Things to do in a hotel room (Pt 1)

As some will know, I have been working away from my lovely little house in Sheffield and am currently spending the week dabbling in holes in Gloucester. Before the new year I was there for a couple of months and now I am there for another few weeks but possibly a month and this is making me very sad.

I have been trying to get my act together and start making things to sell on the wonders of etsy, da wanda, folksy and misi and the like as well as trying to set up a website selling copies and originals of my vintage knitting and crochet patterns. But being away from home has disconcerted me and I find my time is spent perving the web for craft things, tweating and generally not feeling very good about things.

So I have decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and actually get some of those random crafty idas I have bopping around into place and see what I can do in a hotel room.
And this is it (well one of the things)

Granted it's not amazingly pretty but it does offer so many potentials.

I got the fibre from visiting Get Knitted yesterday on a day off. I then used my plastic lunchbox to layer the fibre in and added a little of the complimentary shower gel to the boiling water from the kettle which was then dribbled over the fibre mat. A bit of jigging back and forth with my fingers and the mat was strong enough to take out the box and rub on the shower tray. I haven't got any bubblewrap (well it's not something that you'd usually carry around with you is it?) so I thought that the raised bits on the tray would do. A quick rinse through with cold water and a roll in a towel, then I put it on the radiator to dry.

The felted bit works well enough but the shower gel was difficult to rinse out completely and I was a bit heavy handed in the shower tray section of the proceedings but otherwise I am very happy with the result.

Next week I plan on bringing the fibre with me again along with a baking tray of some sort and some bubble wrap and see what I can get up to.

Box of Fun

My lovely fella asked what I wanted for Christmas ages ago and since we had decided that we were not going to spend much over a tenner on each other I said that I'd really like to try and learn to spin. This came from us visiting the delight that is Wingham Wools at Wentworth during the summer and me getting far to carried away in the various sheds of stuff that they have there.

So I pointed him in the direction of the website and said the most basic sindle would do because it seemed folly to spend out on a 2 minute wonder.

So Christmas morning (just) arrives and he wants me to open my gift - he loves giving presents and I usually have to restrain him from going over the top so I was really pleased that he managed to contain himself and only get what I suggested. I was dreading that he had splashed out on a spinning wheel but my fears were unfounded.

So this is what he got for me


So far I have just been fiddling around as the last time I tried spinning was when I was a school over 20 years ago but it is a basic thing - just twist the spindle and draft out the fibre and a yarn type of thing will be produced.

This is my first attempt - I haven't finished it yet but I think that it's a good start and I am inspired to continue.


I said that I would knit him something from my first attempt but since he doesn't wear gloves, hats or scarves it might just have to be a pair of underpants - that way he won't blind anyone.