Patchwork May

Hello.......... It's patchwork time again, so here's a little look back at May.

Which was all crochet, ceramics and pants (making !!) 

May is also ME/CFS and Lyme disease awareness month, so I bravely decided to share a post each day about how my illness effects me to help raise awareness over on my Facebook and the blogs instagram page, I did quite well with it but ran out of steam on day 25.

As you know my healths really not been very good this year and I've been in a severe relapse since last October.  I find myself in the difficult position of not having a diagnosis that fully explains all my symptoms and therefore it hard to find a effective treatment, we are just treating symptoms as they occur, fighting fires if you like.  As my GP puts it' my official diagnosis is ME it's probably Lyme disease and my back diagnosis is MS.

It's so hard as I'm developing the symptoms of lots of different autoimmune conditions from Arthritis to Lupus, MS to Diabetes and thyroid disease and Dyautonomia, to name a few, my GP has said she thinks I have some sort of, yet to be discovered multi system autoimmune disease, which lets face it, is just no fun.

If you want to read more about the individual photo's you can find them here on my IG feed.

Onto happier and more lovely things to end with, out in the summerhouse garden.....

Well that's about it for May's round up

Happy Crafting

Clare xx

Ceramic Painting Ta-Dah

Hello........... I'm back with part two of my Birthday yarn bowl adventure. I can't tell how excited we were to see how our makes turned out.

We went here for our ceramic painting afternoon and it was so much fun, the lady who runs the place was sooo helpful.

So are you ready for a closer look, I love how the sky blue came out and the little blossoms

The Butterflies look OK too, I was a little worried they might not have turned out so well, so I'm  happy with them, I've not go the steadiest of hands.

The inside of bowl is the perfect Spring time mix of blue skies and clouds and I love the little blossom flowers around the inside of the bowl.

Around the outside of the bowl there are three set of cherry blossom Sprigs

Ta-Dah

It's coming in so handy as balls of yarn were forever falling off the bed before.

Here's some of the other makes, I think they all turned out just fabulous, plus we all tried a new craft.

As for me I'm very happy with my new yarn bowl and I'm putting it to good use. I'm also looking forward to going back to the Cermaics Cafe again.

Happy Crafting

Clare xx

Ceramic Painting : part one

Hello............. How have you been, sorry long time, no post, just struggling with my health lately, but today I have a very exciting birthday post to share with you, yes back in April some friends and I went off to a local Ceramics Cafe for a afternoon of craft,cake and tea.

After a bit of tuition about the paints and pottery from the lady who runs the cafe, we all set to work.  

You know me I just couldn't resist having a go at decorating a yarn bowl, probably not the easiest option for my first visit to the cafe, but hey ho

 I was thinking blue skies, cherry blossom and butterflies, for my design, and painted a little watercolour at home a few days before we went.

Now I did find it a bit tricky drawing my design onto the bowl, I really should have gone with a flat surface, but luckily you can use pencil and do some rubbing out on the pre fired bisque, once I had drawn my design on and before getting painty it was time for..........

some yummy cake and a cuppa

Here we all are, getting arty, I can tell you it was pretty quiet with all that concentrating, as we were all new to this pottery painting malarkey.

 I did find the paints a little confuggling at first with my foggy brain as they come out a different colours when fired but I soon got the hang of it.  First up I sponged sky blue over my bowl before painting in the cherry blossom and butterflies

You have to give each bit three coats of paint and in the excitment of it all I was a little worried I might have missed some bits.

Fingers crossed it comes out OK when it's been glazed and fired eek.

Here's what my lovely friends created, we all really want to go back again, although I did find it really tiring it was just so much fun.

 I promise I won't make you wait too long for the ta- dah post, we had to wait just under a week with the bank holiday but it was so exciting waiting to see how everything would turn out.

Happy Crafting 

Clare xx