House-Elf Doings 

 Welcome to Dorchester in Dorset.

 This is a town steeped in history. Judge Jeffreys (the hanging judge) presided here sentencing 100s of people to be hung drawn and quartered for treason. Thousands were sentenced to death and deportation during the Bloody Assizes.

It isn’t all bad though.

Victorian tile montage.

To some the town is more familiar as Casterbridge in the Thomas Hardy novel. 

We visited the Dinosaur Museum which allowed photographs. 

Dina should be familiar to the late and great Jon Pertwee as Dr Who, fans. 

There were so many excited children which was great to see. 

I had heard of this lady Mary Anning because of the nursery rhyme:

“She sells sea shells on the sea shore

the shells that she sells

are sea shells I’m sure.”

Click to read the fascinating story.

 One last look.

and we head up the road

 to the Teddy Bear Museum.

But look at the display which greeted us on the ground floor. 

Terracotta Warriors from China. They didn’t ship the very fragile originals but made exact copies for this display. There was a very interesting video which explained the life of the 1st Emperor of China “Qin Shi Huang” and his preoccupation with living forever. 

Upstairs it was life as normal for the teddies. 

 The tour cards introduced us to each of the adult sized bears in turn. 

Many of the rare bears were in display cabinets.

 Others were living the life of teddy bears.

There was a shop where you could buy a bear or things related to the Terracotta Warriors. Son was interested in that sort of thing.

Lastly there is the Tutankhamun Museum

Sadly there are no photos allowed. I would’ve loved one of the children’s faces as they saw the display of the archaeologists breaking through to the tomb. The museum has arranged it so you then walk through the wall and are greeted by the antichamber just as it was when Carter saw it. I remember the wonder I felt at that moment- so much gold and the leopared bedstead.  Later it displays a lot of the items individually so you can see the exact copies up close. 

 Well I couldn’t resist. Her name is Doris and she is a German Sunkid bear. She was happy to share fish and chips on the beach at Bowleaze Cove and star in photos.

Now I have finished sharing Dorset! Hurray!

I have finally finished the quilt for daughter to go to uni with this academic year. With the boats on it goes with the cushion she made with the Spinnaker Tower on. All is light and nautical this year for her small room with a view of the sea and tower. 🙂

Welcome to the NEC in Birmingham earlier this month for the Festival of Quilts.

 Grethe and I met for the 1st time. I met Kaffe Fassett my fav living designer for the 1st time too.

I was so pleased to tell him how great his knitwear and fabric designs are. Too often I think we don’t tell people that we appreciate them.

I took over 300 photographs, so rather than flood this blog with them I have a web page where you can view them as thumbnails. You can also view them screen size and click the arrows below the photo to view the next one at that size. 

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This brings me to an idea I have had about having a Craft Olympics.

I was so inspired by a lot of what I saw, I wondered if anyone would be interested in signing up to participate in a Craft Olympics where we make 5 things in different disciplines such as stitchery, piecework, applique, felt work, needlepunch, needle felting, knitting, crochet, painting on fabric, mixed fiber art, 3d sculpture, anything really as long as 1 of the projects is made in a technique new or barely done by you.You choose what you want to make and which craft you want to try out.

The idea is that we push ourselves in new directions and inspire one another.

Sneak peeks are allowed especially as Christmas is coming and gift making time may be limited.

For each project you get a thimble to display on your blog until you have the full set of 5 by 1st January.

Just take whichever of the images you are up to and replace your old one when a project is complete. By the New Year we should all be able to proudly display the picture with 5 thimbles on. Hopefully we will all have challenged ourselves in new directions which will improve our work next year.

I will organise things in my side bar like Ulla did for Scandinavian Christmas where I will put your name and a link to the blog page where you have shared the completed project, or sneak peeked it. I will rely on you to tell me about it. There will be Thimbles numbered 1-5, so you can all see exact links to everyone’s 5 by the end.