See it, try it, buy it: 2018 shows for crafters

Liven up the coming year ahead by planning a day out at a craft show or exhibition. Whether you go to be inspired by exquisite pieces, to stock up on supplies, to socialise – or a combination – you'll refresh your creative juices and return home full of enthusiasm for your next project. (I'll be updating this page so you might want to bookmark it.)

Perspectives on Patterns, Bankfield Museum, Halifax 
Until June 2 2018 | Free
Curated by the TAG (Textile Art Group), commemorating the mill-working tradition in the area, with embellished cards and clogs, bobbins with fabric strips (I think I saw this in Saltaire a couple of years ago), textile samples, stitched panels and needle-felting.

Wonderwool Wales Festival, Royal Welsh Showground, Builth Wells
April 28-29 | £10
With over 210 exhibitors spanning spinning, felting, weaving, knitting and crochet. Take part in hands-on woolschool workshops and events showcasing the best in Welsh and British wool and natural fibres

Orla Kiely: A Life in Pattern, Fashion and Textile Museum, London SE1
May 25-Sept 23 | £9.90
A look at super-successful designer Orla Kiely's 30+ years of work, from first sketches to finished fabrics.

Anni Albers, Tate Modern, London SE1
Oct 11-Jan 27 2019 | £16.50
Barred from studying painting at the Bauhaus school – because she was a woman – she turned to weaving and became an influential figure, pioneering innovative uses of woven fabric as art, architecture and design. This exhibition brings together some of her most important pieces of work.

Christmas is coming…

It's the time of year when many more of us like to get creative, so here are some of my ideas from Christmases past, on this blog, in features I've written, and on Instagram. And there are Christmas presents to buy, too, in the form of a couple of gift guides for particular people.

Christmas cards and decorations

So-simple Christmas cards Your own photos pasted onto cards

Make a mini wreath

Make a festive foliage bauble

Transform tealight holders

Make paper Christmas decorations – perfect for children

Sew a felt Christmas stocking

Make a popcorn and cranberry garland

Make pine cone decorations

Make a paper bag advent calendar

Gifts to make

Step-by-step instructions, or simple inspiration

How to make spiced gin

How to make sloe gin

How to make preserved lemons

Make mulled wine sachets

Embroider a hashtag

Make bird-feeder balls

Knit a cowl

Make beard oil

Knit for babies (11 free patterns)

Christmas gift guides

For particular people, more to come, and more to be added to each.

Houseplants and horticulture 

Christmas gift guide: houseplants & horticulture

On-trend interiors are currently channelling the 1970s jungle vibe, so here are some pressies for budding gardeners with a growing enthusiasm for all things green-fingered…

What's planted where

Even in a weeny windowbox, it's easy to lose track of the plants, seeds and bulbs that are in there, especially if they're lying dormant, died back or, not wishing to be negative, but just plain dead. And it's not unheard of to forget the name of that favourite flowerer… Pop in a plant marker, with the plant name (and date of sowing or bulb planting) written on it in pencil indelible marker and you'll know what's where. So useful.
Wooden plant markers, £3.95 for 40, Sarah Raven



Light up

Light the way, or show off a favourite plant, with this space-saving planter featuring a built-in solar-powered LED lamp. Yes, fairy lights are lovely, but this will sit on a tabletop. Once fully charged, it gives eight hours’ light, perfect for outdoor entertaining.
Elho Flower Light, £35.95, The Worm that Turned







Learn with experts

No, not the services of a gardener. This is RHS Ambassador Jamie Butterworth, whose RHS remit is to encourage more young people to get into gardening. This online gardening course teaches how to convert any spot into a plant paradise including how to plan properly, what to plant for both food and beauty and how to maintain it all.
The new Contemporary Garden course, led by RHS ambassador Jamie Butterworth, from £79, www.learningwithexperts.com (gift vouchers available)


Hearts on hand

Yep, an actual plant. This Ceropegia woodii, aka chain of hearts or string of hearts, is a trailing vine, looking its best cascading from a hanging basket or down a set of shelves. It's often to be seen in the top #houseplants Instagram posts
Ceropegia woodii, £12.50, Trouva







No visible means of support

Terrariums look great, although their popularity may have peaked. However, as anyone who's ever owned one knows, the plants can quite quickly fail to thrive. That micro-environment needs careful managing in order to create optimum growing conditions. I've learnt this the hard way, by making several terrariums and watching their decline. See James Wong's terrarium advice. However, if you routinely kill all houseplants, an airplant (Tillandsia, to be precise) is much less demanding than soil-sited plants. This just needs a bright place, good air circulation and squirting with a plant mister a few times a week in summer, less frequently the rest of the year.
Airplant terrarium kit, £10.50, Crafty Plants (I'd leave out the reindeer moss when assembling, myself)

As seen on my screen

Definitely not Crocs. I appreciate that you don't reeeeally need special outdoor shoes for a bit of light pruning on the balcony, but these will identify you as a gardener when you're going out for supplies, visiting a garden for inspo, guerrilla gardening etc. Light, comfortable and waterproof, Backdoorshoes are made of super-lightweight expanded foam, in sizes 3-14, in loads of jolly outdoor designs including flowers, veg, grass, meadows (like mine, left).
Backdoorshoes, £25, www.backdoorshoes.co.uk

Handmade Halloween

Sick of Halloween decorations and costumes, fake cobwebs and plastic pumpkins festooning every shop you enter? For me, Halloween decorations and costumes should be based on stuff you have around the house, not on a load of mass-produced tat you buy and use/display for one day only. Waste of money, waste of the world's resources.

(The award for the most inappropriate Halloween display goes to my local B&Q, which had a 'trick or treat' bunting banner suspended over…the paint aisle. How about a beautiful display of your black grasses, nearly-black Cosmo atrosanguineus, dark purple-leaved heuchera and orange-flowered plants to salute the season instead?)

So here's a truly last-minute way to decorate your home or garden, made from stuff you're likely to have around the house: tiny dangling ghosts.

You will need
• Paper hankies
• Scrap paper
• Black felt tip
• Needle and black thread

Fold the hankies in four, corner to corner, to find the middle. Draw on two black circles for the eyes, slightly below that point. You can add a mouth if you want.

Crumple up the paper into a ball shape.

Thread the needle, keeping the thread doubled. Tie a knot in the end. Push the needle through the paper ball. Now position the hanky so that the needle comes out through the top of the ghost's head.
Squeeze the hanky around the paper ball to give a more drapy shape.

Tie your ghosts to a twig, window catch, mantelpiece… wherever you want.

More…
Last year I made a mini pumpkin lantern from a Cape gooseberry

Finally finished: longstitch kit

About two years ago I sent off for a longstitch kit; I fancied following a pattern for once. I've done some cross-stitch before, both word-based works, and both designed by me. (I'm talking about 'Fuck off, moths' and 'Moho sweet moho'.).

However, it's quite difficult to find contemporary embroidery patterns, by which I mean no cutesy fluffy animals, ugly flowers, ladies in kimono or whimsical landscapes. I wanted something bold and colourful. And I found it. And now it's finished.

It probably took no longer than about six hours in total, but I kept setting it aside.

In terms of technique it was really easy: like colouring in with yarn.

The kit (by Vervaco, £25 from Stitcher) contained the printed Aida fabric, plus short lengths of yarn (and I have so much left). It's designed as a cushion cover, but I think I'm going to frame it. My only criticism would be that some of the printed lines were a little off-centre.

String of ring shells

Coastal style, for free, with a shell mobile – or a seashell wall hanging, if you prefer.

We all like to pick up stones and shells at the beach; some sort of leftover hunter-gatherer instinct, I think. Or all those interesting textures, colours, shapes... Anyway, I was on the beach near Alnwick, in Northumberland the other day (pic at bottom of page, and started picking up ring shells (limpets, in this case, whose tops have worn away). My goal was to find one to wear on my finger, having admired one on a woman in Western Australia once, asking her where she'd got it.

After I'd found one of those, I carried on picking them up, as I walked along the stunning, reflective expanse of sand/sea/sky, turning over the ring shells in my pocket, and decided that, back in the motorhome, I'd string them on a long length of what I had to hand there, which was fishing line.

For maximum beachcombing cred, you could use some discarded fishing line you find. It's dangerous for wildlife, as it's practically invisible, so removing it from the natural environment is nothing but beneficial. And untangling the knots would probably be a great mindfulness exercise. However, I didn't see any discarded line...

Back in the motorhome, I cut a length of line, and tied on my first shell: bigger than the rest, to give the finished piece some weight and encourage it to hang straight. I just tied two granny knots with the end of the line, then carried on with the rest of the shells, tying reach on with two granny knots and roughly equal intervals along the line. At the top I tied a hanging loop, and there it is: a string of ring shells. I think it's offset well by the faux wood of the motorhome wardrobe door.

This project was great for a small space like the motorhome (no need for a pure white, perfectly tidy dedicated craft room, as seen on some Instagram accounts), and it was so satisfying to make the seashell wall hanging not far from where I'd found the materials.

This may be the last motorhome trip of the season, and I'll probably take the string of ring shells home with me, as a memento of the last days of summer.

Making damson jam: 'jamson'

Under the heading of preserves, I've made pickled veg, chutney and clementine curd, but never jam.

On a walk a couple of days ago, while out walking with a friend, I spotted an amazing array of plum (or maybe damson) trees bordering the footpath. We'd already enjoyed apples and blackberries along the way. 'I'm coming back with a bowl,' I said. And I did. 

I was thinking of making damson gin (I like to make drinks from foraged finds) but my partner surprised me by suggesting jam, adding that he'd made it before. He couldn't remember when, or what type, but he'd definitely done it.

So I dug out my ancient Delia Smith Complete Cookery Course and found a recipe, conveniently for around the weight of damsons we had, about 2kg.

We heated the sugar in the oven, as directed, then into the pan (not a special preserving pan, just a big saucepan) with the sugar and fruit and it was soon boiling away.

The bit I was waiting for was the wrinkle test, when you drop a blob of your soon-to-be-jam on a cold plate and push it with your finger to see if it wrinkles. We did this about five times – 'another five minutes' – before it was set.

What went wrong
I forgot to remove the stones, so need to put warning labels on some of the jars. Before I filled the biggest jar, I put the remaining jam through a sieve, picked out the stones, then scraped the mush into the jar.

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Make your own pubic hair conditioning beauty oil

In recent times vaginal treatments and accessories have been in the news: from vajazzles to steaming (thanks, Gwyneth Paltrow), vaginal detox pellets (bad idea), pubic hair dye and vajacials. None of these are necessary – and I can't pretend that pubic hair oil, which I'm writing about here, is necessary either – but if you're in the market for it, I'll save you some money! (Practically the only thing that your vagina might need is lubrication, which I've written a feature on for Netdoctor.)


So, latest in the line of vaginal products is pubic hair oil. Apparently, Emma Watson is a fan of Fur Oil, an American brand. Tellingly, she told Into the Gloss: 'I’ll use that anywhere from the ends of my hair to my eyebrows to my pubic hair. It’s an amazing all-purpose product,' which implies that – despite the (great) name – it's a multipurpose product. And Fur Oil's website also says: 'Also great for legs, underarms, chest, beard, and anywhere hair meets skin.'


That got me thinking, and having posted how-to's on beard oil (and other essential-oil-containing items like luxurious body scrub), I thought I'd prepare my own version, coming in at considerably less than Fur Oil's $44 for 75ml. 

Helpfully, the site also gives key ingredients: 

'Grape seed and jojoba oils
: dry-touch oils with vitamins A and E to soften and condition pubic hair.
Tea tree oil
: Antimicrobial to help clear pores and minimize ingrowns
Clary sage seed oil
: Healing properties to soothe and reduce inflammation for healthier skin over time'

My blend contains, in a sweet almond oil base, a few drops of argan oil, for its hair nourishing properties, plus two drops of tea tree oil and two drops of clary sage oil. I added a drop or two of lemon essential oil, to layer with the summery citrus fragrance I'm currently wearing, but the aroma, or its absence, is down to you.

To use, sprinkle a few drops on to your fingertips, then rub onto your pubes and along the bikini line. Avoid contact with the labia, and wash your hands after applying; no one wants essential oil in the eye!

As well as pubic hair, this Hair/Bare Care Oil, which I've decided to call it, as it works whether you have a full bush or a Brazilian, is also great as a beard oil (which initially suggested the name 'pant beard oil') and also as a shaving oil. If you've never used shaving oil on your legs or wherever, I'd recommend it. It gives a smooth glide to the razor, and leaves your legs moisturised.


While I'm here, I'd like to mention my homemade 'tit oil', a less-than-charming name for a super-soothing product. If you have premenstrual sore breasts, mix a few drops of geranium oil in a carrier oil, and apply. I made ti for myself initially, and it's since had a glowing review from a similarly afflicted friend. Smells good, and eases that ready-to-explode feeling!