Me made May

I've been away this last week so no posts but I have made a very poor start to MMM. This weekend appears to have been one of those where my brain and I part company!! I spent a couple of days with my daughter and her friends (all lovely and fantastic hosts and hostesses, truly pampered!!) where I managed to mishear things and find myself talking out loud when I should have been just thinking!! This proved to cause much hilarity amongst the friends and my daughter permanently trying to convince herself that I hadn't gone faintly senile!!

Anyway the connection to MMM is that I missed day 1 because I thought it was still April and yesterday I did wear all made by me clothes but forgot to get a photo taken!! I will do better today!! and hopefully the rest of the month!! I'm still contemplating today's outfit so pics later! Today is a bank holiday here in England, which usually means mooching around in an outfit that is maybe only one step up from jamas, that is ok to walk the dogs in, comfy for lounging and I don't mind getting covered in threads for when I sew! I don't tend to sew those kinds of outfits but maybe I will refashion something to fit that bill during the month. Today we are also seeing friends for tea so that definitely means something bit tidier and co-ordinated so I thinking denim pinafore and knitted top.

Meanwhile a bit of catch-up, during my absence from blogging, I have been to Wonderwool in Wales. We took our motor home/camper van out for its first trip this year and stayed just out side Rhayader, the site was quite small and very quiet and we had a fab view over the River Wye and up to hills behind. It an area where they have worked at re-building a colony(?) of Red Kites. Now I'm not any kind of bird watcher, you have to be too still and quiet, but my husband is big on the whole nature thing and so I do have these things pointed out to me and Red Kites are really quite spectacular and easy to identify. So even I kept an eye on the sky and kept shouting,"there's one!" we had pretty good weather, lots of sunshine by welsh standards and really quite warm.

But I was starting the brain separation phase that weekend because I carried my camera around the whole time and forgot to take any pics at all!! So I can only show you pics of what I bought at Wonderwool when I got home. There was loads to see and feel, yarn to excite me for knitting but lots of new stuff to interest me too. There was heaps of felting and dyeing, spinning and weaving. I do like the look of spinning wheels but I'm way too impatient for that process. But felting looked interesting, I have tried knitting things and felting them but it has not been very successsful, and just seemed a bit of a waste of good quality yarn. I did stop and watch someone making felted beads and felted discs around a curtain ring that you then embellish and make really pretty brooches and that seemed well within my capabilities and more to the point my budget as it was the end of the day!! So this is the fleece I bought to make some jewellery, I have a couple of birthdays coming up so I think I can do some pretty stuff with these colours.

These are my other purchases, two skeins of yarn, one silk.

and this one that is cashmere and merino mixed,

both of these are suitable for lace knitting and I want to do a smallish triangular shawl/scarf, possibly a swallowtail but I need a bit of a roam around Ravelry and my own patterns to make my mind up. They will definitely be quite lacey so could be holiday knitting where I can concentrate and not loost my way on the pattern!!

The next purchases were these lovely vintage buckles from a lady who sadly does not have a website but she had a lovely selection of buttons and fastenings and they were very reasonable I thought.

I can just see them on self fabric belts making my dresses (unmade as yet!) look very finished and professional!

Lastly I bought some patterns from Claire Crompton, I bought some of hers last year. She doesn't tie you into any particular yarn so you can use up leftovers really easily!! This year I bought a bag pattern (of course!), a modular sock pattern, and a lariat, that you can make in anything from 4ply to chunky. I'm making one in 2 strands of 1 ply shetland on the tiniest needles and I'm beading it as I go so it will be a necklace, finished pics soon!!

So that was my weekend in Wales, most enjoyable made even more so by having the motorhome parked at home now, we were unpacked in 30 mins and sitting down with a cuppa, bliss!!