Shloer recently invited me to a crafter noon. The only problem being that I don’t craft. Worse, I don’t really see the point in crafting. Because basically I’m not very skilled with my hands and have very little patience for making mistakes. So nothing I make ever turns out the way I wanted it to. In an early venture into craft, as a teenager, I decided to make my Mum a wooden jewellery box in CDT (craft, design and technology) class. Unfortunately after a terms grafting, and masses of enthusiasm, it turned out that my measurements were a tad off. The box was absolutely massive and would have held a giants jewellery collection!

So it wasn’t the pull of an afternoon of crafting that saw me driving to a lovely little hotel in Cheltenham last week. I’ll be honest, I saw mention of afternoon tea, which means cake, and I’ll basically go anywhere for free cake. So I said yes.

Talitha and Wonder Girl posed without being asked the minute they saw a camera. Bloggers kids!

I was also fortunate enough to have the company of Adele (Circus Queen, go check out her wonderful blog) and her adorable little girl Talitha in the car and at the event. It was lovely to spend some time with Adele, and definitely warranted a celebratory drink. Fortunately, since Adele is pregnant and I can’t drink for health reasons, there was plenty of Shloer Celebration white bubbly and pink fizz to drink. Both were delicious and I will be buying some for Christmas day supping.

Once some Shloer was poured, and introductions made it was time for the part I was less keen on. The crafting. Luckily the fabulous ladies from The Makery in Bath were our craft experts for the afternoon. We were to make fabric heart decorations, and they had lots of lovely bits and bobs for us to use, ribbons, buttons, bells and delicious fabrics.

Wonder Girl and I chose the bits we fancied together.  I was tempted by some lovely little silver bells. When one of the ladies told me I could hand stitch them on I almost decided against them having only just enough sewing ability to sew swim badges on.

I cut out the heart, pinned it together inside out, then opted out and let my helper sew it together by machine. Then I cut out triangle shapes from the inside seam so the heart would have a nice curvy shape when I turned it inside out. Next was stuffing the heart, and I will admit by now I was enjoying myself, then I was told I could use ladder stitch to sew up the gap. Wary but unwilling to embarrass myself by saying no I watched, learned and then I sewed! Feeling like an Olympian I proudly held up my stitching for my teacher to see (proud face).

Next for those bells, and do you know what after a quick demo, and buoyed by my earlier success, I sewed five bells to the front of my heart. It was finished, and I felt very pleased with it, perhaps crafting could be fun, provided I have a team of experts on hand to hold my hand and do the hard bits!

Finally the cake. I was not disappointed. Scones, lemon tarts, chocolate eclairs, fruit loaf, it was a fabulous spread and I ate more cake than I possibly should have. Yum. I drove home happy, full and with a home made decoration that I could lay claim to (without mentioning the experts).