Projects
Felt Valentine Crafts
Felt does not fray, cuts cleanly and comes in every red there is. A dozen Valentine projects sorted by how long they actually take.
4 min read Beginner
Topic
Seasonal
Autumn, Halloween and the makes that belong to a particular time of year.
Projects
Felted Heart
The shape everyone gets slightly wrong. Three ways to make a heart in wool, and the one adjustment that stops it looking like a leaf.
4 min read Beginner
Recipes
Pumpkin Guts Recipe
The stringy handful you scoop out and bin is sweet, gelatinous and full of flavour. It makes a better stock than the flesh does — and the seeds in it only crisp properly if you boil them first.
4 min read
Recipes
Pumpkin Loaf Recipe
Fresh pumpkin puree holds far more water than tinned. Drain it, cut the liquid elsewhere in the recipe, and you get a loaf that is moist rather than wet in the middle.
3 min read
Recipes
Fresh Pumpkin Recipes
Fresh pumpkin is wetter and milder than the tinned kind, which changes every recipe it goes into. Roast it first, drain it properly, and the rest follows.
4 min read
Projects
How to Make Fake Cobwebs
Stretched wadding, hot glue strings, a spinning drill and a hairspray-and-cotton trick. Which one to use depends on whether the web needs to hang, stick or survive rain.
3 min read Beginner
Seasonal & Nature
Why Leaves Fall
A tree does not lose its leaves — it drops them, deliberately, by building a layer of cells that cuts each leaf off at the stem. Day length starts it, and weather decides how it looks.
4 min read
Projects
Needle Felted Easter Eggs
A wooden egg wrapped in wool takes ten minutes; a solid felted one takes forty. Both methods, plus the decoration that stops them looking like coloured lumps.
4 min read Beginner
Seasonal & Nature
Are Cobwebs Dangerous?
Spider silk is a protein, not a venom. What is in an old cobweb that can affect you is everything else it has caught — and for a small number of people, that matters.
3 min read
Seasonal & Nature
Cobwebs vs Spiderwebs
They come from the same animal. One is in use, the other has been abandoned and has collected dust. That is the whole distinction — plus one older meaning of the word almost nobody uses now.
4 min read
Knitting
Falling Leaves Knitting Pattern
Two complete patterns from one eleven-stitch leaf repeat — a straight scarf you can start tonight, and a top-down triangular shawl with a leaf border.
4 min read Intermediate
Knitting
Autumn Leaves Knitting Pattern
One eleven-stitch repeat, one right-side row to remember, and every wrong-side row purled. It makes columns of leaves — or, with four plain rows between, leaves scattered across the fabric.
4 min read Beginner