I’m always impressed, and more than a little jealous, at the remarkable ‘finds’ that people find:  beautiful old crockery, immaculate hand embroidered linens, colourful vintage glassware!  I never find anything.  Until now that is!!!

On a recent incredibly hot day Caveman and I stopped at a local ice cream parlour (don’t you love that term? ‘ice cream parlour’ it just conjours up images of the 1950’s for me) which was next door to Wowie Zowie.  It’s a great retro shops which sells, in its own words, ‘fabulous vintage things from the 20th century and beyond…’

And look what I found!!!

Can you believe I walked right round the shop once before I spotted this!!??  It’s a really beautiful old cantilever sewing box.  It is in brilliant condition and even inside the drawers are really clean.  Although I am very untidy, I do love places to keep things, even if I don’t always put things in those places!

This is a great little piece of furniture, beside the settee, to hold all my little bits and pieces of sewing and crochet equipment which do need to have a place.  These are actually the things that I am good at putting back because I find nothing worse than getting into a piece of work and needing a thimble or a particular type of needle and not being able to find them!

I might line the drawers with pretty paper just to add to the delight every time I open them and I am yet to fill it up.  Maybe that will be a gradual process as I use it.

I’ve had a very busy few weeks with lots and lots of housework and organising because my sister and her two kids have been to visit this week.  We had a fab time wit lots of icecream, laughing and fun.  They left on the train yesterday and I was more than a little sad waving them off.

Also had an (unsuccessful) job interview which took up a lot of time in application and preparation so still somewhat disappointed after the amount of energy I put in. 

I have found a plenty time between those activities to crack on with the granny stripe blanket and I am really enjoying that.  I have found it goes particularly well with Wimbledon and World Cup!!! 

So back to normal now with nothing major on the horizon for a while but it gives me some time to get on with some making and doing.  The other benefit is that I now have quite a tidy house, which really isn’t normal (that table top in the pictures is normally covered in sewing machines and related paraphernalia), and might help keep my mind a little straighter.  Hopefully I will be able to keep it up.  Time will tell…

I’ve just had one of my very favourite sorts of weekends: family, kids, cake and crochet!!  Caveman and I went to Scotland for my new(ish) niece’s christening so it was a busy and tiring weekend.  However, in between the travelling and the cake I managed to get come crochet done in the sunshine which was a joy, as I am normally just hooking away indoors in the corner of my sofa, in front of the telly and / or laptop.

Anyway, after the church bit of the christening, which I guess IS the actual christening!) we went to the Strathaven Hotel, (Strathaven is where I grew up and some of my folks still live there) for high tea.  I spent a good hour thinking, out loud much of the time, ‘now, why have I never had high tea before’.  My sister insists that I have but I really can’t remember.  High tea consisted of a main course (gammon steak in my case, other options included fish and chips), served with a cake stand full of little slices of tray bake cakes, scones, pancakes and bread and butter all washed down with lots of tea or coffee. 

Then came the pièce de résistance!  A plate groaning with homemade meringues sandwiched with fluffy soft whipped cream!  My sister and I managed not to resist several of these (each!!).  Be honest, could you?

I am ever curious about traditions and etiquette (particularly of ‘polite’ society) and had to look up the origins of high tea and found that the UK Tea Council describes it thus:

For the working and farming communities, afternoon tea became high tea. As the main meal of the day, high tea was a cross between the delicate afternoon meal enjoyed in the ladies’ drawing rooms and the dinner enjoyed in houses of the gentry at seven or eight in the evening. With the meats, bread and cakes served at high tea, hot tea was taken.

After all that food we crashed out in the lounge of the hotel where thankfully there were no other customers as 20 of us, including 4 excited children, would have soon scared them away.  We spent the rest of the day catching up, playing with the kids and taking lots of pictures of Erin in her christening gown with various family members.  I still can’t work out why she vomited on me 3 times over the weekend though!  I’m not that scary!

The rest of the weekend was spent hanging out with my folks, watching some football (yes, really, I watched some of the World Cup) and getting some of my hook-a-long blanket done.  In the process I competled my first full cycle of all the colours!  Yee ha!!!

I read a lot of crochet and craft blogs and often people refer to it being too dark to take pictures of their works and waiting for an opportune time.  I am no expert in photography so wasn’t too sure what this was all about, thinking hte flash made up for it - until I was able to take the pictures below in my sisters garden.  Don’t the colours look great?  Don’t I wish I had a garden and didn’t live in a flat?  Yes to both!!

I have now started on the second round of each colour now and I am jolly well delighted with it; the neatness, colour order (despite all the pondering).  Can you spot the little mistake?  I am going to handsew two little imitation crochet stitches in to put it right.

Now I’m back in Manchester to the same old wondering, as I sometimes do, why I live so far away from the people who are most improtant to me!!  Ah well, such is life!

I promised you a picture of my new niece Erin if her mummy and daddy agreed to me posting it, and how could they resist showing her off. Here she is looking snug as a bug with her blanket made by auntie Fi and a bunny!

I got THE cutest note cards on a recent visit to a garden centre with my mum and dad.  Cute tin, cute crochet and cute stationery!

The cards don’t have patterns for each of the cuties, but they each have their story on the back:

‘Bella, Morella and Fin are bees who love to perform.  They have just started their own singing trio, the Bee Flats.  They’ve already lined up their first concert at a local nightclub, The Hive.  The word on the street is that the night is set to be buzzing!’

Wouldn’t the chick make the cutest Easter card?

Remember way back early in January when I said I had lots of babies to make for…  well the babies are all here now and the makes are all completed! 

My friend had Jimmy last week and I can’t wait to see them to give them the blue blanket.  The day after Jimmy was born my lovely sister in law brought us Erin!  We were all so delighted, and in truth a bit surprised, to have another girl in the family as there had been some of expectation of a boy (I already have 2 nephews and a niece).   We all love the name Erin, which we didnt know was in the shortlist, and it is particualry appropriate as my sister in law is very proud of her Irish heritage and Erin means Ireland.  However, my nephew James won’t accept he’s got a new girl cousin and insists on calling her Tom!

I had been in Scotland all week waiting for her arrival and she came the day before I had to come back to Manchester - good timing as I was getting twitchy I may miss her altogether!

My sister in law really loved the blanket I’d made Erin and it has been much admired.  I do love that thrill when people complement my work!  It makes it worth all the hours of work that have gone into it.

We didn’t know Erin was going to be a girl so I erred on a neutral coloured and I am really pleased with the finished result.  I know my family look at this site and I wanted the blanket to be a surprise, so I am very excited about posting the pictures now.

A few days before Erin was born I had saw three magpies, TWICE!  I am not superstitious, but we all notice things like that don’t we?!   I was looking up the full words of the magpie rhyme and found a few versions, but I liked this Yorkshire one best (sorry, last line is a little cheeky):

One for Sorrow
Two for Joy
Three for a Girl
Four for a Boy
Five for Silver
Six for Gold
Seven for a tale never to be told
Eight you Live
Nine you Die
Ten you eat a bogey pie!

Anyway, if Erin’s Mummy and Daddy say it’s ok, I’ll post a pic of her snuggly wrapped up in her wavy crochet cuddly blanket!

I have so much to write about as its been a busy old week, and a very eventful one too.  Its going to take several posts though to cover it all, so this one is just the opener.  

I’ve spent the last week in Scotland with my family, awaiting the arrival of a new baby (more soon) and its been very, very cold and a bit snowy.  Fortunately we didnt experience the severe snowy weather that some areas had this week.  However, I live as a ’soft southerner’ (their words, not mine) now so I found it very cold.  Now I’m back home in Manchester, not a snowflake in site and I’ve got a cold – but my own bed will make it a lot better I’m sure.

I spent the first half of the week with my sister and her family and loved just hanging around with them, taking the kids to school, family mealtimes, homework, cbeebies etc. 

My sister has a lovely new coat and when we were out shopping she spotted a yarn, Patons Smoothie in Red Mix which matched it so I got roped into making her a scarf, in the same style I made for my niece and her cousins earlier in the year.  Its a pattern from The Happy Hooker  book and is a bit of a staple pattern for me.  I completed it in one evening so it is definitely a quick and easy project.

This shade is Red Mix, but I’ve called it Blood Orange as I think that’s exactly what its like, not quite orange and not quite red.  There’s also a little bit of steel grey, plum and coral in there too.  The pictures may not do the colour justice I’m afraid!

Here’s the end result

Being as critical as I am of my own work I feel obliged to point out my own mistakes!  My sister insists she cant see them, and that they don’t matter, but I know they’re there.  Are you like that?  Do you look at the things you’ve made and look for the mistakes?  Anyway, after the first row we decided the scarf wasn’t long enough so there’s an ‘extension’ which is only noticeable in the middle of one row, but it is there.  That’s one of the things that’s so great about crochet though, you can add on with great ease.  Also, I ran out of yarn about 12 shell loops from the end!  Luckily I’m using the same yarn for another project (details soon) but from a different dye lot.  The shade difference is very subtle, but its there!

Despite its faults my sister is delighted with the result and it has been much admired by her firends.  Orders taken girls!!!

Just one final thing for now… I LOVE LOVE LOVE Patons Smoothie and I’ve used it for quite a few things recently – its great for crochet for so many reasons.  I think it deserves a post all of its own, so watch this space.