Enjoying, 17!

Hello, 

Enjoying, and with disbelief, that daughter celebrated her 17th birthday on Friday!

Daughter has a habit of never being at home for her birthday. 

Her birthday usually falls during the autumn half term and sometimes we have been

 away as a family but last year daughter was away on a school trip so we didn't 

see her at all on her 16th birthday. 

This year she was at a two-day football tournament in Cambridge. We eventually 

caught up with her late afternoon on her birthday.  

Next year she has vowed that she will spend all her 18th birthday with us, and 

has already requested that brothers must be present too.  

Enjoying Cambridge in all its autumnal glory. 

We used to live here...I miss it. 

Enjoying two football matches, daughter in action .... playing central 

defence for a change and outrunning the forward!

Enjoying mid air antics to clear the ball - number 6!

Enjoying her cake belatedly. I had promised to bake her favourite birthday cake but 

being away for two days scuppered these plans. 

Enjoying the reflections on my new candle holder.  

Enjoying more of those autumn views and late sun from the bedroom 

windows as I vacuumed and dusted.

Enjoying all those nostalgic moments invoked by dusting my dressing table - 

daughter has brought back these tins for me from her school trips, she knows my taste!

Enjoying the possibilities these little goodies promise - bought from 

John Lewis in Cambridge. Definitely a rosy, Christmas theme going on! 

Enjoy your weekend.

xXx

"This and that"

Hello,

This is going to be a bit of a "this and that" post today - nothing very substantial, nothing

 particularly exciting to report but that is how life has been the last couple of weeks - it's 

been a case of catching up on work and home life.  

So there has been very little crafting, quite a bit of reading and this weekend, a lot of 

lazing around and a long-ish lie in until 9.30 am today which is very unlike me. We have 

had a weekend with no children, still a relatively rare event thankfully despite 2 now being 

at university, and pretty bad timing considering that today is Mother's Day, but husband 

and I enjoyed a very nice meal out yesterday and a light lunch out today and all my plans 

for exercise (walking and cycling) wandered off into thin air!

We didn't even have a football match to attend today, although as husband and I drove past 

a match this lunchtime between 2 teams of teenage boys I did find myself looking 

longingly at the game!

Anyway, "This and that number 1": reading

This week I read 'The Miniaturist' by Jessie Burton in about 5 days - this is pretty good

 going for me but it meant very little else got done, and definitely no crafting.

I enjoyed this book, it wasn't particularly cleverly written but the story was a bit

 different and held my attention. I would recommend it. 

"This and that number 2": smoothie makers!

Daughter loves smoothies and up to now has made them in my food processor, but it does

 create a lot of washing up. She had started to talk about smoothie makers where you make the 

smoothie in the bottle you also drink from, thereby reducing the amount of washing up. And so 

I treated daughter/the family to a smoothie maker and it's great! So easy to use and so little 

washing up - always a winning argument for me!

"This and that number 3": cross stitching

Yes, I said I'd done little crafting this week and this is a sort of cheat because I actually finished

 this little item last weekend, but haven't yet posted a photo so slipped him in here. 

This is another one of my little hanging cross stitch decorations - and I have stitched this

 little sheep before, here. 

However, this one was for elder son to take back to his room at University as I thought it

 looked bare the last time I was there. My sons are very accommodating and humour me 

with my crafts. Son did say he would hang it up - I finished this in a slightly different way to 

the one I made for home, hopefully to make it a little more masculine - I did check that he was

 happy for me to use spotty ribbon and the twig was an integral part of the design too!

"This and that number 4": magazine treats

I don't buy huge numbers of magazines and have never had a subscription to one, but I do

 like to browse the shelves of craft and home style magazines. And for me, a magazine is a

 relatively inexpensive treat (I very rarely pay more than £5 for a magazine, any more and I

 think it's a bit of a rip-off!)

So two treats in the last couple of weeks - firstly an old favourite CrossStitcher. I never

 have time to make many ideas from this magazine but enjoy browsing the photos and I

 like the free gifts - this month a keyring kit in the style of a house. 

The cottage reminds me of a little decoration that I made and posted about here 

taken from Helen Philipp's book Home Sweet Home.

I love this tablet cover in the latest CrossStitcher. 

My second purchase was 'Prima makes'. Now this magazine has a whole host of different 

crafts and I doubt I will make many from it at all, but I am really enjoying browsing through it

 and some fairly quick craft ideas caught my attention. 

I love these simple Easter felt decorations. 

And these decorations made from air-drying clay - these would be so simple to

 make and so much fun!

 I always love heart sachets - and I like the relatively plain, tactile material used here.  

These little containers for bits and pieces are pretty - I could imagine these on my dressing

 table holding cotton wool. 

 And one of my favourite projects has to be this cute bunny knitted in baby cashmerino

 - he would be so soft and snuggly!

Well, that is the end of my "this and that". 

I hope you have all had an enjoyable Mother's Day and wish you all a good week.

I'm off to the Sewing for Pleasure show at the NEC, Birmingham on Friday - it includes

 knitting too. I shall have to be very restrained with my purchases! 

xXx 

My 3 year table runner!

Hello again,

Yes, I was pretty happy yesterday because I finished a Christmas table runner that I 

started 3 years ago! I'm so happy to finish an uncompleted project.

This was a pretty simple runner - I bought a selection of Christmassy fabrics off the market at a very reasonable price and literally cut rectangular/square shapes from the fabric and sewed together in a very rough and ready patchwork fashion. 

My aim was then to quilt it but that went disastrously wrong and I ended up unpicking all the quilting stitches and I finally decided on just using an old flannelette sheet as wadding to give it a bit of body and folded the plain green backing fabric over to the top side to act as an edging. 

 

Please don't look too closely as the edges are not straight!  

It's quite long! 

It's far from perfect but it will brighten up our table and it is FINISHED - YAY!

I also finished four cross stitched Christmas cards - two of which are now winging their way to far corners of the globe! The other two are staying nearer to home.

And my final completed project for now was this little cross stitch kit purchased from Hobbycraft, I think last year, which I made up into a little hanging ornament with a few added embellishments. 

 

 I enjoyed making this so think I may make a detour home from work one evening this week and call in at Hobbycraft to see if they have any other little kits of interest. 

 I am enjoying all the project ideas I see bloggers sharing on line - it gives me so much inspiration.

 I hope your Christmas project making is going well - have a good week

xXx 

Over a month!

Hello,

Yes I have just realized that it is over a month since I last posted!

And those few weeks have gone by in a whoosh!

• new job

• making a start on sort out our house a bit

• visiting 2 sons in Sheffield (yes, still find it hard to believe that both sons are now studying at university in Sheffield)

• a half term train trip to Sweden and Denmark (for me and husband) 

• and a school trip to Morocco for daughter which was a bit of "school trip from hell" with two thirds of the pupils suffering a sickness bug!!

 But anyway, I have managed to squeeze in a bit of reading and a bit of crafting in the last few weeks - especially this weekend when I was particularly lazy and spent several hours crafting. 

Firstly, I have at last finished the notebook cozy for my daughter - I posted about the notebook cozy I knitted for me to use here - I love it while at the same time thinking it is a crazy idea!

And I'm still loving that yarn - so no surprise that I've now added a few more balls to my collection!

I also love making Christmas decorations. I have made quite a few over the years but I give them away either as gifts or to our scout group for them to sell on their craft stall. I have kept a few for myself but realized I had several in various stages of construction so last weekend I finished the half-completed decorations and now have a reasonable selection of stockings, Christmas puddings, mittens and hearts!

And this is the very satisfying view I could see round my feet - ribbons, felt, cottons,

 cross stitch charts, buttons, evenweave fabric -  all waiting for me to be creative

 with them - the possibilities are endless!!

 

 

Right, off to catch up on some blogs!

Hope you are all and happy crafting!

xXx

On Thursday I bought.....

Last week Sue, from sweetpea family, made me smile because she wrote this post explaining how she nipped into John Lewis and ended up buying 40 balls of wool, too many to hide behind the sofa or under the bed!

I'm sure quite a few of us know exactly how Sue is feeling. So I thought I would write a little confession.

On Thursday I bought.......

Yes, this was my little haul from Hobbycraft. 

My nearest store is in the city about 20 miles from where I live but it is also in the city where I work. This could be bad news except for the fact that it is the other side of the city, so temptation is kept at bay - phew! 

But last Thursday I had to visit a different part of our campus on the way home. Now, to be completely honest, the campus I had to visit is only a short distance from where I work and I hardly have to make a detour from my usual route home to go there but because this visit had changed my whole routine ever so slightly AND because it is the school holidays and so I don't have a tight time schedule to stick to, I decided to drive over to the other side of the city and come home via Hobbycraft. Makes complete sense doesn't it?

And what a great little selection I bought - supplies for cross stitch, crochet, sewing and stationery! There, I've made my confession and boy, does it feel good!

(the only downside was that when I got home and showed my goodies to my daughter she said she would like to go - so I guess we'll just have to make a special trip sometime....oh dear, such a shame!!!

Have a good week

xXx

We must be artists!

Hello,

I had a fantastic week away recently with my son and while away we visited a couple of art museums. There was an 'interesting' selection of art on display, and with neither me or my son being art experts I'm afraid we were heard to utter several times "how can that be considered art?" Such Philistines!

But there were a couple of pieces of art which caught my attention for different reasons. Firstly, I saw this painting by Thomas Eakins, entitled Mrs Mary Arthur an dated 1900.

And here is the accompanying description of the painting.

It amused me that Mrs Arthur was described as being "absorbed in an old-fashioned manual task". I can't quite decide what that "old-fashioned task" might be. At first I thought she was crocheting but she looks to have a long hook/needle in her hand. Is she maybe tatting? I really don't know, but I was slightly put out that whatever she was doing was considered 'old-fashioned'. I can only hope that the description of the painting was written some years ago and pre-dated the current revival of knitting and crocheting. 

The next piece of art that caught my eye was this. It was hung in the Museum of Modern Art, although I'm afraid I failed to make a note of the artist or the title of the piece. Personally I don't particularly like the piece; I think the colours are drab. 

I'm sorry too that the photo isn't of better quality - by this time I was hurrying after my son who was only really interested now in the most popular pieces of art on display. 

But, the above piece is approximately 5 feet square and comprises strips of material sewn together. My first thought was "it's a quilt!". And sure enough when I read the description it said that the artist was inspired to make this piece after watching his mother sew quilts when he was child.

So, my first thought was "when does a piece of 'craft' become 'art'?

But then I realised that I found the description of this piece very heartening. 

Clearly this suggests that for all of us who knit, crochet, sew etc - each article we make is a piece of art! 

I never considered myself an artist before!

So what will your next piece of art be?

 xXx

Craft books 2

Hello

A few weeks ago I posted about a recent purchase I'd made of three craft books. I thought I would share with you another craft book I have - this one a knitting book, and here it is....

The Knitted Home by Sian Brown.
(Coincidentally it has the same title as one of the books in my previous post.)
Look at the cute little green basket by the side of the chair.

 This book was a Christmas present from my eldest son a couple of years ago. I gave him a list of books I'd like and let him choose one to buy - he told me he chose this one because he thought I could knit things for our home.

I love the throw pictured below - those cables look so chunky!

As I said in my previous post, I don't often make things from my craft books - I prefer instead to browse through them and use them for inspiration, but I was determined to make something from this book.

Not long after I received this book we bought some new bedroom furniture and I decided the dressing table desperately needed some mats to protect the surface. Then I noticed the pattern for the placemats below - look at the stitch definition on those mats!

So I decided I would knit a placemat and use it on my dressing table.....

...and here is the result.

My crochet edging is a little ruffled but I'm generally happy with the result.

(The little tin was a gift from my daughter - she brought it back from a skiing holiday with school - she knew I'd love the design and colours of it - and she was right!)

And as I was happy with the result I made another one, this time edging it with green.

 Unusually for me, I even used the yarn that they used in the book, which is Patons DK 100% cotton. I have fallen in love with this yarn.  I am using it to crochet my stripey blanket which I have posted about here and here. So the green and pink yarn edging my mats are the same green and pink in the blanket pictured below, so it will all match.... once the blanket is finished.

 Other tempting patterns in the book include this throw knitted in a very smooth yarn, so different to the chunky throw above.

And we all love this large cushion with larger-than-life leaves (the colours are much brighter in the book than in this photo)

And this is the photo on the back cover - a pile of yarny goodies!!

I wonder which are your favourite craft books.

Wishing you a happy weekend - an extra long one for those of us in the UK!

xXx

(Please note: this is not a paid advert, it is just my review of a book on my shelf)