Snapshots of a week

♥ High tea with friends on Sunday.  I thoroughly enjoyed this and have plans to make this a regular feature of life in our house.  Cake, cheesy nibbles and wine.  Dreamy, dreamy!

Look - a bowl of tomatoes - just to prove it wasn't all high-sugar, high-calorie fare. Tokenism, that's what it is.

♥ Some of my beautiful new Pip collection.  It gives me a little thrill every time I catch sight of the dresser.  Once upon a time it used to be Hobbs shoes, now it's plates....

♥ A lovely, sunny day at home with my two smallest babes.  All the more lovely because my middlest child was supposed to be at school, so it felt a bit naughty.  (If you happen to be a teacher and reading this - he did have a temperature the night before, honest.)  We pottered and potted:

♥ My first session on my new and lovely allotment (more, oh so much more, on this to come):

Do you know what Mr N said when he saw this photo?  'Bloody hell, look at my hairline.'  You'd need a magnifying glass to even see his head, but like a laser, his eyes were drawn to it.  Pa-ra-noid.

♥ Still working away on my granny ripple blanket and really, really loving it:

I'm in ripple heaven, me. x

Summer hols blanket ta-dah

Brave little hyacinths making a stand against the glum weather....I love 'em.

I, like the flowers, am making a stand against the air of cold/damp/back-to-school-blues that's pervading my house at the moment.  I'm standing on the side of all things bright and cheery and I'm finally ready to 'ta-dah' my summer hols blanket.  Had you forgotten all about it?  I confess that I did finish it quite a few weeks ago, but it's only now that I've been able to get my scrambled-egg head around photographing it.  (I'll add an aside here: my head is feeling a lot less like scrambled egg now than it was in the month or so leading up to Christmas, but I've still managed to double-book myself tomorrow and I'm on the horns of a dilemma about what to do.  Gaaah.)

So...with a small drum roll, I present you with: the summer hols blanket:

Ta-daaaaaah!

The vital statistics are as follows:

* I used Rico Creative cotton - two balls of each of the eight colours, plus one extra for the edge of the edge, and fourteen of the white (I think)

* the pattern is from here

* I made 180 hexagons and filled the edges in with half-hexagons, which are a bit wibbly, but I don't mind a bit of wibble every now and then

* the edging is just two rows of double crochet - the first in white and the second in pistachio

* some of the colour combos are a bit suspect, and if I were making it again I wouldn't use the dark blue, but on the whole I'm really, really pleased with it and I cuddle up under it with a certain sense of pride.

So there you have - my second blanket done and dusted - the first one wasn't just a fluke after all!

Unbelievably, I am half way through my third...(check me out - there's no stopping me and my hook now...)  It's made in Rico Creative cotton again and it's for my number one son, who may be nearly nine but who still loves a cuddle under a blanket with his mummy as much as he ever did!  My head is also full of ideas for a dreamy shawl, but I really, really want to make sure I get the right pattern and yarn before I start.  I'm trying to break the habit of a lifetime and be patient and think it through before I jump in with both my feet before I really know what I'm doing.  (It's hard, I can tell you - I have the patience of a gnat, and once I decide I want to do something I am virtually unstoppable.  Poor old Mr N, I must be a nightmare to live with!) x

A little teeny bit of a catch up

Erm, okaaaay, so it's been a while...I'm thinking that if I just write like I've never been away then maybe you won't notice...attempting to fill you in on all my goings-on over the past two weeks would, frankly, be a) daft and b) a bit boring for all of us, so here are the edited highlights, presented in bullet point form (I used to have a proper job once upon a time, you know, one where I was forever using bullet points.  There's not so much call for them now I spend my days running around after small, noisy people...)
✪ I have hoovered the entire contents of not just one but two boxes of Rice Krispies off the floor/worktop/bread board/cooker.
✪ I have caught a regurgitated marshmallow as it flew from middle n's mouth (think Witches of Eastwick and you have an idea of what my Saturday night was like).  Nice.
✪ I have finished my blinds!  Yaaaaaaayyyyyyy....no more goldfish bowl-effect sitting room for us:

I'm absolutely thrilled with them - they have turned out exactly how I'd pictured them and they make such a difference to the general cosiness of the sitting room. 

✪ I've also finished my cowl.  (Pause for a happy dance).  No pictures today though - there'll be more on that when I've found someone to take pics of me modelling it (in a headless way, of course...)

✪ I bought a dresser on a whim; as you do:

Love it!

✪ There's been plenty of crochet action on my summer hols blanket too:

It's neeeearly fiiiiiniiiished.

✪ An exciting parcel also plopped onto my front door mat this week.  Here it is in action, Claire:

This is the most stunningly well-made and beautiful tea cosy I have ever seen - Claire is a real artist and I urge you to visit her lovely blog if you haven't already done so!

And now I need to go - Mr N's just walked in the door after spending three days in Paris with 90 14-year-olds.  Who'd be a teacher, eh? x

Crochet update - August

You may recognise this flower - it's one of the hellebores I made a while ago - but this one has been turned into a brooch as a little thank you to Catherine for my lovely giveaway pressies (glad you liked it, Catherine!)

My summer hols blanket (aaahhhhh, siiiiigh).  I don't want to show you too much or it won't be a proper ta-dah when I've finished it, but this baby has made its way on to my list of 'things-I'd-save-if-my-house-was-burning-to-the-ground-and-everyone-was-safely-outside-and-not-trapped-and-if-it-was-safe-for-me-to-go-into-the-building-without-fear-of-a-piece-of-flaming-ceiling-falling-on-my-bonce'.

And the stripy side of my little rocking chair cushion is finished, though the reverse side most definitely isn't.  Gaaaggh....  I made the entire reverse side out of pale pink, edged it in purple, decided I hated it, frogged the lot and haven't touched it since.  Humph.  Anyhoo, I will finish this soon - I've bought some lovely, clean-looking white yarn - I just need to locate my stripy cushion love again then it'll be done and dusted in no time.
And in the other news tonight:

ooooh, look at this little lovely - it's my bargainous patio rose that I bought for the princely sum of £1.50 from a local florist.  As I paid for it, the florist pointed out to me that there are, in fact, five little rose plants in the pot, so I have high hopes for a positive profusion of these beauties next summer.  (Though, knowing my gardening abilities, it's more likely that they'll all die over winter.  Positive thinking now....)  If you look closely at the photo above, you might be able to see the enormous tin that I filched last time I went to Pizza Express.  I saw them lined up on the counter and it appears that I have no shame, because I actually asked the waiter if I could take one home to grow plants in.  I haven't been back since.

And here is a close-up of the one flower on it, before baby n decided to eat it...

Ah, and here are my beautiful 'dotty dollies' that big n bought for me with his pocket money from the festival.  Yes, I did shed a tear and also instantly forgave him for every annoying thing he's ever done in his entire life - of which there are a few - he is king wind-up merchant.

Right, I'm off now - Monty Hall is on the television and I need to give him my full attention - he is definitely on my list of guilty pleasures (along with Monty Don, bizarrely.  Do you think it's a name thing?) x

That was the week that was

Well hello there, lovely ladies, and how are you all?  I am making a quick bloggy pit-stop in between bouts of frenzied activity of one sort or another.  As I type I am licking jam from my fingers (makes it tricky to type properly when your fingers stick to the key pads, you know) having just spent a very happy hour or so making greengage jam from fruit picked by me and my gang from my gran's garden (the garden of flowery loveliness, you may remember).  Greengages are one of my all-time favourite fruit and I am pleased to report that after our recent picking session, the boys are converted to their sweet loveliness too.  If this jam works out well, I will be writing a post about my efforts (once the jars have cooled sufficiently for me to label them and put little crinkly hats on them ready for their photography session - can't have naked jars on my blog, that simply wouldn't do).  However, if the jam fails to set properly, I will never mention it again in my shame and will have to live in the hope that you will get collective amnesia and forget I ever mentioned it.  Fingers crossed...
Anyhoo, the eagle-eyed among you may have spotted those rather intriguing-looking circles at the top of my post and be wondering what they are all about.  So, with a small drum roll and slight nod of the head, I present you with the first official glimpse of my summer hols blanket.  Dunh duuuuunh:

 

Yeah babeeeeey, I LOVE this blanket.  This is not a blanket to be used as an accessory for pirate-related activities (a la springtime throw).  No sireee, this is MY blanket and it will be treated with due respect, or there will be serious talking-tos going on, and maybe even a bit of sitting on the bottom step.  And I haven't even finished it yet.  Don't let them say they haven't been warned...

So the past week has seen a bit of jam-making, a bit (a lot) of crochet, a bit of this:

Oh god, please don't drop them...

A bit of this:

quite a lot of this:

Oh yes, bun-bun comes in three different shades - no colour discrimination in this house...

And the final, rather thrilling thing, that happened this week was this:

Ooooh, open this one first, mummy

My amazing giveaway presents.  Thank you so, so much Catherine, I love them all and can report that the chocolate was most delicious - a little thank you will be winging its way to you soon. 

Right-ho, must dash, my next bout of frenzied activity involves packing an excessive amount of bunting and a big box of wine for our trip to the Just So Festival on Friday.  Eeeeeekkk!!!! x

Domestic-ness

Aaah, more of my lovely sweetpeas.  When I was pregnant with baby n, the smell of these used to make me barf and every other year I've tried to grow them, I've managed to kill them (how?) so I am completely, disproportionately thrilled that I have managed to keep these ones alive and not throw up every time I walk past them.  Happy days indeed.

Here's a thing: I have gone so completely crazy making my new summer hols blanket that my hands actually ache as I'm typing.  Jeez - a crochet-related injury - does that make it a sport?  Olympic crocheting anyone?  Well, yes please, that would be great; but I'd only participate because Olympic sports are no longer done naked as they were originally (I know about the naked thing because I watched Horrible Histories every day for the entire Easter holidays with the boys).  I have the missing blue yarn in my sweaty mitts now, though the second mint-coloured ball that I ordered from eBay has yet to arrive (cue panic attack).  Just to say a really huge 'thank you' to all you lovely, lovely bloggers who offered to bail me out in the missing-mint-yarn-nightmare.  I really appreciate your kindness and I've tried to contact you all to say thanks, but Linds I can't get in contact with you for some inexplicable reason, so I'm sorry - I have been trying!

So today has been a ploddy, domestic kinda day, which is always great.  I sneaked in a little, tiny quiet moment in bed this morning feverishly working away on my new blanket before I was rumbled and the child-menagerie came and jumped on my head.  (Ha ha, I say 'moment' but in actual fact it was more like an hour and a half.  How brilliant is that?  I love my husband quite a lot, he's so good at containing the mayhem so I'm left in peace...)  We took the kids to the park this afternoon after a long and heated debate about which park we should go to - I won the argument and we got to go to the one with the massive death slide, which I absolutely love.  Mwah ha ha!  This park also has the added appeal of being next to a huge field with goal posts in it, so the boys weren't too disappointed that I forced them to go there.  

I got a little bit excited when I saw these:

(They were transported home in a poo bag that I filched from a passing dog-walker.  Needs must...)

I got even more excited thinking about what calorie-laden delight I was going to make with them.

This did the trick:

Mr N actually blanched at the size of the portion I gave him, but I noticed he didn't actually leave any.  Pig. x

PS - we're off to sunny Dorset for a few days tomorrow so a) if you're a burglar, remember the thing about the hungry, slavering Rottweiller: and b) I may be a bit absent on the blogging front for a while, sorry; and c) if you're Cuckoo, lock all your doors because I know where you live and I'm coming to get myself a crochet hook roll...