Marking, Mending and Making

 Niki and I went to Ikea the other night, and amongst other things we bought a wireless charger for our phones.  the way the system works meant we had to have new phone cases - and they only came in boring white, so I jazzed mine up a bit

It helped that Tesco was selling this fab pack of sharpies for just £7 - about 1/3 of the usual price!

I've had a few bits and pieces in the sewing room that have broken.  Husband has passed on some Sugru stuff (see here for other inspiration).  It's like BluTak, but sets into a permanent but rubbery shape, and is great for fixing or creating!

I fixed a broken embroidery hoop, and broken scissor grip, and I used some more to put ends onto my felting needles, and to make a chunky handle for a crochet hook!

 My Rainbow Hexie project has stalled a bit

But some of the hexies that hadn't made the cut were bugging me. They were in shades of turquoise and teal and looked lovely together, but didn't belong in the quilt.  At Ikea I picked up some hessian/jute/burlap fabric and added it to a band of hexies I had joined together.  I added a lining of  hessian but it wasn't very stable, so I added craft/pelmet vilene inside.  I then hand quilted it to stop the whole lot shifting around too much

I'm not quite sure what it will be used for - but it's pretty, and it used up unwanted fabric!

Double Ooops

After buying up loads in my local independent store, I popped into the chain store we have locally, the one that has things for Hobbies and for Craft.

I got some bits on sale, but the best bit was the entertainment.  The sales assistant cut me three lengths of Hungry Caterpillar fabric, and each time he picked up the scissors and put his thumb through the large handle section and his fingers through the small handle section, and each time he complained how bad the shop scissors were.  I was biting the insides of my cheeks to stop laughing, so I couldn't even speak to suggest holding the scissors the other way

Great entertainment, not so good staff craft skills or staff recommendation for their own products.  Good thing the prices and reductions were good!

Oooops!

I just popped along to the Bishops Centre while Niki was at work for 2 hours.  The Bishop Centre is a retail park with a number of outlet shops

I popped into Lands End, and got this scrummy HUGE canvas bag (saved £15) and a black warm coat (reduced from £99 to £20:50!!!), then next door to Josef Seibel shoe shop and I got some patchwork leather boots (saved £27:50), and next door again was Cargo where I got two fleece blankets (saved £2).

 Then at Creative World, three Inktense pencils jumped into the shopping basket, along with some felt, some alphabet stamps, some fabric pens, some silk flowers, some candle wicks and some fabric dye, and finally at the junk/antiques shop there was a lovely square glass vase/candle holder calling my name, and of course I could afford them out of all the money I had saved :-)