Wippin’ Piccadilly
Image Details: ‘Map of Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway System, Manchester Victoria Station’, by mrrobertwade (wadey), via Flickr. “Once upon a time, not too long go, we took a day out in Manchester, We all fall down, there’s not enough hours in our day.” On 13 April, 1998, Gomez’s ‘Bring it On’ was released. ‘Whippin’ Piccadilly’...
On the Road: Windhoek, Namibia
Image Details: ‘Off to see the desert, the wonderful desert of Nam’ by Paul Watson, via Flickr As it was my birthday last weekend, we went on a trip to Windhoek in Namibia. I’m not going to lie to you, this was prompted almost entirely by alcohol: our favourite lager here is ‘Windhoek’ and we...
You can take our acrylic…
But you’ll never take our freeeeeeeedddddoooommm! Image Details: ‘brave heart’ by lcampos37, via Flickr. It all started with a little TV appearance on BBC Breakfast by Lauren, aka Deadly Knitshade of Stitch London fame, who appeared at a fairly ungodly hour to chat about knitting. She cracked on with a rather bright scarf, maintaining a...
Happy Blogday: A Year in the Life of the Shinybees Blog
Image Details: ‘Birthday Cake’ by Omer Wazir, via Flickr The Shinybees blog is 1 year old today. It was on 13th February 2011 that I wrote my first proper blog post – ‘The First Rule of Knit Club‘. So, I have decided to do a little round up of posts for the last year for...
Not so Extreme Makeover: Man-Cave to Craft Haven
Over the last couple of weeks, I have dedicated some time to sorting out the study. By ‘sorting out’, I mean completely changing its designated role from ‘ramshackle study-cum-mancave’ to ‘lovely crafty room of awesomeness’. I was aided and abetted in this feat of engineering by my dear and long-suffering husband (LSH), who, as you...
Damask of Doom: A knitter’s curse?
Image Details: ‘Lil’ devil hat’ by thomasina, via Flickr. Do you ever get that feeling, when you start a project, that you are a bit doomed to failure? Like there is some celestial force which just does not want you to finish it. Bad joo joo if you will? That the craft karma fairy is...
Book Review: Kirstie Allsopp’s ‘Craft’
Amongst the seriously awesome presents that I received from Mumsy for Christmas, including the welly socks for my Hunters, was a copy of Kirstie Allsop’s Craft. As you can imagine, this was extremely pleasing for me, as I had thought about buying a copy but thought ‘no, wait, maybe if I am a really good...
Nothing like Ghost: A first go at painting pottery
Image Details: ‘all i could think about was ‘ghost’ and demi and patrick swayze and the clay scene…’ by feeb, via Flickr. A couple of weeks ago, between Christmas and New Year, we went on a mission to test an overlocker, as I had been promised one for Christmas. Having driven into Hove and found...
LYS Review: Black Sheep Wools Craft Barn
On 4 January, I went with Sal from The Gingerbread Bunny to the Black Sheep Craft Barn in Culcheth to do a bit of yarn shopping. We had planned to go to Purl City Yarns in Manchester, however, as the weather has been particularly horrid here, we didn’t fancy dicing with death on the M60,...
2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,700 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people. Click here to...
A Crafty Absence
Image Details: ‘ornament 3’ by Nesster, via Flickr. I can’t believe it has been over a month since I last blogged. I have several blog entry drafts that are almost completed, but haven’t quite made it to the finished pile yet. A bit like all my Christmas knitting. Oops. In order to break the block,...
Project paralysis
Image Details: ‘Tied to a Chair’ by Hanna-, via Flickr. Twitter keeps happily reminding me how many days/hours it is until Christmas. As I have mentioned countless times on here, I love Christmas. Nothing pleases me more than rebelliously putting the Christmas tree up in the last couple of days of November. Any excuse to...