Tarting up a plain cardi...

I bought a standard navy cardigan from H&M but it was far too plain for me. I thought some white lace or ric rac would look great and lucky for me my local fabric shop had just enough lonely white jumbo ric rac left on a spool!

I pinned, pinned and pinned then I sewed the ric rac onto the cardi using really long stitches.

I went really slowly because I didn't want to stretch the fabric out under the trim.

I think it looks pretty good, and it only really too five minutes. 

I tried to do it on my old, cheap sewing machine but it just stretched the cardigan out and it looked rubbish. My new shiny Brother is the bees' knees!

I might have to do some more cardigan and jumper sewing!

Beccy

Hey did I show you this?

I’ve been spending a lot of time here these days:

https://www.facebook.com/beccyridsdel

If you’d like to pop by and say hello, you might see such things as this…

…this…

…and this…

…that’s mum meeting Grayson Perry last month with some of our students. I bought a new frock specially!

You also get some great rambling posts, many of which rival these for disparate nonsense but are much more brief and slightly more ceramics-centric (but not much).

Anyway, wave if you’re passing through!

Beccy

If you have a garden, you're always busy - 300th post spectaculaaaaar!

Ok you got me, not really so spectaculaaaar, because mostly I've been painting things and I only just noticed that this is my 300th post. Not bad really considering I get pretty bored pretty quickly. I blame work and the fact that it forces me to spend so much time with seventeen year olds that I've accidentally adopted their attention span. That and I'm naturally really childish.

The greenhouse desperately needed a lick of paint - the old sage green was wearing off and we didn't want it falling to bits! I painted on lots of wood preserver before the colour to give it the best possible chance.

We started with slate grey Cuprinol as a base and added a little purple and black acrylic paint to make it a much richer colour. Classy, we thought.

It was pretty tricky painting the roof, (balancing one foot on the top rung of a ladder, trying not to fall through), and really it's best the photo's are from a distance because there is far more paint on the glass than there ought to be.

Still, it looks pretty in the photo's and that's one garden job done - there are always plenty more though!

Beccy

Sunny garden days!

It's been so wonderfully hot and sunny lately we can't stay out of the garden!

Unfortunately that usually means it gets worse before it gets better! Somehow every single pot with dead twigs gets dragged out from behind the greenhouse to be prodded and probed. Is anything alive in there besides vine weevils? A few sad bulbs? Or can we reclaim the beautiful pot for one of the three-hundred plants we seem to have acquired over the last few weeks!

Of course, it really is very hot so we usually end up making the yard clean and tidy first because that's the coolest place.

Don't get me wrong, I love sunny weather. It just makes me want to start things in the morning that I can't finish unless I want to frazzle to a crisp!

Beccy

Mostly sunny, shiny days around Yorkshire…

Millgate House in Richmond, Parcevall Hall near Pately Bridge, Skipton Castle, Beningbrough Hall near York, Cayton Bay, Scarborough, Tholthorpe.

Beccy

Busy busy busy busy busy!

As you might know it’s York Open Studios pretty soon (4th, 5th, 6th April and the 12th and 13th April) so I’ve been in the workshop making lots of ceramicy things.

The Tour de France Grande Depart will almost pass by my house later this year which is a bit exciting and as part of Open Studios we were asked to contribute a piece of grande depart themed work for a preview exhibition.

Here’s mine -

It’s one of my large chimney jugs, but with extra added bicycle!

I’ve also been making some little dishes because I needed to replace the ones that sold in my little shop! They start off looking like this:

And they end up looking like this:

You might have noticed a little addition to the sidebar there showing off my little shop. You know I’m not one to shout from the rooftops (but my accountant says I really ought to mention this stuff to people sometimes), so if you’d like to see more just click through and have a look! No pressure!

To be honest I’m just as excited (maybe more) about these shiny new decals I just bought to decorate my plates with – I really do love them and their pretty floral goodness.

York Open Studios starts two weeks yesterday so I’d better get my chintzy skates on!

Beccy

It was World Poetry day today…

So I just wanted to share with you my favourite poem.

 

He wishes for the cloths of heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats

What's your favourite?

Beccy

I heart counted cross stitch!

I must point out right from the start that I don’t actually DO any kind of cross stitch, I don’t even have much interest in starting (although that could easily change), I just seem to buy a lot of completed ones.

Whenever I see one in a charity shop or at a car boot sale I really have to stop myself from just buying it - I’ve started forcing myself to be critical and only buy the ones I really like because frankly I don’t have the wall space. I don’t know what it is about them, but I have a sneaking feeling it’s because they remind me of the games we played on our ZX Spectrum and Amiga 500 in the 80’s and 90’s. Especially the smaller ones.

The Perils of Rosella anyone? No? Really? Well I’ll show you:

You see? I think I must miss four pixels to the inch.

This is my most recent purchase and it’s a big one although it only cost £7. The subject appears to be The Spanish Village of Insane Perspective.

I’ve cropped in so you can just see the giant random black animal behind the teensy tiny blue and white lady under the arch. Also some of the crazy roofs. It’s amazing, I love it!

These two are modern but I couldn’t resist the Monarch of the Glen! I bought them both for £5 and they just need blocking and framing.

Finally, I found this lovely fire screen last week. It was marked down from £8 to £5 and I nearly bit her hand off for it. It makes more sense in real life, but it’s a picture of sailboats in a harbour.

Anyway, I think I’m probably a bit obsessed, but

I counted cross stitch!

Beccy xx

Where’s all the snow?

This is a photo I took this time last year – clearly we didn’t have blizzards but at least we had some snow.

So far this year? Nothing - not a single flake. And I got a shiny red sledge for Christmas too!

We have taken to driving up into the hills to try and find some to at least crunch around in. This photo was taken this morning in Hebden Bridge and we have to drive over some pretty high hills to get there. It was raining and grey all the way, much like the weather we’ve been having for ages. Hebden Bridge always looks lovely though no matter how gloomy the weather gets. I just wish it would snow!

Beccy