Silver Apples

We went to Manchester to visit our younger daughter Rosie and see her lovely new flat which is at the top of a tall old house. (It's a few streets away from where I lived as a student, so I always feel nostalgic there - in a nice way). We had a good look round the bright, refurbished rooms and I snapped some pictures of the pretty things to be found there, and then we went out to a cafe.

We all love going to a cafe, and there are plenty to choose from here......

This time we went to Silver Apples on Orchard Street - what a great name. And a lovely cafe, with a quirky continental feel, vintage china, lovely food and amazing homemade cakes displayed on the counter. Sometimes they have live music and they host lots of interesting events too.

And I knew the name reminded me of something - it comes from a poem by W B Yeats:

And walk among long dappled grass

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon

The golden apples of the sun.

I hope you're having a lovely week. x

Crafty Supplies

This week a few interesting packages arrived from various crafty places - with some new supplies to add to my craft stash. I buy fabrics which catch my eye, often with no definite plan for using them, but if I like them I know they will fit in to a project at some point.

I usually buy small amounts of fabric as most of my work is small scale, and often mix different designers ranges together. If I want large pieces of fabric, say for a quilt backing, I choose these separately after the quilt top is completed. These bright and beautiful fabrics came from here.

Buying new craft papers and other embellishments for magazine projects is essential to the success of this type of work. I need to use new and current crafts materials so readers can get hold of the same ones, if they wish to, and to give the work a fresh look. (Well, that's my excuse anyway!)

It's Christmas designing time in my studio at the moment, so some new papers were ordered in ready to be included in the festive creativity. I love Christmas, fortunately, so I can even get enthusiastic about it in August - or any time of year I need to! These crafty Christmas supplies came from here.

Before I go I'd just like to say a great big thank you to the new visitors to my blog this week, especially those who have left me lovely comments. Please do come back again soon!

Have a wonderful weekend. x

Picking the Beans

This year we have been having such a good crop of beans that after our week away there were so many to pick we had to get out all our colanders and enlist the help of the family's smallest gardener too.

We had more than enough beans for ourselves, so we gave some away.

And in return we got these.

And these.

And all these.

So, we did well growing the beans - better not ask about our cauliflowers or corn - but we have high hopes of the tomatoes that are sloooowly ripening right now.... How is your garden growing?

Red and White

One of my all time favourite colour combinations - red and white appear together all around my house - often by chance - and in my work. Here are a few:

Pages from the August 2010 Issue of Cross Stitch Collection featuring an extract from my Home Sweet Home book - this is La Maison Rouge, a vintage French-inspired red and white home sampler, stitched on pure white linen.

A pile of cosy cushions - the top one was a project for Crafts Beautiful magazine earlier this year - it has the words Home Sweet Home stamped onto a little label and sewn on.

Of course the retro 50's look has a lot to do with the appearance of red and white spotted items everywhere, especially thanks to the delights produced by Cath Kidston - I'm nowhere near tired of them yet, are you?? I love my cheery tea towels, mugs and my spotty tablecloth in the studio.

I could go on - there are still more r&w things here... but I'll stop now as I want to do some knitting tonight - which is not red and white but a soft grey! x

It's a Crafty Life

There's a lot of crafting going on in my house at the moment, though I can't show it yet. I'm working on projects that will one day be published so for now I have to keep quiet about them!

The studio is awash with embellishments, scrapbook materials, ribbons and bows, card, paper, paints and pens.

The crafty activity has spread to the dining room where machine sewing takes place and the second iron and ironing board are set up (ever since an incident when the first iron got some left- over bondaweb on a shirt, I keep craft and home ironing separate). And there are jars of beads and boxes of buttons on a shelf in the dining room now, and rather a lot of craft books have gravitated there too (it's a sunny room - I like to read there sometimes).

I really need to tidy up my studio and put everything away again. I find that when I'm in the middle of projects I just can't tidy stuff away, but usually I do at the end of them. Not so this summer - everything is left out and accumulating and I need to spend some time getting organised again.

But for now, it's back to making something new and the exciting creative process beginning again - if I could just find those blue-handled scissors....

Baby Bliss

This is the little pink coat I knitted for delicious little Daisy, our new grandbaby, modelling it here in a very cuddly way.

The pattern is by Debbie Bliss - it's the Matinee Coat from Baby Cashmerino Book 1. It used sizes 2 3/4 mm and 3 1/4 mm needles and 4 50g balls of baby cashmerino in pale pink from here.

This was such a lovely little coat to knit in the softest cosy yarn. The sleeves and yoke are in moss stitch and the main body in stocking stitch. The lacy edging looks so pretty and is surprisingly easy to do - it's added after the rest is knitted.

I think she likes it. x

This Old House

Our house is old - built in the 1870's - and has had many renovations over its lifetime, including some by us. People before us saved it from falling into complete dilapidation by sorting out the basics for which we're very grateful.

Some of the features have been left as they were originally and I like that sense of history you get when you can imagine people from maybe a hundred years ago moving around this space, running their hand down the banisters or opening a door in the dark cellar using that very same latch.

Most of the ceiling mouldings here are quite restrained, for the Victorian era, but there are two rather decorative ones tucked away on a turn in the stairs where hardly anyone notices them.

Old doors, old key holes, long lost keys somewhere.

Well, it wouldn't be a Victorian house without one of these, would it?! It's really quite a hard worn floor now and it doesn't usually gleam like this but the tiles are still damp from a recent mopping!

So, those are just a few pictures of the some of the old bits of this old house, and I'll post a few more another time.

Hope you're having a great weekend. x

Seaside Stitching

While I'm on a seaside theme I thought I'd show you this little coastal inspired picture. As you can tell, it uses several techniques of a stitched and textile nature, including applique, cross stitch, crewel embroidery and patchwork.

The idea for it came from my Spindrift Cottage Sampler, a cross stitch design inspired by a trip to the remote and beautiful Scottish coast. I produced it as a chart years ago, and a lovely lady once wrote to me and told me it was exactly like the place in Scotland where her daughter lived and she was stitching it for her.

I was experimenting here, trying to make sea pinks, shells, boats and buckets from little scraps of fabric with a tiny bit of stitching. I love how a scrap of fabric in a certain colour and with a certain shape can capture the look of an object - there's such a lot of fascinating serendipity in this kind of work.

The words are from the classic poem Sea Fever by John Masefield, written in 1902 - and slightly misquoted by me for design purposes!

I might just keep this as a picture, what do you think? Or maybe I could use it as a panel in a small seaside quilt?

Seaside Knitting

Last week I had a very nice break from my usual routine, and part of the time I indulged in a lot of knitting. I was making the Frankie boyfriend cardigan from Breeze by Kim Hargreaves. It was quite addictive to knit and I had to be prised away from it to go out at night to eat, drink and meet up with various friends - and not talk about knitting and crafts all the time!

I bought this knitting card at the V&A shop earlier this year, for a friend whose birthday was last week. She's a great knitter and I felt sure she'd love it - which she did. Her present was a box of wool!

And look at this - could it be the tiniest wool shop ever? Right by the sea at Moelfre, looking over the beautiful bay and pebbly beach. I discovered Helen's shop last year and was magnetised to it by the sight of wool in the window. It may be tiny but it is absolutely stuffed full of gorgeous wool, patterns and buttons. The perfect work/life balance for some - a wool shop by the sea?

Beside the Seaside

Hello! I'm back from my little break and feeling relaxed and refreshed.

Surprisingly, the seaside was a little bit grey this year, but a lot less windy than last time so the regatta sailing was on for Mr P - and the pottering, knitting, reading, shopping, coffee drinking and generally lazing around were on for me!

When the family came down we added beach combing, paddling, a bouncy castle, and delicious ice creams from the Red Boat for a real seaside day out.

One of the highlights of Beaumaris for me in recent years is a visit - or possibly several - to the lovely Janet Bell Gallery on Castle Street. We love Janet's beautiful paintings and have a lot of prints of her work around our house. The Gallery also has other artists' work, all with a seaside theme, and a range of gorgeous gifts (the kind you want to keep for yourself!)

So now it's back to designing for me - and guess what I'm doing this week? Christmas themed designs - so it must be August now...

I hope you have a good week. x