Cole Museum: Conservation Cleaning

Damaged display

Over the summer I’ve been helping out behind the scenes at the Cole Museum. We’ve been taking an inventory of some of the storage cupboards, and doing a little bit of conservation and cleaning along the way.

This display had been stored unwrapped, and had become rather damaged and dusty. The label says “Canis Familiaris – Cranial Vertebrae”, which is the bones of the head of a dog. There’s also, somewhat inexplicably, a little forelimb of a puppy attached too.

Parts removed for cleaning

First of all I removed all the parts that could be safely removed from the board without damage. The red part is glued on, and the other pieces are held securely into place with pins. I then used a combination of soft brushes, cotton buds, tweezers and smoke sponge to clean off the worst of the dirt. The loose dust on the backing board was brushed into a museum grade vacuum cleaner.

Complicated jigsaw...

These are the rest of the pieces, waiting to be cleaned. They’ve gone back into their cupboard again while I find out how to clean the dust off the bones without also removing the paint. The tube contains some tiny fragments that had broken off. This has been numbered, and will be kept with the rest of the display.

I’ve really enjoyed working on this little piece of conservation – although I have a sneaking suspicion that putting it back together again might be a little more difficult than taking it apart!

Striped Tie

Stripy tie

Paul decided the day before the event that he would come with me after all.

Thankfully I managed to get him a ticket, and I had just enough striped fabric left over to make him a tie to match my outfit.

The diagonal stripe is because I didn’t have a big enough scrap of fabric to make the front of the tie in one piece, so I had to make a join. The stripes didn’t quite match up as precisely as I’d have liked, so I ran a piece of leftover braid across the seam.

Not bad for a last minute dash and a few bits of leftovers!

MERL: Farmyard Fun!

Meet Izzy and Fizzy – a Herdwick sheep and lamb from Miller’s Ark.

Over the summer, Miller’s Ark brought a garden full of animals to MERL, and I was lucky enough to be volunteering that day. The children were allowed inside the pen with the sheep and goats, so I spent most of the afternoon supervising them, and making sure that everybody had washed their hands.

There are loads of photos on MERL’s Facebook which show all the animals, and hundreds of visitors having a great time.

I also learned about The Herdy Company, who are committed to giving back a percentage of their profits to look after the Lakeland landscape. I think my favourite things are the stitch markers and the herdy banks. As they say, why should the pigs have all the money?

I had a fabulous day at the MERL farm – it was great to see some of the animals that would have played such an important part in everyday rural life, and to see the visitors enjoying them too.

Organic Cotton for Sale!

Oh, I have so many things that I’ve made and haven’t told you about yet… and I have a new job, and new ideas and new plans… but first of all I need to do a little bit of clearing out.

It’s more than three years since my order of Bishopston Trading fabrics arrived, and I still have quite a bit left. They’re colours that I was left with when people ordered half a bolt, and they don’t really fit into the scheme of the new things that I want to make. (Nope, not even the pink!)

I have approximately seven metres of green, nine metres of pink and just three metres of blue that need to go to a good home. Or several good homes. So, I’ve set up a Big Cartel shop for the purpose of selling them to you.

The price is £7 per metre, plus a little bit extra for shipping. I’ve also offered the option to buy little sample swatches, so you can see the colours and feel the fabric before you decide whether to order a bigger piece. The green in particular is very difficult to photograph, although the photo above is actually pretty accurate.

Big Cartel only allows for you to order in whole metre increments, but if you did want smaller pieces such as fat quarters, I can do that for you – just leave me a comment or drop me an email. (claire@eternalmagpie.com)

Once I’ve re-homed this little lot, I can then buy some lovely organic cotton jersey and fleece. I’ve just designed a lovely little cropped hoody, and am working on some pretty skirts and tops. Watch this space…

Fairysteps Birthday Shoes

Fairysteps Queenie

Happy Birthday to me! And what a perfect chilly-but-sunny day for frolicking in the grass wearing my new shoes. Aren’t they gorgeous?

These are Queenie shoes from Fairysteps, in pink dragon leather to match my beloved handbag. I may have put them on before I got out of bed this morning, to the accompaniment of rolled eyes from my husband. I don’t know why he expected anything less, to be honest!

There’s a silly story attached to these shoes.

A few months ago Ren made a pair of Puck shoes in this leather, and I wanted them very much indeed. Sadly I couldn’t afford them at the time, and another lucky person snapped them up. Because all Fairysteps shoes are limited editions (each hide is a finite size, and not all colours can be repeated) you have to buy them when you see them, otherwise they might not reappear! So when another pair magically appeared a few weeks later, happily coinciding with some money in my PayPal account, I gleefully snaffled them straight away.

When Paul came home from work I confessed that I’d bought the shoes, and he looked at me, paused and said “Oh, um…” at which point he was forced to reveal that he’d already bought this pair, and put them aside for my birthday! I quickly sent Ren a rather embarrassed email explaining the situation and, bless her, she was happy to refund me straight away. So a huge thank you to Ren, for sorting out our silliness!

I did feel a bit silly though, and spent a good while wondering whether I could possibly justify owning two almost-identical pairs of shoes… but now I can keep saving up for a pair of Mustardseed or Moonshine boots. I know that a pair of Moonshines are in progress, but it’s probably just as well that they’re not in my size! Maybe next year…

Paul’s been threatening me for weeks that he wasn’t actually going to give me the shoes for my birthday, he was going to put them away until Christmas. I’m so pleased he wasn’t cruel enough to actually do that, because I do love my new shoes! (And my handbag… and my purse… and my choker…)

It’s so lovely to be able to wear or use a well-made item that fills you with joy!
Soppy, perhaps, but true.

McCalls 5924

McCalls 5924

I haven’t been able to settle to anything for the past couple of days (I’ve been unwell again) so I made a very simple little dress. It’s McCalls 5924, which I’ve made before.

The first incarnation came out a little on the generous side, so this time I trimmed the pattern down a size. This jersey’s also much more light and drapey than the cotton lycra I used the first time, and I think it suits this style better. I am a bit worried that it might stretch out of shape though, as the skirt’s pretty heavy to hang from such a little bodice. There is an option to add elastic at the waist, but the casing adds a lot of bulk and I didn’t want it to be tight.

It’s more flattering on than it looks on the dressform, and the most important thing for me is that it’s really comfortable. Not tight at the waist, nice soft fabric, and it has pockets. Perfect.

(Also, the pink flowers match my Fairysteps handbag.)

Now I just need to find some orange woolly tights to wear with it, and I’ve reached the height of mad-art-teacher chic. Excellent!

Quarter Past Ten Scarf

Quarter Past Ten Scarf

I liked the Ten O’Clock scarf, but wanted something a bit wider. So I added an extra column of feather-and-fan up the middle. Then I decided that I didn’t want the edges to curl so much, so I’ve added a couple of garter stitches and a yarn over at each side.

Quarter Past Ten Scarf

Knitted from a single 200g ball of Patons Trentino, it measures almost six feet long. According to Ravelry it’s taken me almost eighteen months to knit.

Quarter Past Ten Scarf

I chose the colours so that I could wear it with almost everything that I own, and I’m really glad that I finally managed to get it finished just as the weather’s decided that it’s definitely autumn now.

So it’s almost the ten o’clock scarf… but with a little bit extra.

A Louder Recorder

I spent today at Bunkfest, playing recorder for Aldbrickham Clog & Step Dancers. I was (somewhat unexpectedly) the only musician, a position I’m going to find myself in more often next season. Originally I played tenor recorder, but quickly discovered it was just too low to be audible out of doors. I switched to descant, as you can see, but it’s still a challenge to be heard above half a dozen clog dancers, ambient noise from an audience and in this afternoon’s case, a Punch & Judy show and a helicopter!

After that particular performance a lady came over to me and asked whether I’d ever played a Renaissance-style recorder. I said I hadn’t, so she handed me one of these. I hadn’t been aware that Renaissance recorders have a much wider bore, which makes them much louder – and therefore ideal for playing out of doors. Perfect! I’d already been thinking about going to the Early Music Festival, but now I’m definitely going to go and try out some Renaissance recorders. So thank you very much to a lovely lady with a bag full of covetable recorders, for her extremely helpful advice.

As well as meeting some lovely people, we also saw some fabulous performances. The Outside Capering Crew had been recommended to us as a must-see, and we did manage to catch the tail end of one of their sets. The highlight of the day for us was watching their performance with Berkshire Bedlam, collectively known as The Big Caper. If you think you know what Morris Dancing looks like, go and see these dancers – they’ll blow you away. We also loved Wild Hunt – visually stunning with black tatters and masks, they also had no traditional musical accompaniment, only drums, which made them very dramatic to watch.

We had an absolutely brilliant day, and I’m now inspired to venture up into the loft and try to unearth some of my old recorder music. If I’m going to treat myself to a new recorder, I’m going to need plenty of music to play!

Butterick 4731

Butterick 4731

Yes, this is exactly what it looks like. An evening dress, in wet-look lycra.

Another one for the “it seemed like a good idea at the time” pile, I suspect!

This is Butterick 4731. It looks a bit odd (relatively speaking) on my dress form because I’m in between sizes. The bust on my larger dress form doesn’t go small enough, and the waist and hips on the smaller one don’t go big enough. Typical. So there will be slightly more curvaceousness (is that a word?) going on in Real Life, but it won’t be quite skintight except at the bust, which obviously is holding up the dress.

The dress went together remarkably smoothly, considering I made such a radical departure from the suggested fabrics. The only change I made to the pattern was to leave out the centre back zip. The fabric is so stretchy that it doesn’t need any fastenings, and I didn’t fancy trying to top-stitch on this fabric. Having said that, it didn’t stick to the machine anywhere near as badly as I’d expected.

I do still need to add a lining or facing to finish it off though – the top edge is just folded over at the moment. The pattern is constructed with a boned foundation made from interfaced lining, but there’s not much point in trying to bone a stretchy dress, and the edges of the bones will show through the outer fabric anyway. Instead I think I’m going to make an internal girdle, of sorts, using powermesh. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to achieve that yet, but I’m sure I’ll figure something out!