Crochety!

The sun streaming through the windows encouraged me out into the garden to take some autumn photographs - clogged up with leaves as it is! Still a few summer herbs, and good old geranium. The bird house gets used as a perching post, but not for nesting, and the large bug hotel appears empty, but the one Jim made  has three or four residents I think.

     Hanging on to my parsley for grim death! Of course, when the frost hits, that will be it for the year.

           I'm hoping the chards - white and rainbow, will see us through winter, along with the kale.

                                Back of the cottage in the late afternoon autumn sunshine.

                                              Really pleased the bug house is being used!

                                                   And still the cranesbill survives!

I've really got back into crochet the last month or so; perhaps it's the weather! Lovely to cosy up with a basket of gorgeous wool and a crochet hook when the evenings are dark and the temperature drops. Colour-schemes buzzing round my head all the time.

I'm very excited that my wool has arrived for Lucy's (Attic 24)  latest  "Moorland" blanket, though it has to sit on the back burner until January when she begins the Crochet Along pattern on her blog. I haven't even opened the bag in case I'm tempted to dive in and use the wool!

I do have a fair amount of Stylecraft yarn which I've just boosted with a small delivery, in order to begin my own latest blanket which I am calling "OCEAN". I'm using the Lucy pattern from her Cosy Stripe Blanket, but have come up with my own colour scheme. A little like her Moorland idea, I used the natural colours of an outdoors scene. I wanted to depict the colours from the grassy dunes, down to the beach, and into the ocean. I haven't used a photograph, and my colours repeat as a block rather than as Lucy has done hers following the vertical striations of the photograph. (If that sounds skew-iff,  I mean the striations are horizontal in a vertical context.) I think that's what I mean anyway.

This is my "Cosy Stripe" blanket, using Lucy's pattern and colour scheme. This is our favourite of all the Lucy blankets I've made. It works up very quickly and soothingly.

OK so this is MY colour scheme for "OCEAN" It begins with four shades of green, depicting the grassy dunes, the sea-buckthorn, samphire and other seashore grasses. Then comes the dry sand at the top of the beach, followed by the damper sand closer to the sea. Then comes the almost white surf, and four more shades of blue as the water gets deeper and further away from the shore.  This 'colour repeat' is only 22 rows whereas Lucy's moorland depicts the entire vertical slice of her photograph, and is one single scheme with no repeat. (although colours are repeated obviously).

Here I'm just beginning the first repeat. I love all these shades, so am excited afresh each time I change colour! "OCEAN" is intended as a gift for someone special, but no more about that just yet.

As a break from the blanket I'm using up all those little balls of left-overs to make solid granny squares. NO IDEA what I'm going to do with them, but they are building up nicely into a little pile; I'll just keep going with them until I have sufficient to do something with.

Each little ball makes roughly four or five squares. More left-overs will accrue, so obviously this is an on-going project.

                   More greens required - and some shades of red too, I think. Time will tell.

Rummaging through the sewing room, I found a basket of multicoloured granny squares which I began years and years ago - I'd forgotten all about them. They are a pretty disparate crowd, but I have thoughts about adding a couple of rows and pulling them together with one or two colours, so they will blend more easily. Again, no real idea of the outcome, but there will be enough of them for a throw.

The light in my sewing room wasn't the best when I took this shot; the squares are much brighter than they appear here. And of course, greens never seem to come out properly on the blog, for some reason!

No other stitchery going on at the moment, I am obsessing about crochet - and you know me - one obsession at a time! But of course I am cooking and reading, and even doing a little gentle walking! Yes! Me! I hope you are all finding something  lovely to obsess about and are enjoying yourselves.

EDIT :  APOLOGY!!!!  Whilst publishing the comments for the previous post, I inadvertently clicked on the "DELETE" instead of "PUBLISH" but I cannot for the life of me remember whose comment it was. Please, if you commented and haven't seen it posted, let me know - I never delete a comment and would hate someone to think I have whisked their kind comment away without publishing it!

Autumn Colour

No, I can't believe it either - two blog posts in ONE WEEK! Just like the old days! And don't be mislead by the title - this isn't about fallen leaves and gloriously hued trees - though there is much evidence of fallen leaves to be fair. It's about the colourful things in the cottage and garden which are still providing me with pleasure as the season gets a little murkier.

In the header photograph you can see my favourite cardigan - and no, I didn't knit it, don't be silly! But I DID crochet the little bag which tones so well with it. This is Lucy's (Attic 24) Weekend Bag and I chose the Heatwave colour scheme specifically to go with the cardigan. It's made using chunky wool and worked up in absolutely no time at all. A real joy to crochet.

Off out into the garden, and - aside from the profusion of fallen leaves still littering the place despite Jim's hard work with the leaf blower - there are still so many flowers hanging on in there long after they should be gone. A real delight, especially the fuchsias.

I was amazed to discover that last hollyhock, hiding behind the bins! And it hasn't been long since the rose decided to call it a day.

And speaking of crochet, HOW long have I had this granny stripe on the back-burner? The actual blanket was finished ages ago, but the ends needed darning in and the border put on. I finally sat and did the darning over the weekend, while the rugby was on, and began the pistachio border, but have run out of wool and am waiting for a delivery. Behind it over the back of the chair is one of my ripple blankets, also an Attic 25 pattern. She gives such full and clear instructions and detailed photographs of every stage, just what I need! It has been very soothing trebling along round the border, and I have another two rows to go - bliss!

Some more gorgeous colour which delights me each time I go into the kitchen.

On my lovely trolley I keep some of my favourite ceramic bits and pieces, my lemon/eggs/garlic storage and this fab food cover, isn't it pretty in pink? My blue and white salt pig we bought in Sienna many many years ago;  the lid is cracked and repaired, and the rim has a few chips taken out of it, but I will never part with it.

And how about these beauties! The spoon rest we found in Larners, up in Holt earlier this year, and the five small dishes I bought there also. When we were in Mallorca in September we found a shop selling the same patterned ware as the spoon, so we snapped up the three dipping bowls, and yes, we do use them for all sorts of things. (I have to say they were a lot cheaper in Mallorca than Holt, but you'd expect that!) It pleases my eyes immeasurably to glance at these items while I prep and cook. To my mind, colour gladdens the heart, and we could all do with a bit more of that these days! Toodle-pip, I won't promise to be as quick with the next post, but you never know!

Atrociously Belated!

What can I say? Beware, other bloggers - if you leave it too long it becomes almost impossible to get back on track!  So much has happened - quite naturally - since I last blogged, I think it easier to just pop some photos up with a short description. But then… you know how difficult I find it to be brief once I get started!

First, we had a trip to Mallorca, in September, just to have a break and some sunshine and meet up with our friends Trini and Steve, who live there.

 
   Jim in the square, in the small town of Soller, where we stayed. We began most days with a coffee in      the square, before deciding what - if anything - we would do for the day!

            View from our patio across the orchard where the two holiday casitas had been built.

                       
                                      Looking down the orchard towards Soller.

The tram we took to reach the beach at Puerta de Soller, a twenty minute scenic route, full of local colour!

Puerta de Soller, with its yachts and fishing smacks, sandy beach, tourist shops, and beach restaurants.

                                                   Our seafood lunch. Mmmmmmmmm!

Steve up at the farm, demonstrating how the grapes become wonderful red wine, in his vintnery.

 And lastly, one of our favourite places to stop for an afternoon helado or ice cream. We also ate dinner under those sunshades most evenings.

In October, Jim and I met up with some old Naval Medical Branch friends near Brighton. We spent 3 days catching up on old times and having dinner in a different place each night! Our hotel was in Rottingdean.

          Our room overlooked the beach. The weather wasn't brilliant, but I rather liked this snap!

                Evening number one: Chinese meal for eight. Yes! A rare one of me!

I had barely got my suitcase unpacked from Brighton, when my friend Pat and I flew off to Barcelona!
Pat had been twice before, with her husband Dave, but it was a place I'd longed to visit - mainly, as you'll have guessed, for the mosaics!

Our hotel was right on La Rambla, so we ate out each night at a different pavement cafe. The first night I ordered sangria - and was a tad taken back when it arrived in a half-litre glass. I didn't finish it!

We took an open top bus ride around the city. Some of the architecture was magnificent, some of it designed by Gaudi.

               See the sky? It was like that much of the time we were there. No sunglasses required!

                                                                              The Harbour.

                                                                          Up at Park Guell

             The model of Gaudi's Familia Segrada, which was almost as close as we got, sadly.

          The beautiful paint-and-plaster covered buildings at Park Guell I was spoilt for choice!

                                    View from Park Guell across the city to the coast.

                      Ah! The mouth-wateringly beautiful mosaics - I didn't know where to start!

                                  You just want to take them all home!

                                                        I swear if I'd had a sharp knife with me………

                                                 Another view over the roof-tops.

                                                                   More deliciousness!

                                                     Mrs County Commissioner - the Natural Poser!

                                                                  Yet more!

Sadly, we got to Familia Segrada at 1030 to find the next available entrance was 1830 that evening! The crowds were HUGE! So we decided we'd get our tickets and come back later. Only to find that as we reached the front of the queue, all the available tickets had sold out. Come back tomorrow! Well, too late for us, as we were flying out the next day. HUGELY disappointed. We understood the  reason for it, but nowhere was it made plain that you should really book the day before to ensure you got inside. So many people were turned away, and more coaches arriving as we left - hundreds of people would not have got in that day. We felt it could have been better advertised.

This is as close as we got. It is really breathtaking, and as you can see, Gaudi's masterpiece remains a work in progress - the scaffolding is not for repairing the building, but for the continuation of the plans Gaudi laid down when he designed it.

                                              Everywhere you look there is immense detail.

 We didn't get to see everything we'd intended on our flying trip to Barcelona, but it certainly stood up to my expectations in every way, and I'm sure one day I'll go back - booking some tours in advance!

So, I'm more or less up to date now, I must get back into the swing of things and post regularly. Thank you to lovely Connie who always comments on my posts and has been asking after me during my long break! And now, I must catch up with reading all my favourite bloggers, I've got way out of date with them. See you all soon!