Fused Glass Overload!

One of my Mum's friends showed an interest in buying some of my fused glass for Christmas presents which means I had to finally get off my arse and do something about photographing some of my pieces. Having done that I thought I would share them with you here!



Fused glass is one of my favourite things to make. Its not a very practical hobby - you need a pretty big and expensive kiln for starters (I do a class) - but it is such a fun thing to do.


I have been doing a fused glass class for about a year and a half now and I love it. Playing around with light and colours is soooo much fun.


It does mean however that I now have loads of pieces of fused glass hanging around my (fairly small) flat!



This is only a very small proportion of what I have made!!


There are also lots of flat pieces which I made when I was starting out to practice. They are very pretty but not very useful so I'm not sure what to do with them!


One thing I have made quite a lot of is jewellery. Its really good for giving as presents and, luckily, it doesn't take up too much space!!

I started stockpiling fused glass pieces, in particular lots of jewellery, a while ago with the intention of opening a folksy shop. Now I'm not so sure - I already have a folksy shop selling some of my sewn pieces and I'm not sure its not more bother than its worth - any thoughts? I think I might write a separate post about this soon......!


I was thinking I might look into doing a craft fair instead........

At the moment it is just nice to have all these pretty, sparkly things around my house! Not to mention a necklace to go with every outfit!

Unfortunately I won't be doing the class again after Christmas - its an expensive class and I think I need some time off to get my inspiration back to make the most of the classes. Plus I need to find someway of getting rid of all the glass pieces I have already made!


On the off chance that anyone reading this is interested in buying any of these pieces (or even fancies doing a swap?) then please feel free to get in touch. But mainly I just hope you have enjoyed looking at some of these sparkly things I have hanging round my house!

Have a lovely week xxx

PS. Sorry for the sporadic posting recently - have been having a very busy time! But I have also been working on lots of presents and decorations for Christmas so should have lots of exciting things to share with you soon!

100 grannies!

HURRAH! 100 granny squares with all the ends sewn in. Now for the next challenge - making them into something resembling a blanket! I'm very excited :o)

Crochet Cowl Workshop

There's not been nearly enough time for crafting in the DottyHouse recently - I am taking a psychology course and my first essay is due on Thursday (eeek!) so a lot of my spare time has been concentrated on that. I love the course but I haven't written an essay for years so its taken me a while to get my head round the whole thing! However I did manage to fit in a bit of crochet on a Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks ago.

My local craft studio, the Create Place was running an afternoon course to learn how to make a crochet cowl so I thought I'd pop along. Lisa (our teacher), the other student and I had a lovely afternoon chatting away and learning how to make Lisa's crochet cowl design (hopefully coming to a bookshop near you fairly soon!). I'm not sure there's a better way to spend an afternoon! We were using chunky wool and so the design came together pretty fast - a few hours in the class and a couple more at home and I was left with this beast:

Its HUGE and really snuggly.I really like the way it can be worn in so many ways - long like a scarf, across the shoulders, one end tucked inside the other or doubled round to keep my neck super warm. I'm a bit disappointed it hasn't been cold enough to wear it since I finished making it!!

I really like working with the chunky yarn and larger hook size (it was a size 10). It meant that the cowl came together really fast so there was a real sense of achievement plus it didn't hurt my hand and turn it into a claw like some of the smaller hooks can do!

I'm not sure if you can see from the picture but the yarn is an interesting mix of colours - from a distance it looks grey but close up there are hints of pink, turquoise and green. You might be able to see it on this picture better even though its a little blurry:

I wasn't sure about the yarn to start with but it has really grown on me. It is Wendy Serenity Super Chunky which is 10% wool, 20% alpaca and 70% acrylic. I think the colour is called thistle. I've bought another ball to make the matching wrist warmers. Which I am looking forward to starting on as soon as I finish that bloomin' essay!!

Hope you have a lovely week xx