holiday in Wales

This is the lovely Caravan club site we stayed at in Wales

Betws-y-Coed is North Wales' most popular inland resort. It is where the River Conwy meets its three tributaries flowing from the west, the Llugwy, the Lledr and the Machno. Much of it was built in Victorian times and it is the principal village of the Snowdonia National-Park. Set in a beautiful valley in the Snowdonia Forest Park, it is ideal for outdoor activity holidays. Numerous Craft and outdoor activity shops are in the village with the popular Swallow Falls nearby.

It’s has a wonderful setting surrounded by dense woodland and magnificent mountains. The beauty of the area is enhanced by cascading waterfalls, hill-top lakes, river pools and ancient bridges.
The main street, Holyhead Road, has numerous inns and bed-and-breakfasts. Shops specialise in outdoor clothes.
Of exceptional interest are the many bridges in the area. Pont-y-Pair (the bridge of the cauldron), built in 1468, is buffeted by foaming water after heavy rain. A number of sign-posted walks in the surrounding countryside start near this bridge.

we visited Caernarfon. Caernarfon is possibly the most famous of Wales's castles. Its sheer scale and commanding presence easily set it apart from the rest.

Hugglets Teddies 2009

Two rainbow bears ready for Hugglets TEDDIES 2009 stand 141A

Lake Windermere

This was our 2009 holiday to the Lake District
Lake Windermere

Lake Windermere

Bowness on Windermere

The family came up for a visit on Wednesday, we visited the Betrix Potter museum.
They really enjoyed it.
We went to feed the swans

Lake Windermere

The Lake District

We spent a week in the Lake District in July.

We had mixed weather, with quite a lot of rain at night.

This is the Bridge house at Ambleside .

Rainbow Bear

The finished rainbow bear!

He is approximately 15" tall,

he has black glass eyes and needle felted dreadlocks.
He is a one of a kind bear and is crafted from hand dyed curly mohair in rainbow colours.
He has ultra suede foot and paw pads,
and is filled with super polyester fibre.

I like to add pellets and steel shot to give my bears extra weight.

He is available for adoption.

Rainbow Dying bears

How to hand dye a bear.

There are many ways to hand dye. One way is to immerse the whole piece of fabric in to a deep pan of dye making the mohair all the same colour. Another way is dip dye each piece making it have different levels of the same colour.

I prefer to "Rainbow dye" my bears using rainbow colours.

These come in a small packet in powder form and you add water to them. I use the plain white or natural mohair or "Loom State"
The mohair I have chosen is a wavy natural colour German mohair.

I draw my pattern pieces on the back of the fabric and then carefully cut them out making doubly sure I have two body pieces one left one right, two head pieces one left one right, two arms one left one right, one head gusset, four ears and two legs.





I use newspaper to paint the mohair on. I then lay the cut out mohair pieces on newspaper right side up.
I have a brush for each colour dye and each dye is in a small container with an airtight lid, this avoids spillage and you can keep what is leftover for another time.
I then carefully paint each colour on the mohair starting at bottom, dividing in to sections as I go equally painting each piece the same colour.
Normally I paint the mohair in stripes, the bear being painted in the photographs is spot painted by spotting the dye on the mohair.

I start with one colour, doing all the pieces with that one colour at a time. Then I move on to the next colour.
Carefully covering all the hairs as I go, right to the top with each colour.
When all pieces are all covered I place them on clean newspaper and make sure the pieces don’t touch each other and leave them to dry.






When they are completely dry I put them all in to little net washing machine bags with zips and place them in the washing machine, on a rinse and spin cycle with a little fabric softener.
Once they have rinsed and spun I take them out of the bags and brush all the pieces.


I again leave them to dry, and then I take sharp scissors and trim all the fur away from the sewing seams.
The bear is now ready to make up. I normally sew all my bears by hand, occasionally I will use the sewing machine.


I think hand sewing is neater, but that is my personal opinion.
Kerren.

My next post will have the finished bear!