Wednesday, 5 October 2016

Back To Yarn Along

Finally linking up again for Yarn Along.


I have been knitting, I promise; I just haven't been keeping up with my blogging! In July, we had our Woolly West Fest - wonderful festival of wool!


This year, the featured book was Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett.










And how exciting - we even made his blog in this post on Woolly West Fest!
And how exciting again - Arne and Carlos liked the Woolly West Fest Facebook page! Doing an excited, happy dance about how our town's little yarn festival has grown.


If you haven't read this delightful picture book, the story is about a girl who knits and knits and basically covers everything in her town with yarn. Thus each town participating was asked to choose an iconic feature of their town. A wooden model was then made and covered with wool in any form, with some truly stunning results.











We also had our usual parking meter cosy display, so this year I made an Extra Yarn one, covered in jumpers (sweaters) and a little bobble hat.









 And most exciting of all was to be involved in the WARM project. This is a project about climate change and sustainability through woolcraft.







The project's aim was to cover a painting of a revegetated mine site with wool.




And guess who designed the knitting projects and ran the workshop? Georgie Hallam of tikki knits. Yes, the designer of the Milo! I felt like an awestruck fan! She is absolutely delightful and it was a fabulously fun afternoon of knitting, warm open fires and cups of tea.






I love that Georgie has designed all the pieces to be donated to charity, if the project is dismantled. Some of the bark of the gum is fingerless gloves, the sky is squares that can be repurposed as blankets, there are hats in there too. All these items will be donated to charities for the homeless at the completion of the project's life.


And here is the completed painting. I knitted a gum leaf!





 Also, as part of Woolly West Fest, I attended the Australian premiere (a red carpet premiere in our tiny town!) of Yarn The Movie. Loved, loved, loved it!
I particularly loved Toshiko. She crochets the most amazing, and enormous, playgrounds. Absolutely inspirational to listen to her talk about why she does it, simply that children need somewhere to play, especially in urban areas where play spaces are being eroded.







Wow, I suppose I better stop talking yarn and start talking books!


I have just finished reading This Side Of Heaven by Karen Kingsbury.




I really enjoyed it. Easy read, but absorbing. I found it hard to put down, simply because the characters had pulled me in and I had to know what happened.
A story about how you do not have to be successful in the way society expects to have a successful life. And how we should appreciate the people we love, as the unexpected can happen to take them from us in an instant.


My favourite quote: 'Jesus was about the least, the last and the lost.'


Get the tissues ready for this one!


And I will be getting back to my Classics Club reading list too - been neglecting that as well!


Hope this post wasn't too long and boring, but I had a bit of catching up to do.




8 comments:

  1. Wow now that is hat I call an impressive yarn post. A real feast for the eyes, what a wondrous achievement.

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    1. Thanks! We are all pretty proud of what started as a little yarn festival a few years ago.

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  2. my goodness what incredible ways to take knitting and turn it into creative art!! how lucky you were to be there.

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    1. For a small town, we have some amazingly diverse creative types. It is just wonderful.

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  3. I love that book! In fact, we just got it from the library again to read the kids. It's a book we plan to own. Even our older children enjoy it. What a fun idea to make wooden models and cover them with knitting, too!

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    1. You know, I hadn't even thought of the kids reading it, but my older ones definitely could. Thanks for the suggestion!

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  4. What an amazing yarn festival you hold there; 'tis very impressive! It would be the most wonderful experience to be there in the thick of all that yarn gorgeousness and creativity. Oh my, Toshiko's creativity is unbelievable. How blissful it would have been to sit in her presence and listen to all her thoughts and ideas. I must look out for both those books. I love that quote as well, it warmed my heart. Such a gorgeous post, Jayne.....one could look at all those clever yarn ideas forever! Have the most wonderful week, lovely Jayne.

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    1. You will have to make a trip across the sea to visit us one year! Every year, there is more added. It is worth watching the Yarn Movie just to listen to Toshiko. You are right, even on the big screen, her peace and gentleness came through - so to meet her in real life would be amazing.

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