Beaker Button Blog

We have a craft club on a Thursday in the shop.  This is one of those clubs that formed because my Mum and her friend Debbie happened to come and craft with me on a Thursday afternnon.  Then Natalia started dropping by, then Hazel, then Bernadette... you get the idea.  I say craft quite deliberately because Mum rarely knits, she makes art batts, and Debbie sometimes knits but she just as often spins, and so on.  We had quite a turn out this Thursday, with Elaine (who usualy only makes Sundays as she works in the week) a welcome addition to the usual crew.  And I did warn the very nice man from Adrafil that Thursday was fine but my craft club would be there in the afternoon.  So he really should have known better.  He came through the door, this tall dishy Italian bloke, with a suitcase full of yarn.  I mean, what did he expect walking into a shop full of women who crave yarn as much as chocolate.  I have to say he handled it all rather well, ...

I have just discovered pinterest.  A friend at our Thursday crafty club told me about it.  I'm now curled up under the duvet on the sofa, at 1.30 in the morning, with my eyes all gritty, rifling through the internet for interesting and inspiring images to add to my boards.  I was typing up the first world war research but I seem to be doing more harm than good (I typed the same record twice at one point).  Hopefully all the beautiful images I'm finding will make me sleepy and oeacful, so I can go to bed.  I did manage to put the first lot of Dorset buttons on the website today. This is the 2012 collection, although I have more still to come. I've included some of them below.

I had a beautiful walk today, and I listened to the birds, but there wern't any flowers to smell. I started from a small lane just outside Pitton (Salisbury) and walked up the hill, through lots of woods, which reminded me very much of Scotland, across some fields and ended up at Clarendon palace. I had great fun talking to the Llamas (yes Llamas!) and wandering around giving my legs a rest. I read all the signs and found them quite interesting. It has a nice historic feel to it. I took the Clarendon Way back to the car, passing though some beautiful woodland. I especially liked one cinder track, with beech woods one side, all light and air and carpets of red brown leaves, and fir woods on the other, which were dark and mysterious with puddles of light here and there. You could imagine Hobbits and Elves walking though them. I stayed for sometime just drinking in the beauty and contrast of it. It would make a lovely walk for us at some point. I ended up coming out into some...

I have an enormous lot of buttons in the shop at the moment.  I'm sorting them into bags to be sold.  This has become a fascination to me, but it was only today I worked out why.  It takes me back to my childhood.  My Gran had two tins full of buttons.  My brother and I, well mainly me, used to spend hours sorting them and playing with them.  We never actually made anything out of them.  We'd sort them into piles, or group them together in colours and sizes and the ones we liked, and the ones we didn't.  So I was talking to Elaine this afternoon, and I looked over and there she was, playing with the buttons.  And she told me that when she was a girl her Gran had a tin full of buttons, which she would spend hours playing with.  It would be interesting to see how many of us crafty types had Gran's with button tins!

Its been a Bloody awful week.  The rule of threes applied, with my Mum ending up up in hospital, the clutch going on my new car (£455) and my husband being rushed into hospital with chest pains.  So on Thursday I was tearing my hair out and trying to put on a cheerful face for my customers.  And then the Manos Maxima in the most beautiful shades of purple came in, and life was suddenly OK.  I did try to resist, for a good five minutes, but I need a new jumper, especially as I'm still figuring out the heating in the shop.  And if people can see how lovely something looks when its knitted up they are more likely to buy it, so its good advertising.  But what finished my will to resist was how soft and purple it was.  I'm  sucker for purple at the best of times, but when I'm low, and life is hard, and the worry is threatening to overwhelm me I have no power to resist.  So I'm a third of the way through a simple long sleeved stocking stitch j...

I had to leave my shop for two whole days (please image that sentence spoken in a whinging accent) this weekend.  My Mum ran things instead, and a very good job she did too.  Although it was slightly disconcerting to come into the shop this afternoon and discover the mess she'd been making with our new drum carder.  On the other hand we now have some beautiful art batts for sale!  The reason I had to leave my shop for two days was the Appleshaw School fair, which went ok, despite the cramp in my arm from the huge amount of crochet I did, and the Andover Farmers Market, where we met lots of very nice people wanting yarn and workshops and fleece and all the other lovely things we do.  So it was worth missing the shop for to days I guess.  I did learn that my mittens, which I'd designed for the Christmas kits we're selling, are fantastic for knitting outside, because they leave the fingers free but keep the whole hand warm.  I'll have to keep a pair in my...

I am frantically making mittens and kits and buttons for the Appleshaw School Christmas fair and the Andover Christmas Fair this weekend.  I thought I'd have enough time to sort everything out but what a surprise, it seems to be disappearing at a rate of knots.  However, our first Dorset Button workshop was a roaring success and all enjoyed themselves, especially me.  By the time my ladies left they were inventing styles of their own.  How clever are they!  I've included photos of the mittens, made with Artesano classica, although the ones I'm making for the Christmas fairs are in Maxima because its so soft.  Come on weekend, I can cope!