I think the most impressive of all the crafts I saw at the fair had to be this one. Paul Hornby delicately cuts away at old coins to create intricate jewellery. It was just fascinating to watch.

Another of my favourites was Martin Green and his Victorian circular knitting machine. With the twirl of a handle the machine quickly churned out meters of knitting. Its fascinating to see old machinery preserved and still in use today.

The guys from Stokes of England gave me an excellent demonstration of heating up iron and shaping it on the anvil.

I loved seeing the wood carvers with their chain saws carving away at big chunks of wood. It really is a great skill to be able to carve using a chain saw, you would think that you would struggle to get such precision.

As the host of christmas lunch this year for my family I have been trying to prepare as much as possible in advance.
Ive been making mince pies frozen uncooked ready for the day. Above is a pic of a few I baked off to taste test

I followed this recipe but added half an egg : http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2174/unbelievably-easy-mince-pies

Finally I am back to making fabric decorations, and here’s the final result.
Each shape was sewed inside out then turned out the right way and stuffed with toy stuffing. Buttons, bells and ribbon were used as finishing touches.

After creating bunting I got a little distracted by some pine cone decorations I had seen on etsy. I collected some pine cones and started to experiment with different ways of hanging them.

Above is what I came up with. I created these by drilling holes through the bottoms of 5 cones and joining them all together with garden twine. I then finished them off by adding ribbon for hanging.

After buying fabric the other week I have kind of gone christmas decoration crazy. This is the first of several christmas decoration posts, starting with this… my attempt at making bunting.

For each flag I cut out a diamond shape and folded it in half. Leaving a gap for the string I then stitched around the outside of each triangle with a zig zag stitch. Finally I sewed little bells to the bottom of each flag and threaded them on garden twine.

And this is the final result…

Distracted yet again from the fabric I bought in … I started to cut lots of different sized snowflakes out of paper. I then tied these altogether with white cotton and hung them in long chains vertically down my french doors. They look pretty cool.

Plain ice cakes delivered to me by my sister-in-law

Adding the flowers and ribbon

All boxed and ready to go

The big display