Cute & Crazy handmade creatures
I’ve just finished my first little herd of newly designed wobbly legged Sock Giraffes. They’ll be coming with me to Loughborough Town Hall SOCK craft fair at the weekend and then I’ll make a few more for my OddSox shop. 
Work in progress, the fiddliest bit is stuffing those long thin legs…
Inspired by my lovely little Lomonosov Russian ceramic giraffe that used to belong to my Gran.
I’m looking forward to my first craft fair of 2013 next weekend. It’s being held at:
Free Entry & Free Parking * Refreshments for sale
Beautiful handmade crafts & produce
Craft activities, face painting & glitter tattoos for the Children!
Visit the organisers Facebook page to see lots of the goodies that will be on offer. It will be the ideal place to browse for last minute Mother’s Day gifts, shop for a few items to brighten up your Easter celebrations or just to get a treat for yourself. Oh and of course get a cuppa and a piece of cake 🙂
Here are a few of the things I’ll be bringing along to my OddSox stall… fabric brooches and baskets, sock monsters, monkeys and plenty more. Hope to see you there.
I keep meaning to write a little post about these brilliant drawings by my god-daughter, she did them a few months ago when she was 8. She’s definitely got a talent with paper and pencil. I thought they were just right to work up into sock versions. This one is Rocky the Dragon, I particularly like his eye detail and great big toothy grin…
and this one is a rather scary vampire monkey, complete with scars, wounds and squirting blood!
I really enjoyed making these from her drawings. I took a photo of each one alongside the drawing and put them into picture frames so she had Rocky the Sock Dragon and her brother had Vampire Sock Monkey for their 9th birthdays (a couple of days before Christmas).
I gave her a set of Sharpie pens and drawing pad for Xmas so I’m hoping I might get to see some new creature designs 🙂 Hint Hint!
THE VENUE – PARK HOUSE SCHOOL, ANDOVER ROAD, NEWBURY – SATURDAY 1ST DECEMBER – 10AM-4PM – FREE ENTRY
I’ve been making some festive HooterNinnies (similar to hedgehogs!) and robin decorations ready to come to my last fair of the pre-Christmas season next weekend along with a posse of cute and crazy sock creatures. It promises to be a fabulous affair. It’s not just a craft fair, there will be lots of other exciting events going on too. Here are a few things to look forward to…
Vintage traders will have selected clothing modelled by students in fashion shows throughout the day
Hair and Makeup by Beautycall – offering Vintage hair and make up: £15 for both or £10 each
The PHSA at the school will be providing drinks and delicious snacks throughout the day
Cake Competions
Beautiful handcrafted and unique gifts
…and lots more besides – all accompanied by festive music to set the scene
We’ll all look forward to seeing you there 🙂
This week I’m busily sewing up a box full of sock monsters and monkeys to replace the ones that were sold at last weekend’s craft fair. This little lot will be coming with me on Sunday 18th November to the next fair at St Bartholomew’s School, Newbury.
My OddSox stall will be placed next to award winning Mrs Chutney – I bought three pots of delicious items from her stall a couple of weeks ago and can thoroughly recommend her produce – top fave is the Chillililli – fresh, crunchy, fragrant and with a good spicy kick. And the best thing is, she has little taster bowls out so you can sample before buying!
I hope you can come along – we’ll look forward to seeing you 🙂 Here are the venue details…
I’ve finally started using some of the lovely Joel Dewberry fabric strips I bought a few months ago. I’m using the pink and green complementary pieces first to make some hanging heart decorations.
I’m filling them with polyester fibre filling to make them soft along with a couple of spoonfuls of apple spiced aroma beads to give them a lovely christmassy scent. It smells really lovely around my workspace!
This summer I bought an old Imperial typewriter from a car boot sale for £5. I’ve been using it to type ‘Spiced Apple’ onto pieces of calico to sew to the front of the hearts, just to make them a bit different – I quite like the effect. I’m hoping to have a selection available for my next craft fair this weekend at Thatcham Catholic Hall – better get my skates on 🙂
FALKLAND WI CRAFT FAIR
SATURDAY 27th OCTOBER – 10.30am – 2.30pm
At St Georges Hall, Andover Road, Wash Common, Newbury
Just a small reminder of a local Craft Fair this coming weekend – everyone welcome. I’ll be there with a selection of my creatures and homewares. I know a few of the other stall holders who will be there too, Natalie of NOfkants Curios, Jacqueline of J Austen Jewellery Design and Pauline of Snowfire & Ruby – we hope you can come along.
The Café will be serving homemade soup, cakes and refreshments
There will be lots of craft stalls offering Handmade
Jewellery ~ Woodcrafts ~ Bee Products ~ Preserves ~ Cute & Crazy Sock Creatures ~ Cards ~ Bags ~ decorative items for the home
Inspirational Gifts from the Old Chapel Textile Centre
And Lots More!
FREE ENTRY
We’ve started watching ‘The Walking Dead’ in Thesockgarden house and we’re completely hooked. It’s so tense-making and incredibly addictive. So addictive that Mr. Sock has been sketching zombies and I’ve made myself a sock zombie bunny…
I came up with a novel way of making rather revolting innards. I used pieces of sheer tights filled with stuffing and snippets of red thread with random sewing and thread binding to make them look like guts, popping eyes, brains… you get the idea!
guts and wounds!
is it dinner time yet?
GRRRR
I really enjoy making these kind of sock creatures – it’s a good opportunity to do messy sewing and cut holes on purpose! What kind of zombie should I try next – I quite fancy doing a crazed dog. Any other suggestions?
SLEEP WELL 🙂
This little monster is for my collection of misfits but if anyone wants something similar making do leave a comment here or nip over to my Folksy OddSox shop and send me an email.
I have quite a few craft fairs coming up over the next couple of months so I’ve been trying to get a few Christmas items made. I went to a Doughty fabric sale recently and bought some lovely cream coloured cotton with simple red Scandinavian style Xmas shapes and some pretty green flowery print cotton. I came home with a few other choices too – a very dangerous place to spend a fortune if fabric’s your thing!
I’d spotted some lovely hanging house decorations in one of my sewing books and fancied making up my own house pattern using the book method as a guide to putting them together. I used my newly purchased fabric plus a collection of other Christmas patterns from my stash. I’m quite pleased with them – just wish I had a lovely fireplace to hang a few from!
Pieces cut and being decorated with doors, windows, trees, buttons & …
Sparkly stuff!
All strung and sewn together ready for stuffing
All stuffed and closed ready for hanging
I’m hoping there might be the odd bright sky moment over the weekend so I can get some pics taken to put a few in my OddSox shop as well as my craft fairs.
Next task is to sew some orange felt carrot noses onto my latest batch of sock snowmen…
Have a good weekend all. 🙂
Today we nipped up to Donnington Castle on a search for berries. The sun came out for a bit but it was very windy, so we put wellies & coats on to protect from scratches and possible rain.
Almost immediately we found sloes
And there were plenty of brambles all over the place, although it looked like there might have been quite a few visitors before us. As is often the case with blackberries they don’t just grow in the hedgerow, they often abound around dilapidated buildings – we found quite a lot here…
Off home to give the sloes and blackberries a soaking in Miltons sterilising fluid – mixed with plenty of water of course. I only found out recently that it could be used to sterilise food and I’m glad we used it – there were some horribble wigglers that came out of the blackberries!
I spotted an article in the October Gardeners’ World mag for using any kind of berry, sloes, damsons etc with a spirit such as gin, vodka, tequila, brandy – and caster sugar. So that’s what we’ve done! One bottle of blackberry & sloe gin, one of blackberry & sloe vodka, then one each of blackberry gin & blackberry vodka. It looks such a pretty colour already…
For the first week you shake the bottles whenever you pass them, then put them in a dark place and shake them once a week for 3 months. I was a bit disappointed to find that you have to keep it for a year before drinking though… Until I re-read the instructions and realised that after the 3 month period you strain & decant and it’s ready. It keeps for up to a year!
So by my calculations we should have our lovely pink berry gin & vodka ready to drink on Christmas Day! We couldn’t have planned it better 🙂 Cheers
The sock garden 
I SAY, I SAY, I SAY