Advent stars

We went to visit a friend on the Glossop Christmas Art Trail at the weekend.  She's a stained glass artist but was busy making stars from dogwood twigs, so she taught us too.  The children were using them as magic wands, I went a bit mad and made quite a few and then wondered what to do with them all.  So now we have this:

advent stars hanging above the fireplace.  It must be nearly Christmas!

Grey days, or seaside?

It's a grey day today and we're back to normal after the weekend.  But we had a good weekend!  In amongst the usual stuff (and the odd party) it was time for the annual Amnesty craft fair.  So we all got together and set up our stalls.  The fair was twice as big this year, and for the first time we had two rooms.  There was lots for the kids to do to, including tile painting, corn dollies and face painting.  Hannah went down the traditional route and had her face painted as a butterfly, but Steph (as ever the individual) went a different way:

I don't suppose the face painting lady gets that many requests for 'the seaside'!  It did remind us all of summer though.

Mitred squares

I've just published my first pattern on Ravelry, it's a mitred phone cosy, and it's free!  While we were at BOB there was a lady sitting knitting mitred squares to make a waistcoat, and she'd made fingerless gloves, and we were all intrigued and getting a masterclass on how to do it.  I came home inspired slightly obsessed and have been playing around with the technique ever since. 

First there was this:

 then this (it's a work in progress, obviously):

then these:

 and finally the phone cosy was born:

and another one too, just to check the technique you understand.

So I thought I'd write up the pattern and offer it on Ravelry, for anyone else who might be similarly obsessed looking for something exciting and modular to knit.  You can download it here.  Enjoy!