Hot off the needles

As well as going to hear Sean Ronayne when I visited my sister last month, I was able to collect my Christmas present - which was a session in a pottery painting studio just round the corner from her - Potteria . It's always buzzing any time I walk past, lovely to see something creative thriving. You choose your piece, and the price for a 2 hour session is dependent on the cost of your chosen piece. You can choose six colours of glaze - so different when painting it on that the glazed tiles showing the finished colour are very necessary. It was her third time there - the first time she did a tile for beside her front door, the second time she chose a little vase and this time she did a liquid soap dispenser. I went for a butter dish as being something practical that I would enjoy using. We had our session when I visited for her birthday in January, but you have to leave your piece for firing, so it's not an instant gratification project. She collected them in early February, but I didn't get down that month.

And when finished before firing - 

I was really pleased with how it turned out - I wasn't sure about the whole thing because I don't consider myself artistic, more a crafter. But it's definitely something I'd do again. 

Very hard to capture the colour of this sweater for C - it's described as Cornflower and I guess in the photos that's a good description, but it's a little darker and in some lights has a distinct purple fleck in it. But without taking time to set a customised white balance for the camera this is the best I could do. It's an Alice Starnmore design from her book of Aran knits. I started it on the ferry last August, but it's just as well I didn't get much done while on holidays because I had cast on the wrong size, so I had to rip back about an inch and all the ribbing of the first piece.  And it was a between-times project while I worked on something for myself, which I ended up ripping because I wasn't happy with it, so while it didn't take that long to actually knit, it was a long time in the wings. The one for myself that I ripped is back on the needles again in a different design.