool, Bees & London!

Ooh I've been a little lax of late post-wise as so much has been going on!
The weekend before last was truly wonderful thanks to the fantastic City of Bristol! Although I live in South Wales I am just a hop, skip and a jump from the border with England and thus only 20 minutes from Bristol (where I actually work and got married).

Bristol is such an amazing and colourful city, it's quite small but has a lot of diversity and has a truly ethical spirit. It has it's own barter currency, it really promotes supporting "local" and has a real artsy feel about it. The famous graffiti artist, Banksy is from Bristol and there's always some impressive art project taking place, for example see my previous post about Knitted Bristol here.

Being such a great place, more often than not there's something that attracts my attention but that weekend was extra special... Bristol hosted it's first WOOL FAIR and a BEE FESTIVAL!! Whoop, whoop, two of my favourite things :-D

I volunteered for 3 hours at the Wool Fair, my duty was to stand at the entrance/exit gate collecting people's tickets and giving them a wristband. It was a lot of fun and I met some interesting people, many of whom were quick to give their opinions (most of which were positive thankfully) and saw lots of sheep and a couple of lovely alpacas. 

For the few hours of volunteering, I had free access to the event and felt totally justified spending the money I had saved on the entrance fee (and a bit more too) on woolly goodies!
Here is my lovely haul...

If I really had to choose a favourite it may be the pair of 11mm rosewood knitting needles from The Little Knitting Company. They're such a pleasure to knit with and what made me love them even more was my husband thought I'd bought myself a Harry Potter wand when he first saw one of them.

The Bee & Pollination Festival was hosted by The University of Bristol's Botanic Garden which is a wonderful venue in itself. There were lots of exhibitors, talks and demonstrations and, as it was a beautiful day, there were lots of bees and pollinators about, doing their thing, buzzzzz!

After the fun of the weekend I had my birthday to look forward to so made a week of it. I headed to London for a girly break with my sister for a few days. We shopped a lot, caught a West End show, "The Pajama Game" which we really enjoyed and it included sewing (it was set in a pyjama factory), perfect!

We returned in time for my birthday on Friday, this was spent exploring the amazing Roman ruins in Caerleon which is only 15 miles from where we live and eating lots of cake.

Then on Saturday I hot-footed it back to London for a long weekend, this time with the hubby for more sight-seeing and BBC Radio 2's Festival in a Day. 
Of course, I took some crochet with me to keep me busy between the bands.

Again we had a fantastic time and we got to see the incredible poppy art installation at The Tower of London, "Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red". It marks the anniversary of the First World War and by the end of Autumn the Tower's dry moat will be filled with 888,246 ceramic poppies, each one representing a British or Colonial soldier killed during the war. The last poppy will put in place on Remembrance Day. Already it is a pretty incredible sight and very moving.

So all in all I've been pooped since we got home on Monday, I returned to work on Tuesday and I have only just returned to "normality"!
Thanks so much for reading, I really appreciate it.
Until next time, craft in earnest! Craftin' Ernest x

Button Art and a Bumble Bee!

Well the Sun is still shining! This Summer is certainly making up for the complete lack of sunshine South Wales had last year. My lovely hubby did the unenviable job or sorting out the garden shed and getting out all the garden furniture. I did help clean them off though. I know, where would he be without me huh?
So an afternoon of crafting in the garden was called for, under the protection of a large parasol and very high factor sunscreen. As I had my latest acquisition of charity shop buttons to sort, it was a perfect excuse to do some button related crafting. I had a few box frames to hand so I decided to create a heart shaped picture using buttons to go inside one of the frames and, even though was no rain in sight, I chose to use the colours of the rainbow- the brighter the better!

I covered a piece of board in plain white fabric using double-sided sticky tape. After taking the time to arrange the buttons into a design I was happy with and then just glued them on with regular PVC glue. I used tweezers to individually pick up each button so not to disturb the lay-out and applied a generous blob of glue to each button before returning it to it's picture. Once it was dry I tentatively turned it over to see if I had missed any, which I did- three in fact (I was distracted by carrot cake part way through). Once they were fully attached I popped the finished article into the frame. So simple but I really like the finished result.

We went to a Food Festival in Cardiff Bay on Sunday and ate lots of scrummy food. Delicious ice cream was almost a medical necessity as it was so hot. We bought "pick and mix" brownies to enjoy at home. My sister and I decided on the way back to stop off en-route and buy a paddling pool!! We sat in it for the rest of the afternoon, eating our delectable brownies (it was a tie between double chocolate and peanut butter) and sipping chilled drinks- it was heavenly!
I did have to save this little beauty at one point! I used one of the acrylic sheets from my Sizzix Machine- crafting items can be very versatile ;-) It was very wet but once I had scooped it out and left it to dry off, it flew away, thankfully seemingly none the worse for the experience.

Keeping crafting in earnest, Craftin' Ernest xx