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What's Tammy the HH 'Twinfit' dress form doing in a hall full of lovely artwork then eh?
Keep scrolling down and all will be revealed...

I get a lot of comments about all the stuff that I manage to cram into my lovely little basket with the green and orange handle. But yesterday we were grateful for all the odd bit's and pieces that lurk amongst the crochet-covered fruit, mp3 player and pliers...
We were heading over to Burnham Overy Staithe where the Norfolk Arts Exhibition 2011 was being held.
Look at all the lovely bunting!

Helen Brown and Paddy Peters along with some other great artists organise this event every year and this year the committee invited Halfpenny Home to showcase A Green Guide to Country Crafts!
Helen and Paddy are great friends of both Jacqui and I and their 'Old Piggery Pottery' is one of our favourite places, Helen makes the fab mugs that we use at HH HQ! We are also allotment neighbours but I won't bore you with seed talk right now...

Another great friend of Halfpenny Home is Danielle Wade of Polly's Textiles and her 'Dutifully Purposeful' items are wonderful so it's no wonder that the committee had also invited her along too!
We sell Danielle's hand-dyed and screen printed fabric at HH HQ and so we decided to make the long journey up to North Norfolk together!

We had a lot of fun displaying the lovely items that Danielle makes from her fabrics...

The suitcase that is usually at the bottom of the stairs crammed full of beautiful cushions!

Country Crafts open on the page showing Samantha Hayes wearing a Polly's Textiles Apron!

One of the beanbags that Danielle has just to started to produce sits alongside a Roman Blind that I made for another exhibition, we had this on display in HH HQ for a while and everyone loved it, the pleats show off the print perfectly!

Let's hope the visitors to Burnham Overy Staithe Village Hall, North Norfolk PE31 8JD between today - Saturday 16th July and Sunday 21st August like our crafty wares...Nic x

We love glass at Halfpenny Home - anyone visiting us would notice that pretty swiftly!
Buttons, ribbons and yarns have all graced a cake stand at some time...
We have enjoyed playing with discarded and no longer useful glass with Anita, her workshops are great fun and everybody comes away with different things.

I was particularly pleased with this flower pendant which is currently gracing the chandelier in my kitchen and the square bowl with flashes of orange and blue which cradles pears on my old kitchen table.

Our love of glass and a text message from Lisa at the Museum of East Anglian Life inspired us to have a little bit of a Halfpenny Home competition!

We are amazingly proud of A Green Guide to Country Crafts published by CICO books Ltd. recently and Lisa had sent us a picture of a copy on sale in a branch of Waterstones located in Leamington Spa.
When you are next browsing through the craft section of your local bookshop and happen to come across a copy of CC then please snap it, send it to us and we'll enter you into a draw!

The prize is a real life Halfpenny...

set in glass at Anita's workshop and totally unique in every way!
You can enter more than once (but they must be different shops!) and the deadline is the end of April 2011 send them to halfpennyhome@googlemail.com

And finally (and just because I wanted to post one..) a photo of Rory from last week - getting bigger! Meetings at Jacqui's take longer but are a lot of fun with a puppy to play with...!

Get snapping and good luck, Nic x

It's arrived! The day we've been waiting for!

When we finally got to see the final result - it's a proper real life book! More importantly, our book!

We knew it was on it's way - and Nic arrived extra early almost lynching the postman when he turned the corner towards Halfpenny Home HQ! But what a scary moment too!

As only a handful of copies are available at the moment we've only been allowed one copy to share between us - and so far we've managed not to fall out! Nic even slept with it by her side on that first night!!!

Inspired by Jacqui's cowl knitted up in the wonderful Knit Collage I've knitted my neice a hat in the colourway Raspberry Sunset - I love this one as it has bright lime green flowers as well as red sequins all through it. I very loosely followed the pattern for a hat on Purlbee but after casting off had a little of the yarn left over and not liking to waste any of this amazing yarn decided to keep on knitting and make a very pixie like knotted hat!

She loved it as much as I enjoyed knitting it and the knot bounces along with her - she really loves buttons so I had to add a few!

As you can see pink is her favourite colour so the hat suits her perfectly - she's ALMOST the perfect model you just have to be very quick with the camera!

We all need woolly hats and scarves with this chilly weather which gives me the perfect excuse to keep on knitting between opening Halfpenny HQ and making sure my chickens are all ok, here's a lovely picture of Button with Bing the cockeral and Zsa Zsa, she's settled in very well after a bumpy start which meant that she had to come to work with me for quite a while...

She's even been laying eggs, little ones! Here one is next to one of Betty's big brown ones!

I'm just finishing off my second pair of stirrup socks and then I'll summon up the courage to show them to everyone! Nic x

and yes, it really did hit the ceiling!

It may have been a rainy January day in Suffolk however, it's been a day of celebration at Halfpenny Home!

Today was the day when the first order from our website www.halfpennyhome.co.uk left Halfpenny Home! We recieved an order for some lovely handmade ceramic Injabulo heart buttons, a bit of a favourite of ours!

We've learnt such a lot in this last year, and we're still learning! It's no exaggeration to say that we've taken thousands of photos and met some very clever people who have been very patient with us! We are now proud to officially announce that our website is well and truly launched!

Sending our first order out today meant such a lot to us. Knowing that an enthusiastic crafter liked what we had to offer on our website made us very happy bunnies indeed!
Thank you everyone for your help and for being so patient with us, Nic and Jacqui x

This week we thought that we would try a something new and dye with brazilwood, we were not disappointed...you soak the brazil wood (tied up in a little stockinette bag) overnight in water and then simmer it for an hour.

When we added the mordanted items it went this berry red!

Lovely!

The colour result is affected by the acidity of the dyebath and to make it more purple than red we added some soda ash.

Gorgeous!

Look at this washing line of loveliness, all natural dyes!

Did a bit of dip - dyeing

And finally, you've all seen Barney, Jacqui's dog so here's my dog Bob - a miniature pinscher. He gets jealous when we have evening meetings and once ate the ends of all my knitting needles, I still love him though!

Have a good weekend, Nic x