Interview with Heidi Chadwick

My third interview of the day was with the lovely Heidi Chadwick, who runs yoga and creativity workshops in Manchester and is also a fine artist. Heidi's art is truly magical, her paintings are bright and bold featuring a mix of vibrant colours. I would say that my favourite pieces of her work were the 'Dream Boxes', these could be described as beautiful little dioramas which I found to be truly inspiring.

Please visit Heidi's Etsy store if you would like to purchase any of her work or her visit her blog to find out more information about her yoga and creative workshops

Interview with Stitch Me Lane

Every single interviewee of the day was amazing and I know that I shouldn't pick favourites, but I really enjoyed meeting and chatting to Jen Gilmour, who runs Stitch Me Lane Fabrics and Accessories. Jen was such a friendly interviewee, she was very welcoming and has great taste, just look at all the amazing things she had for sale!

My only regret was not going back to her stall to buy some of the fabric that I wanted but I will be sure to visit her Folksy store.

In regards to her interview Jen had loads to tell me, not only about her business but the many other craft related projects she is involved in too. I'm actually hoping to talk to her again in future regarding some of these projects towards a paper I have in mind.

She was also kind enough to give me this handmade fabric fortune cookie, which was really sweet and I hope to get the opportunity to speak to her again soon. 

Interview with Crafty Karma

As I managed to get seven excellent interviews at the St. Andrews Court Craft Fair on Saturday, I thought that I would stagger the blog posts and write about each interviewee one day at a time and in order.

My first interviewee of the day was the lovely Cara Graham who runs Crafty Karma, I was attracted to the beautiful colours and kitsch jewellery that was display on Cara's table - particularly the Day of the Dead pieces, as it is a theme which is a real favourite of mine. Despite Cara being fairly young, she is very confident about her self and her work and her personality really shines through all of her pieces. She gave me a great interview and I was really pleased that I got the opportunity to speak to her as she gave me a great start to the day.

 If you like cute handmade accessories with a twist then be sure to visit her page on deviant art

St. Andrews Contemporary Craft Fair

Yesterday I had the best day of interviews ever, my friend Faye Scott Farrington is holding a craft fair in Bolton over the bank holiday weekend, she very kindly gave me permission to go round and speak to some stall holders for my interviews. I managed to get seven brilliant interviews! Every person I spoke to was amazing they managed to answer every single question with thought and depth, and every personality shined through, I'm still buzzing about it now. I'm going to blog about every single interviewee individually as they all deserve their own posts. Faye said she is going to do another fair at Christmas, which I'm sure will be even better! If you wanted more information about the St. Andrews Contemporary Craft Fair follow this link to their tumblr

A Glimpse of God

This video is so wonderful and inspiring that I just have to share it: 

Granny Square Cushion

I've been working on this cushion for ages and finally stitched all the squares together. I've been busy making other stuff too and will update this blog with some of my new makes over the next couple of days. I think that the stuff I make is very much part of my research as it allows me to relate to some of the people I'm studying, plus it helps me to relax after a tough day on the books. I'm still ploughing through my literature review at the moment, which is coming along nicely but I still have a lot of work ahead me. I'm also looking forward to some exciting interviews that I have coming up too. 

Knitted Kittens Craft Club

Once again Sophie has amazed me with her flyer design for Knitted Kittens this month, based on the awesome yarn bombed telephone booth in London. For more information about coming to our group please visit and add us on facebook:

We are hopefully meeting up sometime next week to discuss the potential launch of our website, more info coming shortly.

Knitted Biscuits

A few months ago I had food poisoning and announced through facebook that I was starting to feel better as I was craving biscuits, which prompted this photo to help my recovery from the very kind David Gauntlett. I remembered them this morning when looking through one of my favourite craft magazines Mollie Makes and thought this pic definitely needed to be shared. Unfortunately I'm not sure who to credit this to, so if you made these awesome biscuits and would like me to say where they are from then just drop me a message.

 

Knitted Kittens Craft Club

Had another Knitted Kittens group last night, forgot to put the flyer on here, it's a bit of a bonkers design this month but Sophie was trying out something different and it's good to mix things up. We had quite a few new members last night (which I was a little worried about as I want them to feel welcome) but they were all lovely and seemed to have a nice time, so I really hope they want to come back.

The new members said they found us through google, if you type in 'knitting group Manchester' we are listed second but it's just a random forum post I put up somewhere over a year back. This has inspired me to open a website for us so we can be found easily for new members, we have a facebook group but that's not always easily found, it might take a while to set up but I think it will be really beneficial to have a strong web presence, plus we can have a gallery for Sophie's artwork and photos from our events. Watch this space!

Interview with the Knitting Noras (Bolton)

Last Sunday I met up with the Knitting Noras, a knitting group based in Bolton to conduct an interview and participate within their group. This interview will contribute to the focus group element of my research and will hopefully be the first of many of this kind. The Knitting Noras are positively lovely, they were very welcoming and gave me lots of useful information for my research. Many of the members run their own blogs and use social networking sites such as Yahoo groups and Ravelry to share and talk about their work. The group has been running for about 10 years now and have accomplished so much during this time, including and most notably the naked knitting calender they produced for the charity Christies Hospital in memory of losing a member of the group to cancer. Below is a video of some of the members discussing and promoting the calendar on Channel M:

 

I had a lovely time but my only concern is because it was such a busy day in the coffee shop where they meet, I am worried that the interview did not pick up fully on my recording device, although if this is the case it does give me the opportunity to go back and interview the group again which is something that I would be more than happy to do.