And all that jazz...

Well, its been weeks since my last update, and so much has gone on, I don't even know where to begin. Last time I wrote on my blog I had just done the Craft Fair.

I got a few commissions of hats, scarves and even a tea-cosy, and a few friends came round after the Fair to root through what I had left. Enough to pay for a few bottles of wine over the Xmas...so I was happy enough.


The Customized Tea-Cosy.
It took me a while to figure this one out. I had to borrow the teapot, and adjust the pattern to take into the account of the straight sides and the spout. I love tea-cosies that you can leave on, so I did the lid more for decoration, it also doubles as a coaster.




This is the Vintage/Re-cycled/Re-used bag that I had asked questions about previously. The main body is linen thread, which is over 40 years old, the red is fairtrade twine I got from Oxfam, and the pale is strips of remnant upholstery fabric.

Here is the another Sackboy that I made.

I re-wrote the pattern to make one with an open mouth. This Sackboy along with the original Sackboy and Sackgirl were sent to Media Molecule Headquarters where I have just heard, they have been placed in the Cabinet! It must be a Cabinet of Fame, of LBG memorabilia that will some worth a fortune some day...



My biggest commission came from my step-dad, who let his fingers do the walking by getting on the phone and ordering his Xmas presents off me. He wanted some kind of a Hyperbolic thing to give to my ma. She had seen some of my Coral Reef stuff before, and they were amazed, not at what I was crocheting, but the fact I was talking maths. (Me and Maths were never known to have gotten on before...). The piece I made of the Cork Textiles Network Exhibition in the School of Music, is still in Cork, so I had to make a new one from scratch. Doing the crochet was easy enough, it was finding the right frame that was the hard part. I didn't have time to get a frame made, so I did a search for box frames around all the usual haunts, and eventually came across one in Woody's that would do the job.



Then, one or two more scarves to be made, pack the bags and we were off for Christmas. An over-night stay in Galway, and next thing, we were in the wilds of the Mayo, the land of St. Pat. I ended up spending a week and a half up there. It was nice and uneventful, as I had planned, until after Xmas when I got a puncture. Me being me, it had to be a drama, the wheel was rusted to the car, so refused to come off. Then I realised I hadn't seen my purse since before Xmas, and discovered it was lost somewhere between Kerry and Mayo. Cards Cancelled, money borrowed, wheel off, child sick, a day later, I went off to get puncture repaired.

What has been a successfully quiet and pleasant Xmas with my family, had turned into a hungover disaster, but by New Years Eve, it turned back to being pleasant. A small win on the horses (considering I bet on horses about every 3/4 years, this was a great surprise), the puncture repair people couldn't find a puncture and said my spare was fine to drive with, and a call from the bank to say my purse, which I had lost Xmas Eve in Westport, was found intact, with cards and cash.

The End of 2008....

So, 2009 started with me snoring my head off, peacefully in bed with toddler, and then a long drive home...

Croagh Patrick, Co. Mayo, o holy of holy mountains,
covered in cloud, yet basking in the sun