Wednesday Window: National Storytelling Week

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...

Did you know it's National Storytelling Week this week? It's the brainchild of the Society for Storytelling, which exists to celebrate and promote oral storytelling, surely one of the most ancient of arts.

The idea of National Storytelling Week is to encourage ordinary folks like you and me to put away our printed books and have a go at winging it, out loud. To quote from the Beginner's Guide to Telling Stories: 

We are all storytellers! We tell each other stories quite naturally as part of our everyday life. We need look no further for proof of this than the snatches of conversation overheard in the workplace, the playground, or on the bus.

Telling stories gives us the opportunity to express emotion and to use our imaginations with a freedom no other medium can offer.  

Telling stories to children enables them to learn the art of listening, in an age when many are lacking this skill. Encourage them to tell stories and they will gain confidence, improve their vocabulary and their literary skills.  

I find the idea of just launching into a story, even a well known one like a fairy tale, quite intimidating, but there's a useful guide to getting started on Family Storytelling which you can download from the website. Do let me know how you get on!

Knotting with silk

It feels like a while since I posted anything about Morgan & Pink, and I've been having fun recently with Griffin silk so I thought I'd share some of those designs with you.

This one was a Christmas present for a relative, and combines 14mm cream Czech glass pearls and 10mm pink glass pearls with pale amethyst nuggets and faceted glass rondelles, knotted on a relatively thick cream silk:

Then I went back to basics and re-strung an old pearl necklace I had, on finer silk:

Next I treated myself to something more funky; this time a mixture of red and gold glass beads, with irregular shaped glass pearls, on red silk:

And finally, because I rarely make green things, I bought some semi-precious epidote, and combined it with faceted Czech glass, on a medium-weight cream silk:

This last one is for sale in my Etsy shop, and I'm always happy to take commissions. I've now bought some more silk in pale blue, dusky pink, navy blue and deep purple, and am looking forward to my littlest one starting nursery soon so I'll have more time to play!

Wednesday Window: Knit One, Purl One

Last Friday was a momentous day, because at approximately 9.30pm I finally finished a blanket I began knitting for my then unborn child about 6 years ago.

I realise many of you are probably rather competent knitters, and will not be particularly impressed by this specimen but for me it represents a massive achievement, and I am brimming over with pride and excitement about it. It not only proves to me that I can knit, but also that I can, given enough time, finish a project. I am one of those ideas-rich, time-poor crafters who have a guilt-ridden heap of unfinished fabric projects (including two quilts and a crocheted blanket), gathering dust upstairs. Maybe that's why I love making jewellery - it doesn't take long to create something beautiful!

This blanket lay ignored for a long time after Poppet was born; at that stage I was overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of parenting, and simply forgot about anything else. Then after a while I remembered it, and occasionally I would get it out guiltily, look up the instructions for moss stitch again, do a couple of rows, and give up again. From time to time people offered to finish it for me, or suggested I truncated it, but I resisted. I realised I wanted to finish it myself, and to do it as printed in the pattern. Last autumn I finally got going, determined to finish it by Christmas. It became what I did when my children slept, or when I found five minutes peace. I missed the Christmas deadline, and there are a few mistakes that I didn't notice, or didn't dare try to correct for fear of making them worse, and I will be forever grateful to the friend who patiently unpicked half a row of bungled stitches for me in the M&S café, and set me on track again, but it's finished. (And yes, I did indeed do a little victory dance round the kitchen to celebrate...)

My next project is a hat, so I can learn to decrease, then Poppet wants a sleeveless jumper; after that my husband (who is learning to knit himself - bet that surprises a few of his fellow commuters!) has challenged me to learn to cable... Watch this space (but not too eagerly!)

Wednesday Window: buying oneself flowers

Ordinarily of course one would wait for the love of one's life to appear on the doorstep clutching a beautiful bouquet of seasonal flowers (but not too ostentatious, or one might suspect a hidden apology...) But life isn't always like that, and anyway, why should having fresh flowers in the house be such a big deal?

My Dad once sent me a £10 note in a birthday card with strict instructions that I was to spend it on things like wine, chocolate or flowers, and absolutely not to fritter it away on tights or Tampax. I was very touched (you can tell - it was nearly 20 years ago, but I still have the card), and it struck a chord.

Buying oneself flowers is fun and frivolous, but it also sends a clear message that rather than waiting for someone else to treat you in the way you wish to be treated, you are doing it for yourself. It also means you can have exactly the flowers you want! On that birthday occasion I bought some stunning gladioli from the stall in Chiswick Park tube station. Today I spotted some of the first British daffodils on sale, and I'm a sucker for a cheerful little daffodil.

Happy Wednesday, and roll on spring!

Tissue Box TV

I can’t remember whose idea this was to start with, but it has worked better than we could have hoped, so I thought we’d share it with you.

Take one empty tissue box - the slim square kind worked for us, but I guess it doesn’t matter. Pull out the plastic film bit that holds the tissues in, so you have an open window with a frame, effectively. Poppet wanted to cover up the colour of the original box, but found that poster paint wouldn’t stick to the shiny surface, so we covered the box with strips of masking tape first, then painted the tape with white poster paint. Leave it to dry...

Meanwhile, draw and colour a suitable picture on a piece of plain white paper, making sure the paper is the same size as the box, but the picture itself will fit inside the “frame”. Relatively thin cheap paper works best for the fun part that comes later.

Carefully stick the paper onto the front of the box. Cut up an old egg box to make legs, which can be fixed on with sellotape. You can stop at this stage, and admire your new TV: 

Or you can carry on: buy (or if you have the right kind of garage/shed, rummage around and find) a simple electrical circuit with battery and bulb, like so:

Make a hole in the back of the tissue box large enough to poke the bulb through. Connect up the circuit, turn off the house lights, and settle down to watch the show.

Poppet was so entranced by this that she lay on the floor watching for nearly half an hour, periodically calling out, “Look, they made a TV program about us - come and see!” She then made a remote control, a mobile phone, and finally an iPad, so that she can “noodle” (it’s a family word...) while she is watching TV. Oh dear.

Have fun!

Wednesday Window: Sugru

Happy New Year! And welcome to my first Wednesday Window of 2013. For those of you new to this, it's something I started at the end of last year (see this post for more details); it's in its infancy so far, but hopefully this year it will get into its stride, so please stay with me! (And do send ideas for future Wednesday Windows if you come across something cool you think I'd like...)

Through today's window, we see this stuff:

I came across this peculiarly useful grown-up play-dough via a twitter link nearly a year ago, and I bought some that same day. According to their own spiel, “sugru is the exciting new self-setting rubber that can be formed by hand. It moulds like play-dough, bonds to almost anything and turns into a strong, flexible silicone rubber overnight.”

Take a look at the Sugru website, and the videos of customer fixes - it really is amazing stuff. It appeals on many levels: it's simple, easy, endlessly adaptable, comes in lots of pretty colours, and enables you not only to improve things you already use, but also to mend things you'd stopped using because they're broken, and that might otherwise be thrown away. They also have a rather cool Fixer's Manifesto:

(And no, this isn’t a sponsored post, more’s the pity.)