I made a basket!

basket weaving workshop - basket base
basket weaving workshop – basket base

On Saturday I went to a Basket Weaving workshop with Christine Brewster at Reading Museum, as part of their “Art in the Dark Ages” series. There were ten of us altogether, all completely new to basket weaving, although most of us were craftspeople of some sort. We spent six hours with hardly a break (but plenty of cups of tea!) working hard to overcome the technical challenges involved in making a willow basket in a single day. We all started with a twisted willow hoop that was provided, which determined the overall size of the basket. The picture above is the completed base. So far, so satisfying and extremely therapeutic! 

basket weaving workshop - basket detail
basket weaving workshop – basket detail

As soon as I started to weave the beginnings of the basket proper… that’s when I discovered that it’s not as therapeutic as it first seems – unless you already know what you’re doing! If you haven’t selected nice sturdy willow pieces right at the beginning (which I hadn’t, in a few spots), it makes the weaving a teensy bit difficult. You can see on the right where one of the uprights has collapsed and is bending around the horizontals that are being woven on either side of it. That’s not supposed to happen… but thankfully Christine was extremely good at troubleshooting all of our wonky bits, and was also extremely patient with our many, many questions!

basket weaving workshop - basket detail of hole
basket weaving workshop – basket detail of hole

Christine did say that as soon as you’ve started to get the hang of weaving your first basket, you almost immediately want to start making your second one. It’s not long before you’re able to spot things that you should have done differently right at the beginning that affect the basket as it grows. Sadly basket weaving is not like knitting, where you can just unravel a little bit and go back to put something right. If you start off wonky you’re going to end up wonky! I’ll admit it took me quite a while (and a lot of grumbling) to get past my inner perfectionist and relax into the fact that my basket was just going to be a bit wobbly and have some interesting holes in it. 

basket weaving workshop - Claire holding completed basket
basket weaving workshop – Claire holding completed basket

But look at this! In just six hours I made a willow basket, complete with a wrapped cane handle!

Some people’s baskets had shaped finger holes, some had no handles at all, some had vertical stripes, and some were all one colour. In fact every single basket came out completely different, even though we were all working with the same materials and to the same instructions. 

I haven’t yet decided what I’m going to keep in my basket, but I have made a note in my diary to remind me that I need to leave it out in the rain once a year, to keep it from going brittle. The things you learn on a good workshop! I really, really enjoyed it.

Making Do and Mending

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Well, isn’t this irritating? One freshly-dyed white t-shirt (Dylon Rosewood Red, not as lurid as it appears in these photos!) complete with stain that, annoyingly, wasn’t visible when the t-shirt was white. Now that the t-shirt’s dyed I can’t use a stain-removal product or scrub at the fabric, as that will most likely take off the dye as well as the stain. My only option now is to cover it up with something.

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That’s better! A bit out of focus, but these are floral motifs carefully snipped from a small piece of Lancaster & Cornish organic cotton lace. I’m hoping there might be just enough loose dye still in the fabric that a little bit of it leaches out into the lace the next time it’s washed, just to soften the cream colour a little bit. But if that doesn’t happen, no worries, because the cream lace makes the white stitching on the t-shirt look as bit more as though it’s supposed to be white on purpose.

Knowing that the stitching wouldn’t take the dye was the main reason I chose the colours I did for dyeing my trousers – beige to dark brown, and pale blue to dark grey. With the contrast stitching they just look like smart, lightweight jeans. I also have plans for mending all of my funny-coloured trousers in the future. I’m on the look-out for small pieces of Liberty print fabrics that I can use for patching, and maybe for adding a hint-of-a-print on the turn-ups. Hopefully that will be a long way off yet though!

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While I was mending things, I made the decision to take two of my most beloved t-shirts out of my wardrobe. This Suzanne Vega t-shirt is from the very first gig I ever went to – at the Wulfrun Civic Hall in Wolverhampton, on April 8th 1993. (We were sitting three rows from the back, and Suzanne Vega had a cough.) Having been worn pretty often over the past 22 years, although recently relegated to hospital wear or pyjamas only, it’s safe to say that this t-shirt is very much past its best! But there was no way on earth I was going to throw it out, and it’s really not fit to give to a charity shop, so it was the work of about five minutes to turn it into a cushion. The tour dates are on the back.

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The same fate befell my other favourite t-shirt, also purchased in 1993, this time from Forbidden Plant in Hanley. I didn’t own any other green clothes, and it was far too big for me (being a men’s size XL), but I just had to have it. It saw me through art college and University, but again, it’s not even really fit to wear as pyjamas any more. But, because it was still in my wardrobe, it kept mysteriously finding its way out and onto my body. Drastic measures clearly had to be taken. So, cushion it is.

(No, I don’t iron my bedding. Sorry, Mum!)

Making these two cushions from my favourite t-shirts has made me wonder though – are there any items in my current wardrobe that I can imagine myself still wanting to keep in 22 years’ time?!

A bit more about the Emporium

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I’ve been fiddling about with the idea behind Mr & Mrs Magpie’s Inexplicable Emporium for a couple of years now. It started off as a Steampunk Thing, then it was an Etsy shop… and now it’s something else.

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It’s a blog, written in the form of letters from Mr & Mrs Magpie to their friend Olaf. It also contains snippets of the lives of Mr & Mrs Magpie, and their friend Miss Mouse. (Other friends will follow, I’m sure.)

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It’s also a shop, that will sell things that Mr & Mrs Magpie have brought back from their travels, as well as things that they’ve made. There won’t be products in the shop all the time – everything will be limited edition, and will have to wait for inspiration to strike.

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My main focus, business-wise, is still going to be hats. I have a huge great list of different styles I want to make, and an accompanying list of hat blocks that I need to save up for. But having the Emporium around gives me more of a place to play.

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It’s more of an art project than anything else, really. The outcome can be just about anything I feel like, from little letters for the blog, to anything that the characters themselves might create. I’m making lots of notes, and imagining things about their everyday lives as well as the epic adventures they’ll no doubt undertake.

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I’m not in any great rush with this. In fact, by necessity it’ll have to be slow. Too much other stuff to do, as always. Work, hats, aromatherapy lessons, medical appointments, laundry. (Speaking of which…)

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So all of this, really, is a very long-winded way of saying that Mr & Mrs Magpie’s (new-and-improved) Inexplicable Emporium is now open for business!

Oh, and there’s a new Facebook page too. Hope to see you there.

Surprisingly popular!

A little bouquet of felted flowers. Wet felt for the petals, needle felted in the centre to hold them onto the bobby pins at the back.

This little pile of felted flowers (complete with grainy Instagram filter – I’m “inexplicableemporium”) is waiting to go to work with me on Saturday evening, where I’ll be having a stall at our Museums At Night event. Well, that was the plan, anyway! The two green were ones were made by request for a friend, and the blue one sold on Facebook this afternoon, to another friend who’s also ordered a waterfall jacket that I’m really looking forward to making. Thankfully I still have seven hair flowers to take with me, plus another nine brooches the same size that are just waiting for the pins to be sewn on.

Small felt hair flower on a bobby pin

This is the size of the smaller flowers – about 7-10cm (3-4″) across, and quite deep. It’s attached to a bobby pin that has a little round pad at the top, which holds it firmly in place. The pad sits in between the flower petals and the centre ball, so it’s completely hidden and very secure.

Large felt hair flower on a ribbon-covered comb

This one… well, first I was going to keep it. Then I sewed it onto a comb, and remembered that combs really don’t stay put in my hair. But I was worried that it would be too big, so I popped this photo onto Facebook to ask for some feedback. Apparently it’s not too big at all, a friend has claimed it for her own, and I’m in the process of making half a dozen similarly-sized ones to take to the Vintage Night tomorrow!

Yesterday's felt flowers, now dry and ready for brooch pins. More enormous flowers for hair combs on their way!

And this, again from Instagram, is a selection of the flowers I made yesterday. I’m hoping that there’s enough of a range of colours to appeal to lots of people, although from the response I’ve been getting to the photos, I’m hoping that their popularity isn’t going to be a problem!

Oh gosh, that sounds smug, and it really isn’t supposed to. In fact, I’m a little bit overwhelmed about how supportive and enthusiastic people are being. I’ve seen links to my Etsy store shared on forums, received offers of collaborations, and everyone’s just generally being lovely. I think I’m gradually starting to whittle down my making into things that I’m really happy with – so the fact that other people are happy with them too is the icing on the cake!

Full Moon, Full Brain

Full Moon. Allegedly.

I happened to be awake at around two o’clock this morning, and was amazed by the brightness of the full moon. It was absolutely beautiful, and if we still lived right next door to the lake I’d have been very tempted to go for a little walk. I’m not sure why I thought this photo would express the magnificence of last night’s lunar spectacle, but it’s the best one I managed to take! Sad, really.

(It was two o’clock in the morning, don’t forget!)

As always, I’m at least two ideas ahead of myself, and I was lying awake thinking of all the things I’d like to be doing if I had either time or the money – preferably both!

Thing Number One is a cosmetics project that’s been lurking around the back of my brain for a very long time. I’m thinking that some kind of little Kickstarter-type of enterprise might work for this one though, as the thing that’s currently preventing me from doing it is having enough cash up front for certification assessments and a bulk-buy of ingredients. The idea is a (probably quarterly) Cosmetics Club, where you could pay a subscription to receive a lovely box of goodies four times a year. I was originally considering monthly, but several people have pointed out that a month isn’t very long to use up a box full of bath and body products, and also it doesn’t give me much time to experiment with recipes and make sure I’m sending out the loveliest things!

The whole thing would be branded as part of Mr & Mrs Magpie’s Inexplicable Emporium, complete with faux-Victorian packaging and a story to go with each item. I’m looking forward to that part just as much as I am to developing the products themselves! The main question really is where to start. There are three certification packages available:

  1. Lip Balms
  2. Body Balms, Butters & Oils
  3. Bath Bombs, Melts, Milks & Salts

The second two are probably the most versatile in terms of what I’d be able to make following a single assessment cost, so it’s really a matter of which to choose first – and then encouraging enough people to support the project in advance, so I can actually go ahead and pay for it.

Thing Number Two is MORE HATS!
I’ve been having some quality issues with the felt hoods I’ve been using to make the hats. I don’t think it’s a problem with my current supplier, I think it’s just a problem with machine-made felt in general. I have a number of experiments I want to try out in terms of making my own felt:

  • Will the merino tops I’m using to make all these flowers be too soft to make a good hat?
  • Will it look too “home made”, as opposed to fabulously and uniquely hand-made?
  • Can I get an entire cloche hat out of one carded batt of more hardwearing fibres?
  • Do more hardwearing fibres only come in “sheep colours”?
  • If so, can I dye enough wool myself, using natural dyes? Or will they be too muted for my liking?

You can see I have a lot to think about! This one’s a bit easier than the cosmetics project in that the materials are a lot cheaper, and I have enough fibres already to answer at least two of these questions without having to buy anything new. I just need to find the time to do the experiments, and risk ending up with a little pile of horrible hats if it doesn’t work out!

Thing Number Three (did I even mention three things?) is also hat-related, and it’s MORE HAT BLOCKS! Today I received an email from Guy Morse-Brown with the preview details for their newest hat blocks.

Oh. My. Goodness.

I’d been pondering how to make some different cloche shapes by re-shaping the hats as they came off my existing blocks… but now I find I can buy not only two new sets of brim blocks which are already exactly the shapes I wanted (and which will fit together with the blocks I have already), but there’s also a single-piece cloche block which is simply STUNNING. The down side, of course, is that I’m going to need to find the best part of a thousand pounds in order to buy ALL THE THINGS, which obviously I don’t have. (Or less, obviously, if I don’t try and buy it all at once.) But I’ve been mentally designing hats for exactly these blocks for a while now, so it’s very exciting to discover that they’re actually available!

The plan for right now though, is to concentrate on getting as many hats as possible ready for my Indoor Market on Sunday. Anybody local to Reading, it would be lovely to see you at the Corn Stores! I’m bringing along a nice big mirror so you can try on all the hats, and I’ll be taking orders too.

I will be closing the Etsy store for the day, just to make sure I don’t accidentally sell anything twice, so don’t panic if you try to visit and find me gone! I’ll be back on Monday, once I’ve updated the listings for anything that’s sold.

Felted Flower Experiments

Cut-and-sew felt flower

Whilst the feedback on all of my hats so far has been very positive (thank you!!), there’s one enquiry that’s come up several times now: “will we be able to buy the felt flowers without a hat?” The answer, of course, is yes! But I do need to work out the best way of doing that – both for me in terms of making the flowers, and for you in terms of offering lots of choice.

Cut-and-sew felt flower

So, to that end, I’ve been doing lots of felt flower experiments. The two pictures above are of my attempts to cut out petals from a wet-felted sheet, and then sew them together again to make a flower. This did not go well. It turns out that if I’m making felt, I’d actually prefer to wet felt the flower itself, in one go.

Wet felted flowers

So that’s what I did next! It turns out I have a bit of a problem with size though… these are all smaller than the monster flower that I made for Nicola’s orange hat, but the smallest one is still almost the size of my hand. They just seem to naturally want to come out big!

This is fine by me, as I think a huge great flower on a brooch or a clip or a hair comb would make a fantastic statement! But of course not everybody wants to show off as much as I do, so I thought I’d better try and make some smaller ones as well.

Needle felted hair flower

So, here’s a little needle-felted flower, attached to a large bobby pin. Much better! It fits in the palm of my hand, and the flower is light enough that it’s not going to pull the clip out of place.

Needle felted hair flower

This is the second one, playing with adding a bit more colour to go with the felted ball in the centre. I have a few of those that I made during a session with the children at work, so now I’m choosing colours and designing flowers to go around them. This one’s already sneaking up in size though, so I need to make sure that these stay dainty and don’t get too big! I also need to practice my needle felting technique, as I’m not quite convinced about the texture of this one. Maybe a finer needle would do the trick.

So, watch this space, as I suspect there will be lots more flowers to come!

More flower than hat…

Nicola's ORANGE hat!

So, this is what happens when you order a hat in BRIGHT ORANGE, and then give me free reign to decorate it however I like. I blame Nicola, for agreeing that a massive “alien flower” would be a good thing to wander around wearing on her head.

Nicola's ORANGE hat!

I have to say that I have absolutely LOVED making this. The opportunity to use a nice bright base colour, and the freedom to make something that I thought Nicola would like, has been really enjoyable. As has the process of making the felt itself. I’m learning something new every time I work with wool in this way, and I’m so excited about the possibilities. It’s good for me too – it keeps away my perfectionist streak, as there’s no such thing as “perfect felt”, and it changes all the time as you’re working with it.

Nicola's ORANGE hat!

The centre of the flower is circled with bright orange bullion knots, to draw the colour back into the hat. The process of stitching through handmade felt is incredibly satisfying – almost therapeutic, somehow.

I had to take a bit of a break from felting today, as my shoulders and neck were complaining about all the rubbing and rolling, but I can’t wait to get back to it. My next day not-at-work is Tuesday, and that’s most definitely going to be another felting day!

At long last – another new hat!

Pale grey cloche hat with blue beaded felt flower

It wasn’t until I came to upload this hat to the Etsy shop that I realised it’s a whole month since I added the previous one. How on earth did that happen?

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the hats (too much thinking and not enough doing, clearly!), and I think in April (when I formally register Eternal Magpie as a business again) I’m going to move these hats out of the Inexplicable Emporium and over to an Eternal Magpie branded Etsy store. I think that will allow me to have a bit more creativity without having to shoehorn them into the faux-Victorian theme… and if I make anything properly crazy or very obviously Steampunk-inspired, then it can go into the Emporium if that’s where it fits best.

Felted leaves and tendrils

I’ve been having a bit of a play with felt again, with a view to the hats having a lot more handmade embellishments, rather than only ribbons and buttons. I think that lends them a certain uniqueness – anyone can go to a shop and choose a pretty ribbon and a striking button, but only I can make these exact flowers. Sure, there are a million and one felted flower tutorials out there, so I can’t claim any uniqueness in that. But these flowers will have come out of my hands and my imagination, and that will hopefully make these hats stand out a little from the many other cloches out there. Typing “felt cloche hat” into Etsy currently returns 1,869 results, so I need to make mind stand out somehow! They’re currently on pages 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 (out of 47) of that search, so not bad, but anything I can do to make them that little bit more interesting will definitely help.

I also want to make a few smaller things, such as hair clips, to offset the fact that yes, these hats are going to be expensive when the prices go up in April, and yes, they’re going to be outside of many people’s budgets. I’m hoping that people might start by buying a hair clip with some pretty felted flowers on it, and like it so much that they save up to buy a hat. Well, a woman can dream!

 

While stocks last…

I should probably mention my other special offer that’s up and running on Etsy, before it up and runs out!

All of the remaining scented candles in glass jars are being discontinued,  so there’s currently a voucher code to receive £5 off any candle in my shop. Simply enter the code “CANDLE5” at checkout, and it should do the maths for you. Unfortunately it only works once per order, not once per candle, so if you’d like to order more than one just contact me and I’ll make a custom listing for you.

When I made these candles they were greeted with great enthusiasm, but while the tea light packs sold out almost immediately, the large candles have mostly been sitting in a box. Realistically, I think they’re just too expensive for buyers to take a risk on without being able to smell them first. Hence the discount, which I hope will encourage a few people to go for it!

Airship Fresheners - tealight sample pack

Unfortunately four out of the five fragrances we chose for the Airship Fresheners have now been discontinued altogether, which means that they can’t now be repeated. Any large candles that are left over at the end of the month will be melted down and turned into tea lights, to try and prolong their availability just a little bit, but after that it’ll be all new smells!

I also want to try some new things as far as candles are concerned. Keeping in the theme of the pseudo-Victorian Emporium, I’m thinking along the lines of candles for banishing monsters, or lighting up a seance, or attracting (and repelling) all manner of fictional creatures of the night. A little bit more research will be required, but that will mean delving into my pile of of gothic horror novels, so I’m rather looking forward to it!

There’s also the long-standing project that’s been in the back of my mind for years, about making candles scented with essential oils. There are quite a lot of safety considerations involved with using essential oils at wax-melting temperatures, so again more research is needed before I can go ahead.

Whatever I make in future though, in the way of candles, will definitely be tea light sized! That way people can buy them individually if they want to, or I can offer small packs. Either way, they’ll be cheaper and easier to send through the post than big glass jars!

Experimental Afternoon

Failed felting experiment

I had one of those “brilliant ideas” just as I was falling asleep last night, so I rushed home after work this afternoon to try it out. It turned out not to be as brilliant as I’d thought, which is often the case! I’d been contemplating the possibility of felting loose wool fibres onto the pre-made felt hoods that I’ve been using to make the hats. I hadn’t seen that method of working in books or online anywhere, so I thought I’d give it a go.

I tried needle felting first, with a piece of leftover wool yarn. Coarse needles worked, with a little effort, but left unsightly holes in the front of the work. Fine needles resulted almost immediately in a break – the needle just wasn’t strong enough for the dense machine-made felt.

Failed felting experiment

Next I gave wet felting a go. Admittedly I’ve used a very small amount of wool here, but again it just didn’t really work. The fibres are starting to felt to themselves, but they’re not even thinking about meshing in with the darker felt underneath. I guess it’s finished too smoothly for the top layer to grab on to.

Failed felting experiment

The yarn and the merino fibres also started to hold on to one another very nicely, but you can see that they’re just not even slightly attached to the bottom layer.

It’s possible that with a lot more fibre and a lot more effort, this technique might work. But to be honest, if I’m going to have to go to a lot of effort, I’d much rather be making my own felt completely from scratch. That was always the plan anyway, I just wanted to see whether there was an interim method between machine-made hood and handmade felt. Apparently not!

Salt dough experiment

This is how the experimental salt dough looks now that it’s dry. I haven’t baked it – I left it at work while I was off sick for three days, and it’s dried itself out nicely in the meantime! It’s lovely and white, but the salt does make it look a little grainy. The backs of the pieces are rather rough, and I’m not completely convinced it will survive being sanded. I also want to test a few pieces to see how brittle they are. There’s no point making a pendant or a pair of earrings that are going to snap the first time you bump them – or that might dissolve the minute they get damp! So I need to experiment with painting and sealing them too. Oh, and drilling holes in them. I should really have poked holes with a cocktail stick while the dough was still wet, but I’m hoping they won’t snap under the pressure of a hand drill. Another fun experiment to try!