Showing titles in Crafts & Hobbies

Quilting for Beginners by Caylie-Jen Arnold is a heartfelt invitation to explore the timeless art of quilting in a fresh, inspiring way. This book is perfect for those who’ve always wanted to dive into quilting but are looking for more than just step-by-step instructions. Here, quilting unfolds as a journey—one of self-expression, community, and creative discovery.

For years, Nigel Slater has kept notebooks of curiosities and wonderings, penned while at his kitchen table, soaked in a fisherman’s hut in Reykjavik, sitting calmly in a moss garden in Japan or sheltering from a blizzard in a Vienna Konditorei. These are the small moments, events and happenings that gave pleasure before they disappeared. Miso soup for breakfast, packing a suitcase for a trip and watching a butterfly settle on a carpet, hiding in plain sight.

Join Clara Parkes on a cross-country adventure and meet a cast of characters that includes the shepherds, dyers, and countless workers without whom our knitting needles would be empty, our mills idle, and our feet woefully cold. Travel the country with her as she meets a flock of Saxon Merino sheep in upstate New York, tours a scouring plant in Texas, visits a steamy Maine dyehouse, helps sort freshly shorn wool on a working farm, and learns how wool fleece is measured, baled, shipped, and turned into skeins.

On the day that Betty meets Guy, her life is changed forever. She never thought she'd see him again but a few months later realises she has something of his that needs returning. So, she writes him a letter. It's the perfect solution for Betty—it means she doesn't need to tell Guy about what really happened that day and the secret she's been hiding. For Guy, Betty's letter arrives at his repair shop at the perfect time. His whole world has come crashing down around him, and for the first time in a long time, he starts to feel hopeful.

There is a major disconnect between what we wear and our knowledge of its impact on land, air, water, labor, and human health. Even those who value access to safe, local, nutritious food have largely overlooked the production of fiber, dyes, and the chemistry that forms the backbone of modern textile production. While humans are 100 percent reliant on their second skin, it’s common to think little about the biological and human cultural context from which our clothing derives.

The Cottage Fairy Companion is your accessible and beautiful guide to mindful living. It teaches the fundamentals of cottagecore style through the practices of The Cottage Fairy’s daily life.

They’re scented, fizzy, and fun, but adding a sizzling bath bomb to your tub is doing far more good for your health than just stimulating your senses with some fizz, color, and flowery aromas. You’re about to learn how to transform your bath tub into one of the safest and most powerful healing therapies ever discovered.

In this moving account, Peter Korn explores the nature and rewards of creative practice. We follow his search for meaning as an Ivy-educated child of the middle class who finds employment as a novice carpenter on Nantucket, transitions to self-employment as a designer and maker of fine furniture, takes a turn at teaching and administration at Colorado's Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and then founds a school in Maine: the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, an internationally respected nonprofit institution.

In Material, Kary takes listeners along with him to visit some of the places where modern artisans are preserving, and in some cases passing on, the old craft skills. His vivid descriptions and eye for detail make this book a rich and delightful listen, and the natural and cultural history he imparts along the way provides an important context for understanding our own past and the roots of our industrial society. Personal, engaging, and filled with memorable people, landscapes, and scenes, Material is a rich celebration of what it means to imagine and create.

Not so very long ago, Yuletide was as much a chilling season of ghosts and witches as it was a festival of goodwill. In The Old Magic of Christmas, you'll rub elbows with veiled spirits, learn the true perils of elves, and discover a bestiary of enchanted creatures. Rife with the more frightful characters from folklore and the season's most petulant ghosts, this book takes you on a spooky sleigh ride from the silvered firs of a winter forest to the mirrored halls of the Snow Queen.

Joe Lycett explores the nation's weird and wonderful obsessions by getting to know a selection of famous and not so famous guests. Hear Katherine Ryan share her love of the Kardashians, Greg James introduce Joe to the world of cricket and Janice Connolly share her collection of decluttering books. Can Lloyd Griffith inspire you with his adoration of fire engines? Or will June Sarpong get you into Hula-Hooping?

In a gorgeous history that spans continents and millennia, Aarathi Prasad weaves together the complex story of the queen of fabrics. Through the scientists who have studied silk, and the biology of the animals from which it has been drawn, Prasad explores the global history, natural history, and future of a unique material that has fascinated the world for millennia.

The Lost Flock is the story of the remarkable and rare little horned sheep, known as Orkney Boreray, and the wool-obsessed woman who moved to one of Scotland’s wildest islands to save them.

Kelly Osbourne is the child of one of the best documented - and least ordinary - families in Britain and life under the spotlight means she has had to learn from her mistakes the hard way. Fierce takes us from Kelly's first period to her first night in Chicago. From depression and dealing with alcohol and drugs, to coping with the ultimate embarrassing dad, this book is totally honest and totally Kelly.

From the political storytelling of the Bayeux tapestry's anonymous embroiderers and Mary, Queen of Scots' treasonous stitching, to the sewing of First World War soldiers suffering from PTSD and the banner makers at Greenham Common, Threads of Life stretches from medieval France to 1980s America, from a Second World War POW camp in Singapore to a family attic in Scotland. It is as much about identity, protest, memory and politics as craft and artistry.

Using a travel guide format, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee acts as tour guide extraordinaire, describing and critiquing every aspect of this territory she knows so well: its people (young and old, male and female), familiar phrases ("purl this, darn that"), strange beliefs, currency (skein trading), etiquette, holidays (any sale day at the local yarn shop), and customs. She notes important dates in knitting history and celebrates unsung knitting heroes.

At age five, Esme was asked to write in her notebook, but instead, she filled it with drawings—the only way she knew to express herself. At seven, when it was discovered she was partially deaf, she found refuge in her sketchbooks. Shortly after, Esme made her first garment and a passion for sewing and designing was born. As a teenager, she made her way to London where her creative journey truly began.

Blending memoir and nature writing at its finest, Ingrained is an uplifting meditation on the challenges of working with your hands in our modern age, on community, consumerism, and the beauty of the natural world – one that asks us to see our local trees, and our own wooden objects, in a new and revelatory light.

When Cleo and Dylan find each other at a Christmas party, will they be able to make the necessary choices in order to find happiness and love for themselves?

The Vulcan, the second of the three V bombers built to guard the UK during the Cold War, has become an aviation icon like the Spitfire, its delta shape instantly recognizable, as is the howling noise it makes when the engines are opened for takeoff. Vulcan Boys is the first Vulcan book recounted completely firsthand by the operators themselves.