Janie Crow - August Newsletter

August Newsletter

We have added something new to this month's newsletter in the form of a quick introduction video that I filmed at the studio this morning. It is so much easier to get information across in a video rather than a newsletter and I do love a good chat, so I thought I would do a quick film for you today. You can find the video on my Youtube channel here or by clicking on the image below.
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If you like to idea of the video, or if you think it is a bit naff, do let me know so that I can gauge whether or not to keep doing them. We are planning a Q&A style video for the end of the month, so you can find more information about that in this film too.

When Gemma, Sarah and I sat down to discuss a theme for this months' newsletter we decided that we wanted to reflect on the events of the last few months and focus on how people have continued to enjoy their craft projects whilst isolated at home. We wanted to focus on the positive aspects that many of you have told us you have taken away from this experience. We know that there have been many negatives and some awful stories over the last few months and we are not looking to ignore these, but we felt the need to look at some of the really inspiring stories of friendship and support, of families coming together and of people going out of their way to help others.

Gemma has contributed a piece about an organisation dear to her heart as well as a really scrummy sounding recipe, which I have featured lower down this email and Sarah has donated a piece about her recent experiments with Indigo dying, something that she and her lovely husband Paul have been having a go at recently.

I had a message from my friend Jan the other night asking if I had been reading the comments within the Fruit Garden CAL Facebook group. To my shame I had to fess up to Jan the fact that I tend not to belong to groups, even those dedicated to my designs, so I had not been in and taken a look around any of the groups.

The reason I don't belong to a lot of the groups is partly because of time restrictions. I am a recovering social media addict and find the temptation to scroll and scroll and scroll really strong! I can loose hours being taken down a route I had not anticipated when I first went on line to look up just one thing! I tend to refer to this as being led away by squirrels and even have Post It note on the wall above my PC warning me of the perils of 'squirrelling'!

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It isn't to say that I am not appreciative of all the chat that goes on in these groups in regards to my work. I love the fact that so many people have taken the time to write their stories of the CAL journey and if you have a bit of spare time, perhaps you would like to pop over to FB and read a few for yourself. You can find some great posts on my Facebook Page here, or take a look at the official Stylecraft CAL group here.

When thinking about what my contribution to this month's newsletter should be I started to think about how fitting it was that a crochet along project inspired by May Morris, and in turn her father William, really was at this time of lockdown. William founded the Arts and Crafts movement primarily as a reaction against the mass produced items that flooded the market at as result of the Industrial Revolution. William's idea was that there should be more of an emphasis on hand made unique items and that the worth of craftspeople should be more revered.

Whilst I love the ethos of many of William's ideas, I do think they were often grounded within the constraints of a class system where the rich could afford the hand made and therefore high price tags and the poor had no choice but to opt for the mass produced. I think the same can be said for modern day in some respects, but thankfully we can now source quality yarns at reasonable prices and can hopefully all choose projects that suit our pockets and our ethics.
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'Nothing should be made by man's labour which is not worth making, or which must be made by labour degrading to the makers.'  
- Wiliam Morris -
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How fitting it is that the Fruit Garden CAL took place over the last few months, when there were so many parables to the Arts and Crafts Movements and our current lives, with so many of us looking forward with a slightly different view point to the one we had a little as 4 months ago!

hope you are in a position to sit down for 5 minutes to catch up with us this month and as, always if you want to get in touch, please hit reply and let us know what is on your mind.

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Community Learning Partnership
​A crafting community looking after each other during lockdown - Gemma Biggs

I learnt to crochet a few years ago at an evening class run by a small charity called Community Learning Partnership, based in South Oxhey (near Watford). Headed up by the exuberant director Eliz Borg, who has a close relationship with all things yarny, CLP specializes in community learning. They run arts & crafts courses for adults including knitting, crochet, Scandi embroidery, beginners sewing and dressmaking as well as family art sessions where children and their families spend quality time together having fun and being creative.  
 

​When lockdown began back in March I had been working for CLP as a teaching assistant on an advanced crochet course. We had completed 8 weeks of a 10 week course and it was a real shame that things came to such an abrupt close when it became frighteningly clear that COVID-19 was about to have a huge impact on the everyday life of the country. I was also enrolled on a Social Media for Business Course with CLP at the time. 
 
From their own homes, Eliz and her team immediately set to work together on a plan of action to ensure that the courses in progress could be completed in one form or another and that they could continue to support their learners throughout this challenging time. For many learners CLP becomes a second family and long after courses are complete, they continue to attend informal sessions at St Martins, the church where the charity is based, chatting and laughing with friends they have made, over a coffee (and cake of course), while they crochet, knit or sew.
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After discussions with their funders, including HAFLS (The Hertfordshire Adult and Family Learning Service), CLP were able to ensure that courses in progress could be completed by moving to an online format. I am sure by now many of us have experienced the joys of Zoom and other such video meeting platforms, so as you can imagine, it was not all plain sailing! One particular Friday morning, when attending my Social Media course, it seemed like by the time all the technical issues had been resolved and all the attendees appeared to be in the right place, it was almost time to finish! For many learners it was difficult to juggle having children at home with keeping up on their learning and hanging on in there until the end of the course. For older learners encouragement was needed to give them the confidence to move online. 
 
Pre lockdown, CLP ran a Tuesday morning session called Coffee and Crafts at St Martins and this was an important get together for many people. It was a chance to relax with friends and have an hour or two of ‘me’ time to spend crocheting or knitting. It was also a chance to purchase yarn at the small but wonderfully well stocked shop in the Heavenly Arts & Crafts Café, run by CLP at St Martins. Eliz managed to secure funding from HAFLS to run a series of crochet workshops on Zoom on Tuesday mornings, which meant that there was still that chance to get together, albeit in a new virtual form. The workshops were designed to expand learning and covered different patterns and stitches and included bunting, face scrubbies, and filet crochet to name but a few. You can see some of the lovely achievements in the photos below. They are a clever bunch, the Heavenly Hookers!
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Once these workshops came to an end the community were about to support CLP by purchasing yarn packs for a Crochetalong project, which they continue to get together on a Tuesday morning via Zoom to support each other with. There are many new courses due to start in September; all will be run online but that has not put people off booking on, with one course receiving double the number of anticipated participants during the first couple of days. 
 
One of my abiding memories of lockdown will be attending a couple of virtual sewing café sessions hosted by Laura Martin, one of the team at CLP. Let’s just say very little sewing was done in most cases but just having the opportunity to see the faces of our friends, checking in on each other’s wellbeing, kept us all going when we were all facing our own personal challenges at home.  
 
Yes, the warm, close knit community that is the CLP family have been looking after each other well this year.  Of course, we are all desperate for the time when we can get together in person again, after all no video meeting can compare to a warm hug, homemade cake, laughter and the joy of comparing projects, oohing and aahing over beautiful things made by our very own hands. When that time does come it will mean so much more to all of us than we ever knew it could. 
 
You can find CLP Arts & Craft courses on Facebook here
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The Wonder of Blue
Sarah Hazell

I am sure that I am not the only person for whom it has taken a lockdown to galvanise themselves into making or doing something that for one reason or another has kept getting put off!

A couple of years ago, my husband Paul and I were on holiday in the south west of England and whilst there we came across a book in a garden centre café. The book was called Indigo by Kerstin Neumuller and Douglas Luhanko and it was so lovely to look at that by the time lunch was over we were planning how we would have a go at some indigo dyeing ourselves. Needless to say, we returned from our holiday, ordered and read the book, bought some indigo dye and a few of the other bits needed and then promptly did nothing about it!

(By the way, if you are in that area, Potager Garden Centre near Falmouth is well worth a visit!)
 
However, along came Covid 19. Extra time at home and lots of good weather meant that we had the time and space to experiment. Dyeing with indigo involves a lot of preparation, so we bought a little kit to get us started. The patterns that we associate with indigo dyed textiles mainly involve using resist-dyeing techniques.

Paul really liked the look of 'Itajame' and I wanted to explore some simple Shibori ideas. The Itajame technique involves folding pieces of fabric and pressing them between two shapes. You will see in the photos below how Paul used clamps to secure his shapes. I used stitches to make patterns and shapes. It is incredible how a few running stitches pulled up tightly can produce such a wealth of patterns. 

Here are a few photo highlights from our day!
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Selection of hand stitched fabrics, linen and pure wool yarns and vintage textiles.

The dye looks green - it is the process of oxidisation that turns it blue!
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​Before - One of Paul’s Itajame pieces straight out of the dye bath.

After - The same piece rinsed in cold water.
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Here I am snipping out my running stitches before the cold rinse.
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Now what are they up to?
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​The fruits of our labours drying in the sun after a hot wash and absolutely no residue in the washing machine – phew!
We plan to make a few things with our fabrics and so I hope to pop back in a few weeks with a little update for you all! Take care! Sarah x
 

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City & Guilds Machine Embroidery
Chris Bourne
 

In response to your suggestion that I might like to send you something about our City & Guilds Machine Embroidery class and our online exhibition I have written a little about our group and achievements during such difficult times. I think it highlights how supportive crafters/artists can be to each other during challenging times. My fellow students and tutor are happy for me to send this to you and are looking forward to getting a mention in your newsletter if you feel that can be done....
Personally it was very important for me to complete the course and to feel that I had achieved something during these challenging times, but I really don't think I could have done it without the support of my fellow students and our tutor who I think went "above and beyond” in what was a new experience for all of us. Having more time did not necessarily mean that it was easier, I think many people seem to have experienced periods where their "get up and go" has gone. Alongside the course I have pretty well managed to keep up to date with the CAL and am now on the final border, it's beautiful and I’m looking forward to seeing my own finished blanket. I have a pack for the other (first) colourway but plan to keep that as an autumn/winter project, if I can resist the 3rd option in the meantime.
9th August, 2020
I thought that you might like to hear about us and maybe include us in your newsletter to show what we have achieved during the Covid 19 pandemic - I would venture to say that the friendship and support has been as important (maybe moreso) as completing the course. 
Ros Grey & I (Chris Bourne) are two members of the Official Stylecraft Yarns CAL group who are currently participating in your wonderful May Morris inspired “Fruit Garden” CAL. 
We are also two of six students who have just completed the City & Guilds Machine Embroidery Level 2 course at Malvern College of Art, not an easy feat during lockdown but achieved thanks to great support from each other and our tutor, Caroline Park. 
“Lockdown” came during the spring term, the College closed down and we were unsure if the course could continue. Thankfully we were able to continue with a weekly online class through Google Classroom and this, together with our Whats App group helped and encouraged us to carry on. Whilst it was no substitute for being in class together, whenever anybody had a problem or query a post on Whats App would bring a speedy response, with answers to questions, constructive criticism, encouragement and offers of practical help which was invaluable at a time when many of us were isolating and unable to access materials.  
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                                                                   Chris's Mary Quant Inspired Piece

We finished the course at the beginning of July and had a “socially distanced” meeting to hand in our work for assessment, this was the first time that we had met since before lockdown and the first time we seen each others work (other than online), so it was quite an experience.   
In “normal” times the College holds an end of year exhibition, as this was not an option this year we looked into our options and the result was this online exhibition, which features each of our final assignments - you will see that Ros has created a piece inspired by May Morris. 
You will see that we have put a considerable amount of thought and effort lot into our work and we hope that you and readers of your newsletter will enjoy our online exhibition that can be found by following this link.  

Sadly a few of our fellow students were unable to continue with the course but remained active members of the Whats App group and hope to continue with the course in the future. 
As we try to regain some sense of normality in our lives we are now looking forward to being part of a new and exciting group which will be starting in September and led by our tutor. So look out for the “Elmslie Embroidery Group”.

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Be Fabulous!

Andy came across 'The Fabulous' a few weeks ago after a recommendation by a friend and I have to say it has been a total game changer for me. Before I tell you too more about it, here are the 3 main bullet points from The Fabulous website:

Reset Your Habits
Increase your energy levels, enjoy vibrant health, lose weight and sleep better by installing healthy habits and routines into your life.

Transform Your Life
Use Behavioural Economics to identify where you're stuck and follow a step-by-step programme to unlock your full potential.

Rewire Your Brain
Re-programme your brain and automate the important rituals in your life so you have more time for what really matters.

Sounds good doesn't it? Well actually, I thought it all sounded a lot like all the other 'be good to yourself' style mantras that lots of other sites churn out! How many times have I read articles about the importance of meditation, the health benefits of drinking gallons of water and getting more sleep? These messages are around us all the time. We take some of them on board and others we ignore - well, at least I do!

I try to eat well. I go to the gym. I walk quite a lot and I thought I made time for myself to relax, but the brilliance of using The Fabulous app for the last couple of weeks is that it has encouraged me to take a really good look at what I do and where I could do with 'cleaning up my act' (think squirrels and social media!) and by taking small baby steps, a few at a time, it has helped me to create some really great routines, which in turn really have made a difference to my life.
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The Fabulous is basically an app for your phone, that will send you push notifications to remind you to keep up healthy habits, like taking time to sit and read, or simply to drink more water!

You can download the app for free, but if you want to upgrade to add in more features you can pay a yearly subscription of around £30. Why not take a look? You could download the app and build some new routines into the weekend ahead, just don't be disheartened if it starts slow - I was a bit disappointed with it at first as I thought it wasn't giving me enough actions, but stick with it and you might find it as helpful as I have and the first week is free! ​

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Gemma's Blackberry Vinegar

​It is 'blackberrying' time in our house, and we have had a bumper crop in the garden this year.  Not content with the bounty from our own little patch, my husband often arrives on the doorstep after his daily walk, knocking with his elbow to be let in as his hands are full of berries and so he can’t get his key out of his pocket! He remembers visiting his Grandma in Yorkshire and feasting on Yorkshire puddings drizzled with blackberry vinegar, a tradition we now carry on in our house. A little bit of the pudding gets saved for dessert, when it soaks up this deep red rich taste of summer and is as satisfying as the sweetest cake or pud. It also tastes fabulous drizzled on a leafy salad, for the more health conscious among us!
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Blackberry vinegar is not difficult to make and only needs three ingredients: 

Blackberries
Vinegar
Sugar

I like to use a raw organic cider vinegar (such as that produced by Aspalls) but any cider vinegar or wine vinegar will do just as well.  
 
Quantities are not an exact science here but as a rough guide for a pound (453g) of blackberries will need about a pint (568ml) of vinegar. 

The first step in the process is to put your blackberries in a dish or bowl. I use a pyrex bowl as it won’t be affected by the acidity of the vinegar. Pour on the vinegar to cover the blackberries, cover the bowl and then leave them to rest for 7 to 10 days, stirring occasionally. The longer you leave the berries to steep in the vinegar the stronger the final flavour will be.   
 
After the steeping time is up, strain the mixture through a sieve into a jug or bowl so that you end up with just the liquid. Press the berries on the sieve as you strain them so that every last drop of juice and flavour is squeezed out. 

Measure the liquid you end up with before pouring it into a saucepan and add a pound (453g) of sugar for every pint (568ml) of liquid you have. I prefer to use unrefined sugar, simply because it less processed.  

Bring the liquid and sugar to the boil, stirring until the sugar has dissolved and simmer for around 15 minutes. If you get a scum forming on the top just skim it off using a metal spoon. Once simmered, pour the liquid into sterilized bottles. I use the bottles from the vinegar used in the recipe. You just need to remove the little plastic insert in the neck in order to fill them, before popping it back in and putting the lid on.  
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​Allow to mature for a few months before starting to enjoy your blackberry vinegar. Believe me, it makes all those scratches on your hands from picking the berries worth every ouch! Yum!

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Knitting & Crochet Awards
 

There is still time to vote for your favourite designers, yarn stores and publications nominated within this year's British Knitting & Crochet awards. You can vote any time between now and the 26th August and the winners will be revealed in the November 2020 issue of Let's Knit magazine.
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There are 22 categories in total ranging from Star Baby Yarn Brand and Best Sock Yarn Brand to Most Loved Knitting Designer and Social Media Star. Every voter will be in with a chance of winning a terrific bundle featuring 1800g of yarn, subscriptions to top titles My Weekly and People’s Friend Magazines and knitting and crochet books - a total prize value of over £200!

For more information and to place your votes please follow this link.
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It's nearly the Weekend!

​So here we are with the weekend only a matter of hours away and I have to say that I am on a bit of a high as we head into Friday evening. There are 2 main reasons for this, the first is that I have spent this morning sorting out the reveal video for the new colour way of the Fruit Garden CAL, which will launch again in the Autumn. My video shows the 3rd version of the blanket, plus the 2 cushions I have designed to accompany the original versions. These are all brand new and have not been seen outside the walls of Janie Crow and Stylecraft yet, so I am beyond excited about you seeing them next week! The video will be loaded onto my Youtube channel on Tuesday 18th August, so do look out for it.

The other reason I am excited is because we are celebrating the fact that my lovely Charlie boy got a call from Pret this week asking if he would like to go back to his job! How flipping amazing is that! He starts on the 24th and we are beyond happy, especially as our gorgeous daughter Summer, also started a new job a few weeks ago. I am a proud Mumma! 

We do not have big plans for the weekend, perhaps we will have a take away tonight (we all seem to have a craving for delicious Thai food) and I might finally manage to make some headway with the redecoration of the kitchen, which has been poorly neglected while it has been so hot.

If you have a few minutes you might like to head over to the Scheepjes Instagram feed to check out the live video they recorded of myself and Audrey chatting about the Royal Garden blanket last week.

That is it from me for today - I hope that wherever you are and whatever you have planned you have a great weekend and don't forget to send in any questions you may want to ask as part of my new monthly Q&A session, which I mention in the introduction video.

Stay safe and keep well...