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Wow, organisation! 😀
I’ve already looked it up as we hope to come. MH Travelodge is miles cheaper, though a bit further away, but it’s a very easy drive. Premier Inn is very close indeed but more expensive. There’s a lot of on street parking at MH that is free in the evenings and weekends and as we are normally out at around 9am it suits us well. There’s a Pay & Display car park round the corner as well if need be.
Poor little Benny! I hope you can cure his dropped foot with 50p – sounds like a bargain to me 😀
I hope we’ll see you again at the Big Textile Show, Agwen 😀
It looks really interesting Offcuts! I’m looking forward to seeing it sometime 😀
Hi Tintin, sorry you’ve been under the weather recently – I hope you’re on the up now!
I’m so glad you had a happy evening together making bags over the hardware shop – what a great venue! 😀
I tried to follow the link you posted but got rebuffed – the photo is private. You’ll need to tinker on flickr with the settings for the photos you want to show us. I find there’s the option to choose which setting you want (private/ friends/ public) when you’re uploading them, but I’m sure it can be changed afterwards too.
I think if you click on a photo you come to a screen with it on a black background. Scroll down a bit and look on the right. Click on “Additional Info (show more)” and scroll down a bit further and you’ll get to the “permissions” bit. All my photos are set to public as I only use it for morsbags, so I get “Anyone can see this photo (edit)”. If you click on the “edit” you’ll have the option to change who can see it. Choose “Anyone” then click on “save” and they should show up in your post – I hope…..
Hope this helps.
Bagging Boconnoc part 3
Well, who’d have thought it! Flying starts and fine weather on two days running!! The last people we spoke to on Saturday afternoon came back as soon as we opened up the “shop”, ready to sew themselves a bag each.
Julie (in the stripey top) organised the craft tent and invited us to take part. Thank you Julie, we had a great time! She came along on Sunday afternoon and made a bag very proficiently – but then, she told me she used to be a professional machinist, so as well as looking for the foot pedal when starting to sew, she also missed the “knee lift” that operates the presser foot on industrial sewing machines. 😀
Later that same day…… do you recognise them? I found this photo in someone else’s photostream when I searched for “Boconnoc” on flickr.com
Our son Richard came over for the day and had a good look around at all the exhibits and attractions.
Sunday proved to be the most popular day for families to visit. We had decided beforehand that NO under 12’s could sew, 12-16 with a responsible adult present, but a few children wound the handles for their mums, grannies, aunties.
Harry was helping to make a bag for his teacher, to be presented at the end of term next week.
He was very good at stopping instantly he was told to – well done, Harry! 😀
As you can see, it got pretty busy
The lady in the foreground had the stall back to back with ours. She and her husband each made a bag. We discovered that I am half an hour older than she is – how often does one’s date of birth come up in conversation? Not often, I find, now I’m an adult (allegedly). And to find a twin? Very rare…. 😀
Another steamy photo for you –
https://www.flickr.com/photos/28356801@N08/14516705749/
Flanaghan’s were the purveyors of every kind of burger from alpaca and alligator to zebra, via kudu and ostrich. There were dozens of unfamiliar animals to sink your teeth into, allegedly……….. 😕 Richard has asked me to tell you that he wanted one of the advertised llama burgers, but they’d run out (loped off?) so he had to settle for a horse burger. I had a venison burger from the wild food stall where I bought the nettle falafels on Friday.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/28356801@N08/14516688870/
We made 22 bags on Sunday, plus a half-made one by our last customer of the day. She was a young lady of 12 who sewed a lot at home, but went off to find Mum so she could sew with us on a hand-crank – a new experience, especially as the machine (85 years old and counting, been working for 3 solid days) had a hissy fit and went a bit cranky. We almost managed to finish the bag, but Mum had been watching how to do french seams and was confident that they’d be able to complete it at home, otherwise we could have put down 23 for Sunday.
Considering how full up the craft tent had been, we didn’t have too much trouble bringing the car over, loading up with Richard’s help, and getting back to the caravan.
Kettle on first, then I made dinner – our Sunday camping stand-by – corned beef hash. We ALWAYS used to have that on Sundays when camping or caravanning as you need a couple of potatoes and everything else is tinned, so safe to eat with no fridge. It took me right back to the days when we had a caravan full of kids – all sleeping in a row like little sardines. 😀
A safe, quick journey home rounded off another lovely morsbagging weekend 😀
Thank you, Ivybags! We had a sea of sunshiney yellow bags with blue flowers on – very appropriate for summer, and some of Masterclock’s “panda-pleasers” – the bamboo fabric went a long, long way, especially when enlarged to the standard morssize by some beige lining.
When we were tidying up on Sunday we found a couple of bags we’d forgotten about, pegged to the tentpole at the back of our stand as a display, but the others have all been rehomed.
I found another photo that belongs to Friday – this little chap waited very patiently on Dad’s lap while his Mum made them a bag.
Bagging Boconnoc, part 2
Saturday started in a couple of surprising ways. For one thing, the sun was almost shining when we woke up, not the heavy rain as forecast. The other thing was that we got off to a flying start, bagging-wise!
It usually takes at least an hour and a half for people to arrive, find us, have a look round at everything and decide to come back and take up our offer to make themselves a bag. So we have a quiet time to wind bobbins, overhaul temperamental elderly sewing machines, make a few bags ourselves, get another cup of coffee…. You get the picture.
So the second group of people strolling into the tent say “Yes please, we’ll have a go!” Golly!! I’ll stop winding then, while you pick kits. There were 5 people and we only had three machines, but two of the party were happy to watch or go and look at models in the next tent, so we settled down with a trio of bold needlewomen.
The friend standing and watching was wearing an interesting outfit – I wish I’d thought to take her photo. It featured lace trimmed knee breeches with fishnet stockings or tights and a fitted waistcoat and jacket. She showed me a photo of her latest creation – a floorlength frock with tiers of organza (or was it chiffon) in palest pink, shading to deep pink at floor level – amazing!! She described her next project – a fitted piratical coat with big, BIG cuffs and lapels and lace – WOW! No sewing lessons needed here 😀
This lady in the poppy dress came back early on Saturday morning to make a bag for her husband as he liked the bag she made for herself on Friday.
I was very pleased “himself” was helping the gentleman at the end of the table. He had a lot of technical questions, but luckily, he was asking the right person…. 😉
The sun came out and it got quite hot but there were extra flaps open in the tent’s side walls to get a breeze through. A fairground organ was playing just outside the tent (fortunately, at the other end of the tent or we’d have been hoarse by the end…)
I had a hot dog sold through a window of Boconnoc House (looked like a dining room) and a whipped ice cream from a van for lunch.
While M/C was away having a break I was approached by a man from the Geevor Tin Mine stall a few fields away. Would we be kind enough to look at the sewing machine they had just got out of his partner’s Granny’s loft? My engineer was not present, but I said we’d (HE’d 😉 ) take a look. He came back with the sewing machine lying comfortably on a plastic sledge – what a brainwave! M/C was still away, but I managed to get the box open and took a look.
A Frister and Rossmann looking all present and correct, but not threaded up correctly. I fixed that and had a go at sewing. Everything worked, but the two loops of thread missed each other. Fortunately, at that point, M/C came back and diagnosed “bent needle” syndrome.
A new needle was provided and Bob’s your uncle, as they say! 😀
The lady owner came back and had a quick tutorial on old sewing machines
and presented me with a gorgeous blue beaded butterfly she’d just made as a thank you. I came off well – M/C did the hard work and I got the present!! 😀
Here is our final customer of the day – a lady whose partner was whittling “gypsy flowers” in a gazebo opposite our craft tent. She’s wearing one of the flowers in her hair – nice, eh! She popped over to us as we were tidying up on Sunday and presented us with one too. 😀
Total bags made on Saturday = 25, thanks to our flying start.
We ended the day with a pleasant stroll round most of the rally area – we even got down to the lake where a large fire pump had been working earlier. It cost over £600 when new in 1891 or 1893, so a very expensive item, but quality counts, it had been in use supplying water even when the “Big House” where it was installed was taken over by the NHS, and worked up until the mid 1950’s.
BOCONNOC STEAM FAIR part 1
Here we are, home again after a weekend of morsbaggy happiness!! 😀
Were we lucky with the weather??
I should say so!! 😀We arrived early on Thursday afternoon and set up our stand in a lovely spacious marquee. We had a generous 10 foot frontage – which was about 6 feet deep too, but as it backed onto a stall selling craft supplies we couldn’t use all sides of the table. No worries, we had enough space to fit in three hand crank sewing machines and plenty of storage space for the reserve machines, kits for the other days and other necessities.
When we were set up and ready we retired to our caravan which was parked a couple of fields away – with the classic car owners this time – and fried sausages, to the accompaniment of rolling thunder. After a lot of rumbling the lightning and rain joined in and we had a classic, lengthy thunderstorm that went on for hours and hours and…. you get the picture. It was still going on and lighting up the caravan when we went to bed and I woke up a few times during the night hearing rain on the roof.
But, lucky us, the next morning dawned dry if not sunny, that was coming later. I donned my wellies for the “walk to work” and got ready for the first customers.
Here is Masterclock giving the first three sewing machines a once over.
It took quite a while til I could tempt anyone to sit down and sew a bag with us, but at last this lovely lady came and sewed. As we stitched, she told me that she was here on a coach trip and had spent the last four years in a Buddhist retreat. Guess what she did there? Made bags for the monks to take out with them – and also made pleated meditation cushions that sounded very complicated. So making a morsbag was a breeze!! 😀
We had a humourous misunderstanding. I thought the Buddhist retreat was in New York, but it turned out later that it was NEAR York! 😳 LOL !
This gorgeous lady had a stall opposite us, selling beautiful scarves and bags. We made her a bag out of one of the most popular fabrics this weekend. I’d cut up a HUGE king-size duvet cover a couple of days earlier and it made 18 and a half kits (the half was a small bag). Almost all of the 18 kits are already sewn up and in people’s hands and pockets. It’s a good job we had so many, or we just might have had punch-ups, or at least, disappointments. The ultra-popular fabric was a mid grey, with small pink and white sprigs of flowers and leaves. Perhaps it was a bit vintage-y. I don’t really get its appeal, but lots of others did – it just goes to show there’s a taker for every bag!!
I had nettle falafels for lunch from the wild food stall 😀
http://www.wildfoodkitchen.com/
(Went back for some to take home after we’d packed up but found that so had they…. 🙁 Oh well, another time…… )
I discussed how to make them and could probably give it a go now 😀We and our “customers” made a total of 22 bags on Friday – and the best part was the large number who said “I AM enjoying this!” 😀
Several stall holders and people exhibiting interesting vehicles
https://www.flickr.com/photos/28356801@N08/14516704389/
found us rather late in the day on Friday but came back on Saturday or Sunday and made bags later on, so that was nice!!
It’s now nearly midnight, so part 2 and part 3 will have to wait til tomorrow afternoon.
Adios for now, morsbaggers! 😀
That IS exciting Offcuts! 😀 Could you just confirm the date though? According to my diary, 25th August is Bank Holiday Monday this year…..
Your Royal bagging event could be either Saturday 23rd August or Monday 25th.I was looking to book soon, but just need to clear it with our daughter who’s getting married the next weekend. I don’t think she wants us to lend a hand with anything but it would be sensible to check……
I’ve had this problem in the past and found that doing the screw up nice and tight with the screwdriver, not just fingers, stopped it. You could try that first if you don’t have any PTFE tape lying around
Hmm, despite Glastonbury being over, it looks like Ivybags will be right! The weather forecast is promising heavy rain on Saturday and thunderstorms on Sunday. We may be grateful for M/C’s car’s four wheel drive to get the caravan out. We’ll be grateful if we don’t need tractor assistance. Wellies have been added to my packing list….
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This reply was modified 10 years, 4 months ago by
beattie.
That will be the end of an era! I’m very impressed that you have another suitable place to act as a “home depot” for morsbags “Team Leicestershire” and a liaison point for all the separate pods. I hope you’ll have plenty of storage space there too – that was what was so amazing at the Phoenix Resource Centre.
Best wishes to Roger – I hope he gets lots of “footfall” in the more central location, he’s doing a grand job! 😀
He’s sooo cute!! When does Lili become yours? Maybe you can pick her up and take her home when you collect Bo Jangles.
I can’t work out which is the second from the right in the new kitties photo – can’t tell kittens from Mum’s legs!! 😀 What colour are we looking for? Is she the tortoiseshell one, if there are 3 kittens between Mum’s front legs?
Did you find Mr Bo Jangles thriving when you visited Offcuts?
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This reply was modified 10 years, 4 months ago by