FIELD DAY FESTIVAL.

Atention! Attention!

Next Saturday 9th August we highly recommend the Field Day Festival in Victoria Park. We will be teaching spinning next to Pom Pom International, and there is a whole pot pourri of brilliant bands, good bars and classy loos. 

For a full listing go to www.fielddayfestivals.com

So Roll Up, and don't forget, it's no use planting cooked potatoes.

(We are especially excited to be working with Natalie and Tom from 'Return to the Rural'. 

Seven years ago, Amy and I started a knitting Club. 

It didn't have a name and we were sitting on the steps of the White Cube Gallery in Hoxton Square, when we spotted a poster on a lamp post saying, 'Return to the Rural'. 

We e-mailed them saying we had rural tendencies,  and they invited us to form our first big knitting circle at their first party. It was with the photos from that party that we made a magazine called 'Cast Off' and Cast Off Knitting Club for Boys and Girls was born. )

JAM ON THE BEACH.

Thank you to everyone who made Monday's Hyperbolic Crochet Jam on the beach such a joy!

With a low tide and glorious sunshine, on the edge of the Thames, we all sat out on the Southbank Centre deck chairs and got busy making yet more coral, and spinning plastic. We saw the most knitters since we started this project, and sadly it was the last workshop at the Southbank. 

Thames 21, an organisation dedicated to cleaning up our great river, came and gave us more plastic bags and explained their operations. Thames 21 hold events where you can help clean up and learn how to fish too! Go and visit them at www.thames21.org.uk

If you still wish to crochet for the reef, it will be touring the country and there is plenty of space to add more. Please send your work to Katy Beven at the Craft's Council, 44a Pentonville Rd, London N1 9BY.

HOUSE OF SHADOWS WILL BE BACK!

Until we presented Prick Your Finger's House of Shadows Silhouette Portrait stall at the V&A village fete this weekend, we had no idea how much the great British Public worried about the length of their noses.  We have proved that however big, bent or flat your nose is, a silhouette portrait looks charming. 

Silhouettes are easy to make at home. We made a dark tent out of old coats, but you could use a darkened room. Inside, was a chair for the artist and a chair for the sitter. There was a light behind the sitter and a screen, covered with white paper in front of the artist. We traced around the shadow on the white paper, which took less that a minute, and then cut the image out in black paper.

Congratulations to Mr and Mrs Higgins silhouetted above, who brought their 13 day old baby daughter along for a portrait.  More silhouette portraits, will be up on our events page soon. 

The House of Shadows will be back! It is for hire for Weddings, fete's etc, just like they used to be in the old days! 

e-mail.     shadow@prickyourfinger.com 

UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN. GOODBYE ORKNEY!

Monica and I have fulfilled our dream of exploring the west coast of Scotland and the Orkney Isles in a VW Camper Van. 

It blew our minds. 

I loved it so much I don't know what to tell you.

Monica bought some mittens made out of the North Ronaldsay wool. I wrote a blog about North Ronaldsay sheep a few weeks ago - they are the ones that eat seaweed. What we didn't anticipate was that the wool is really waxy and floppy. I bought skeins of grey, brown and white.

Here is a picture of Monica's mitten waving goodbye to a beautiful holiday. 

DUST JACKET FOR RUTH.

This Sunday 27th July, there is a farewell tea party at the 'Museum of Objects of Virtue' for our show 'Dust Jacket For the Voyage of the Beagle.' You are all welcome. Details are on the Glass Pinacle blog. You can connect to it from the list to your right.

Let me introduce Ruth. My grandmother let me play with this doll as a child. For a while I didn't like her. She was cold, and bald, so I told her she was bad and she had to sit in the corner of the dolls house. My grandmother told me we mustn't be horrible to people just because they are bald, and suggested I cut off one of my curls and give it to her. I agreed and we stuck it on with U-hu.  For some reason I didn't make her any clothes, so she has remained naked for the last 25 years.

When the 'Museum of Objects of Virtue'  gave me the brief for this show, I started looking for interesting dust at my parent's house, which used to be my great grandparent's house.

 Rumaging through the attic, Ruth and I were re-united. She was in a box with three other china dolls who were wearing very crude clothes made by a seven year old. 

I set to work making Ruth a very glamorous coat, deco style, made entirely out of cobwebs.  She has a blue bottle on her head. She holds two gold threads for taking bees and ladybirds for  walks.  She now lives in a hole carved out of Charles Darwin's the Voyage of the Beagle. 

Thank you to Museum curator Fleur Oakes for taking these photos.

We are delighted to announce Fleur Oakes will be showing her work at PYF in September.

PYF LOVES TATTY DEVINE.

Last Wednesday, we were delighted to be models for the 'Best Off Tatty Devine' catalogue.

(For the full collection go to www.tattydevine.com) 

Here we are peering through the glasses necklace collection from behind our dresser. I am wearing the 3-D glasses necklace and Louise is behind orange riding shades.   When the shoot was over, we wished we could be models for Tatty every day, and then we realised that actually, we are.   

HOUSE OF SHADOWS!

Prick Your Finger would like to invite you all to our "House of Shadows", a silhouette portrait stall, where you can have your profile cut for a mere £5.

at the V&A Village Fete,
evening of Friday 25th July,
and day of Saturday 26th July.

Free admission
Our friends, Tatty Devine, Mark Pawson, and Rob Ryan, will all be there. Come along!