Catching Up

 

August and September were busy months!! We seemed to cram an awful lot in and didn't have a weekend to ourselves at the end as we were all over the place. Luckily the calendar seems to have calmed down a bit now and today has been really nice just to have a lie in and a chilled out morning. The only thing planned for today is Reece having a hair cut about two minutes walk from our house so, as it's sunny, I think we'll walk with him and maybe go to the playground. That sounds like an excellent chilled out day to me!!

I've been going through my photos and there are a few things that I thought I'd just chat about on here, the first one being this little sheep hoop which doesn't appear to have made it on previously. It was the sample piece started at the Frittenden workshop and I used it as my bus project for a little while. It's not anything spectacular, and reminds me of how I'd started this whole journey, simple layers and stitches just for me rather than for anyone else or to experiment with something new. 

Some layers were quite fun, the sheep were my usual technique of french knot wooly coats, although this time they were in different shades of brown and white. I used variegated purple/green thread to make two strand straight stitch stems with one strand pistil stitches and I had a play around with the squares above to make an offset crossed stitch in two colours which was quite effective. 

I was using up green threads I had so some of the colour changes in the above layers were because I'd run out of a colour, there are lots of colours in the french knot edging, and about four I think in the big back stitch between the french knot spots above. 

We had a lovely summer for weather, although I seem to recall last summer being hotter? Reece asked for a day at the beach and, whilst that was a tad unusual for him to request, I was happy to go along with it. We spent a wonderful day mooching around Eastbourne seafront, and ended up on the cliffs near to Beachy Head where he asked me to marry him!! (Ulterior beach motive after all.) Before you ask, yes I did say YES!

So now we have a wedding to plan and save up for. How exciting. That's like, a proper grown up adult thing!

I've had to concentrate a lot on my volunteer work as a Guide and Rainbow leader lately too. We participated in the Uckfield carnival at the beginning of September, for which there were several planning sessions on how to decorate the float and then getting the girls in to do the decorating, then the evening itself. I also organised a woodland craft and camp experience day for the whole District of Rainbows, Brownies and Guides where we took over a local campsite and cooked over fire, made things with leaves and twigs, wove wall hangings, pitched tents and enjoyed a visit from an archaeologist who ran an activity on Stone Age houses. What do you think of the Stone Age huts they all made?

At the end of the day some of the younger girls had asked to have their huts back but they were just poked into the ground so not particularly transportable. I ended up carefully dismantling them and resetting some into clay bases, getting my hands absolutely covered in the red ochre that had been used to decorate them! I've still got a whole village to do to make a display in our Guide hut - although I haven't got enough clay to make a base for each hut, so if you have any other inexpensive ideas do let me know!

I haven't had a huge amount of time for stitching but I have started working on a new kit idea based on my first ever kit, Summer Sweet. This time I'm going a size bigger to a 20cm hoop to add in some sizing variety to my current collection. 

The fabrics for this have been collected for a while but I couldn't start until I'd found some trimmings to go with it. I think this petite ric-rac is just so darn cute!

Progress on this is slow though and I've stopped for the minute whilst I ponder over a few parts. I have stitched most layers down to the green leaf spray pattern but I don't like what I've done in the wheat field so I've stumped myself and it will all have to be unpicked I think. 

Eventually it will be done though so watch this space!!

A Soggy Carnival

Goodness me! September already, how time flies! Today I am recovering after being in the Uckfield Carnival yesterday. It was such a looooong day!! I have probably mentioned before that this year I was in charge of organising the District float- from deciding the theme, designing the decorations, sourcing the materials, organising craft days, selecting the music, drawing diagrams for the lovely Uckfield Rotary Club who lend us the float, and bringing it all together on the day..... It was a lot to do and has been on my mind for months so it seems a little odd to not have to think about it any more.

During the week I was painting the big green backgrounds of our Jungle/Rainforest. One side of the float was Jungle themed and the other Rainforest, and we had an enormous banner from Waitrose and some large cardboard rectangles from work on which to glue the paper plate monkeys, water droplets and parrots.

My absolute favourite things on the float were the large cardboard animals- you can see in the above photo how big they were against my feet. The eyes on the Slow Loris actually followed you around the room, so cute.

Yesterday morning dawned bright, sunny and clear and I was at the Guide hall nice and early to begin gluing on the letters and animals ready for when the float arrived. I did have a couple of helpers too who started making the paper chains and provided entertainment whilst we worked.

When our float turned up, accompanied by several Rotary men, it all went up really quickly. The banners and cardboard were attached using cable ties, and we added some paper leaves with staples and glue- what we would have done before cable ties were invented I have no idea!! We did have to rescue a few parrots and water droplets as the float in our imagination was larger than in reality (we really should measure for next time) and the large cardboard pieces were overlapping a little bit. But after a slight reshuffle we were back in business!

The dangling lights were something new this year and the reason why I had to send off diagrams to the RC. The idea was to loop paper chains and streamers over these higher lights once we got to the starting place to create a more drippy, jungly feel.

The weather stayed dry all the way up to the drive down to the starting position of the carnival when it started to pour down!! We still had quite a good turn out of girls and one of my lovely Guide mums brought all of her face paints and the girls had their faces painted. The costumes were very easy- animal onsies- and the faces were painted to match! We had lots of little tigers, monkeys, zebras and even a crocodile! The Leaders were dressed as explorers and our hats kept most of the rain from our faces but we were all absolutely soaked and were seriously considering pulling out and taking the girls back to the hall to dry out and get warm. The girls, however, had other ideas and pretty much insisted that we stay and join the procession which we did. By the time we had finished the circuit about two hours later my poor float had completely disintegrated and the animals fallen apart.
We did win 1st Place in the Youth Organisation category though, and also the Youth Shield which was pretty good going!! I suppose really that the weather added an element of the rainforest I hadn't thought much about (or wanted)- actual rain!!! Very realistic.

Carnival Craft Day

At the weekend I organised a big craft day for all of our Rainbows, Brownies, Guides, Senior Section, Leaders, Parents....everybody really to come and help decorate and get things ready for our Carnival float. The actual Carnival is at the beginning of September and we will have to dress the float on the day but such a lot of effort and preparation has to go into it beforehand that it was all hands on deck!

Our theme is Jungle & Rainforest Explorers as that gave us lots of lovely crafting ideas and I have been chief organiser (not a responsibility to be taken lightly!) so my Guides have been working on little bits here and there through the last term. This was a big jump forward though and I am very impressed with the work the girls (and parents) did on the day.

I got to our hall very early and spent some time carefully drawing out our big animals. We have a Slow Loris, a Chameleon and a Poison Dart Frog, as well as a very dramatic, frothing waterfall (it's nearly two metres high!)! The girls did such a good job painting these, there are several carefully considered layers- base colour paints, then slightly more detailed colours and shades going in, and final textures being added at the end (like spots and fur). It was a good thing that the day was relatively warm and the paint dried quickly.

We made an army of paper plate monkeys, lots of toilet roll tube binoculars were decorated in the latest trendy binocular colours, leaves were cut and painted, bamboo sliced into wrapping paper tubes and letters coloured in.

We've a way to go to pull all of these components together but I really think our float will be a triumph this year!!!

Crowborough Carnival

I absolutely LOVE carnivals!! Just the whole atmosphere and randomness of the situation is amazing, the towns coming together to enjoy the pomp and ceremony of it all- brilliant stuff! Last night was the Crowborough carnival (the town next to mine) and I haven't been in a while as holidays and university conspired against it so it was really lovely to follow the familiar procession again with friends.

It is a vastly different experience to the Uckfield carnival and I think it is fantastic to get the two sides; being in the carnival and being a spectator of the carnival. We bumped into a slightly tipsy random stranger who started talking to us- he was a Londoner down for the weekend to visit his parents and he couldn't believe what he'd just walked into. He thought it was incredible and so do I.

Toward the end of the route, the procession marches towards the town green, with huge flaming banners of short quotes which change every year. That's a crow at the front there, followed by the 'Crowborough Bonfire & Carnival Society' banner with the words, 'We Burn For Good' underneath it.

Then this year's celebrations include 75 years on from the Battle of Britain, the WI's 100 year centenary, and the Queen's great reigning triumph of 63 years and 220 days (and counting). These great big banners are used to start a gigantic bonfire on the green which everyone waits and waits for with great suspense.

After waiting around in the cold for an hour or so, suddenly having a great flaming bonfire is usually most welcome, as long as you don't stand down wind and get covered in the ash and little glowing pieces of leaf that fly up (a health and safety nightmare probably).

It's definitely a tradition worth waiting for!!

ABBA Carnival

Yesterday I was up bright and early, up at the Guide hall for one final push to get everything ready in time for the carnival in the evening. I had taken some musical notes home for the family to help me colour and cut out, but then they all needed arranging and sticking, along with the big ABBA letters, onto banners... there was a lot to do.

Luckily, we had some little helpers come along to assist and two hours later we had four beautifully painted instruments, absolutely covered in glitter and all sorts of colours. Lots of little hands worked on the pieces so nothing was symmetrical but it was brilliant in it's creativity.

I drew out a lot of the instruments (except for the keyboards), and you can probably tell that the two boards in the above photo were more leader based. Not half as fun and glittery as the two painted more by Rainbows/Brownies/Guides.

We had several other projects to decorate the float- you'll love these CDs when I show you what is on the other side.

And for the girls to wear they had made headbands with paper feathers (and more glitter) which were finished off.

Our finished float!!! The vehicle and a lot of the help putting up the decorations was supplied by the Uckfield Rotary Club who help us every year with our carnival entry (and were also instrumental in helping us finished in time. I have never seen so many people covered in glitter at once!!).

We should really have counted how many musical notes we made- lots and lots and lots. We weren't even able to use some of them there were so many.

(A couple of the costumes showing there- lots of flares, bright colours, sequins and sparkles.)

See what I mean about the CDs? So clever, all you have to do is drill a few holes where needed into the edges and then colour away with a sharpie or other permanent marker pen.

It was a brilliant evening full of dancing and waving and laughing (and even some chips that appeared at one point). The little ones on the float waved and smiled, their feathered headbands swaying in the breeze (I'm getting poetic here), whilst the older girls on the floor boogied and sang. We even won first place in our category!! Now all we have to do is think of next years theme!!