By Helen

having a wonderful time...

Sorry that I haven't blogged this week: we have been away, having a wonderful time.  Here is a little clue as to where we went...

Yep, that's right we have been with the soft sweet showers of April to Canterbury.  I decided to be wholly cliche about the holiday and read the Canterbury Tales, something that I have never done until now.  I have to confess that I am reading a modern translation and in prose, but still, I think that Chaucer would approve.  So far, I am enjoying the tales.

Canterbury is a beautiful city full of amazing architecture...

Gorgeous gardens...

Fabulos tearooms...

Tiny Tim's was sooo good we ate there twice in two days!  We brought back a stunning little tealight holder...

The perfect souviner made by the talented people at Canterbury Pottery. 

All in all a wonderful mini-break...

blogversary...

Happy blogday to me, happy blogday to me, happy blogday dear Helen, happy blogday to me..!  You guessed it, it's my first blogday or first blogversary.  By Helen is one year old.  Time to celebrate with coffee and cake...

Crochet cake of course!  I thought  that I would share some of my highlights from the last year of By Helen, so here goes...

April 2011's highlight really has to be starting By Helen.  I had often thought about, and talked about starting by blog, but last April I actually did it.

In May Si and I visited one of our favourite gardens, Harlow Carr in Harrogate,  and I took one f my all time favourite photographs.

June saw me selling my first evey crochet brooch.  This was a real sale, not to a friend or family but to a real life person who liked what they saw enough to pay for it.

July was a MASSIVE month and it is really hard to decide on my highlight, so many good things happened.  I think my favourite thing was opening my garden showing how garden and crochet are a perfect match.

September's highlight is easy.  Our summer holiday in Florence.  A wonderful week walking around galleries and architecture eating pasta and drinking Chianti.

My favourite thing from October was the witchy kitty I made for Halloween.  I was sooo pleased with how it turned out.

Each November I love to make jam and chutney, something that can last all year.  We still have plenty left to see us through to next October.

I love December, York looks so amazing this time of year.  My favourite thing from December was making Starflakes for my Christmas cards.  Best of all I shared them with all my friends.

January is the perfect time for quick crochet projects and making things that will keep you warm, like the cowl I made.  I didn't expect to still be wearing it in April!

Again in February so many lovely things happened.  I made the gargoyle that my friend had knitted for my, I visited one of my favourite abbeys, but I think that the very best things was the snow.

My favourite thing from last month, had to be crocheting Daffodils.  I am so pleased with them and they are all my own design.

This months favourite thing is really a tie between two discoveries: cardamom and Mollie Makes I just can't choose between the two.

So here we are one year on and I have a say a massive, masSIVE, MASSIVE, thank you to all of you who take the time to read By Helen.  Please keep coming back for year two.

Thank you

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April showers and Bluebells...

Wow!  Is the weather as wet with you, as it is here?  It seems that ever since there were reports of drought that it hasn’t stopped raining.  Mother Natures idea of irony!  I really think that the rain has gone beyond April showers now.   The upside of all this rain is the amount of time I can spend, guilt free, crocheting.  Usually by now I feel I should be sorting the garden (which is looking neglected again, despite the work we did during the warm weather, whenever that was) but with all the rain my motivation isn’t there.

I have been crocheting way, and have almost finished my Bluebell...

What do you think?  I am pleased with them, especially using the bead of the centres.  All that is left crochet are the stalks.  I am thinking of something similar to the Snowdrop stalk, so that the flowers can keep their heads bowed.  I was looking in a book, and according to folk-lore, Bluebells hang their heads because of their association with death.  Medieval archers used the sap to make a sticky glue for attaching feathers to arrows!  There is an interesting, if a little morbid, fact for you!

Something more cheerful…crocheting all afternoon while listening to the rain fall on the ground.  See there are positives in the rain…

bakeation…

I think that I might have just bought the best baking book EVER!  Crochet will have to play second-fiddle to baking for a while, while I bake my way through the book.  The book in questions is the  Hairy Bikers' Big Book of Baking…

It’s the book which accompanies their BBC Two programme Bakeation.  The book, rather like the TV programme, is just brilliant, rather like everything the boys do.  I am bit of a fan. 

The book is arranged by countries, and each country has a selection of recipes.  So far, I think that I have baked my way around Norway, with a few pit-stops in Italy, Germany, Belgium and Hungary.

I think my favourite recipe (so far) is the Norwegian Cardamom and Lemon Stamped Cookies.  I have to confess I was a newbie to cardamom, I think that I might have tasted it in other recipes, but never as the main event.  I am a convert.  I can’t describe the favour, but would encourage you to go out and try it.

I was really pleased with how my cookies turned out…

Only one complaint about my cookies: mine aren’t stamped.  By this I mean, that the Bikers had used these gorgeous little presses to stamp pretty pictures of leaves and flowers on their cookies.  Mine were left unstamped.  This was not for want of trying.  I looked EVRYWHERE in York for cookie stamps but nowhere sold them, not even trusty Lakeland (the shop I thought sold everything you don’t know you need).  I found some on the internet, but they had to be shipped from Canada, this seemed a little extreme and I didn’t like the decoration that much to order them.  So my cookies remained undecorated.  Needless to say the lack of decoration didn’t affect the flavour, they were delicious! 

Go treat yourself, buy the book and bake something amazing.

April's crochet flower...

Committing to crocheting a flower a month is taking some doing.  I didn’t quite realise how quickly they would come around: it only seems like a minute ago when I was thinking about March’s Daffodils.  Here we are in the middle, mid-DLE, of April.  This month’s crocheted flower will be the Bluebell.  I guess Bluebells are very appropriate especially as according to one news source (so must be true) the English Bluebell is on the decline.  I had intended to go to visit a beautiful woodland and take lots and lots of photographs for inspiration.  I haven’t found the time to do this.  Instead my inspiration comes from a birthday card, which I got last month…

 

I did manage to find the time to visit Ramshambles to stock up on Bluebell colour yarn…

And to Viking Loom to get some beads, which I think will become the middle bits...

What are the middle bits of flowers called?  I MUST look that up.

Now all that if left to do is the actual crocheting bit.  I’ll let you know how I get on…

happy easter...

I really hope that you are enjoying the l-o-n-g weekend?  The poor weather is just the perfect excuse for low guilt reading, baking ,crocheting and generally doing not a lot.  I love it! 

Do you remember the Daffodils that I ta-dahed about a few posts ago?  Well I was so chuffed with them, I made some more and made those into a wreath for Easter...

I stitched the Daffodils to a base made of green material and then filled in any gaps with small crocheted Primroses and leaves.  I am really happy with how this turned out, I think that is will be a Springtime wreath, rather than just an Easter wreath.

Enjoy the long weekend and don't eaat too much chocolate (as if too much chocloate is ever possible) x.

read all about it, read all about it...

I have a confession to make.  I am a magazine junky.  There I admitted it.  I am sure that I am not alone in this addiction.  To try and curb my habit: I limit my visit to WH Smiths to once-a-month, and go armed with one ten-pound note.  April’s visit was such a success, I can’t tell you how pleased I am with my purchases.   Well, that is not strictly true, as I am about to tell you.  I came away from the shop with two wonderful magazines…

I was a stranger to Mollie Makes , and was only tempted to buy this issue because of the free (yes free) crochet gift on the front cover.  The magazine is just b-r-i-l-L-I-A-N-T.  Not only have the lovely Mollie Makes’ team provided the pattern, hook, brooch back and yarn to make a delightful flower brooch, the rest of the magazine is just fabulous.  The magazine doesn’t limit itself to one craft so there are an array of treats waiting for you within it’s cover.  There are patterns, reviews, interviews and inspirational photographs.  The whole magazine is a delight.  I can’t wait for next months (which is out next week) where the free (yes free) gift is a set of vintage buttons.

One of my monthly stables is Inside Crochet.  I buy the magazine out of habit and because it is the only UK crochet magazine that the shop sells.  The magazine usually has two or three patterns that I can’t wait to follow.  This month…

...is different.  I want to crochet ALL OF THEM.  I can’t remember the last time Inside Crochet was this good.  Although I will spend a happy afternoon checking out my back issues just to make sure.  I don’t know which of the patterns to start with.  Should it be Lynne Rowe's Skinny Scarf?  Or perhaps Christine Harvey's cheerful spring flower pots?  Or maybe Helda Panagary's  funky hibiscus coasters?  If I am feeling ambitious Sian Brown's beautiful lace trim top? 

There are so many wonderful, amazing, fabulous things out there, thank goodness for the long weekend.  Here’s to spending time curled up on the sofa flicking though magazines and crocheting…