By Helen

crochet sun-flower…

I did it!  I found the time to crochet July’s flower of the month: and I am so, so, proud of it.  Ready for a serious ta-dah moment…

Do you like them?  I really hope so.  I can't begin to tell you how happy, hap-py, h-a-p-p-y, I am with how these turned out...

I thought that they were the perfect flower to crochet, in celebration of the sun-shine returning.  I love how the double crochet really looks like the centre of a real sun-flower and the chain crochet makes the petals...

They are all my own design, so I will share the pattern with you in a few posts time.  That way you can crochet your very own bit of sun-shine.  That will give you time to gather together your things.  This is what you will need…

I also found the time to start crocheting flower brooches and now only have twelve granny-squares to crochet.  A weekend well spent! Happy, hap-py, h-a-p-p-y!

mind in a yarn tangle...

I’m back to with reality with a bump.  Not a massive thud, more of a gentle bounce back to reality: definitely back to reality.  I have soooooooo much to do!  This is what the inside of my mind looks like right now... 

A tangle of thoughts, a web of ideas, a confusion of not know quite where to start.  Okay.  Stop.  Breath.  The inside of my mind doesn’t actually look like a massive tangle of yarns, that is the inside of one of my yarn stash draws.  My mind just feels like a massive tangle, there is a difference.  So lets make a to-do list:

• Make pasta salads
• Make sweet salami, see Hairy Bikers' book for recipe
• Made potato salad
• Find pan big enough to cook potatoes in
• Crochet twenty-four flower brooches
• Crochet eighteen more granny squares for cushion cover
• Crochet flower, for July’s flower of the month
• Find way of display crochet projects in something other than a Tupperware box
• Start to tidy house (for something very exciting, which I’ll tell you about another day)

 Wow, that’s it.  Not too bad, all lovely things, just lots of them.  Lots of lovely things.

 Oh yes…and tidy stash draw..! :-)

Ps - I am not intending to east all of the food that I am making over the next couple of days: we are having a party...

grand days out in the Welsh Marches…

We’ve been away on holiday….

We’ve been to the Welsh Marches, having a wonderful time. The holiday was wonderful, just what we needed, a good mix of doing not-a-lot, visits to castles, cathedrals and abbeys, tea-rooms and pubs! We stayed in Hereford and used that as our base for exploring the lovely borders between England and Wales.  We visited cathedrals such as Worcester…

Abbeys such as Tintern…

And castles such as Chepstow…

I have to give a massive thank-you to Si at this point for allowing another man to join us on our holiday.  That man was William Marshall, a knight from the thirteenth century who I have been a little bit in love with since reading Elizabeth Chadwick's novels and then the translation of his auto-biography.  Poor Si had to put up with me declaring that William Marshall could have walked here every time we ascended or descended steps, or walked along any path – come to think of it!

Of course there was plenty to time for relaxing and  doing nothing.  I have to confess I didn’t crochet as much as I thought I would have, or would have liked to.  I went with the intention of crocheting lots and lots of granny-squares: something easy to crochet, but results in something really rather wonderful.  I only made ten…

Instead, I got lost in a book.  One of the best books I have read in a long-time A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness, even if the final few chapters were setting-up for the next book in the trilogy!

It was lovely just to spend the time mooching from place to place with no particular place to be or time to be there by.  Going where we felt like: influenced only by our whim, and a little by the weather.  The holiday wasn’t as far-flung as last year: visiting Florence, but sometimes English (or Welsh) strawberries and cream are just what you need…

a grand day out in York...

Si and I were meant to go to the  Yorkshire Show.  I was so looking forward to it, seeing all the sights, tasting the food, thanking the sheep for giving us yarn.  Last year's show was soooo good: I was very excited about going again.  The weather had other plans; and for the first time in 154 years the show was cancelled because of all the heavy rain; think Glastonbury style mud with extra animals.  Si decided that he would go into work and take the day off later in the year.  My head was already on holiday, so I decided to take the day off.  A whole day off to myself: this is not usual as I work part-time, but my none-working days are usually full of other things.  This was a treat day; not to be filled with house-work and other stuff that is no fun.  The day was to be a fun day.  I decided to have a day out in, my home city of York!

I started the day with a visit to a friend who is very unwell at the moment.  Rather than walking through the streets, which I love to do – nosing in peoples’ gardens, I walked in the sun-shine (yes sun-shine) around the city walls...

After visiting A, I popped into Grace and Jacobs...

If you have never visited Grace and Jacobs, you need to.  It is a gorgeous little shop full of yarns and fabric….

It also has a small studio where classes are held…

I did manage to leave Grace and Jacob’s empty handed, something of an achievement!  I did book myself on to a course for making the prettiest fabric flowers.  I don’t feel too guilty, I like to have things in my diary to look forward to and this is just one of them!

Then I went to the Quilt Museum...

Again, if you have never visited: go.  I have the upper most respect for the quilters: as I stand in awe, I fully acknowledge that I will NEVER have the patience or accuracy needed to quilt.  The exhibition was fantastic: really inspirational.  I was instantly drawn to this purple quilt…

I loved the subject matter of this…

And thought this one to be very appropriate…

The best thing about the Quilt Museum is that the exhibitions change every three months, so there is always something new to look at.

I needed a pick-up up of coffee and cake so went to a new café, which I have wanted to go to for a while, The Flax and Twine...

The tea-room was sooo pretty…

And the coffee and cakes were AMAZING.  Another place you will have to visit in York.  Feeling full I mooched around for a bit, popping in to shops, saying hello to friends and taking more photos…

 

York’s most iconic building York Minster, taking the photo I realised that I don’t visit the Minster anymore.  I volunteer at the Minster as a guide showing visitors around, but I don’t actually visit myself.  By then my feet were getting tired, so I headed home for some serious hooky time…

I loved this day.  It wasn’t the day I was expecting: but it was a grand-day out!

crochet a to z….

I’m crocheting the alphabet!  There is a reason: I didn’t just wake-up and think I’ll crochet the alphabet, all twenty-six letters…

You will have to wait a while before I can tell you what I am crocheting: it is a gift and I like the gift to be given before I share it with you.  Before I crochet the actual gift, I thought I’d better get some practice in, just in case I came across problems.  I took, and adapted, the pattern from Melody Griffiths’ book…

201 crochet motifs, blocks, projects and ideas.  This book is one of my go-to books, if it isn’t already on your bookshelf I would recommend it.  In fact I would recommend any of Melody’s books: the're great.

Once I’d crocheted the letters, I quickly realised that I needed to block them.  I thought about using the same technique that I used for blocking my Starflakes, using pva and water.  But I’d didn’t need the crochet letters to be quite so stiff or quite so shiny.  I opted to starch them…

This worked.  The letters are a little bigger than I was expecting, so next time I’ll be crocheting with a smaller hook.  Ms and Ws were a bit of a pain to crochet – not surprising you follow the same pattern for each and turn one upside-down!  Cs and Gs weren’t much fun either…

…hay-ho I can crochet the alphabet! 

crochet wire course part two…

So where did I get to?  Oh yes, I was about to share with you some other amazing crochet wire work that the very talented ladies crocheted, on the course last weekend.  I hope you are ready for some serious ta-dah moments?

This is another piece by Julie, our tutor….

Isn’t it fabulous, the way the colours work together?  M decided that she was going to crochet herself a fully set of jewellery, earrings and a necklace...

I think that this is just brilliant, especially as the earrings match each-other!  Think making socks here, you have made one, you are really happy and then you realise... you have to make another, and it has to be the same!

The lady who crocheted this (sorry I have forgotten your name) took a very precise approach to crocheting, everything was thought out and counted, and what a result…

This is something that I can only ever aspire to.  It is not in my nature to be so accurate, but I do love, love, LOVE the results.

This is what A crocheted, a gorgeous sea blue necklace…

Isn’t it stunning?   A only learnt to crochet back in March. Yes March, this year.  That’s four months ago.  Just think what she will be crocheting this time next year…

It was a wonderful day.  A real treat.  An inspiring tutor, a wonderful workshop, infectious creativity and, oh, that lunch…

crochet wire course part one…

Do you remember me telling you about a course I had booked on to?  Well the course was yesterday, it was amazing, and I have to tell you all about it.  I arrived at ArtisOn just in time for a quick cup of tea before the course started.  Our tutor Julie Glaze started by showing us some of her fabulous works, as inspiration.  My favourite piece, was a beautiful vine of sliver flowers…

Then it was our turn!  Julie started us nice and slowly, by getting us to crochet chains, so that we got used to crocheting wire and got even sized stitches….

Once we had mastered crocheting a chain, we threaded beads onto the wire and started to work them into our stitches…

By lunch time, this had become my first ever crochet wire piece of jewellery…

Julie was great at teaching and so flexible, this allowed us the freedom to crochet whatever we wished, earrings, necklaces, pendants; the only limit was our imaginations.  We paused, to give our fingers a rest and for lunch.  Lunch was AMAZING, a real treat: baked veggie risotto and salads, followed by three (yes three) choices of pudding.  I have to confess that I had a little of each pudding: choosing which to have would have been far too difficult.

After lunch we went back to crocheting.  Give my love of crocheting flowers; I had to give it a go in wire.  Crocheting trebles and double trebles, in wire, proved a little trickier than the morning’s chain, but I am glad that I persevered.  Are you ready of a ta-dah moment?  Ta-dah…

After some uming and erring (brooch, hair-clip, brooch, hair-clip) I attached the crocheted rose to a kirby-grip and popped it in my hair…

I am chuffed to bits with the result, a grown-up formal version of the hair-clip I crocheted a couple of weeks ago.

There is so much more that I need to share with you, not to mention the GOURGOUS work created by the other very talented ladies on the course.  You will just have to come back and read my next posting…