A Trip to Greenwich & The Royal Observatory

Before Christmas I went on a Nice Day Out with my dad to Greenwich. It was a gorgeous winter's day!

We'd spotted an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum we both wanted to see and had been saying for months "oh, we must go to that exhibition soon!"... then all of a sudden the end of the year, and the exhibition, was almost upon us so off we went.

The National Maritime Museum is worth a visit just to see the awesome (and huge!) ship in a bottle on display outside.  

 

We had a cuppa and some yummy cake in the museum's cafe, explored the excellent and fascinating Ships, Clocks and Stars exhibition, bought some postcards then went back to the cafe for lunch. Based on the cake alone I am looking forward to making a return visit sometime to check out the rest of the museum!

Our exhibition tickets included entry to the nearby Royal Observatory, so we headed there next. The Observatory is on a hill in the middle of Greenwich Park, with great views over London...

... if you look closely on the left you can see the Gherkin in the distance.

The Royal Observatory was super interesting in a nerdy "science is awesome!!!" kinda way.  

It was especially cool to see the Time Ball...

 

... and to stand on the famous Meridian line!

Before heading home we popped into the neighbouring Astronomy Centre and oohed over the amazing photos in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition. I definitely want to come back here sometime to see a show at the Planetarium. 

Thanks to the short winter day, it was already getting dark when we headed home so we got treated to a sparkly nighttime view of London...

 

... and we got to see the awesome Meridian Laser which marks the route of the Greenwich Meridian from the Observatory. So cool.

All in all, an excellent Nice Day Out to finish my year of travels!

Bags and Bags of Lavender

I finished my first Use It or Lose It project!

Lots and lots and lots of lavender bags:

 

That's not even all of them - I had so much dried lavender to use up I made a massive 29 sachets!

Lots of happy hours of hand stitching later I've got lots of scented goodness to add to our wardrobes and chests of drawers to keep them smelling fresh and help deter those pesky clothes-nibbling moths.

In a bit of magical de-stashing coincidence, I had exactly the right amount of that moth and butterfly print fabric to use up all the lavender. Hurrah!

 

I've just got a few small scraps of the fabric left now, plus a pile of these thin strips...

... which I am totally planning to use in another de-stash-y project soon.

Patchwork Progress

After a super busy few months jam-packed with deadlines, I had a deliciously lazy Christmas and New Year. It was lovely!

I purposefully didn't get much done, but I did knit a lot of blanket squares (my go-to crafty project when I want to relax). I knitted some large squares for my happy rainbow blanket, and some small squares for my patchwork picnic blanket... and spent lots of happy hours sewing some squares I'd knitted earlier onto the patchwork.

 

I'm making my patchwork blanket with leftover yarn from other projects. I knit as many small moss stitch squares (10 stitches wide) with the yarn, then sew the squares together to make some simple shapes. Then I add the shapes to the blanket sections (I'm making it in several sections so I can spread the colours across the finished blanket) and trim any yarn ends that are no longer needed.

I last blogged about the blanket back in the summer... here's how the sections are looking now, with a total of 270 mini squares stitched together:

 

 

Making this blanket is a sloooooow, labour-intensive process! Here are the yarn ends left over from my stitching over Christmas:

As part of my Use It or Lose It challenge I also decided to make use of the half dozen dark squares I had that aren't gonna fit in my bright, happy blanket, unravelling them...

... and re-knitting the yarn into small squares to add to my patchwork project: 

I wonder how much my patchwork project will grow this coming year?

Hello 2015

Happy New Year, everyone!

Have you made any New Year's Resolutions - crafty or otherwise?

Apart from working on my Use It or Lose It de-stashing challenge, I'm resisting the urge to set myself a list of specific resolutions or goals for the year.

Instead I'll just be focusing on working hard to grow my business and doing my best to fill my year with designing, making, writing, cuppas and catch ups with friends, decluttering, good books, tasty cake, happy post, Nice Days Out... and lots of other good stuff.

Here's to a busy, happy year filled with crafty goodness!