Royal British Legion Poppies

Recently the wool shop in my local town have been asking for knitters or crocheters to make some poppies for the Royal British Legion's Poppy Appeal so popped in a couple of weeks ago to see what it was about.

The shop has been working with The Royal British Legion on the knitted/crocheted poppies. Both the patterns and the wool choice for making them has been approved. Everyone making the poppies has to use the same wool so they will be uniform and the patterns are free. Ten per cent of the profits from the wool is being donated to the Royal British Legion.

Once all the poppies have been handed to the shop some are going to be used in a Remembrance Day display at the Lion Salt Works Museum. After this they will have brooch backs attached then be sold to raise money for the Royal British Legion.

The black wool used for the centre is glittery with different colours running through it.

I tried both the knitted and crocheted pattern but everyone in my house preferred the crocheted version so I stuck to that pattern.

In total I made 22 which I dropped in to the shop this week. They're not sure how many they have yet, it sounded like quite a lot though so I hope they hit their target number.

Art Deco Architecture

Yesterday we took a quick drive out to Sale so Anders could pick up a new guitar amp. Luckily I had put my camera in the car because we spotted some lovely Art Deco buildings on the way and stopped on the journey home to take some pics.

The first building we looked at was the Mecca bingo hall. Originally it was a Lido and the pool used to be covered to use as a dance floor.

The next building, The Pyramid Theatre opened in 1934. Since opening it has been an Odeon cinema, a nightclub and a fitness centre. I loved this building. Even through the garish paint you could still see hidden details. I found a lot of information about the theatre's design here.

Sourced From Cinema Treasures

While searching the internet about this building I found this old photo. Doesn't it look fabulous? ... it reminds me of old Hollywood films

I haven't found out what has been happening to the building after 2013. Looking at the dust it clearly hasn't been used for quite some time though. The main door was left gaping open and after popping my head inside for a quick nosey I saw that the next set of doors were also open. Little L was all for going inside to explore but there was no chance of that. Who knows who was inside there. I hope that whoever is in possession of the theatre sorts out the security before the interior gets vandalised.

So far I have not been able to find out anything about this building at all on the internet. Nothing at all, not even an old photograph. 

Just around the corner from the unknown building I spotted this detail above some shops.
What started off as what I thought to be a mundane trip turned out to be a great afternoon after all.

Spooky Sewing

Having a couple of hours spare before Little L was due home from school today I wanted to try and fit in a quick project. With Halloween almost here I decided on making the character Oogie Boogie from one of my favourite films, The Nightmare Before Christmas. I settled on this character because he isn't very detailed and I knew that I already had suitable materials.

The fabric I used for the body is from some old curtains that belonged to my Mum. The eyes, mouth and slit in the tummy were cut from black felt and sewn on by sewing machine. I then used embroidery thread to make stitches around his mouth and tummy slit. A line of straight stitch was sewn all the way around followed by a row of zig zag stitch. I did this because the fabric is a quite loose weave and frays a lot. I chose to sew the body parts together this way because I wanted him to have a bit of a tatty look to him. The little plastic spiders were attached using a hot glue gun.

Horror Film Festival

The day I'd been waiting weeks for was finally here. Sunday morning I was up and about, slapping on my make up at 7:30 getting ready to go to our first horror film festival, Grimmfest. The event was held at The Printworks in Manchester which took us about an hour to drive to. The parking cost £5.50 for 24hrs and was only about a 5 minute walk away from the cinema. Stalls were set up selling t-shirts, dvds, posters, etc. 

The nice people from SHUDDER (which is a new horror streaming service) were giving away t shirts for signing up. Anders did and when they asked if I wanted to as well I explained that I'd already done it online so they gave me one as well.

The first film was being shown at 10:20 and to be honest I wasn't particularly fussed if we got there on time or not because it didn't look like my kind of thing. 

The film was called Darling and I'm so glad we did get there early enough to view it because it turned out to be both mine and Anders' favourite film of the day. 

 Beyond The Gates was the next to be shown but this one we missed because we nipped out to get some food.

Tonight She Comes was the next that we saw and then we stuck around for the Q & A after the film with the director, Matt Stuertz. Anders really liked the music score for this as it reminded him of 1980's horror films.

This was followed by The Rezort, a British zombie film. The director, Steve Barker and writer, Paul Gerstenberger were present after for a Q & A session. (We didn't stay for this, not because we didn't want to hear what they had to say but after staying for one Q & A session found that we then only had about 15 minutes at the most for drinks, toilet breaks, etc before back in the cinema to find seats again. The organiser did say that it was a jam packed day to get everything in)

Villmark Asylum, a Norwegian film was the next to be shown. I love foreign horror films so I was looking forward to this one.

The Rift was the last film of the day (I had sore eyes and a bit of bum ache at this point) followed by a live Skype Q & A with Ken Foree.

We were also treated to an unofficial trailer for Habit, a British horror set in Manchester. From what I saw I can't wait to watch this one after it's release.

The organisers were having a bit of an after party and said everyone was quite welcome to join them which I thought was very good of them(out of the question for us though due to travelling home)

We arrived home around 11:30 and ordered a pizza before everywhere began to close for the night. I think that  Anders surprised himself by managing to sit through so many films as he can be quite fidgety but we've both said how we definitely want to go to next year's Grimmfest, maybe bringing our eldest boy along too.