Doing a little stocktaking

This morning, Facebook gave me an 'On this day...' snapshot as it always does, of things that I have posted on this date in previous years. Today, it reminded me of a blog post I wrote on 25 November 2016.

The opening paragraph read as follows (you can read the whole post here, if you're so inclined):

The last couple of days have been very difficult for me. The brief version is that I have lost my beloved workshop space. You know the cliche 'it never rains, but it pours'? This wouldn't happen while everything else was hunky dory. Oh no! It has to happen while we're trying to sell our house, and while Mr Namasi is trying to find work (in a less than ideal job market) before his notice period comes to an end, following the demise of the business he has been working for. And while I am waiting to find out whether 'the big C' has taken up residence in my body.

It seemed like an appropriate time to do a little 'then and now', without burying myself (or you) in the 'what went between' bit.

I have lost my beloved workshop space. We have since moved house, and I now have a workshop space at home. It is much smaller, and not terribly weatherproof, but it's adorable and I love it to bits!

We're trying to sell our house. As you can deduce from the previous paragraph, we sold our house. Not without a few glitches along the way, but it happened. And the proceeds from that sale are what keep the wolf from the door. I especially love our current house, the village and the countryside in which it... yes, I think nestles is exactly the right word.

Mr Namasi is trying to find work. Mr Namasi's search continues. The job market is fierce, and I/we have lost faith in the recruitment industry. At the time of writing, he is in the process of setting up an IT consultancy business... but still open to the idea of a role within an existing company.

I am waiting to find out whether 'the big C' has taken up residence in my body. The 'big C' had not taken up residence in my body, and a minor - albeit extremely painful - procedure was all that was needed. Poor Mr Namasi was subjected to the sounds of his wife squealing in agony as he waited helplessly in the waiting room.

Karyn's Kreations has been rebranded as Karyn's [re]Kreations. A new logo has been designed. A van called Barney has been acquired, and I'm making a real effort to find avenues to take my pieces to market.


So please spread the word: I have stock to hand, including great Christmas gift ideas. I also accept commissions and offer 1:1 sessions and group workshops. And I'm raring to go.

Proceed to the route

A bit of musing from me today.

Those of you who know me personally, will know that I am not strong on the whole spatial intelligence thing.

Some examples:

• Although I know the rules (and the point) of chess, I can't actually play the game. There are too many parameters for me to be able to use all my pieces in concert to build a strategy and defend myself against my opponent's strategy.
• Even though I was pretty decent at maths at school, I always came horribly undone in the geometry papers (but not trigonometry, for some reason - that, I could do). I simply couldn't figure out how the size of this angle, or the length of this line impacted on that angle and that line, even though I knew the various theorems being applied.
• Even if I have been to a place before, I can't be relied upon to find my way back there without help. Don't get wrong: I'm pretty good at navigating if I have a map, and someone else is driving. But I can't build a map in my head that tells me where one place is, in relation to another. So, if I turn left at the end of X street to go to place A, and right at the end of X street to go to place B, and far as I'm concerned, places A and B are miles apart. Even though it often transpires that the roads curve back towards each other en route, and the distance between A and B is actually short enough to walk in just a few minutes.

All this leads me to my love/hate relationship with the map apps on my phone. I am immensely grateful for the technology that has provided me with a hands-free way to navigate the highways and byways as I dash off to collect this or that item on which to lavish some transformative love and attention.

Mr Namasi - who, like his sisters, is blessed with a bump of locality that can only come from their father, because their mother outperforms me in the 'getting lost' event - is no doubt equally grateful no longer to be on the receiving end of panicked phone calls when I have managed to lose myself along some country lane. That man has managed to locate and extricate me from extreme lostness using only my hysterical description of landmarks and a map on his computer. More than once. I kid you not.

But now I have the soothing tones of Siri to guide me. I have even allocated a female voice and a South African accent, so that I feel a greater sense of kinship with her. Not that speaking with a South African accent has made her any better at interpreting my spoken instructions. She and I have had some interesting conversations!

But I digress.

The thing is, lifeline though she is, Siri has the habit of issuing a few instructions that I find less than helpful.

"Head north (or south-east or whatever)". My car is fitted with an indicator that copes with left, and right. My car is not fitted with an indicator that tells me which way is north. And since I'm not looking at a printed map, and since Siri helpfully swings the on-screen map around so that the direction I'm headed is always up, I have no idea which way is north. Thanks Siri.

How I deal with this: I just drive forward. Forward is a direction I know, even though my car doesn't have an indicator for that. I also know backward. Are you proud of me? Siri simply has to replot the route and tell me what to do once she's figured it out.

"Proceed to the route". Siri, you're the navigator. I'm following your instructions. How is it that I'm not already on the route? This is particularly unnerving if Siri's on-screen map shows me floating across the countryside where apparently no roads exist.

How I deal with this: I just keep going in the hope that Siri will figure it out.

Once, several years ago, I was on my way to collect my son from a friend's house. Siri hadn't been born yet, and my phone didn't run to maps. The friend lived in a new area which didn't appear on my paper map. So, of course, I was lost. The friend's mother was trying to direct me over the phone, (handsfree, of course). "Turn left off Rockingham Road," she told me. I did as I was told and promptly got even loster. You see, in her mind's eye, I was travelling in x direction along Rockingham Road, when in fact, I was going the opposite way.

Without some kind of context, so many instructions are like this, aren't they? They work on the assumption that certain basic pieces of the puzzle are already in place. And that's about as helpful as 'proceed to the route.'

Upcycled Christmas part 2 - handmade decorations

As a follow on to my last post, today I'm going to focus on Christmas decorations made out of reclaimed materials.

To start the ball rolling, here is a Christmas wreath made out of a pool noodle, hessian, ribbon and various other bits and pieces I had to hand - mostly saved from centrepieces from previous Christmases. There's even a pair of earrings in there somewhere. Can you spot them?

Christmas wreath from reclaimed materials

This weekend coming (25-26 November), our village church is holding a Christmas tree festival. My entry is called (as you might expect) Upcycled Christmas. The trees and everything on them will be made from reclaimed materials.

I already touched on the madonna-and-child models I made with the local craft-and-coffee group, using reclaimed materials and polyfilla. My own madonna will be part of my display at the festival. As will this little choir, and their conductor. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what went into making them!

Totally rubbish singing

Obviously, I don't want to reveal all my secrets in advance, but here are some of the trees I have made out of reclaimed materials in the past:

A mooring rope...as you do

Wall-hanging tree for small spaces

This pair was a commission

Table top tree

 And of course, there are the decorations to hang on them! This is where discarded curtain rings, disposable coffee cups, previous years' ribbons and wrappings, broken jewellery, scraps from the craft cupboard, etc. come into their own. Even a piece of an old bathmat has been pressed into service in one of these photos (see if you can spot it). The chains from a few hanging baskets will also be putting in an appearance, but you'll have to wait until after next weekend to see them!

Tree topper

Broken jewellery and a wedding garter are included here

Lots of curtain rings and glitter glue

The point of all of this is that so many of our decorations are made of plastic, and wind up being thrown away after Christmas. Only there's no such place as 'away'. It's all going somewhere. And, with a little thought, they could all be pressed into service for another go-round in a different guise. You could even make a family activity out of it - it will help build the excitement. And children love to see their own handiwork hanging in pride of place on the tree. Just make sure any hot glue and/or superglue is kept at a safe distance from little fingers. And make sure to use solvent-free options where possible when involving the little people.

I'd love to see your own handmade Christmas decorations!

Upcycled Christmas part 1 - handmade gifts

Those of us who make things to sell have to start thinking about Christmas quite early. In less than two weeks, I have a double whammy weekend:

• Our local church is having a Christmas tree festival on 25th and 26th November. Local people and organisations are invited to participate. My theme is upcycled Christmas, and my tree and all its decorations will be made out of reclaimed materials. I will share more about that in my next post.
• The church in the next village is having a Christmas market on 26 November, and I have a stall. I thought I'd unpack a bit about that today.

Generally speaking, people go to village fetes and fairs expecting to spend the money in their wallets. There is little likelihood that I will find a buyer for my chaise or my hall stand. But I can certainly raise awareness of the items and services I offer, while offering for sale a range of small ticket items.

It is, of course, important, that my small ticket items adhere to the same ethos as the bigger pieces I offer: unique, handmade pieces majoring on reclaimed materials. So I have been frantically building up stock of items that fit this bill.

Reclaimed wood of various sorts has been repurposed.

Wall art: reclaimed wood

Framed driftwood

Willow stems

Reclaimed pallet end

Reclaimed pallet end

A box of specimen tubes (unused, of course) was saved from the tip, and used for a range of handmade bath oils and bath salts.

Bergamot, patchouli and lavender

Bath oils, decopodged with paper napkins

Handmade bath salts, petals from Deema Delights

Bath salts - I've tested them on myself ;)

Various found materials were used to make dreamcatcher-style wall art.

Giant quadruple wall art

Autumn colours

Traditional seven-point style

I have been making inroads on the yarn stash with lots of knitting and crocheting.

Place mat

Set of 4

Set of 6

Plant holder, fruit bowl... or hat, if you prefer

Tam o'shanter style jar

Pair of octopus (there are also teddies)

Glass jars have been decorated to within an inch of their lives.

Various other items have been revamped and made over.

Brooches

Wall mounted candle sconce

Variation on the above

Vintage Sylko cotton reels

Decoupaged clock

Light bulb hot air balloon

So swing by St Mary's Little Harrowden at some point over the weekend of 25/26 November to see the trees, and/or St Mary's Orlingbury on Sunday 26th November and grab yourself a Christmas bargain.

Local craft-and-coffee

A few months ago, Mr Namasi and I moved from a town with an estimated population of 50,000 (75,000, if you include the rest of the borough) to a village with a population of fewer than 900. There is no shop, no post office, and only one pub in the village. 

And I love it. I'd like to see out my days here.

We have made an effort to engage with the community: attending the various functions at the local church, eating in the local pub, joining the FB group, etc. I started a chapter of nextdoor, a UK based online community site, which automatically connects members within close proximity to each other.

I also started a monthly craft-and-coffee. Although I offer 1:1 and small group sessions, for which I charge, I also wanted to have some sessions which were just about engaging and sharing.

So far, we've had three get-togethers. For the first one, we each brought our own projects and talked about what crafts we like to do. One of the ladies brought along a beautiful mixed media wall hanging she'd made. 

So, for the next session, we explored that. Here are the two pieces I made (I should point out that I continued the work at home - I didn't manage all that in two hours!)

Mixed media cushion cover

'Garden' (now framed and for sale)

Yesterday was our third session, and we made Madonna-and-child models out of reclaimed materials (and polyfilla). I had made one of these some years ago, so I was able to concentrate on guiding the rest of the group through the process. It was wonderfully messy, and the results are now drying in my studio, where they will be collected when ready to be transported.

Have a look at these photos and see if you can identify where and how each of the following items has been used:

• piece of MDF or stiff card
• 2l plastic bottle
• newspaper
• plastic shopping bags
• dowel stick or length of bamboo
• old cotton bed sheet
• wire coathanger

Not looking like much, yet

Getting there

And here they are, drying in my studio.

Next time, we'll be making needle felted robins, like this one. Because I don't have the equipment to facilitate this one myself, I have enlisted the aid of Eve Louise Newman (Eve's Gifted Paradise). 

If you're local to the Wellingborough/Kettering area, and would like to join in, please contact me to find out more.

A tale of two...hockey racks

I am the wife of an ice hockey player.

I am the mother of two ice hockey players.

If your first thought was for the olfactory assault that results from those two facts, chances are you know a thing or two about hockey.

If you're not in the know, let me clue you in: hockey players come off the ice wringing wet, and it's not from falling down on wet ice. It's from sweat. There's no delicate way to put it. If they were to strip off their underlayer and throw it against the wall, it would stick.

The underlayer enjoys the privilege of an acquaintance with the inside of a washing machine. The outer layer, with the exception of the jersey... not so much.

Those big padded shorts, those leg guards, those elbow guards, those gloves, that chest protector, that helmet... all those pieces of kit will probably never be washed during the entirety of their existence.

And hockey players take a perverse pride in this.

The kit bag comes home at the end of the game. It is opened. The underlayer and jersey are thrown into the washing machine, where - if I have any say in it - an antibacterial agent is added to the drum. The rest of the kit is left to dry out. Often spread over various surfaces. If you're lucky, said surfaces will be in the shed, or the garage or somewhere away from the house.

Drying racks are commercially available, but no-one in my family has ever got as far as buying one. So I grabbed a few bits of reclaimed material and made a couple for my sons.

Son 1's rack - empty

The advantage of this is that I was able to customise them to my sons' measurements.

If you'd like one (perhaps as a Christmas present for the hockey player in your life), get in touch. Of course, because each one is handmade using materials available at the time, no two will be alike. I can also customise them with the player's name or number, or apply team colours to them.

Son 1's rack - loaded (except for shorts)

Son 2's rack - loaded