Colour My Life

 Isn't this wonderful? It's a dinky little DAB radio in a leather duck-egg blue case. Bought by my son   Mike and his lovely partner Vicki for Christmas ESPECIALLY to fit into the summer house. It just looks so PERFECT in there.

     Looks equally good on the shelf or on my little pale green side table. Just THE PERFECT gift!

  My Cosy Stripe Blanket (Lucy from Attic 24 pattern) I omitted a couple of her colours and changed   the order here and there. Not too fond of the spice (orange) but accept it is part of the autumn colour scheme she chose. Actually, we think it feels quite Christmassy.

   Below, some crochet shapes I've been experimenting with. The first circles are crocheted in Noro   Secret Garden - I love the variegated nature of this silk/wool yarn.

 
Granny Squares. I get a bit fed up fastening off and restarting but I do enjoy the way the colours blend.This is of course good old Stylecraft Special DK. Cheap as chips and lovely colours.

Now then, this was an attempt at free-form crochet, which turned into a kind of wavy circle… I may carry on, do a little decreasing to mitigate the frilliness, and see if it becomes a shawl…. the yarn is Lisa Harding's Amitola which is a 4-ply wool/silk mix. It looks wonderful in the ball, but I hated the way it crocheted in rows, the colours do not meld together very well in lines. However, I do like the way it works in an ever increasing circle.

Here you can see a basket of yarn and the beginnings of ANOTHER blanket - the Granny Stripe no 2. I started out looking at Lucy's Harmony Squares colour scheme, but then decided to do my own version. Same shades as the granny squares above. My Granny Stripe Mk1, made about 5 years ago, will move into the caravan.

     Below, some felty colourfulness in the sewing room. Also known as The Black Hole of Calcutta!

     My collection of pro markers, for all that "grown-up colouring-in" we are so fond of these days!

       And to finish up, a couple of photos of some brightly coloured pottery in my kitchen. Love it!

I hope these colours have brightened up your day - they certainly keep me feeling happy. This will be my last blog-post this year, and maybe into 2016 - but I shall definitely be back! I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a happy healthy and fortune-filled New Year, and I will be back very soon.

Hooking in the Summer House

I don't know about you, but we have been very lucky weather-wise here in West Norfolk, recently. We went to Norwich yesterday to book our flights for Christmas in New Zealand, and had the best of the day in sunshine there, windy and rainy by the time we got home. Then again today it has been brilliant sunshine ALL day. Chilly, yes, but to be fair it hasn't been unpleasant. Jim's been working in the garden all day, and by lunchtime I decided the sun was too good to waste so I took myself down to the summer house to crochet. No heating yet, as we still have the electrics to be connected up, but was lovely and sunny and pretty comfortable with a warm cardigan and thick socks to keep me warm!

It really was peaceful, the clock ticking away in a slow, sleepy fashion, me hooking away happily, safe from marauding cold-callers on the phone, and, later, Jim joined me for a mug of coffee. We love our new sunny space! Do you want to see a few more photos of what we've done? Of course you do!

This is my view of where Jim sits, there is the coffee table I painted earlier this year, the pale blue oak chest Jim found in Ely Antiques, and the cheap mirror I found at The Range and painted chalk green. Just peeping into shot is the settle we found in a junk shop in Wymondham; I had intended painting it, but we like it the way it is. Two cosy quilts complete the picture.

Oh, and the little side table I painted mauve, was a tenner from another junk shop in Wymondham!

The settle before I put the quilts on it. The rug is an old, rather flood-damaged Laura Ashley which I can't bear to part with!

It has all come together beautifully, and we are extremely pleased with it. I'd been busy making crocheted throws for our chairs, way before the room was built.

They are made with Rico Cotton Blend and were lovely to work up. Jim's is, naturally, the more restrained blue and green one. I think they look rather good draped casually over the side of our chairs!

Once I'd finished the throws I was lost until I decided to have a go at Lucy's (Attic 24) Ripple Blanket. I have always loved this pattern but never believed I could manage the pattern (My crochet is very basic!) But her instructions are SO GOOD and very simple to follow, with photos every step of the way. So I took the plunge, and when we were up in Hexham the other month I found a lovely wool shop and she had the Ripple draped over a chair in the shop, with the yarns required in a basket beneath. Serendipitous, I'd say, wouldn't you? So I got stuck in, and once I had learned each stitch and how to do the increase / decrease, I was away.

And here it is! There are some colours which I'm not too happy with, so didn't repeat them, but on the whole I love it.

What do you think? And would you believe, I  have begun another using slightly different colours! You can just see a tiny bit of it in the header photo on my little side table.

So, it's been all go here, with one thing and another. Some majorly sad events at both world and domestic level, and we have all been deeply shocked and dismayed. I hope none of you have been personally affected. Suffice to say that I hope you join me in staying calm and refusing to be drawn into  victimisation. Unity is what they hate and fear, let's stand together in refusing to play their wicked game.

Finishing off- as one should - with the weather. We are expecting Wintery Weather soon in the UK. How seasonal! As long as the airports don't close down until we are safely airborne! Take care and catch up with you next time.

An Eventful Month

I'm in a really strange position of having cleared a lot of "stuff" out of my life (not necessarily for ever) in order to calm things down a little, and yet still feeling I'm on a roller coaster, because the weeks are flying by and I'm barely keeping up with what's going on. Sadly I'm not making much headway on the music front, just can't find my way back into it, and we've been so so few gigs lately I've forgotten what's happening where! Also, I had to cancel two craft fair events due to stuff happening at home. So that's two things I really enjoy doing which seem to be very much on the back burner at the moment.

I did finish this latest appliquéd blanket cushion cover, I love the colour scheme, the wool felt appliqué really "pops" against the deep blue blanket. The header photo shows a cushion cover and a throw I crocheted to go over the back of my chair in the summer house going up in the garden. Speaking of which, here's a photo of the concrete base, waiting for the guys to build the rest of it. I can't wait to start putting in the things we've discovered on our tour of the junk shops, though some of them still have to be cleaned up and painted. I'll be sure to show you the results.

 On the baking front, I've been experimenting with sourdough again, and, armed with a starter gifted to me by a friend, I've made a couple over the past two weeks. They were quite tasty, though I didn't get the rise I'd hoped for. Since then I think I've managed to kill off the starter, unfortunately.

Back to the garden, we've still got a few flowers hanging around, though they are mostly struggling to show their heads above the sea of fallen leaves. And in the plastic bins are some parsley and chard, rescued from my Square Foot Garden which has had to be re-sited because of the sumner house.

In the space of half a dozen weeks, we have celebrated my birthday, Jim's birthday, and our 45th Wedding Anniversary. We're still amazed to be able to say that, it's a bit of a record these days, but we know how lucky we are to still have each other, because very sadly a good friend of ours recently died unexpectedly at home. It's taking a while for it to sink in to be honest; for a short guy Dave had a very big personality. Coming suddenly like that it certainly makes you pause and count your blessings. I hope you all have lots of wonderful things to find yourselves blessed with!