Very occasionally, crafting has to take a back seat

So, apart from launching the shop and the winter sock club this week, what else has been going on the world of Skein Queenery?

After getting my children back safe and sound from a week staying with their grandparents and aunties over in Northern Ireland (and very spoiled they were too), I got all over-enthusiastic and did some baking with them on Tuesday.


Here's the ginger biscuits, but the banana muffins were a disaster so less said about them, the better.

Wednesday night was a very pleasant evening spent at knit night in Reading - the children came along too - and we all panicked about the lack of knitted/sewing/yarnie things we have prepared for the South Hill Park craft fair which is NEXT WEEK!!!

On Thursday, I had half an hour after school to come up with a tramp outfit for Skein Princess who was having a tramps party at Rainbows. I assumed it was the down-and-out kind and not the slutty kind! This is all I could come up with:

I regretted the hairspray later on!

On Friday, a lovely fibrey lady from Newbury came over and helped me wrap the last installment of the Autumn Sock Club parcels. We're going to do a skills exchange - she's going to teach me how to spin and I'm going to show her how to dye up her handspun to make a full garment.

Then Friday night was over to a friend's house for a night of girly chat and a wee swally or two. Back at two in the morning!

Saturday was spent finalising the Winter Sock Club places after running Skein Princess to ballet and a birthday party where she got to make cookies:

And Saturday night was over to our Iranian friend's house in Reading for a Bonfire Night celebration.
This year, our friend is looking after an 18-year-old Afghan boy. He cooked up an Afghan curry feast - he's a culinary genius. He's the nicest boy doing the best for himself here to get a good education. His father was a general, his mother a science teacher - both killed in the one day, along with his brothers and sisters. He was the only survivor and made his way over here when he was sixteen and our Iranian friend is like a mother to him and helps with translation, though his English is getting better and better as he's studying for A-Levels, so it has to be!

Today, we went to the Remembrance Parade - I thought of all the soldiers who died for us and of our Afghan friend.
Has anyone heard of Shared Learning? Does any other school in the country or world do Shared Learning? Well, our one does. Four projects to do between parent and child this term and four more next term. One on How Heavy is Your House, one on Teeth, one on your parent's favourite book and one on the geography, history, social and environmental aspects of your town. Each project takes a good few hours and personally, I think it's all a bit too much pressure! I liked the idea until the deadlines loomed.

So I took Skein Prince out on the bikes this afternoon and thought I'd share some of our camera work. Still got to put it all together in a PowerPoint presentation for next week!

Thank you so much for all the kind comments about the new shop and website - we're still working on improvements and there won't be an update this week as will be dyeing up yarn for the craft fair. And thank you to all the people who joined the Winter Sock Club - it's the biggest it's ever been and hopefully that means it will be even more fun! There are still a couple of places left in the Encore Unfortunate Club, so if you're interested, check out the shop.