Airstream Blush

Doesn't she look gorgeous, with the sunset making her blush and the little star lights showing from inside? When the sky or the weather does something interesting you have to be quick and leap out of the trailer, camera in hand. And by now I have taken so many photographs of reflections in the Airstream windows that I am experiencing deja-vu of a non-spooky variety.

The site where we have been staying for a little while has provided challenges to photography. The view from some of our windows is wonderfully bucolic, but we are also surrounded by tin barns, piles of gravel and an array of ageing farm machinery. Oh, and a couple of conventional caravans, and some strategically placed traffic cones. That's what cropping is for, right?

Here At Last

We went to see Submarine. It was charming, and funny, and uncomfortable, and beautifully shot, like a french film set in coastal Wales.

We saw cherry blossoms in Cheltenham.

I saw a girl in flip flops yesterday. Where do you go from there?

I have spotted a jay a few feet from the Airstream. All of the birds have on their best plumage.

Feral cats are skulking around.

All of the windows and skylights are open.

Refreshing Modernism

The car had to go in for its MOT. The dealership/garage is nowhere near to anywhere I want to be so I took a bus in to Cheltenham. In the midst of all its Regency, wedding-cakey poshness someone had plonked a concrete block, presumably in the nineteen seventies. Actually its presence is refreshingly discordant, especially since The Swallow Bakery has turned the ground floor into an urban-feeling cafe. I remembered it being a bit pricey on a previous visit so I was content with just a coffee and to sit and people-watch in an airy, contemporary space. I'm sure it will feel even lighter when the scaffold is removed from outside.

The car passed its test, hoorah! That was the cheapest visit to a Land Rover establishment ever. Big sighs of relief all round. 

Enticement

We drove to Malvern for a walk up a big hill. It rained, so we had some tea and cake and a heart-racing look around the delicious Knitting Parlour. There was a warm glow within as we ooh-ed and aah-ed at the window. Inside it smelt of new wool and wood. They had quality yarns in irresistible colours. There were some crazy textured yarns too, like the giant one that you knit with your forearms instead of needles.

Pete bought this soft as angels' breath alpaca-cotton blend. I exercised restraint. Well... I have to use up a lot more of my stash before I can get carried away again. It's not easy though, when your senses are being gently teased like that. But they have a website here if it turns out I neeeeeed more yarn.

The Felt Revelation

One of my challenges at the moment, having filled a box with Sock Critters and listed them on Etsy, is what to focus on next? The Airstream has a finite amount of space, the Critters' box is full, time to work on little things. But my mind is in butterfly mode. Must grit teeth and focus.

I have made drawings for lots of smaller projects but I keep flitting from one to another. I've got some knitting on the go - a new tea cosy for the shop and another for my Mum-in-law, plus a couple which are knitted but not finished. As I've said before on this blog, I enjoy the repetitiveness of knitting rows and watching the form unfold slowly from the needles. I might also have one eye and half of my brain on a cheesy/classic film, or the ramblings of a DJ on the radio while I engage in this semi-autonomic activity. But, as soon as the time comes to sew up seams and sew in ends it starts to feel like a chore and I'm tempted to succumb to the thrill of a new project, abandoning my old one until I literally have NOTHING more interesting or pressing to do.

I'm dabbling with felt at the moment. It is a new material for me, and I'm enjoying getting the hang of how it behaves. It behaves very co-operatively in fact. You cut it into shapes and it doesn't fray, or stretch, or roll up at the edges. It comes in all kinds of vibrant colours. You can layer it, or stuff it. It lends itself to cute or funky designs. You can draw something, then make it in felt and it looks just like your drawing! Brilliant! I made this pin cushion to fit a specific space in my sewing box.

Little Tin Hut Shop

My Little Tin Hut online shop is open and ready to welcome curious visitors, and those in need of some essential frivolity. Let's face it, who isn't? Click here to go directly to the shop.

So far there is a collection of my Sock Critters, each with their quirks of character and all in need of good homes. Tea cosies will be added soon, and other little projects that I'm working on at the moment. All made and photographed in, and dispatched from an Airstream! Brilliant!

The shop is located on Etsy, which most crafty people will know about. For those who don't, it is a venue for all things handmade and vintage. The variety of artists and crafters is astounding, the quality is high and they are based all around the world. I find it inspiring just browsing the other shops. And even though I only started to list my items on Tuesday and Wednesday, I've already been receiving lovely messages of encouragement from other sellers, and had individual Sock Critters and my shop added to people's 'Favorites' (American spelling since it's an American site, all you pedants!). It's quite overwhelming. I don't know what I expected really. Now I need to dive in and find out how to interact with the Etsy community.

There was lots of helpful advice on Etsy about setting up a shop, as well as blog posts from other sellers. Even though I'm just little ol' me making stuff in an Airstream, I looked around a load of shops where I thought people were doing some really good quality work, or fun and quirky, and where they were presenting themselves very attractively and effectively and tried, with my limited facilities, to emulate what I thought was working well.

Naturally I've had lots of help and advice with the computery stuff from my technical support team of one, Pete. Taught me everything I know (about computers anyway).

Watch this space for updates and news of new additions to the Little Tin Hut, as well as more random bloggy ramblings.

Sunlight and Sweet Melancholy

As I write we are being pelted with windswept tree branches. Nothing too big thankfully, more like large twigs. Sandwiched between a succession of grey and windy days there was a sunny one. I was ready with the tripod and a roll of white wallpaper and my trusty and versatile Canon Ixus. Oh, and a piece of string to suspend the paper from the paper towel-holder. My mission: To photograph my sock creatures.

The sun shone obligingly onto the extending kitchen worktop, but it does move around and sink low very quickly. So the clock (if I had one) was ticking. Sock monsters are not very co-operative either. I had to scour the trailer for discreet objects that could hide behind the critters and hold them up, things like small paint pots and paperclips.

Normally, while I potter I am more than content with having Huey Morgan in the background and his 'if it's cool he'll play it' style radio show on BBC Radio 6 Music. But while I got absorbed in my task I felt I needed an album to unfold around me. I downloaded Nina Nastasia's 2010 release, Outlaster.

I played it all the way through, and then immediately had to play the whole album again. I knew this wasn't really going to be background music since I have often been sucked into her second album, The Blackened Air, and wallowed in its delicate darkness. Outlaster is a more deliciously lush offering. There are moments where you find that you have simply stopped what you were doing and are listening, really listening. It is not just the unpretentious clarity of her voice, or the compelling lyrics. There is her gently meticulous guitar playing and the strings that swoop and scrape in raw, rough-edged, folky gusts.

Nina Nastasia's rare gift of a voice is an intimate, winged presence that is able to either freeze or melt your heart; that can powerfully soar and twist, or brush ultra-gently against you, suddenly summoning goose bumps. Mojo commented on its ability to "suck the air out of the room"
Fat Cat Records 

If you embrace melancholia and cheer in unsentimental equal measure then this might be your cup of tea, but listen alone, because if anyone talks over this music it would be hard to forgive.