The weekend at Scrap-a-mia

I got to spend Saturday at this amazing property. I love all the dark beamed ceiling and the beautiful glass windows ( make me miss our old village! ). We were in the new modern annexe for most of the day but I did go the main building for dinner. Thank you for letting me join you all, Cleo, scrapelephant, the lady who is a nanny, the expert with Morse Code from the Force, the lady who makes prosthetic legs...what a mixed bunch you were! Then Kirsty joined us whilst she waited for her next photo shoot. Big wave to you all. Sorry if I didn't get your name.

Here are some photos of the ladies who were in my first class. It was due to start at ten but I was delayed due to TomTom sending us to the wrong place! At 9.30, she (the TomTom lady) proudly announced, "You have reached your destination!" and I could have sworn, this couldn't be the location of a country house, on the side of a very big dual carriageway! A quick reentering of location shows that we are 25 miles away...eek! Anyway, we made it, and these ladies patiently waited for me. They were just picking out photos and thinking of colourways at this stage. Claire and Margaret have provided a few different colourways for people to choose from.









I was sent a black and red kit. This is my sample for the class. I still have some journalling to do.
The photos are of us going around in this "thing", a carriage pulled by a motorbike, in Angkor. If you know what the "thing" is called, please let me know.



I also did this layout way back in January this year, when I make a proposal of what I could teach at the retreat. The photos are of a male elephant ( they wander alone whereas the females and young male travels in family group ) who was spooked by us and looked like he wanted to charge at us. In the end, we drove and hid in a bush before he went away.

My apron is finished

Or is it ? I am not decided! If I see a nice brooch, I might buy one to pin to it. And I might even get the bejeweller out...we'll see. I've downed tools for now.
Here it is again, modelled by me.

And a little close up.

In the end, I found a stash of fabric under the bed ( is that a surprise ? What would be surprising is the fact that I didn't go out and got some more! ). I am quite sure I will have to cut on the bias for the frill and I didn't have enough scrap for that sort of thing. Instead, the frill got a few patches to match the pocket. What do you think ? Am I sorted ?

Scrap-a-mia is drawing closer

Less than 2 weeks to go! The initial email about Scrap-a-mia arrived many months ago. Ok, that was not good! I should go check.

Claire from Your Creative Moments asked me to teach at this event in September 2009 but the "exploratory" emails started much earlier than that. In my mind, it has always been is some distance future. Then, this arrived!


Well, not exactly that, but I can imagine, right ? All the teachers at Scrap-a-mia have been sent a canvas Donna Downey apron to decorate. I think I am going to copy the fabric frill at the bottom but not sure what else. What's that ? Do you think I should go fabric shopping ? Now you're talking!

If you've missed the chance of attending Scrap-a-mia, I am also teaching at Scrap Revolution on 13th June followed by Claire's and Tracie's Exhall crop on 27th June. I look forward to seeing you there.

Because he talks...

A lot!

My dear H has never been short of something to say, ever since he started talking aged 18 months, he hasn't stopped. I remember a conversation that went along the line of, "bla, bla, bla", more "bla, bla, bla" followed by mine,"you haven't stopped talking!" which got this retort, "well, I have a lot of words inside me" when he was just a toddler.

I must say I am grateful for this. It means I get a full ( a very full! ) report of what went on at school.I decided to capture one of these conversations in a layout. Why this one ? This was a rather unusual conversation!

H is in the last year of primary school, and finds most things boring or stupid or {insert any negative word here}. I think he is definitely ready to move up to secondary! Anyway, science week was a departure from the norm. No disparaging remarks, AT ALL! Everything was wonderful, interesting, amazing, etc.

Here he is, extracting DNA from a strawberry! Do you think he is going to be a scientist ?

What a beautiful weekend

How was yours ? We were busy out in the garden. For most of the time, H and A were on top of the shed, extending and reinforcing the roof so that we can install some solar panels on top. H nailed all the roofing felt into place.

I had intended to do the cybercrop on UKS but it was too sunny to stay indoors for long. I did manage to finish a LO that has been lying on my desk though. I love these photos of J & A at Disney. They got delayed at the start because there was a group of less abled bodied drivers ahead of them. H and I managed to start without a hitch and finished the course (ahead) comfortably. We were sitting at the end, wondering whatever happened to them when they rolled up. But I was ready with my camera, hence the smile and laughter. I've called it "Sunday driving" because I found a strip of patterned paper with the word Sunday on it.

I decided to go light with the patterned paper which means I get to drag out more embellishments. But whatever am I going to do with all my patterned papers ?

My dining chairs

I promised some pictures of my first upholstery project so here they are. Our upholstery classes finished for the year at the end of March. Our teacher is having an operation on her shoulder this summer so she will be out of action for a good few weeks. You do need a lot of muscle power to pull and tighten when upholstering...I am pleased to hear her injury it is not upholstery related.

I started with this. These chairs ( and dining table and welsh dresser ) came from A's mum & dad and we've had it for nearly 20 years. They bought the chairs at auction. They enquired about having them re-upholstered but decided against spending £200 on just 2 chairs. I hate to think how much an upholsterer would charge nowadays but I have to say, I wouldn't begrudge them their fees...it does take a long time to do them properly. We have 4 chairs like this, 1 matching carver and 2 smallers chairs to make the numbers.


The chair is now strippped down. This chair didn't have a traditionally built seat to begin with. It was basically a few layers of wadding on top of the wood, a layer of calico followed by hide. I was adamant I didn't want leather to replace the top cover.

After stripping, I started putting the layers back on. I started by building up the seat ( called first seating ). There is about 2lb of fibre under there that I stitched and cajoled into shape. Originally you would have used horsehair but animal hair is very expensive so I resorted to coconut fibre.

Here is the finished chair. In between all the stuffing and stitching, A also put in a lot of work to remove the dark varnish. He finished the oak off with clear wax. I have covered the chairs with some left over from the curtains that I made for the dining room. A little bit too matching for my taste but at least I didn't have to go out and look for some new fabric.

Here is a layout I made about my new found hobby.

My journalling says, "Upholstery isn't quite as they make out on Changing Room, armed with a staple gun, you could do anything. You could, but it would take you longer than a weekend. These 5 (+2) chairs took me two terms."
My sofa is now with a man who is replacing some woodworm infested tack rails and french polishing the whole thing...it should look amazing.

Visitors at Easter

How was your Easter ? We've had 2 lots of visitors. First was Shera & Co from Oman. Shera joined TKC into form 1 when I was in form 4. She reminded me that she was my messenger to my pet sisters. I won't explain here, PS is too difficult a concept to comprehend if you weren't there LOL. So I haven't seen Shera since 1985 but you know what ? She looks just the same and I wouldn't have problems recognising here anywhere.

We went into the city on Good Friday but unfortunately, the colleges were closed. The BBC was at Kings recording the Easter concert.

Here we are on a bridge over the Cam, taken by Shera's DD2.

On Saturday, Nina visited with her crew. She is going back to Malaysia in August. Nina and I shippped over the UK on the same flight back in 1985 and now she is finally leaving. We visited a few colleges with her.

Here's Nina, having a little conversation with Darwin in the gardens of Christ's College.

And just to prove that the sun does shine in the UK.

And a little easter threat, the shop window of Ted Baker is featuring a large animated chicken, hunting for worms that pop up and down. The kids were impressed.