First Swap!

I was so excited when Anna put up a post about doing a swap. I've never been part of one before so I jumped at the chance. Her blog is lovely and she updates a lot more regularly than I do and she loves her tea (me too!!)so I was in!
I wasn't disappointed when on a rainy Friday after work I trekked to the Post Office sorting centre and picked up my package...

How lucky did I get? Love all this beautiful stuff I got, especially the artwork! I don't have the blog address for the lovely person who sent this to me but as soon as I do I will add it to this post (if you're out there, please send it on!)

EDIT
This is the link to Laura's lovely blog...go on over and check it out!

Craftitecture competition

"The Crafts Council of Ireland and the Irish Architecture Foundation in association with the Electric Picnic, Greencrafts and Cultivate announce a new competition:

‘CRAFTITECTURE - A Pavilion for Electric Picnic’

The competition will realise the design and build of a re-usable temporary structure at Electric Picnic 2011, the annual arts-and-music festival held in Stradbally, Co. Laois.

The pavilion will house small intimate events during Electric Picnic and through its creation raise awareness and demonstrate the links between architecture and craft.

Joint submissions are invited from Architects and Craftperson teams and must represent equal input into the design and development of the pavilion.

The competition forms part of a dynamic programme of events to celebrate Year of Craft, 2011 on the island of Ireland, which marks the 40th anniversary of the Crafts Council of Ireland (CCoI)."

This sounds like such a cool project...get your noggins thinking, deadline 12th May...good luck!

Jane Austen ♥ Embroidery

After blogging about Wave Hill and my adventures in embroidery, I saw this on A Cup of Jo's blog...how funny...Jane Austen and embroidery just like my day out! How wonderful are these bookcovers...want, want, want!!!

Have a wonderful weekend everybody!!! xxx

Wavehill House

A few months ago, sitting at home in Dublin, while reading Design Sponge (my must read blog for the weekdays), I saw a post about Wavehill House. At the same time I was planning my escape to New York, but had not planned anything to do there apart from sit in café's and watch the world go by. I clicked on the link to the Wave Hill House website, searched through the events and found that they would have an embroidery workshop on while I was there, so it was the first event to go into my diary for the trip. The place has an amazing history and I was looking forward to checking it out.

The day came around for the embroidery workshop and it ended up pouring rain. I dragged a friend along with me and we taught ourselves embroidery in very Jane Austen style surroundings in a mansion on a rainy day.

I was so disappointed with the weather because we literally had to run from the gate to Glyndor House and still ended up soaking wet, so there was no opportunity to look around the grounds. I vowed to go back.

When my beau came over I asked him would he be interested in a trip to the Bronx and we penciled in another viewing of Wave Hill weather permitting. Luckily we did it the day before it started snowing again in New York, and we had a gloriously sunny but cold day to enjoy the grounds. We almost had the whole place to ourselves, our own Secret Garden.

I hadn't realised until my hosts in City Island told me that what I had embroidered was the Wave Hill House chairs, which I found when the rain wasn't obscuring my vision...

Wouldn't it be so lovely to bring a book, some knitting or just a cold drink and sit out on these in the summer looking across at the Palisades...heaven.

While at this stage of the year there wasn't huge amount in bloom and very few trees with leaves on, we still found beautiful grounds with a covering of bluebells and plenty of birds and squirrels rustling around...a little bit of heaven in the Bronx.

If you are planning a trip to New York I would highly recommend a half day out at Wave Hill, you can get there by subway and they pick you up at the station (details on the website). The area around the grounds is also nice, Riverdale, with some amazing houses and views across to the Palisades.

Christmas crafting 2009

So, christmas is always a good time to give yourself a good kick up the behind and get those unfinished objects FINISHED!

I finished a sewing course (Sept to Dec) in a local school and was so excited about actually knowing how to use my sewing machine, that I only photographed the gifts that I sewed!! (So, thats a hint for those who received a knitted gift...send me on a pic!)

I finished 3 cushion covers for my mam as her christmas gift. She had been looking at some in IKEA and hadn't bought them and by the time she went back they were gone. All I knew about them was that they had small blue flowers on them. So, luckily about 2 years ago I bought a set of old curtains in a charity shop because I knew some day they would come in handy :) They had lovely blue flowers on them!!! Yay!

So I set to making cushion covers....I started with an Oxford style cushion ( a new style to me) and then two back closing cushions. I spent a whole Saturday making them, which tells you alot about my skill level ;p And here is the photo shoot....

Some Finished Objects...

I'm just going to randomly post a few photo's of stuff I have finished over the years. I probably haven't taken photo's of a lot of the stuff that I've made, but hopefully this blog will help me keep track of all the fun hours spent crafting :)