TITANIC: THE MISSION.

Many of you have asked what all the banging and drilling and dust is about next door to us. It's been going on all summer, and that's why we have been shouting at everyone, making a racket with our own power tools, re-building our shop by competing with them and feeding off the vibe!

Brendon (second from the left in this picture) and his wife Jo have literally re-built next door, and it is almost ready to become a beautiful home and design studio.
The amazing thing is, Brendon been re building the Titanic on channel 4 at the same time.

It is a very exciting program, showing the craft skills and man power used at the turn of last century. They investigate the impact Titanic had on Belfast, by delving into social history by chatting in the pubs.

Every craftsman will love this program. It is brilliantly researched, sensitive, clever and quite frankly, beautiful.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/titanic-the-mission/4od#3124222

POP UP SHOP- CRAFTISM AT THE SHIPLEY GALLERY.

Thank you to the Shipley Gallery in Gateshead for inviting us to do a pop up shop as part of their Craftivism show. Louise bought a couple of raincoats from a charity shop and we stitched elastic inside so we could flash our stock.
It is quite a traditional gallery with marble statues and oil paintings.
It was brave of them to stage a Craftivism show. Three were people making all sorts of things all over the place.

I had to do a talk. And so did Trevor Pitt, who got everybody on the mic, and then,

We went on the radio.There's a lot of pictures of us posing because Trevor had the camera.


Louise was reading the history of anarchism. There are wonderful discos in Newcastle. We had a lot of fun dancing and in the morning after a full breakfast we went to the Baltic and saw some art.
This is the car park which features in the film ' Get Carter'. It was being pulled down when we were there.

DARNED WALLS AND JUMPERS - SHETLAND.

Filled windows in derelict croft cottages Bressay, Shetland.
Blue Marks and Spencer jumper darned with Jamieson's Spindrift £2.80/ 25g and Cecilia Hewitt's hand spun, hand dyed kid mohair embroidery thread, £4.95/ 12m.

IN THE LOOP 2 / OUR LIGHTHOUSE.

Louise and I took some fresh sea air and watched the sunset, intermitently peeping through the kitchen window to see what was for dinner.
It was always something delicious.
And Trev was so good at keeping the kitchen spick and span.
At about 7am one morning Trevor rushed in with the tea, and said there was a beautiful boat on the horizon.
After breakfast, Katy and I climbed to the top of the cliff and looked down on the light house, where the others were preparing the second coffee and tidying up.
We all loved that lighthouse.

ZARAH'S 'EEEK!' JUMPER.

Zarah learned to ride a bike specially for our trip to Shetland. She also knitted this jumper which has lots of holes knitted into it and a big pair of black scissors and the word 'EEK!'
Marvelous.

ZARAH REPORTS EPISODE 2.

Here are more of Zarah's Shetland reports, drawn on her raincoat. You can see sketches of Deirdre Neilson's gin socks, which demonstrated how much gin you could buy for the amount of money you get from knitting socks. Then Annemore's knitted woolly pants which keep you very warm and only itch for the first two months you wear them. Then there was a lecture that Zarah really wanted to see because it was called knitting with attitude - except it wasn't it was knitting with altitude, about some knitters on a mountain in South America.


There were a lot of custard creams.
That's me giving my presentation (on the UFO Project Administration Service) and people clapping and knitting at the same time.
More Shetland Reports on their way.

TAEKO LEARNS TO KNIT.

Last week, Taeko came to visit Prick Your Finger.
She started knitting, and couldn't stop.She knitted and knitted, and it got way past closing time. Her eyes went droopy, and she still couldn't put her needles down.Her parents asked her to stop, but she couldn't do it.Finally she finished the ball and went to sleep on a sack of wool.
Her parents waited until the sleep was deep and then carried her home.