Beaker Button Blog

Short Round and I spent the last two days at my Dad's, having a well earned break.  I thought this week I'd share some of the photos I've taken.  They're in chronological order so you'll get a sense of our holiday without me waffling on too much.  I did buy some beautiful embroidery books, which I'm going to have a good look through tonight.  I'll post about them next week I think, unless something more exciting comes up between now and next Monday. This weeks square is D.  You'll find the chart below and detailed instructions on this post here    Short Round and my rock balancing (mine's on the left) Dad building his stack   Fossil hunting Wallflowers Driftwood and worm tracks (I always come back with something) Nap time at Maiden Castle Bums   so cute! Duchess Dorchester's Roman Town House Spring (and they smelt like it too) Mosaic.  I want to stitch this. Hypercaust ...

This week has been a challenging, although interesting week.  I was pondering what to write today and it suddenly hit me the one of the nicer things about this week has been the singing.  I sing all the time, usually to myself or inadvertently to others if I happen to have an ear worm (for those of you who don't know there is a great description of ear worms here , although there are a lot of adverts on the page).   This week however I was reminded of the power of group singing.  On Tuesday night I had to go to a Wake, for a folky friend.  We spent the evening singing, with some hurried catching up with other friends in between songs.  Although the occasion was sad the hall was filled with the sound of our voices, all singing harmonies.  The sheer noise level was incredible, but with everyone singing together it was also beautiful and joyous and uplifting.  Pearl, who's wake it was, would have loved it. The whole evening felt like a fitting t...

I get asked a lot why the shop name is Beaker Button, so I thought I'd tell you all here.  Some of you will already know that I have a degree in archaeology.  When I was a child my Dad used to tell my brother and I stories about history and prehistory and I have very strong memories of the Beaker people (nothing to do with The Muppets!)  I also spent nearly 10 years working at Stonehenge and the Beaker people are thought to have built at least one of the phases of Stonehenge.  So who are the Beaker people I hear you ask? In my Dad's version they were a prehistoric people, named for the particular pottery beakers they made, who came to England and duffed up the local Neolithic population.  They built burial mounds, took over ancient monuments and generally lived it up until the next lot (the Celts) came over and duffed them up. Archaeologists, however, think they were a lot more peaceful and that Beaker people integrated well with the local population, helping ...

 Yesterday we took Short Round to Milestones Museum in Basingstoke.  If you haven't been I'd highly recommend it.  It's full of very well presented stuff, from old tools to childhood toys to pristine vehicles.  The history is brilliantly presented, with boards and audio tours.  They run a lot of events as well, which is why we were there yesterday.  The Legomania event has been running for a few years now.  Last year Short Round had one of his models on display (so proud!).  This year we got to make one of the panels in a giant picture of Lightening McQueen, and had a fascinating look around the hundreds of Lego models.  Short Round got to make a mini figure.  We got to spend time with my Mum, brother, sister in law and their kids too, which was lovely. The higlight of my day though had to be the Womble puppets and the knitted jumpers on the footballers in the penny arcade! I've added some photos to give you a flavour of our day. ...

As many of you know this week Beaker Button has been at Make It, Stitch It at Farnborough.  We had a stonkingly good time, and met some fantastic new button addicts.  It means that I haven't had time to prepare anything for today's blog, so I'm going to cheat. I've wanted to share this for a while.  Last time I showed you what the Tuesday Group did was a couple of years ago. For those of you who don't know, the Tuesday Group are a small group of ladies with learning disabilities who have taken to peg looms like ducks to water.  They brighten my Tuesday with gossip and laughter, and are frequently challenging me with what they want to make.  Between us we always manage to get their ideas to work.  Here are a few of the latest makes. The cheating part is the free coupon at the end of the post, for  one of my patterns on Ravelry here Jo with her owl Beryl's bracelet Karen with her owl Jo with her horse Beryl with her bear ...

We went to Unravel this Sunday and had such a good time I thought I'd write about it this week.  I save all year for Unravel.  I put £1 in my money box every time I take over £100 in the shop.  That way I have stash growing funds without having to feel guilty.  I went with Kay and met up with Mum, Debbie, Mandy and her friend.  Kay and I spent the day together, meeting up with the others for lunch and a well earned hot chocolate in the afternoon.  Our first sweep revealed some gorgeous yarns, beautiful fibres and an intriguing rug hooking kit.  Both Kay and I decided not to spend on the first run round. Sunday is a nice day to go as it's not so busy.  I had time to talk to the very nice people who supply Beaker Button with Soak (the perfect stuff for washing your hand knits, delicates, holiday clothes, Dorset button jewellery, blocking.... the list is endless), and I now have a bottle of Flatter to try. Flatter is for spray blocking (if you have...

I've been doing lots of knitting patterns in the blog so far, so this time I thought I'd give you all a button pattern.  I've just launched the first Beaker Button mini skein club, which is going great guns, and this pattern is perfect for one of my mini skeins. The button pattern I've given you is called Simple Yarrell Pendant and a link to the PDF can be found under the photo. Simple yarrell pendant Click here for the PDF last months mini skeins I also thought you'd like to see some of the yarn bombing hearts I told you about last week, in case you missed them on FaceBook.  These were left on the bridge in Andover for people to take away.  They all had little notes saying Happy valentines.