It is a beautiful world. Today frost has taken hold and made the world shiny and sparkly! I love this time of the year. All of the photos that I am about to share with you, were taken by the River Ouse in York. All of the photos that I am about to share with you, were taken within twenty minutes’ walk of my front door. I don’t have the words to express how blessed I feel. I don’t have the words to express the emotions that I was feeling as I took a walk this morning. Despite all the bad that it going on in the world today, it is still a very beautiful place to be…
York
11/29/2016
08/25/2016
lovely, lovely, lavender…
Have you visited Provence? No, neither have I. I would love, love, love to visit the area and see the beautiful fields of lavender stretching out for miles and miles. I would love, love, love to hear the hum of the bees as they go about their work in the lavender fields. I would love, love, love to take a deep breath and inhale the intoxicating lavender perfume. One day…
Have you visited Yorkshire? I am lucky enough to love in York, the centre of Yorkshire, the city is stunningly beautiful and so is the surround country-side. Last week Si and me hired a car (we have been car-free since last November) and went to the stunning Yorkshire Lavender. As soon as we stepped out of the car, the smell of lavender hit you in waves. I wish I could let you smell what we smelt. I took lots of photographs so you can see the loveliness of what we saw…
All colours of lavender…
Harvest time…
Sculpture punctuating the landscape…
Not the only ones enjoying the lavender…
Yes, lots of lovely lavender…
Ok, it isn’t Provence: it is Yorkshire and it is well worth a visit, a visit for the senses and for inspiration.
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08/18/2016
little treats…
Wow! It has been a busy few months. Regular readers will know that I have been trying really hard, over the last few months, to slow down and reconnect with my making. It is beginning to work! I’m still working (in the real world) full-time but this may change soon, as my work contract comes to an end. In the creative world, I have been just as busy, with my makes going to a certain three day fair in September (more about that very soon), a crochet workshop in September and lots of Christmas fairs to start getting ready for. Yes, it has been busy! Last week I took some time out and treated myself at The British Wool Show. I was the first time that I had visited The British Wool Show, despite it been just four miles from my home. It was brilliant. Even the free shuttle bus from York had been yarnbombed…
There wasn’t the same amount of stalls that you would expect at Yarndale or the The Knitting and Stitching Show, but the quality of what was there sure made up for the quantity…
Very soon, I had spent all of my money: I take cash to places like this so that I don’t have to explain myself too much!
I bought the most beautiful yarn from; Midwinter Yarns, Truly Hooked andYarn Garden and two stunning brooches from Flet by Bridget. I have ideas whirling around my mind as to what to do with the yarn, I’ll share these with you very soon…
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08/10/2016
Summer in the garden…
Where do you get the inspiration for your makes? Like a lot of you, I get a lot of my inspiration from plants, flowers and Mother Nature. Often, my inspiration is found just a few feet from my backdoor! At the moment, I live in a small terrace house a stones-throw from the centre of York, with a lovely, lovely, garden. Purists would say that, technically, my garden is a yard, and I guess it is…but to me it is my small, perfectly-formed, garden. My garden is my place of calm, green-ness and inspiration. I love it…
Lavender welcomes you in to my home…
Along with a colourful, hanging basket (if any of you know the name of this plant, please let me know)…
More hanging baskets and pots in the back…
Tomatoes…
Lettuce and rocket and other green leaves…
More pots...
All, no more than 30 seconds from my door! I hope that you have your own green space?
I’d love to see pictures of them. Why not tag them to my Facebook page HERE of Instagram HERE
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05/11/2016
crochet granny squares and beyond…
Yay! Busy back with crochet! I’m busy getting ready for my next crochet workshop. On 21st May I’ll be running a crochet workshop for some lovely people at The Silver Thimble, just outside York. This will be the second crochet workshop that I have run, in the last couple of months; this one will focus on crocheting granny squares and crocheting them into something fabulous. I’ve designed the workshop so anyone can join, anyone: those with no crochet experience, those with lots of crochet experience – there will be something for everyone. All are welcome! If you'd love to come and crochet yourself a granny square, joining details are at the bottom of this post...
The workshop is £20.00 and runs from 10:00 – 14:00. If you are interested in coming to this crochet workshop then either message me, via my Facebook page HERE or contact Kath at The Silver Thimble.
See you on the 21st!
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01/06/2016
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to you all! I hope that you had a lovely Christmas and continue to have all your wishes met in 2016. Important question: did you stay dry? I should explain, in case you haven’t seen pictures of the terrible weather that the UK has been experiencing, large parts of the UK have suffered from bad flooding over the Christmas period. So many people have been affected; my heart goes out to every single one of them. Here is York, where byhelen is based, has also been badly hit: with the two rivers, the Foss and the Ouse, both breaching their banks and flooding back into the city. In large parts of the city people and out of their homes as the clean-up starts and small business have been affected as visitors choose to stay away from city centre. If you are visiting York, it is very much open, please come as support our amazing independent traders.
I am luckier than lots of people in the city; the flood touched my door-step, but didn’t, this time, make it into my home. I am so very grateful for this. My home was saved, this time, because of sandbags and the amazing community spirt, that we repeated see in the Bishy Road area of York. My home was saved, this time, because of an amazing group of people from a mosque in Batley. These amazing people, drove to Cumbria (all ready badly affected by flooding,) and decided that people there were getting help, so they decided to come to York and help us. They spent the day in our area helping move sandbags to protect streets and homes and offering support to all. They came back two days later, to make sure that we were still ok. We were. I can’t thank these wonderful people enough...
In all the devastation of the flooding, the sense of community shone through and York, despite what Mother Nature was throwing at her, remained as beautiful as ever…
I hope that we don’t experience this level of flooding again, but I fear that we will.
I hope that your Christmas was drier than ours and that you enjoyed the festivities.
Here’s to more sunshine, hope, love, laughter and craft in 2016…
11/13/2015
getting ready for Christmas…
Hello Lovelies! It is great to see soooo many of you here, looking at the little blog, you are all very welcome! As a reminder you can also find me on Facebook HERE and on Ravelry HERE. Do pop by!
We’ve had Halloween. We’ve had Bonfire Night. We can officially start thinking about Christmas, not that we haven’t sneakily been doing so already, over the next few weeks I have two craft fairs coming up. One is in my home. Yes in my home! My local area is having a Craft-y-Crawl, where makers open up their homes, showcase their makes and, hopefully, have a few sales. The second craft fair I am going to be at, with York Makers. This year York Makers are having two fairs: one on the 29th November at Wiggington Recreation Hall, the other (the one I’ll be at) is on the 5th December at Clements Hall, in my local area. I would love, love, love to have done more fairs this year, but work has got in the way. Here is a sneaky-peek at some of my makes that I will be taking along to the fairs…
Mini crochet wreaths…
Sparkly snowflakes…
Perfect stocking-fillers: bookmarks…
More stocking-fillers: brooches…
And hair blossoms...
It would be just lovely to see soon of you at one of these fairs: but don’t worry if you can’t make, I’ll keep you updated right here!
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08/26/2015
an ancestral gift: a truly inspirational exhibition (part two)…
More wonderful, amazing, colour and quilts from the Ancestral Gifts exhibition at York’s Quilt Museum. The exhibition is curated by Kaffe Fassett and conjunction with The Quilters’ Guild Collection. Kaffe Fassett has taken quilts from the historic collection and used them as inspiration for designing his own quilts, using his own genius use of colour. I really hope some of you have been able to visit the exhibition: but just in case you haven’t…
Enjoy!
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08/19/2015
an ancestral gift: a truly inspirational exhibition (part one)…
I’ve had the morning off work, so I decided to visit The Quilt Museum in York. The Quilt Museum is one of my favourite museums in York. At the end of October the Museum will closes it’s doors for the last time, but before it does please make sure you pay it a visit. The exhibition that is one at the moment (running until 5th September) is a real show stopper. The exhibition Ancestral Gifts is curated by Kaffe Fassett and conjunction with The Quilters’ Guild Collection. Kaffe Fassett has taken quilts from the historic collection and used them as inspiration for designing his own quilts, using his own genius use of colour. The quilts hang in pairs, so that you can see how they work together. The museum is a a wash with colour, a feast for the eyes and your allowed to take photographs!
My photographs are substitute for visiting but if you can’t make it to York in the next few weeks they will (hopefully) give you an idea of the quality of the exhibition. So, here are a few of the picis that I took and I’ll share some more with you next week…
07/14/2015
water lilly inspiration…
Last Saturday was a really sunny Saturday, so me and Si decided to head to Burnby Hall. Burnby Hall, is a stunning garden, about half an hour drive from York, which is full of beautiful plants and ponds full water lillies and some of the biggest fish you’ll ever see. It is well worth a visit. As we wandered around, inspiration started to creep in: I could crochet a water lilly! Naturally, I took lots of photos…
Now all I have to do(!) is use the inspiration that I found and spend some hooky time, playing with yarn and experimenting. I’ll let you know how I get along and hopefully very soon I’ll have a pattern to share with you. I’m already thinking a crochet water lilly cushion, or even blanket!
Helen
I love to create beautiful things out of yarn. I love textile crafts, especailly crochet.
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