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Friday, December 28, 2012

2012 A Year In Summary

Okay, I admit it, 2012 sucked on the blogging front. It has been one manic year!

Last year, I bought M a driving experience at Silverstone for his birthday, which he did in January.

 

Work is quite full on, I ran the Art Summer School program this year and I have ended up with the main responsibility for most of the GCSE art cohort.

 

On the family front, my little Sis got engaged on her birthday and June and married in October! That was a gargantuan project, the planning, dress choosing and fittings, the hen party planning (as Bridesmaid the hen party was my project). She was married at our local church, then the party was at Mum’s house round the corner. All very cosy, but the planning and the act of getting the house emptied, cleaned and decorated was a huge effort.

 

We also got a puppy this year; Jack joined us at Easter and is the most full-on, playful puppy I have ever met! Named after Captain Jack, he is also a pirate in that he will plunder and steal anything that takes his fancy, and can be quite destructive, so our living room is becoming quite minimalist!

 

He’s nearly eleven months now so he has the body of an adult dog, but the mentality of a little boy. He loves to race round the garden, and because of the amount of rain we’ve had this year, the garden is currently looking like a cow field. His favourite activities are digging, emptying plant pots and chewing the container, and splashing in what once was the water garden, but since he dragged the water lilies out of it, it has now become Jack’s play pond. Needless to say that there has not been much gardening this year. At some point soon we plan to fence off the main part of the garden to give it a chance to recover, so we’ll fill in the holes, replant the lawn and put in some more plants. Jack has had some health issues this year, and hasn’t had the chance to socialise very much, so we’ve only just been able to start puppy classes with him. I’ve trained him from the first day we had him, so he can sit, lay down, stay, leave, etc, etc, but he has a few *ahem* behavioural issues, especially when it comes to social situations. So we’re mostly taking him to classes to socialise him. We’ve also just found out where there’s a pack walk locally, so we’ll take him on Saturday morning  and hopefully that will help him too.

 

My sis got me a Tiger experience for my Birthday last year, so we booked it for the summer and she came with me…

 

I also volunteered as normal at the Barefoot Festival…the highlight of my summer, where my friend and I go and help out at a dance festival

 

I also took an online course with the Open University this summer in Digital Imaging…I really wanted to learn to use Photoshop, so that took up a lot of my time!

 

 

We gave Jack his first outing in the caravan over the summer and took him to Glastonbury for a week. He enjoyed bouncing excitedly on us each morning when he woke up; morning puppy breath is not a great this to wake up to; neither is a sharp clawed big ole puppy foot in the stomach, or a tongue in the ear...

 

We also took him to the seaside for the day….Jack loves water!

 

Dance-wise, I am still belly dancing. Tribal and Egyptian/Turkish. Tribal is my first love, but I go to the cabaret classes for the social side of it as I have friends there who I wouldn't see otherwise. I’ve done quite a few haflas this year, and done some workshops too.

 

I redecorated my bedroom over the summer which has made a huge difference; we bought an overbed unit which has given us so much more storage space and I now have enough floor space to be able to do some yoga in my bedroom, which is great since puppy classes are on the same night as the yoga classes I normally go to, so I’ve had to put the yoga classes on hold for the time being. So I’m doing yoga at home now in the lovely yoga space. My cat’s quite often come and get in the way join me. 

 

 

What crafty time I’ve had this year has been organising a Hippy swap on Craftster in the summer, I also did a Hobbit swap, I’ve made some presents and I’ve made costumes. I’ve also become ever so slightly addicted to sock knitting! I love those small portable projects. I have a couple of art journals on the go at the moment, a pair of red zockni’s on the needles, a couple of tribal costuming projects on the go.

 

For my birthday this year, not only did M buy me a Kindle Fire HD (which I love!!) but he also took me to the Harry Potter Studio Tour, which is where the films were filmed!

 

He also spoilt me with a new camera for Christmas, so I’m busy trying to figure out where everything is on that!

Will try to be a better blogger next year!!

Sunday, September 02, 2012

TTT Hippy Swap!

Hey there! It’s been ages since I posted! I’m just organising the TTT Hippy Swap and I thought I’d share! TTT stands for Three Tiny Things by the way and it’s over on Craftster!

So this is what I made for my partner; a set of ribbon wrapped bangles with beads and a tiny tree charm

Three tiny flower pot candles – all made by me, even the flower pots!

And a hair flower!

Hope you like! I’ll post some more stuff soon, I promise! New puppy has been keeping me busy!

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Got to Dance!!

Hey, I’ve been spending alot of time dancing recently…I started a new tribal class which is great fun and I still go to my regular bellydance class!

Of course this inevitably means that a lot of my crafting time has involved costume-making, some of it easy, some of it quite challenging!

I thought I’d share some of last years projects with you.

So this was my most challenging project – a 25 yard skirt for twirling about at tribal class. This inevitably turned into a 24 metre skirt since we are metric here in the UK. Now, maths is not my strongest point. Not at all, no siree! I found loads of great tutorials and formulas on t’internet which made absolutely no sense at all to me. In the end I sat and drew pictures. Eventually my doodling provided me with something I could actually work with (although I had to go to the fabric shop twice because I didn’t buy enough fabric the first time hee hee!)

So I had to learn to gather and sew humongous amounts of fabric. Seriously, I literally drowned in fabric at times. The fabric is a lovely cherry red colour and is light enough to swirl when I spin. I think I almost lost the will to live at one point when I was serging the seams, and I have to confess that I couldn’t face the thought of rethreading my serging, so I used the black thread that was already in it. Which was okay because most of the serging was on the inside. But then I had to serge the hem and by this time I was *keen* to see the back of this project finish!

So I just carried on with the black thread and bugger me, it looks fab! That little edge of black along the bottom looks fantastic cascading down the side of the skirt when I tuck a hem into my waistband.

Now I know why you pay so much for 25 yrd skirts; they are a huuuuuge commitment of time, stress and angst! This might be the last skirt I ever make *lol* I’m not completely happy with it; my perfectionist’s eyes are drawn to the many imperfections in the skirt, but I figure that it’s good enough for class practice. I don’t think I would ever wear it for a performance!

Okay, so I really wanted a pair of melodias but they cost, so when I came upon a pair of black velvet stretchy pants tucked away in my wardrobe, I thought they would make a fine pair of tribal trousers, only they just weren’t wide enough!! So I took the side seams apart and slotted in some black satin fabric

Then, to make them look pretty, I added an appliqued design and some beads and sequins.

 

Of course, any practice needs a twirly shimmy skirt two and I made a couple of those…

This an asymmetrical hem, elasticated waist handkerchief skirt made from a lovely black lace. It helps create a lovely layered look when you add another scarf or belt on top.

And then this one which I adore, is made from glitter dot fabric – silver on black – it’s gorgeous and really sparkles in the light!

I needed a tribal coin bra for my first ever tribal performance, so I found a black bikini bra (fantastic by the way, since the clasps and straps on a bikini top are designed to be worn.

 

And because I had some time over Christmas, I raided my scrap back and created this long shimmy belt with side ties and a lovely beaded back swag!

I also made this for fun – and mainly because my fringe was doing my head in and getting in my eyes at dance practice!!

Soo, these are some of the pretty things I’ve been crafting over the last six months *lol*

Saturday, January 07, 2012

Hippy New Year!

Well, I for one am very glad that 2011 is over; it was a truly rubbish year for lots of reasons. Sadly the Uberhound passed away and left a very big gap in our lives….we adopted another puppy to help to fill the void, but sadly the puppy died of parvo virus four days after we brought him home.

Our holiday to the Forest of Dean was a very subdued affair, particularly as we’d chosen it because there were lots of places for doggy adventures.  

But life goes on and we went to lots of places (although we didn’t see any wild hogs like we wanted to).

We even went on an old steam train

We also visited Puzzlewood where they film Merlin – what a great place!!

The Barefoot festival that I volunteer at with a friend was as good as usual…in a new bigger location and the usual fab cabaret and fire show.

Halloween was a fun night – we dressed up and scared all the local children

The Autumn term was really manic as usual, we had an OFSTED visit, plus observations, so that pretty much took up the whole term.

The Hafla was  great although very exhausting as I’d managed to put myself in a position where I was doing 5 dances, including my very first Tribal performance! This involved four costume changes!! *lol*

Alot of my pre-Christmas time was taken up with crafting a pair of fairy wings for my friend – I was quite pleased with the results!

Christmas was great, as was New Year. I fully intend to spend alot more time crafting this year and have kicked the New Year off to the right start by organising the first Winter Hippy Swap on Craftster, so hopefully there’ll be some more creations to show you soon!

Open-mouthed smile

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