Hello!

Having just read Dedri’s latest newsletter from Look At What I Made, I got to thinking of the tour that was. It’s still weird that it’s over. BUT we are already planning the next one as well as a retreat..and a guest designer and teacher coming up from Cape Town in October….but first…the tour….

Months of planning, weeks of packing, and piles of admin, and then it arrived. THE DAY WE LEFT ON TOUR. Jules and I jumped on a plane and jetted off to the Big Smoke. Crochet bags at hand.

After over an hour of driving through rush hour JHB traffic (puts Durbans rush hour to shame) we had an eventful time trying to get into our B&B in Melville. Once in, it certainly did not live up to it’s classification – the B stood for BUNK BED and the other B (Breakfast) never happened. But that’s all a story for another day.

 

That night, we met up with the lovely (and we were soon to learn the Photogenic) Dedri in real life, and enjoyed a delicious dinner together. The following morning we met early at 27Boxes for our first workshop. Thanks to Shirley and her lovely Mum Gloria, our venue was sorted with chairs, tables, flowers on the table and bottles of water. Tea time saw our treats being brought to us in brown paper bags, which reminded Jules and I of how we used to do our early days workshop packs – brown paper bags with crochet hearts glue gunned onto them <3

The first day of workshops went by in a flurry of photographs, meeting new friends, seeing beautiful “look at what I made’s” and showing off all our beautiful Scheepjes yarns.

Pretoria was fun as well, with a quick lunch at Jam & Daisies, in between workshops. We met some of the 67 Blanket girls, and again, matched faces with our online friends and were INSPIRED by the lovely projects you brought to show us.

After Pretoria we got to go home for a couple of days, but all we really did was get to sleep in our own beds and have our kids bounce in in the mornings as we ran some busy Hillcrest and Mount Edgecombe workshops. It was great being on our hometurf, amongst the girls that have supported us throughout this journey, helping us pack kits etc, and we had the help of our friend Lee, who is like a mother hen and just gets things done! Jules’ mom Philippa also kept us on the straight and narrow and organised a delicious spread in Hillcrest!

 

The highlight of our trip with Dedri was finding a little cafe in Jeffreys, and having brunch and cuppachinos whilst the rain lashed against the windows. Dedri gave us an Instagram 101 lesson and that photograph she took is now the background on my laptop, it brings back happy memories of relaxing with Jules and Dedri, and meeting Minette, Dedri’s mom.

After Humansdorp, Julie and I flew to Cape Town, whilst Dedri did a road trip with her folks. Our first day off was in weeks was in Stellenbosch, wandering around the town on foot, and we even got time for a little hooky! (and an afternoon nap).

Cape Town – you really are the Mother City. What beautiful weather greeted us, and the venue as suggested by Chriselle was wonderful.

Then we arrived in Philadelphia. Oh My. We wanted to stay forvever. Well, before the revving tractor at 3am woke us up. Carle’s studio was possibly the best time of the tour. Not only did we meet some friends from our social media feed….but,

for the first time since we began, we realised what we had achieved with this tour, and with Be Inspired. Carle had a warm and passionate welcome for us, and it brought tears to our eyes because things had come full circle. Carle was the one who made us realise over a year ago exactly what we wanted, and where we wanted to be. And I think we have even exceeded our wildest dreams. So a heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who has supported us along the way.

(You can read about Dedri’s experience in South Africa here.)

Once again I have decided more is more and although I tried my best to choose a few nice pics, I just couldn’t. Even whittling it down to these above was a hard task for me, and for that I apologise. It doesn’t look as pretty as I wanted, but at least I got to add LOTS of pics!

Take care, much love, and yarny blessings

xxxx

Jules and Chants

Be Inspired August 2016