Casting On

 We are wearing our cardigans again here, and searching in the cupboards for our autumn knits....and last week I ordered some wool ready to cast on a new woolly garment....

 ...the last cosy wool knitting I did was earlier this year when I made this for my younger daughter's birthday. It's the Beth jacket by Kim Hargreaves from her book Amber....

....it's made with Rowan Big wool and  it certainly is BiG and so are the needles...rather HuGe actually and when I first began knitting it was more like grappling and quite a different experience from the usual  knitting one...but it did make a lovely garment with a lovely textured look....

 ...so now the season is on the turn and autumn is bringing us it's treats and treasures as well as damp chills and nights closing in, and I needed to have some new wool and some knitting on my needles again.....

 ....I bought this wool/cotton blend...I love all the Amy Butler colours but the blue is the one I liked best this time....

 ....the pattern is a Sirdar cardigan I've knitted before and I hope when it is finished that Dolly will model it for me....as well as a parcel of lovely wool arriving this week another surprise parcel came for me...I won a giveaway at Fin and Gabs and Andrea sent me a gorgeous collection of treats...

 ...the parcel was beautifully wrapped with a gorgeous little black and white heart charm...Andrea is a talented designer who creates all kinds of lovely stationery designs, including bespoke ones, for her shop Andrea Willis Designs, and for Crafts Beautiful magazine too....I was thrilled to find one of her pretty covered notebooks in the parcel specially personalised for me!!

 ...here are all the treats in the giveaway parcel...I love everything...thank you so much, Andrea! Do go and visit her bright and colourful blog and shop...she has some gorgeous designs .....

I love this little birdie ....when I'm knitting I often make plans and think things through, dream of things I'm going to make and things I want to do...I'm planning to do a bit of knitting and dreaming this bank holiday afternoon, after a busy weekend......click click knit knit...

I hope you have a happy week ahead with time to follow your dreams whatever they may be....thanks for dropping by to my little space today, I love your visits.....back soon xxxxxx

Green and Pink

 As late summer settles down on the garden the potting shed is almost smothered in green and pink as the mallow and cranesbill grow taller and taller. The day lilies and cosmos are flowering happily too, I must take some pictures of them before it's too late and the show is over....

 ....pink flowers are blooming indoors too....I spent a little time when we were away learning how to make simple crochet flowers and then I decided to use just the vivid pink ones for a cushion....

 ...this was also a learning experience...finding out how to crochet the granny squares together...there are so many brilliant video tutorials on the internet for these techniques that I managed to pick it up and I love how neat the look is....

 ...here it is, the green and pink flower cushion...now I've found out about crochet flowers I am thinking of lots of other projects to use them for....it's wonderful to find a new inspiring craft to explore isn't it?

 ...this is my project for this month's Crafts Beautiful magazine...I made the breakfast set as a commission, but now I have it back I think I'll use it...we love leisurely weekend breakfasts with fresh coffee and toast and eggs (and a chipped CK mug too!)....

...and what or who is this?...it's Dolly, my new tailor's dummy who I'm rather pleased with...I'm thinking she will help me display some of my knitting projects soon.... 

...lovely cream twisty wire, lots of places to hang up decorative things on and just the right size to model my cardi's...Dolly is definately here to stay and soon there will be knitting to show....

Thank you for your lovely comments on Daisy's quilt in my last post, I did so appreciate them. And thank you for popping in today to see me...wishing you all a wonderful late summer weekend (we are going to a neighbourhood party in a garden along the road...am hoping the rain keeps away)...hope it's sunny where you are...back soon xxxxxx

A Quilt for Daisy

 This is the quilt I made for my grandbaby Daisy's first birthday.....I used lots of pretty colours for her as you can see, with large daisy like flowers appliqued in the centre...and a few butterflies here and there too....

 ....here it is being sewn...after using bondaweb to fix the flower petals in place I sewed round them with blanket stitch in matching thread...I love this method of applique and it means it is quite robust when being used....and I do love the quilts I make to be used a lot....

 .....hanging up with the flowery nine patch quilt top on my small quilt hanger (it's actually a shabby chic victorian towel rail someone gave us)...I like to look at the finished quilt tops for a while and it reminds me to actually get on  and quilt them ....if i put them away somewhere it's easy to forget about them....

 ....folded up and tied with ribbon ready to give to the little chickadee herself.....

                                                   ......we showed it to her and unrolled it...

                                                     ...and she snuggled right in to it :)....

...now it's at my daughter's house and soon it will be on Daisy's little bed when she moves from her cot...

Thanks for popping in to see me today and for keeping in touch with your lovely comments and emails...it's a strange mix of summer and autumn here...with ripening fruits, warm sunny days, then chilly grey and cloudy ones and that autumn nip in the air...

.....this week I am stitching the flowery nine patch, and making a patchwork cushion, as well as sewing work projects...I have lots of new things to show you too so will be back very soon.... enjoy your week till next time  xxxxxxxx

Making Notes

 My tidying up this week has meant discovering all kinds of things...like these crafty notebooks...I have always loved stationery of all kinds, as a child getting a new supply was the thing that cheered me up when the school holidays came to an end....as a student I loved all the art materials, especially the sketch pads and notebooks just waiting to be filled....

 ....I made this set of handmade notebooks as a Crafts Beautiful project a while ago.....the recipe one has a concertina arrangement of pages with folded down pockets to contain clippings of favourite recipes from magazines as well as hand written ones.....

 ...I especially love garden notebooks, there are always things to try to remember for next year...garden lessons learned about planting (or not planting) and what do well, what to avoid in certain parts of the garden...easily forgotten over the winter months (by me anyway)....I also love collecting garden ephemera in little handmade garden scrapbooks, some of which I'll show another time....

 ....a handy noteblock is always to be found for quick jottings and messages...one of my nieces sometimes leaves me a cute little note on here, or on the kitchen chalk board after a family gathering.....

 ....here is my sewing notebook, also a CB project which I loved making...the plastic tape measure was a free one, but actually plastic tape measures often cost less that ribbon so it's really ok to chop it up for creative projects :).....

 ....another sewing project came winging its way home to me this week....this is my selvedge heart and corsage set featured in this month's Sew magazine.....the heart uses strips from the beloved flower sugar range with little cross stitched flower and heart borders too....

 ...the summery flowery corsage has a cross stitched posy covered button for its centre...I just love covered buttons at the moment and can't wait to make some more....

Thank you so much for dropping into my little crafty world today....I wish you all a wonderful weekend with lots of happy, sunny times whatever you are doing...now I'm off to make a list of things to do in my little notebook..........back very soon xxxxxxxx

Happy Wednesday

 Here I am, in the middle of a big tidy up of my crafts materials, and I thought today  I'd show some pictures I've taken around the house ....not the untidiest bits of course, this is supposed to be nice to look at :)

 I love my summer candles, glassware and flowers, with some shells I've collected too...as soon as dusk falls the candle light looks so pretty reflected from the glass containers...the sweetpeas are still blooming too...

 ....a little jar from the lavender farm we visited filled with some garden snippets...I like it when the jar labels stay on after being wahsed...

 ...when we arrived back at the weekend we received some plums from friends...I can't believe it's already plum time here again....after I'd arranged them....eaten a few mmm delicious....

 ...and taken photos of them in pretty bowls.....I made some crumbles with them.....some to put in the freezer for weekend treats in the future, and one to have immediately warm from the oven with creme fraiche....

                                     ...our first crumble for ages....feels like autumn is almost here....

 ....pictures of yarn are becoming more usual for me now as it keeps appearing all round the house in various bags, baskets and any container that happens to be there when some more woolly goodness arrives.. I am so enjoying acquiring lots of colours which I never bought when I only knitted because they weren't suitable  for wearing...crochet is a real liberation for the use of colour isn't it??

 ....here is a quick picture of some of the simple crochet flowers I've been making, using some of the bright shades of yarn...they are going to be part of my new project which I hope to tell you more about  very soon..

I have some design work to do today, a lovely project for an inspiring magazine editor which I wish I could tell you about now...but all in good time....and then I hope to have a bit of hooky time this evening, and I have a list of other crafty things I want to make ....but first I must just finish off the tidying in here....

Thank you for visiting me here and for your sweet comments and emails I love to hear from you....wishing you a very Happy Wednesday....Back soon xxxxx

Sailing By

Hello!! I'm quickly sailing by today with a short post from our regatta week away...I feel as if I've been away ages this time and have so many blogs to catch up with...the pictures above were taken at Red Wharf Bay , Beaumaris and Caernarvon when we did a bit of exploring before the sailing began...

 ...here is the start of one race, with Mr P's boat in there too...I love watching them sail, and the Menai Straits is a great place to see the racing going on...

...some pictures of Beaumaris and the pretty pastel buildings...it is a very old town with a medieval castle, steeped in history and has a wonderful unspoilt atmosphere...each time I stay here I especially love to visit the Janet Bell Gallery where the mix of Janet's paintings and a variety of other artists work is always vibrant and exciting...you can visit them online here too... 

 We bought a gorgeous new print to add to our collection ...this is Penmon Pebbles by Janet Bell...

...and did I do lots of crafting while I was away you may be wondering? well, not nearly as much as I expected, what with the meeting up with friends and the sight seeing and the popping into the shops and watching the boats...I did some of my nine patch quilt, stitching in the ditch and in diagonal lines across the squares, and a teeny bit of crochet, learning to make flowers which I will show you in another post...and I did some work but not enough...so have lots to catch up with..

Thank you for all your lovely comments on my last post (seems like ages ago doesn't it?) about my first crochet blanket, it was so nice to read them all! Thanks for dropping by today too, I love your visits..I am going now to do all the chores that a week away seems to provide...Hope you are all having a great weekend! Back very soon xxxxx

Crafty Summer

It's a very crafty summer here at my house, with an extra injection of bright colour from all the new crochet that has been going on.....and almost to my surprise, the very first blanket I began is finished!!!!! I realised last week that I had now accumulated rather a lot of grannie squares, making them whenever I had a spare moment,  when we were away, in a traffic jam on the motorway, watching movies and old (not yet watched by us) seasons of Mad Men, chatting to friends and family....and when I put them all together I had enough for my blanket....

 ...so I sewed them together, and then began to crochet a border using a few colours from the collection...round and round, I really loved that bit....wasn't quite sure when to stop.....

 ...some crafty colours with the grandbabies...they love my art and craft materials and I have to race around moving dangerous things like paint, scissors, pins, needles and so on when they come over to my house...Daisy really loves the wool, like a little kitten she gets all tangled up in it... and they both loved the tactile feel of the grannie squares both before and after they were sewn together....

 ...a close up of some of the squares, randomly made and randomly sewn together - apart from not actually placing two the same colour together that's about as intentional as this creation was...

 ....the partly completed border....I added some stronger green and blue to finish off the edge after this round of rose pink....

 .....everyone loves the blankie! Everyone wants one too....and some want to learn to crochet one themselves......and I want to keep crocheting now I've discovered it so another project is about to begin....

 I am making this post a bit longer than usual to make up for the fact that I'll be away again next week...Each year Mr P sails in the Menai Straits Regatta and we go to stay in the pretty seaside town of Beaumaris on the Isle of Anglesey. We meet up with friends there, some who sail, some who don't, and all have a good time...I'm happy being at the seaside and pottering about while Mr P is sailing...I'm also taking some of my design work to do and this year I will be taking some crochet too...Above is a detail of my Regatta Quilt, made a few years ago and inspired by watching the fleet of boats against the blue sea, sailing round Puffin Island....

 ...I made two little collages of  some of this season's crafty makes, just a random selection...the pinwheel patchwork cushion, Daisy's sampler, a bit of Daisy's quilt, the flower pot embroidery....

...the sailor bunny, the home sweet home heart, the with love heart (I gave this one to my lovely mum for mother's day), and the finished little doll quilt with matching pillow...I do love this crafty life very much as you can see...

 And a big thank you to all of you who crochet and show pictures of your beautiful makes on your blogs to inspire crochet beginners to give it a go...I'm so glad I did!!

Thank you for popping in to visit me here and for your sweet comments, always sooo appreciated and enjoyed. I hope the sun shines, the flowers bloom and you enjoy a crafty summer week while I'm away. Back soon xxxxx