By Helen

crochet blanket for September and beyond…

It’s  September.  I love September!  I said it last year: I said it the year before, and yes – I will say it again next year.  I love the last hazy days for Summer as the year turns towards Autumn.  I love the thought of the colours changing, the early morning mists and dusky evenings.  I love this time of year.  I have spent the last week, thinking about my Autumn / Winter crochet project.  Inevitably I will have more than one crochet on the go over the next few months: a girl needs variety!  My main crochet project is going to be a biggy: a long term project that will grow slowly as-and-when the mood takes me.  I am going to be crocheting a Lucy blanket: as in Lucy from Attic24.   I ordered my yarn from Wool Warehouse, to my absolute delight a massive box arrived the very next day, full of yarn…

I have to confess I was a little unsure about the some of the colours, they are not what I would normally choose, but I love how Lucy puts her colours together: so I trust that the finished blanket will be great.  I decided that I needed to take a super organised approach to crocheting the blanket and sort out my colours.  Putting the colours in order took a lot of thinking about.  At one point, I have over thought the whole project and was very close to giving up before I started.  Then with one last attempt I found a combination that I was happy with (I think)…

With my first colour (Stylecraft DK Special – Clematis) in hand I started crocheting a chain, long enough to cover a double bed (I hope).  I would love to tell you how many chains I crocheted: but the truth is I lost count.  I crocheted somewhere between 250 and 300 chains…

The blanket is going to be a crochet granny-stripe blanket, so I set about crocheting my first row of treble clusters…

I decided to crochet straight into the chains, rather than crocheting a proper foundation chain.  Why?  Well the thought of crocheting a foundation row of 250 – 300 chains, really put me off.  When the blanket is finished I am going to edge it: any foundation row would be hidden, so no point in doing one!  Right? 

on our holidays…

 

It seems like a long time since I last posted to you.  We’ve been away on our summer jollies.  We’ve been somewhere with beautiful blue sky and seas…

We’ve been somewhere with beautiful long deserted sandy beaches…

Any ideas where we’ve been?  No, ok I keep on with the clues.  We’ve been somewhere where castles dominate the skyline, making amazing silhouettes…

With the long sandy beaches and the blue sea and sky we could have been anywhere, some far flung island.  The castles are the give-away, that we stayed much much closer to home.  We’ve been to Northumberland.  Just a couple of hours up the A1, from York and you arrive at one of the most wonderful, relaxing places I know. 

I feel like I have had a proper holiday, a long relaxing, chilled out break. Our days were filled with late breakfasts, slow walks around castles and gardens, long leisurely evening meals followed by long walks along the beach: with the occasional pause for afternoon tea…

I have come home truly refreshed.  I can’t wait to share with you some of the picis that I took at the Alnwick Garden (I took soooooo many: but don’t worry I wont bore you with them all) I think that I will remain inspired for a good few months to come. 

 Ps – back to crochet for the next post…

Pps - Happy, hapPY, HAPPY, Yorkshire Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

July in an English city garden…

What a difference a week makes?  The sun has finally come out, and with last week’s rain the garden has really taken off.  It has been a long, long, while since I blogged about my garden, that I thought I’d share it with you today.  We still have the on-going issue with the neighbourhood cats, but it is getting better, a lot better, the garden is still full of Si’s CDs on sticks which work brilliantly!  Before we go on, I should explain, that when I say garden – technically it is a yard.  I live in a city terrace, so the yards were originally, functional: that hasn’t stopped us treating the yard as a garden. 

Looking out of our bedroom window, the view isn’t bad.  I love how the plants are taking over and the wall between us and next-door is beginning to blur…

Sweet Woodruff: one of my favourite plants. It grows everywhere, especially in shade, and has the prettiest star shaped flower…

Pots and posts full of flowers…

One of my pots is my herb-garden, perfect for picking of adding to summer suppers…

Bursts of colour everywhere…

Buds waiting to burst into flower…

Looking back towards the house, I am very very proud of my small space…

walking in the sunshine…

Here in England the weather-men tell us that it has been the coldest Spring in years: I am not surprised, I am still wearing winter clothes and my toes have forgotten what it feels like to be in sandals.  Yesterday, the last day of May, the sun shone: so I put on my sandals and went for a walk.  I didn’t go very far, just wandered along the river bank, close to where I live in York.  The river is so close that it is less than a minute from my front door.  I am very lucky: if you turn left at the end of my street you can be in the centre of York in ten minutes, if you turn right and walk for ten minutes you wouldn’t know that you were in the city.  The walk was soooooooo pretty; the river banks were full of wild flowers and the hedges quite literally sang, with all the birds hiding in them.  One of my favourite things was seeing the blossom still on the trees with the bright blue sky behind….

Just lovely, it made my heart sing.  The blossom and blue sky made me hopefully that we will have a Summer full of sunshine and warmth.  Today is the first day of June, and do you know what?  The sun is still shining, so maybe, just maybe...

Hope that the sunshines for you?  Have a good weekend...

xxx

cute crochet collar…

How that Spring is definitely here, I decide to bravely go outside without a coat:  relying on just my cardi to keep me warm.  I found a lovely bright red cardigan, in a really soft yarn, in a local charity shop for just £2.50.  It was love at first sight: it had to be bought.  The cardi looked great: but I thought that it could do with a little-something, just to make it something really special.  It needs a cute crochet collar.  A friend gave me a pattern written by the very talented Nicky Hale, for Arabella, the cutest little crochet collar I had ever seen.  The pattern is bri-lli-ant!  So well written and with a clear chart.  After a couple of hours crochet, I was ready to attach the collar to the cardi.  I was sooooo pleased with the result.  Are you ready for a ta-dah moment?  Here goes…

Not bad for £2.50, the end of a ball of King Cole Bamboo Cotton and a couple of hours!

Happy Easter…

Happy Easter!  I really hope that you are loving the long weekend: plenty of time for crochet and crafting.  Perfect.  I thought that I would share with you my finished Easter / Springtime wreath.  The wreath is both a follow-on from my last post and a recycle from last year's post.  Last year I made my wreath by stitching my crochet Daffodils on to a fabric (stiffened with buckram) circle: while this worked, it did begin to droop.  Something needed to be changed: inspired by Attic24 and a polystyrene ring bought in a craft shop I set about crafting something new.  Hope you like it…

I am chuffed to bits with how it has turned out.  Here’s how I made it.  I started by crocheting a long green panel, to become the background of the wreath.  Using half-treble crochet, I didn’t realise quite how long it needed to be…

I pinned the background crochet to the polystyrene ring, to stop it moving around while to stitched it together…

Once that was finished, to real fun started: pinning the flowers to the wreath…

It took a few attempts, adding extra flowers and moving them around; to get the look I was happy with…

After another move around and adding some crocheted leaves, I was happy…

I wonderful, happy, crochet mix of background, Daffodils, Primroses (I am wiring-up the crochet pattern and will share it with you very soon), and leaves…

cosy crochet slippers…

March: in like a lion out like a lamb, or so they say.   I can’t decide which March has come in like.  Like a lamb?  The last few days have been lovely and sunny: it has really started to feel like Spring.  Today I saw my first Daffodil, on my way to work, and it made me smile all day.  But it’s sooooooo cold (does that mean it’s in like a lion?) especially at night-time.  Noting is better, than walking home, along the river in the dusky Spring evenings.  Nothing is better than getting home and lighting a fire to take the chill off the still cold evenings.  Nothing is better than slipping your toes into a pair of newly crocheted slippers and warming your toes in font of that fire…

Hope you love them as much as I do?  They were really easy to crochet; each one was finished in just over an hour: taking just under a ball of chunky yarn.  After a happy afternoon of crocheting: you have yourself a cosy pair of slippers.  What could be better?

Enjoy your evening…

xxx

Yarn Bomb: York...

Yesterday was an amazing day: there was a Yarn Bomb in York!  It was in celebration of our amazing Art Gallery, which is now closed for a two year renovation and redevelopment project.  I know two years sounds like a very long time, but by the time it is finished they will have increased their display space by a massive sixty (yes sixty) per-cent.  How good it that going to be?  To celebrate all that is to come, yesterday was a community day: where people could drop in a take part in all manner of art related activities.  One of those activities was the Yarn Bomb.  I have to confess that I didn’t take along any of my own work.  I have been sooooo busy of late (with lots of exciting things which I’ll share with you all very soon) and sometimes it is just lovely to look in awe at all the brilliant stuff made by very talented people.  In case you weren’t able to go, I took lots and lots of picis for you…

Isn’t it brilliant?  Brilliant what you can crochet and knit your yarn in to.  Brilliant that there are so many talented people.  Brilliant that we get to share it all with each other. 

 

welcome 2013…

Happy New Year to you all!  I hope that 2013 is an amazing year for you and that all your hopes and wishes come true.  For me, I’d like to raise a glass to a year of crocheting, crafting and making: and I can’t wait to share it all with you…

Happy New Year!

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fabric fat quarters, yarn and lots more goodies…

When I went to the Knitting and Stitching Show, at Harrogate, not only was there lots to be inspired by, there were also lots and lots and lots of lovely things to buy.  And buy is what I did.  I thought that I would share some of my purchases with you; you never know they might inspire you for Christmas presents, or for treating yourself…

Of course I bought yarn, but I also bought lots of fat-quarters, to make into fabric flower…

I love these Japanese prints, from Japan Crafts…

I loved how you use yarn and hooks to make amazing fabric pictures by Hooked by Design…

…I just hope I can remember the technique, when I start this project!  My guilty purchase was an embroidery kit from Rowandean…

 …guilty because I haven’t finished (or even started) the kit that I bought from them last year!  Ssshhhhhh!  Don’t tell Si!

A little something to make for Christmas (this Christmas)...

I finally found some flower yarn, which I had been looking for, for ages.  I can’t wait to crochet it, I think it will be turned into a scarf…

The rest of the yarn I bought will be crocheted into jumpers…

…I think that I will have enough yarn!  I think that I will have enough projects to keep me going until next year...