On Friday I took an early lunch hour and hotfooted it to Blackwell’s bookshop, where my favourite circus were hanging out and officially launching their new book, Giffords Circus – the first 10 years (its only taken me two days to read the whole thing, I couldn’t put it down & its an amazing look at the inside Read more about Giffords Circus and a related book launch[…]
Tonight we went to the botanical gardens in Oxford for a guided tour given by the lovely and very knowledgeable Katherine French who is currently studying ethno botany at the university. In short it was fascinating! We started off in the poisonous bed Belladonna which has modern uses for dilating the pupil A Harry Potter favourite the Mandrake, Read more about People and plants at the botanical gardens[…]
what you see above is my nearly felted wild boar, since I took the above photo I’ve added his legs & the only things left to do to him is ensure all the felt is tight enough before dying him dark brown & adding his strings. The head above shows how I decided to do Read more about Puppet and garden progress[…]
A few months ago Jam’s dad gave me this beautiful corner chair, the seat was broken and he thought I’d enjoy the challenge of fixing it. It’s been say in the spare room for a couple of months till I realised the most wonderful Ardington School of craft had a re-caining course. A place was Read more about Not rushing – recaining a chair[…]
I bought the wood for my puppets a couple of weeks ago, but we’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to start carving them. With the puppet challenge finishing at the end of this month now would seem a very good time to start! First order of the day was to create a scale Read more about The beginning of carving in earnest[…]
I’ve been squirreling away at my desk these past few weeks which is why the blog has been a bit quiet (that and I’ve got a few gig reviews to put up but they are somewhat still ‘coming together’ & so far all I can say about them is that they were awesome, must try Read more about Just like that my first lot of made things heads out into the world[…]
Wanting to make the most of our last day of freedom before going back to work Jam and I decided to go to Haynes of Challow, last time we were there they had some chairs that matched the ones Claire & Simon gave us with their outside table, we’ve only got 2 so another 2 Read more about Lightning doesn’t strike twice (until it does)[…]
For mum’s birthday this year she decided to invite us all to join her in some self catering apartments in Dorset. At the start of the year when it was horrid and rainy outside May seemed ages away but at the end of last week we packed our bags (much to the disgust of the Read more about Holiday times in Dorset[…]
This week at work I was lucky enough to attend an event as part of the World Literacy Summit held in Oxford. It was the UK launch of the Jane Austen foundation and a talk by Jane Austen’s fifth great nice Caroline Jane Knight. Caroline spoke at length about growing up on the Chawton estate in Hampshire as Read more about Austen and Easter break[…]
This weekend we headed to London to catch up with Alex and Victoria. First up we toured the many wonders of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The above (and pic at the top of this post) were two beautiful but very unusual chandeliers positioned in the entryway to the museum itself. We had some fun in Read more about Journey to the V&A[…]