WOAD!

We love visiting the Museum of East Anglian Life, there's so much to see and always something to learn about the fantastic part of the country that we are lucky enough to live in!

The annual Steam and Craft fair is a brilliant event with so many steam engines and crafts people from far and wide...Jen (pictured above) is a dedicated volunteer, fund raiser and a (quite brilliant!) Wednesday knitter!

We set up our stall in the pole barn and it was clear to everyone as we donned our aprons and got the pots warming on the stove that this was no ordinairy craft fair...

There were the brilliant colours achieved through the microwave technique - a little bit quicker than the natural dyeing that we do...

...and the chance to see the famous Needham Market fire engine a recent acquisition for the museum!

So, happy that all the pretty bias bindings, ribbons, ric racs and knitting needles were displayed at there best for the day we got busy with the woad!

We had a lot of fun doing the woad dyeing section in A Green Guide to Country Crafts and all think back fondly to Gavin Kingcome's fascination with the whisking!

Woad creates a rich blue dye by reacting with oxygen so although the surface bubbles here are a gorgeous shade of blue if you part the foam you can see the very yellow dye bath below!

The colour starts to develop as soon as the items are removed from the bath! You need a lot of people around to help 'air' the skeins of yarn and silk scarves so each 'dip' ended with the shout of 'WOAD' and the ringing of a great big handbell that Lisa Museum lent to us for the day!

Here they are drying on our line and yes that is a skein of green yarn there - it's what you get when you 'over dye' yarn that has previously been dyed with Dyer's Greenweed - it's Lincoln Green!

Now it's time for a little bit of an apology - the reasons for the LONG gap between this post and the previous one, my trusty old laptop gave up! It had worked hard and written many a blogpost and luckily as it was coming up to my 40th birthday my very lovely and brilliantly supportive parents bought me a new one! How lucky am I?

It was definitely party time at HH HQ last week and Wednesday was also the day that BBC Radio Suffolk came to visit the knitters and as it was also Wednesday Wendy's birthday we had a little party. Tina made these amazing cakes and as you can see they didn't even hang around long enough to get a snap of all the letters!

They were amazing, thank you Tina!

Jo Lea, knitting moss for an ornamental hanging basket and quite determined to teach Jon from BBC Radio Suffolk to knit!

Just one of the very brilliant birthday presents - a marvelous book by a brilliant knitter! This is my bed time reading...

The lovely birthday gifts will get a proper blogpost all of their own after I've written my thank you notes...but this one deserves a special mention as it was tracked down by Mike the Glassman and it's a beauty!

I LOVE glass as much as I love yarn and there had been much plotting, texting and consultation with The Good Wives of Sew and Crow to find a piece of glass that would make me go giddy and I know that Mike is particularly pleased with himself for finding this Martini jug by Holmegaard glass...

...he takes his glass seriously and being charged with this task made it tricky for me to pin him down in order to pick a winner for Country Buntkin bunting giveaway!

BUT, I finally got him - comment 7 is the winner! Congratulations Cath, send me some details halfpennyhome@googlemail.com and the bunting bits and bobs will be flapping their way over to you!

And finally...how proud were Jacqui and I to see a good friend of Halfpenny Home, Polly's Textiles featured in Oh Comely magazine?!

Well done Danielle, your 'Beautifully Purposeful' hand screen-printed fabrics are gorgeous and your aprons are definitely a favourite of ours and featured in one of our favourite magazines too!

Phew! Think that's about everything...Nic x

Bunting, sushi and curling up on THE sofa with a good book.....

We never miss an opportunity to get out the bunting and last Friday was no exception!

Janine, Events Manager at Waterstones, Ipswich kindly invited us along for a "crafty afternoon".
We got to show off some of the beautiful images from a Green Guide to Country Crafts



As well as lots of the projects we made for the book.

Our knitting needles, as usual, came along too!

I took the opportunity to have a go at some weaving!

As did Cherry when she popped in to see us!

Thank you to all at Waterstones for making us feel so welcome, making us tea and allowing us to take a little bit of Halfpenny Home to Ipswich for the afternoon!

Doing the book has meant we've had the opportunity to meet some local celebrities, and back in March, shortly after the book was published, we were invited to sit on Lesley Dolphin's sofa at Radio Suffolk!

We were given our visitor passes and shown into the studio area. We were both really nervous but Lesley was lovely and soon put us at ease.

Here we are on the famous sofa!

And as a small reward we had sushi to celebrate!

Suffolk has many hidden gems and clever people. Sue Richards, of Rodwell's Farm, in Baylham is one of those people.

Sue makes cheese on the family farm and being a long standing friend, kindly gave us some of her lovely cheese for our party that we held to say thank you to our families for supporting us during the writing of our book as well as all those who contributed to the book.

Alison (Jacqui's sister in law) kindly allowed us to host our party at The Barn Cafe, Alder Carr Farm, which provided the perfect backdrop to show off some of the projects! How pretty does it look?

Here's the calm before the storm!

Sadly, the wine began to flow a little too well and unusually for us, there are very few photos of what happened next.......

suffice to say, we were left nursing sore heads the next day!

Nic & Jacquix

Super Stylish Swish!

In amongst all the activity at Halfpenny Home, I've also been involved in working with friends to organise our third, and most up-market Swish! Remember the Twiggy programme on TV where ladies got together to swap their unwanted quality clothes? Well, this is our version. This time around we're doing it in aid of EACH, the East Anglian Children's Hospice for their Treehouse Appeal and it's going to be on 11th November 2010.

It's a brilliant and fun way to recycle and get yourself a new wardrobe to boot! (yes, maybe some new boots too!!). We're organising a fashion show with some of the swap items to be compered by Rachel Sloane, from our local BBC Radio Station, Radio Suffolk. And, of course, given the thrifty nature of the event, Halfpenny Home was happy to be involved and will be having a stall, along with some other local businesses. We're hoping the lovely buttons and notions, ribbons and trims will give ladies lots of ideas of how to maybe customise their new attire!

Above is a picture of the venue for our Swish! Creeting House! You may recall it being featured on Ruth Watson's Hotel Rescue in the summer of 2009. It's a gorgeous place with lovely owners, Di and Steve, who've so generously agreed to let us use it for the Swish. Take a look at their website http://www.creetinghouse.com/. Highly recommended if you ever want to treat yourself to a weekend in Suffolk and a visit to Halfpenny Home, which is just a stones throw away.

There are still a few tickets left for the Swish so if any of you would like a ticket or more details, do get in touch. You can email enquiries@halfpennyhome.co.uk and I'll send you further details. For those further afield I promise to take lots of pics of the event and post about it afterwards!

Jacquix