Big News

I have something to tell you!

As you know I was faced with the tempting thought of turning our junk/guest room into a workroom for me or on the other hand giving it up to Sprog 1 so that she could have a bedroom of her own.

Obviously I did the decent thing:-)   But then an opportunity came up that was so perfect that I had to jump on it, although to be truthful I dithered about it so long that it almost passed me by and then jumped just in time!

I live in what was once quite an industrial part of the city, and not too far from me is a factory which has been empty for a while.  The owners have decided to rent it out as an arts hub, with studio spaces, offices and a cafe/gallery/performance space - and I have rented a studio!

I've looked enviously at other people's workrooms for so long - if you are like me and have to make things at one end of the dining table I'm sure you understand my excitement!  The bit I have rented is a small space - and I mean really small - which I will be able to pay for by carrying on with some of my other work, and initially I'm only committed to it for a very short rental period so I can treat it as an experiment while I see if I can actually make anything that anyone would want to buy.

I haven't moved in yet, because the partitions are still going up, but should be in mid May.  There are girders too!

Town and country

So I've finally caught up on all my favourite blogs.  In fact I spent so long reading through them that my foot, which was tucked underneath me, went to sleep.  When I stood up it was like having an uncooked sausage for a leg with the result that I just fell over sideways and my husband had to run downstairs and pick me up off the floor.

I've also edited the holiday pics and thought I would show a bit of what North East England is like.  I really love the little glimpses of round the world that you get from blogs, so hope you won't mind lots of pics which of course you will skip if you do, so that's okay too.

Anyway, first we had some culture. An English museum in the French style:

This is the Bowes Museum, built by the illegitimate son of an English aristocrat, and his wife, a French actress.   They spent their life together making a wonderfully idiosyncratic collection of objects and paintings, possibly as a kind of 'up yours' to the society which wouldn't accept him, and had this built to house them.  Tragically neither of them lived to see it finished.

The building below, also in the town of Barnard Castle, served a variety of functions, including butter market, fire station and court house.  It also had two bullet holes in the golden weather vane as a souvenir of a target shooting competition between two chaps in the early 1800s.

This sign was high up on the wall, so I had to look up Corn Returns on the internet.  Apparently each town had to declare the amount of grains sold in the local market, and the selling price.

In total contrast this was a typical local stone barn with slit windows and dovecot in the eves.  Although it has a corrugated iron roof some of them were tiled with massive split stone slabs (rather than slate). I think they are beautiful.

Being Britain the weather was variable. We walked to the waterfall with the longest uninterrupted drop in England on a very cold and wet day: photo taken in the two seconds we took to make the most of waterfall before turning back and does not show grumpy children. It was worth it though!

There was a lot of lovely sunshine however and the countryside was full of blossom.

How can anything as energetic and characterful as a lamb turn into something as stolid as a sheep?

I was so excited to see a hare - they are not a common sight in urban Scotland:-):

This is the kind of scenery lower in the valleys.

Higher up, it's much wilder.

Lots of beautiful walls.  I think I have a bit of a trainspottery nature, but I think the variety of styles of dry-stone dyke work is totally fascinating.

There's also something completely awe-inspiring about a dam - I suppose it's partly to do with controlling the natural environment, but there's also something surreal about them.  We walked across one:

and drove across another to reach one of the houses we stayed in.  That drop to the left was quite hair-raising.

A lapwing.  Love the fascinator.

Back to reality, and school, after Easter.  Then perhaps some quilting!

Toads amazeballs

Calling Slow Bloggers

Today is the day when all Slow Bloggers are invited to join in the monthly linky party.  You don't have to be a permanently slow blogger - if you have had a fast month and been craftily creative join in and celebrate your achievements here whether you made one thing, or a whole mosaic load.  Or tell us what else you've been up to if real life has been taking up your time.

The aim of the Slow Blog manifesto is to take the pressure off, so you don't have to worry about falling out of the loop - so link up here, and link up anywhere else you like - and I don't want it to be just about me, me, me, so if you'd like to host one of the monthly linky parties, just let me know:-)

This is what I've been up to:

taken some walks in the countryside, bought a new sewing machine, attended the Stitch Gathering, learned how to make crazy patchwork, sorted out my stash, been photobombed by a cat, visited the Scottish parliament, seen the Great Tapestry of Scotland, made a Liberty komebukuro bag.

[edited to add you can read more about the Tapestry of Scotland here, and about Jo's group's contribution on her blog here - Jo's group's panel is shown in my photo bottom row second from left, and another image from the tapestry top left.  It's amazing!]

Your turn!  

Really Random Thursday - Reasons to be Cheerful

My daughter designed and sewed this while I wasn't paying attention. I don't take any credit for it at all - it just makes me really happy that she did this all by herself!

Other reasons to be cheerful this week: sunny weather!  The flowers are coming out,

and so are the creatures.  I really love stripey snails.

Things are always interesting close up and I love that my camera can show the flowers on this tiny grass/sedge(?).

This satellite picture of a strange planet is actually a huge lichen.

Of course things aren't always sweetness and light and we are not the Walton family!  This always cheers me up though.

Random Thursday - a Week of Awesome

A snowfall in which every flake was composed of perfect crystals:

A Roman settlement, in the cold and windy wilds of Northumberland:

A rare red squirrel:

A walk on the Pennine way:

A magical contraption:

These are teasels, used to raise up the surface of a wool fabric - there are 3000 of them in this machine which stood in this position for 160 years until the 1970s:

Hmmmm.....

Lastly, the view I found on stepping into the garden this afternoon:

Linking up to Live a Colorful Life - click here for some lovely randomness.

Really Random Thursday

I thought I'd share my view over the weekend.

Resolutely ignoring each other!  I think these cats are playing "Cat Chess" - as described by Terry Pratchett.

I like the way that cats (and dogs) feature so often in their owner's sewing blogs.  Mine likes to make his presence known, generally inappropriately, as in this recent protest against my paying attention to something else, demonstration of mousing skills:

or in this mis-timed concern as I lay on the floor trying to take a photograph.

Apparently this sort of thing has been going on for centuries.

Linking up to the fun at

Two Words

Tension headache.

Cat Attack

Wee bugger.

Really Random Thursday

There has been a lot of cupboard clearing going on in the Knotted Cotton household (displacement activity while plucking up courage to cut into the Oakshott...), and I have been sorting out a pile of stuff to go to the charity shop.  One old loud-speaker had a mysterious rattle.   This is the cause:

Yes:   five toy cows, two sheep, a dinosaur, a giraffe, a deer, a crocodile, a hippo, a panther and a pig, three Easter chicks, two pencils, two gekkos,  a butterfly,  a toy mobile phone, two wooden jigsaw pieces, a tangle of pipecleaners, a baby's hairbrush, an electronic thermometer, four hazelnuts, one parrot finger puppet and a plastic bee had all at one time or another been posted into the small hole at the front of the speaker by small children.

Back to the Oakshott - I had to show you the thread tangle I trimmed away after washing it.  The variety of colour illustrates how the shot cottons are woven - as each shot colour has a different thread woven with the red.   There must be some sort of textile art I could do with this - it's beautiful really!

Linking up to Really Random Thursday