Life, the universe, everything - but mostly crafty stuff!

 Researching about different codes has been a bit of a refresher course for me. I love puzzles and working things out, and I really enjoy working out puzzles for mystery / unknown geocaches - some of the puzzles are ingenious, but quite often you have to be on the same wavelength as the puzzle setter. I remember watching a little snippet of Only Connect  about 10 years ago and wondering what it was all about, as I really couldn’t work out what was going on. However, over time, we started watching it, and learnt about the way the game was played and we made the connections that enabled us to solved the puzzles. Admittedly, some of the connections are tenuous at times - and I wonder how on Earth anyone can see the connection in just one or two guesses. Working things out and using logic to do so is a skill - it is something that can be learned. I was - and still am - in awe of people doing cryptic crosswords; my grandad used to do them, but I could never work them out. A teacher...

 I have done a little needle-felting previously. My first experience was at a Craft4Crafters show at Shepton Mallet - in October 2018. I was lucky enough to win a ticket for the show (if you don’t enter competitions you won’t win, and the competitions on Facebook are often genuine), and it included a free workshop session with Furzie. About 6 weeks ago I did a 3 hour workshop for a needle-felted postcard, so before the project I chose for the badge I had done maybe 4 hours of needle-felting in total - so a novice in my eyes. The item I made with Furzie was a cat head. I have attended the Craft4Crafter shows on several occasions, and love the colours of the wool batts and roving that I have seen - and ended up buying quite a few materials with the idea of incorporating them into my patchwork and quilting somehow. Time moves on, the years go by, and I haven’t done it yet…I still have a kit for making poppies. I received a Rustic Robin needle-felting kit from my sister for Christmas i...

 I’ve been crafting for about 40 years - I enjoyed the craft sessions I did in primary school - like the glove puppet (that I still have), the weaving, the towelling beach bag (which I also still have). I started doing some patchwork at around the same time, with hexagons my mum had cut out. I didn’t know any different when I started, so I just started sewing them together in any old way - I didn’t know about putting papers behind them and tacking them…that came a little while later. Anyway - when I saw the requirements for the Craft badge, I knew I wanted to do it, and would be able to do it fairly easily, especially as at some point I have tried at least 14 out of the 20 crafts listed. I really don’t think I need any more crafting supplies, so my idea is to pick some items from the list, and challenge myself with them. This means that I will be doing some crafts that I already do, but creating a new piece for the badge, or challenging myself to do an aspect of it that I find diff...

 For some years I have been interested in codes and coding, ciphers - in fact the world of spies fascinates me. I love James Bond movies, and books by John le Carré, - one of my favourite books by him is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy . Over 20 years ago I joined a book club or two - the first was TSP - The Softback Preview, and the other was QPD - Quality Paperbacks Direct. With the first one I bought a book which I have read several times - and which I have recommended to quite a few people: Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks. I got Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy from the second book club. This love of all things codes and ciphers has helped me with another hobby - geocaching: some of the geocaches require you to work out a puzzle first, and quite a few of these puzzles have used codes or ciphers of one sort or another. Luckily there are some useful websites to help out with this (and an app or two) - one which is very useful is geocaching toolbox . How far does my obsession with t...

 How am I organising myself for the badges? At this moment in time I wonder if I’m procrastinating by writing this blogs although I know that spending time on this blog is actually fulfilling the criteria for a badge. The Rebel Badge Book has some spaces in it to help with planning and organising, but each person likes to do things in a slightly different way, and so I’m sharing my way right here. I like to plan things out - having a plan means that I can have a list of things which I can tick off - I like the sense of achievement when I’ve ticked off items on my ‘To Do’ list. There is that great saying that is many Ps - PPPPPP - Perfect Planning Prevents P*** Poor Performance, and I’m sure I’ve seen some with even more Ps! Having a plan is a good idea as it is easy to get carried away with ides of what you want to do and what you want to achieve, and then feel overwhelmed at the enormity of it all. Creating a plan means you can focus your energy and efforts in the most appropriate...

This is a bit good, isn’t it?! Another blog post so very soon. I am keen to get working on the different badges in the book, and I’m thinking that I will need to do a bit more planning for the Writer badge; I can have loads of good ideas for blog posts, but if I don’t write them down, I don’t remember them. This is the case for other blogs I contribute to as well. Oh yes, I write other blogs - I blog for the UKQU website  - you do have to register, but there is a wealth of information on the website - it is by quilters for quilters. And there is an idea for a future blog post…hold on, I’m going to make a note of that idea… I’ve now made a note or two about blog posts - how to organise them, and future topics. There was a post in the Facebook group yesterday about how many badges people are claiming retrospectively; in the Badge book section ‘How to use this book’ the author states: “If you’ve completed an entire badge prior to getting this book - for example the Community Service o...

It has been quite a while since I wrote anything for this blog. So long that the app I had used when I started it (blogo) no longer exists. I did have a look to see if I could find another app that would give me similar functionality - given that I’m using my iPad to do the writing, but the apps I saw either didn’t have very good reviews, didn’t look like they had been updated recently or…. And this is where things may get a bit controversial. It is March 16th 2022 - and the news and the media is full of the war in Ukraine, and which companies and brands have pulled out of Russia - and which countries have applied which sanctions. One app that I looked at simply said ‘Made in Russia’ - nothing  about the developer at all. I made a decision there and then - and so I’m now writing this blog using the website - so we’ll see how that goes. If I need / want to use an app to write it in the future, I’ll have a look for one at that time. Now for an introduction. My name is Christine, and ...