Showing titles in Crafts & Hobbies

Dreaming of a vibrant retirement? Say goodbye to stereotypes and embrace a life filled with adventure and fulfillment!

A beautiful memoir, travelogue and meditation on stone by artist and stone mason Beatrice Searle. At the age of twenty-six, artist and Cathedral stonemason Beatrice Searle crossed the North Sea and walked 500 miles along a medieval pilgrim path through Southern Norway, taking with her a 40-kilogram Orcadian stone.

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.

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.

What if the house of your dreams is the home you have? Meet Melissa Michaels, creator of the popular blog The Inspired Room and the best contentment coach you'll ever meet. With humor and candor, Melissa reveals how to transform your rooms (and your life) from plainly livable to fabulously lovable.  

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.

Survive the unexpected. Statistically, you're more likely to die from a vending machine than a shark. But, Rob Nelson knows many shark survivors. His college girlfriend was attacked by a crocodile and his roommate, a grizzly bear. His wife was sucked by a wave down a blowhole, he was left stranded at sea after a storm sank his sailboat, and the list goes on and on. To Rob, these "improbable" altercations are "random acts of nature," and he's learned how to survive them.

Trent Preszler thought he was living the life he always wanted, with a job at a winery and a seaside Long Island home, when he was called back to the life he left behind. After years of estrangement, his cancer-stricken father had invited him to South Dakota for Thanksgiving. It would be the last time he saw his father alive. Preszler’s only inheritance was a beat-up wooden toolbox that had belonged to his father, who was a cattle rancher, rodeo champion, and Vietnam War Bronze Star Medal recipient. This family heirloom befuddled Preszler.

From hints and tips on what tools to use, to informative instruction on how to build your first model, and many of the techniques needed to make it look more realistic, this book is aimed to help the beginner scale modeller to help them develop their skill. If you're just starting out on scale modelling, this book is ideal for you! All the hints and tips you need to start in scale modelling, with note paper at the ends to help you with your builds!

Twenty-four aircrew who flew the iconic aircraft with the Fleet Air Arm, the Royal Air Force, and the South African Air Force (SAAF) relate their experiences and affection for the Blackburn Buccaneer. Arranged in chronological order, the book traces the history of the aircraft and the tasks it fulfilled. In addition to describing events and activities, it provides an insight into the lifestyle of a Buccaneer squadron and the fun and enjoyment of being a "Buccaneer Boy" in addition to being part of a highly professional and dedicated force.

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. Nigel records the small things, events and happenings that gave pleasure before they disappeared. In A Thousand Feasts he details a soup for breakfast, packing a suitcase for a trip and watching a butterfly settle on a carpet, hiding in plain sight. He gives short stories of feasts such as a mango eaten in monsoon rain or a dish of restorative macaroni cheese.

Shelley Klein grew up in a house designed on a modernist open-plan grid; with colourful glass panels set against a forest of trees, it was like living in a work of art. Shelley’s father, Bernat Klein, was a textile designer whose pioneering colours and textures were a major contribution to 1960s and '70s style. As a child, Shelley and her siblings adored both the house and the fashion shows that took place there. Thirty years on, Shelley moves back home to care for her father, now in his 80s.

In Susan Orlean's mesmerizing true story of beauty and obsession is John Laroche, a renegade plant dealer and sharply handsome guy, in spite of the fact that he is missing his front teeth and has the posture of al dente spaghetti. In 1994, Laroche and three Seminole Indians were arrested with rare orchids they had stolen from a wild swamp in south Florida that is filled with some of the world's most extraordinary plants and trees. Laroche had planned to clone the orchids and then sell them for a small fortune to impassioned collectors.

Some years ago, Oliver Darkshire stepped into the hushed interior of Henry Sotheran Ltd on Sackville Street (est. 1761) to interview for their bookselling apprenticeship, a decision which has bedevilled him ever since. He'd intended to stay for a year before launching into some less dusty, better remunerated career. Unfortunately for him, the alluring smell of old books and the temptation of a management-approved afternoon nap proved irresistible. Soon he was balancing stacks of first editions, fending off nonagenarian widows with and trying not to upset the store's resident ghost.

Like golfing, fishing, and gardening, knitting is an obsession. It's an activity fraught with guilt, frustration, over-optimism, sly deception, and compulsion, along with passionate moments of creative enlightenment - not to mention heaps of yarn you really think you'll knit someday. The first step toward recovery is getting help - and having a good laugh at your compulsion. At Knit's End is a wicked and wickedly funny fix for any knitter.

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.

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.

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.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of The Man Who Made Things out of Trees. Robert Penn cut down an ash tree to see how many things could be made from it. After all, ash is the tree we have made the greatest and most varied use of over the course of human history. Journeying from Wales across Europe and Ireland to the USA, Robert finds that the ancient skills and knowledge of the properties of ash are far from dead.

Born out of a desire to know and understand the mysteries of this material, the spiritual and practical applications of clay in both its micro and macro histories, Clay: A Human History is a book of wonder and insight, a hybrid of archaeology, history and lived experience as an amateur potter.