Not quite Doctor Who crocheted scarf

There are coincidences and then there is serendipity. This story falls under the latter descriptive noun because it's not just a random fluke, the universe has been purposefully whispering to me and the conjunction of two things has produced this scarf.

Firstly, over three or four visits to the Wool Zone in Oakham, I have been collecting one ball of each colour in Stylecraft Yarn's new Bellissima range. It's wonderfully soft; definitely wearable next to the skin,  I wanted to make something with it but I wasn't sure what.

Secondly, I have seen publicity online for the Special episode of Dr Who to be broadcast on New Year's Day.  Jodie Whittaker is wearing the most gorgeous scarf, it looks like it's made with some kind of fleece fabric, of course I prefer winter scarfs to be knitted or crocheted. The original was designed by Mark Smith in Nottingham, unsurprisingly, his on-line shop has sold out already!

You can see where I'm going with this ... 

In a perfect universe, there would be a teal in the Stylecraft Bellissima range but when I put my colour cards together, that's when I realised I was meant to crochet this scarf. Sugar Snap stands in magnificently and looks just great. All the same, if Cosmic Santa is reading, he could drop a hint to Stylecraft that the next colour in the Bellissima range should be teal. (And if  I'm not being too greedy, orange as well ...)

If Doctor Who discovers a ball of Bellissima Teal in the future, I hope she will use the Tardis to drop it off at my house about 5 nights ago, that would be much appreciated.

If I'm not back before, I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. 

xxx

New blue tardis

I've made some blue tardis beads, rather appropriate as Dr Who's tardis is blue. I've been playing around with Amy Kinsch's storming technique on and off for a while and these are my favourite beads so far to come out of my experiments. The swirly texture underneath the clear raised dots is mesmerising.

They take ages to make, I'm not the fastest beadmaker in the word as it is but the most I can do in an hour is 5! I've got 12 in total and am looking forward to turning these beads into jewellery tomorrow. :-)

Tardis bead needs a new name

Gosh, we were lucky in Cambridge yesterday. The forecast predicted dire weather from lunchtime onwards but it's too close to Christmas for me to stay away and I had customers planning to stop by to pick up things ordered via e-mail, so I really needed to be at my stall. My rule of thumb is that if I can get a good half day's trade in then I'm happy to be there.

As it got closer to lunchtime, the weather actually started to brighten up from the grey claggy cloud we'd had in the morning and by mid-afternoon, we even had some glimmers of sunshine! It didn't last all day though, we packed up in the dark at around 4.30 in some yukky drizzle but we counted ourselves extremely fortunate to have had a good day's trading.

I had loads of new items to show off having been away last week. The jewellery I made with the cava beads attracted lots of interest, I sold a bracelet to a lady who zoned right in on it; it was the first thing she picked up - she was amazed when I told her what the beads were made off as it's her favourite drink. The guy with her insisted she buy it (what a sweetheart!) :-) A couple of pairs of earrings also sold (Sorry no photos, I didn't get time to do any this week).

The new tardis beads were another good talking point! DH didn't feel that the name was very conducive to jewellery sales and so we were trying to think of a new one; we enlisted the help of anyone who picked the tardis bead jewellery up (two pairs of earrings and a bracelet - no photos again).

One young lady came up with "dalek beads", which I totally get and isn't it a coincidence that she used a Dr Who theme even without us telling her their provisional name?

Another person said "blister beads" which we didn't think would help at all! :-) By this time, both a pair of earrings and the bracelet had been sold. The last pair of tardis bead earrings sold to a lovely lady whose husband came up with the unfortunate name of "pustule beads" ... ahem, I think I'll be sticking with "tardis beads" when I make some more of these next week ... unless any of my blog readers can come up with anything better!

Hats off to the new tardis bead

The hagstone bead was inspired by my holiday in Bamburgh, Nortumbria in the Spring and the jewellery made with them has been popular but I've become a tad tired of them so I tried various things to glam them up for Christmas-time and this is the result of their makeover: It's the usual mixture of two colours of grey with sis stringer dotted and then gravity swirled as a base. I changed the shape to a cylinder and then added dots of raku which I heated and cooled a few times, topped with blobs of clear glass, there's quite a variety of colours trapped behind the clear glass. I've called them tardis beads as they remind me of the interior of the tardis (great Dr Who special on Sunday wasn't it?!)

And here is my new hat, it's based on a pattern of hat that was made for fellow beadmaker Laura, by her fella, Chris's mum. (Thanks for sending the link, Laura!) I've used different yarn as I couldn't find any Coats on-line in the UK. I used Sirdar Crofter instead bought from Sew Creative on King Street in Cambridge. I've also changed it so it's got a turn up as I like 'em and it comes down right over my ears - I get very grumpy when they get cold on my stall!

I'm also doing a matching scarf which is almost finished; I might have enough wool to do some mittens as well - we'll see. Now I'm ready for when the colder weather arrives. It's a bit mild for hat wearing at the moment. I remember last year pinning my poppy onto my "big" coat a few days into the start of November; this year, it went on my slightly padded showerproof jacket and didn't shift.