Lost in the Wood

Palm House, Sefton Park, Liverpool Just a tiny post today as a reminder that I'll be at the Artisans in the Palm House event tomorrow, Sunday 23rd March at the Palm House, Sefton Park,  Liverpool. It's my first craft fair venture out Merseyside way and promises to be a lovely event packed full of interesting makers (craft/art/ food/drink) & activities. I'll be taking my new Spring / Easter-inspired creations including these new small woolidermy bunnies, 'Moomin' & 'Lotti', nests with crocheted eggs and needle felted bunny with carrot cake (cake handmade by the very talented Small Portions Miniature Food ). Also, my new needle felting kits (see pic). A full report to follow next week... New Needle Felted Flowers & Bee Brooch Kits Moomin & Lotti, Woolidermy Bunny Heads Nests with crocheted eggs Needle Felted Bunny with Carrot Cake

Wolf Woolidermy Head A Walk In Wolf Wood book One of my very favourite childhood books was 'A Walk in Wolf Wood' by Mary Stewart. It's packed full of magical adventure, time travel to a medieval world, not too annoying brother & sister protagonists, werewolves, a perilous quest, dark witchy woods and evil sorcery. Enchantingly, it was read aloud by a lovely auntie who injected her voice with the appropriate drama (a splendid skill not everyone possesses I've since discovered). Why ramble on about this you may well wonder? Well, fond thoughts of this book were prompted by the recent request to make a woolidermy wolf head as my part in a happy art exchange (I got a fab graphite drawing). I have a long held fascination with the Grimm tales, in particular Red Riding Hood, which you'll see reflected in my business name & logo but it's this book that really drew me in first. Rather sadly I didn't need to dig out or dust off the book for this phot...

'Aubrey', 'Matilda' & 'Sam' Woolidermy Heads 'Balfour' & 'Sam' in Hanks Yarn Shop Please lower any expectations now, while I'm mangling Arthur Miller's classic title (a mild bafflement to school kids everywhere but better appreciated by disillusioned adults), the prose is unlikely to live up to this premise. On the plus side, this should be a far more uplifting ride. Come with me now to Menai Bridge, a town nestled into the Anglesey side of the Menai Straits. Home to impressive views, affluent boaty people (don't let this put you off), a Waitrose patronaged by royalty (Kate Middleton shopped here before the Big Dress & Palace), a deli with surely the most pungent, meltiest brie found in the known world and an exciting blooming of independent, boutique shops (more on these below). It's creeping into the long list of my favourite places to potter. Since the short list currently includes Edinburgh, Caernarfon, Flo...

'Love Crochet' magazine 'Love Crochet' Autumn 2013 There was thrilled excitement at Lost in the Wood cottage over the publication of my first piece of press publicity!!    'Love Crochet' magazine (Autumn 2013, issue 5) has a splendid article on craftidermy featuring some of my crochet bunny heads. I was really pleased that a lot of what I'd contributed did actually end up in the article, including the recommendations of other artists creating in other mediums such as Mister Finch's textile insects & Zoe Williams weird & wonderful needle felted creatures. It was a very small but interesting glimpse into how publications source stories and use the information provided. Hopefully it'll lead to more opportunities, especially since between us, me & my proud mother surely must have helped boost circulation of this issue! The rest of the magazine is very colourful and enjoyable too! Fittingly, this was Hector's (big grey bunn...

Evie starring in 'The Last Days of Summer' A bitesize blog today! Helfa Gelfa has begun in style, Evie has had her makeover & is now looking pretty ravishing / sinister (depending who you ask, apparently there's shades of The Wicker Man about her) at the centre of a strange tea party. Entitled 'The Last Days of Summer', it's a mysterious picnic with a hint of things unravelling. Evie with her crochet rabbit's head (a more ambitious version of my mounted bunny heads), somehow looks both imperious & slightly wanton and exudes a definite nymphish air. She's a work in progress & will by the end of the month be (hopefully) festooned with flowers, vines, creatures & ivy.  I feel very fortunate to be sharing a lovely light & airy studio (reminiscent of a lofty garret) with two other colourful artists, painter Alison Englefield (the photos of her work give the flavour but don't do the wonderful multi layered, intricate ...

Mmmm, bit quiet at yesterday's craft fair @ Galeri (Caernarfon), must have been something very exciting happening somewhere else! It's a shame (although am very much in favour of exciting things happening as a general rule) as it's  a lovely venue with fab crafters,  we just need to work at enticing more people down this way, a  strategy we'll be putting our minds & crafting hands to before the next one on 6th July.    For this fair I brought a few new friends with me including Hector, the big bunny with a slight air of sadness about him, little bunnies Mille & Leo (on his racy lime shield) and the two rival crochet squirrel heads, as well as a new range of fruits in jars (they look good on a Welsh dresser, preferably nestled next to a rack of crochet toast as in my little cottage). Rather sadly, the thing that I really enjoyed making for the fair was a jar of crochet leeches. Although almost anything can be found online, there were no patterns fo...

The next craft fair that me and my collection of curious creatures, cakes & felty bugs will be attending is in Galeri (Caernarfon) on Saturday 1st June. It'd be lovely to have as many people as possible to come along to browse and support this new venture as all the stalls feature talented, local contemporary crafters/artists. I'm very happy to have recently joined this talented and friendly group 'Crefft Cyfoes Caernarfon', have a look at the facebook page for more about each of the artists & pics of the last fair  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Crefft-Cyfoes-Caernarfon If you like, you can also follow the group on Twitter https://twitter.com/CrefftCyfoes , we'd be delighted if you do. The Rivals The troublesome cake-devouring mice will be sitting this one out as they're holidaying in Lotti & Wren's tea-party inspired window (and loving the attention, very vain mice) (Lotti&Wren ) so instead some crochet squirre...

  Hurrah! Have finally finished the bunny heads so now they look the way I imagined they would. Now they seem very glam with bespoke made shields (MDF as it can be shaped more easily than wood for the shields, so I'm reliably informed) painted in pastel colours. The shields were made by the very lovely John at Ogwen Art & Crafts based in the picturesque Ogwen valley (North West Wales http://www.ogwenartandcraft.co.uk/   These three- Freddie, Bettina and Millie are now on sale in my Etsy shop  http://www.etsy.com/shop/LostintheWoodDesigns The fourth bunny, Rosey, sadly can't be pictured as it turned out pale pink didn't do much for her colouring (she's a soft grey which I imagined would be perfect but that's how much I know) so she's awaiting a hot pink shield (paint to be purchased this week from the extensive range of B&Q mini tester pots, I now have a lot of them!). My next post will continue the talk of paint and expand on my new paint rolle...

As part of my ongoing attempts to refine the things I'm making and the way these curious creations are presented, I've decided to set up a new Etsy shop  http://www.etsy.com/shop/LostintheWoodDesigns . After a bit of reading about the differences between Etsy and Folksy, it's clear that Etsy has a lot more users (buyers & sellers) and I hope that may help me to get my products seen by the people they'd appeal to. While there's inevitably a lot more competition and items to wade through, I've discovered that the  things I want to focus on fit more naturally into the Etsy world than Folksy. Etsy not only has categories for crochet foods and animal heads (hurrah!), they also have lots of entries under these more niche categories. I was relieved that the process of setting up the shop was straightforwards and only subtly different from Folksy Today I've added two new items, crochet rabbit heads. It would have been three but after writing up the list...

With the last week of lovely sunny weather (admittedly it was still freezing) and pastel coloured pretty things starting to appear in shops, it definitely feels as if Easter & Spring are on their way, hurrah! While Autumn is undoubtedly my top season, Spring is a close second with all of it's freshness, places re-opening for Easter, and it's emphasis on chocolate and adorable animals like chicks, sheep & bunnies! I feel a bit too young, poor and urban to properly qualify as a target 'Land Love' magazine reader but I bought this lovely glossy slice of i nspir ation/aspiration this month as it featured lots of rabbits , flowers & Spring crafts. Last year I made a few little bunnies for family and friends (& myself naturally, they look very sweet peeping out from behind the rack of crocheted toast on our dresser) based on crochet guru June Gilbank's Baby Bunnies pattern which is satisfyingly straightforward & adaptable. My favourite t...