Attic24

Sweet Peas

Morning my lovelies, it's yet another grey drizzly day here in North Yorkshire I'm sad to say, very un-Julyish still. But no matter, life goes on and I am happy enough pottering around dodging the showers.

Because of the weather we haven't been able to use our little outdoor space very much yet this summer, but I like to go outside most days to stroll round my little patch and check on my flowers. Usually when I'm cooking I open the back door and pop out in between chopping and stirring and baking (which is why I'm wearing my apron in above photo). I would say my flowers are more surviving than thriving but nevertheless they are growing and managing to do delightful, colourful flowery things and I love to go and say hello to them.

I confess I didn't grow my sweet peas from seed and haven't a clue what sort of variety they are. They were an impulse buy from the co-op one day when I popped in for a loaf of bread. There they were, lots of plantlets in in a dinky little tray for £1.99 and I was powerless to resist the lure of them, the promise of colour and scent to come. In my usual haphazard fashion though I didn't treat them very well and they ended up a  bit root-bound in their dinky little plastic tray before I finally planted them out into a nice big blue-glazed pot.

So they look a little straggly don't they? And they haven't exactly rocketed up the swirly sticks as I had anticipated. But I have hopes for them continuing to climb as the summer moves on so that eventually they might greet me at face height rather than knee height. But still, as short as they are, they are delightful. The colours are fabulous, they're that wonderful mix of pastel and bright that I love. And the scent is ecsquiste. Really, it makes me go weak at the knees.

I know that you are supposed to pick sweet peas aren't you, the more you pick the more they grow, right? But it was still difficult, I felt such a meany cutting them! There was only a small handful to be had, and the stems were so short that they wouldn't really go into a jug or vase. So I arranged them in a little mug with some alchemila (from Lovely C's garden) and set them on the table.

The scent from this little posy was powerful enough to fill the whole room.. Some of us appreciated it more than others. I won't tell you what J says about the "stink" because it isn't very nice. However,  me and Little Lady think it's delightful. Its the scent of summer.

Blog Candy Goodness

BLOG CANDY GIVEAWAY!

Hello, good morning, how are you today? I had a lovely weekend, hope you did too? Oh good, I'm so glad.
Well not a lot of time this morning to be wordy, its straight down to business. As you can see, I am passing on some Blog Candy Goodness....oh yes, the fun is non-stop in Blogland!

So this is how its gonna be ::
I am putting together three parcels of colourful Candy Goodness to send out.
I'm going to send two parcels to the FIRST TWO readers who leave a comment today.
The THIRD parcel will go to a name drawn out at random from all comments left during this next week.

You don't have to say anything special in your comment, just say hello thats all, its easy-peasy. It's wonderful that I'm getting to know quite a few of you now who drop by regularly and boy-oh-boy I can't tell you how much I love your comments, they SO make my day. You have no idea. But here's the thing :: I peeked at my stats over the weekend and OHHHhh! I am getting some Traffic through the Attic these days! So I'd love to know who you are, you lovelies who visit and read but stay unknown.

I'm not sure what exactly the Candy will be yet, but you can be sure it'll be colourful. I think something pretty, something smelly, something handmade, something yummy and something else I-don't-know-what-y yet.

So Good Luck my lovelies, comment away at the end of this post and you have until SUNDAY 20th JULY, Candy-winners will be announced next Monday.



I had a little time over the weekend to continue working on my bag :: its looking good if I say so myself. I finished the baggy bit off last night with a scallopy edge, which I'm very proud of (there was quite a lot of cursing and frogging* involved before I cracked it). SO all I need to do now is make some handles.



The Little People tell me I shouldn't in fact bother with the handles. They tell me to forget the bag idea altogether in favour of a giant hat for Daddy. Because Daddy doesn't have any hair. Harsh but true. And funny :: the bag/hat was modeled by J yesterday with much accompanying laughter. I love my family.

* definition of FROGGING: The act of taking apart a crocheted object in order to fix a boo-boo...Rip-it, Rip-it (get it?)

Bloggy stuff :: Tag, Award and Candy

Bloggy stuff today folks, hope thats ok? I've been meaning to do these things for a week or two now, but all the ice cream, baskets, crochet, wellies, flowers, yarn, calendars, pillowcases,  salads and risottos kept getting in the way. So my apologies to the people who have tagged, awarded and mailed me things, sorry to be so tardy. I do get round to it eventually. So three things today....

TAG
I was tagged a few weeks ago by Ruth at Raletourn50 with a "Five Things" tag.
These are the rules

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names, linking to them.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blog.

So here goes ::

• When I was four I cut off most of my own hair, it was not a good look.
• I cannot swim very well, the water scares me.
• I have a degree in Embroidery from here, I graduated in 1991.
• My first job after graduating was as a Tarot card reader, I wasn't half bad.
• I spent five months traveling in India and Nepal in 1996/97, it was incredible.

Five People who are now IT ::

• Julia @ vintage heaven
• Vanessa @ do you mind if I knit
• Maddy @ maddys glass house
• Kathy @ My life and other beads
• Tess @ driftwood

AWARD

I have to say I am enjoying this blogging lark immensely, it makes me so happy to discover such a lot of pleasure can come out of a computer. And I was super-chuffed to be presented an award recently by the lovely Julia at Vintage Heaven. I do still feel like a bit of a Newbie in Blogland (even though this is amazingly post number 88!!) so it still comes as  wonderful surprise to find that folk do appear to enjoy my blurbles day after day. I am glad to know I might somehow add a bit of happiness, warmth and colour to your days, even if I don't quite think I do Edgy or Bold or Humourous or Informative as the award there says.

I do visit quite a few blogs myself day to day, enjoy visiting very much. And to be really  honest,  the whole Big Blogging Thing makes my day. So what I am trying to say is that I don't feel able at this point in time to be pressed into choosing five, so am spreading the love.
You all make my day. Yes, that includes  xxxxx    y o u      xxxxx

CANDY

Ok, does anyone know who invented Blog Candy? Oh its a whole lot of fun, what an inspired idea!
I won the right to this parcel of loveliness from Claire at Serendipity, just by being there at the top of her list of comments one day. I was sooooooooooo excited to become a Candy Receiver. I waited a while for this mysterious Candy to arrive and finally on Monday it came.
Shocked to the core I was. I had NO IDEA it would be this Big. I was expecting a little token of something or another. Not a bloomin great box full of beautifully wrapped goodies. See there above what I got?? See the lovliness, the thoughtfulness, the generosity?

Little Lady helped me unwrap, and even she was exclaiming Oh! My! Goodness! She was especially delighted with the bubblewrap, such a marvelous pastime for a four year old.
And I am thrilled with it all, thank you so very much Claire.

So............if you wouldn't mind waiting a few days and dropping by on Monday, I shall be announcing my very own BCG (Blog Candy Giveaway). Have a fabulous weekend, you lovely people xxx

Basket case

An old basket, picked up last week in an antiques/collectors place in my town.
It cost £4.50.
I love the shape and the oldness of it, but it is brown and I don't much care for brown.
I decide to give it a makeover.

I remember seeing this, and remember that I have Duck Egg Blue paint in the cellar left over from my painting phase in April.
I get busy painting.
It takes over the dining table for quite a few days and we have to eat dinner with it.

The painting (three coats) finally gets finished and order restored to the table.
I need to make a lining, and I immediately want Greengate.
I raid the tea towel stash. Get the heebiejeebies cutting it up.
But I stay focused and it goes well and I am so pleased with the way it turns out.

I love my newly vamped basket very much.
I spend quite a lot of time looking at it and carrying it around the house.
I decide this lovely Greengatey basket is going to be for my new wool.

And my latest WIP, started on Monday night.

Round and round, its going to become a bag, inspired by one made last week by Lovely C.
I realise we are probably going to arrive at Knit and Natter with matching bags.

Crochet bags to transport our crochet.
Love that.

Strawberry ice cream

Good morning, good morning! :o)
I am so happy, the sun is shining, the sky is blue and I've put my wellies in the cellar woohoo!
Little Lady has a garden party at her nursery today and we have been SOoo keeping our fingers crossed for good weather. Oh the excitement this morning getting ready for this event, it has been wonderful. She's gone all dressed up in a glam princess dress with under-skirt netting and gold trim and jewels and ribbons in her hair, oh my heart was bursting with motherly pride, she looked adorable and we must have been stopped in the street about 8 times by complete strangers telling her how pretty she looked. Her smile was ear to ear.

So anyhow....on with homely stuff :: last week I decided to make ice cream for the first time. I've been wanting to try this for ages but was under the assumption you needed some fancy ice cream making gadget to do it. But my informative other-half told me last week that this is not so :: gadgetry is not in fact needed and one can do it perfectly well oneself if one can be bothered to do so.  So all I needed was the time and a recipe.
Folks, there are many, many recipes out in cyberspace for ice cream. I was looking for the simplest strawberry ice cream recipe, and this is the best I could find. There are five ingredients ::

600g strawberries
130g caster sugar
2tsp lemon juice
300ml double cream
100ml milk

Keep about a dozen or so strawberries to one side and put the rest into a food processor with the sugar and lemon juice. Whizz until smooth, transfer to a bowl.

Put the dozen strawberries into the processor and pulse until mangled but not pureed. Add these to the  bowl with the smooth stuff.
Marvel at the colour. Dip fingers in and mmmmmmmmmm. Allow Little People to dip fingers mmmmmmmm.

Put the cream into the processor and whizz until thickened but not stiff.
Pour the cream and milk in with the strawberries and mix thouroughly (I started out with my spatula but ended up using a whisk for thouroughness).
Marvel at the change in colour, from strawberry red to ice cream pink. Little Lady approves of the pinkness. By now I am fighting off  Little Fingers which are dipping, licking, dipping, licking at the speed of light.

Now the bowl goes into the freezer and this is where you have you take the place of the gadget. You become a human de-crystalizing machine, which involves whisking up the mixture every hour or so. Four times in total. So make sure you have four hours ahead of you in which to perform. Its not difficult, but you do have to remember to do it or else you will end up with a solid lump of frozen strawberryness.
After the last whisk, transfer to a tub with a lid and freeze until solid.

The Little People could not wait for this to be ready, it was absolute torture for them (and me). But oh my goodness, this was so worth the wait. So so so worth it. I cannot begin to describe the flavour to you, the sweetness, the fruitiness, the full on summery-ness of it.

I beg you to try it, you will love it I know you will, and your children will worship you.
Last night Little Man had a friend round to play after school and he asked me if they could have ice cream. I overheard him boasting to his friend that My Mum Made This ALL BY HERSELF with REAL strawberries. I suddenly came over all Domestic-Goddess-like. Yes, my domestic halo was gleaming, budge over Nigella.

Summertime

Oh July, the height of summer, don't you just love it? The warmth of the sun on your face, the long, light-filled days, airy blue skies....ahhhh yes, tis summertime. The above photo was taken last week (Weds 02 July, 07:39am) and it was oh-so-lovely to feel summery last week, to wear a strappy vest and flipflops, to go to the park and drink homemade lemonade and watch the Little People do roly-polys down the hill and get covered in dry grass clippings, to eat dinner outside with the geraniums and sweet peas. I wish that the above photo was of today, and that I could say the weather here was still light, warm and blue, but alas it is not. Not today. No, today we have more of the grey wet stuff. Yes, the wet ploppy rain is still with us here in Yorkshire.
I remember a little while ago I had a bit of a foot-stomping strop about the weather, do you remember that? I got all cross at having to abandon my flipflops and dig out my black  winter boots (with the wintery fur-lined trim). Well that was before I bought these ::

 

These are my New Wellies, aren't they super? Oh yes, its quite amazing what a pair of snazzy wellies can do for ones mood.  I've been wearing these this week to do the school run, as the school run for us consists of a picturesque but very puddly walk along the tow path of the canal. Little Man has some black wellies with spider webs on but he refuses to wear them for the school walk, prefers the jumping-over method of puddle negotiation instead. So it's been Me and Little Lady stomping and splashing our way through puddles and loving it quite honestly. True, wellies are not very July-ish but I am choosing to smile instead of strop. Bravo.

Yes, I have given up lamenting about the state of the weather. I look out of the Attic24 window at the stormy grey skies, but I also see the green lushness of the hills and think how lucky we are that our climate allows the grass to remain green all summer long. I remember the summer of '96 when J and I spent twelve weeks backpacking round the Greek Islands, how brown and dry and barren the landscape was, how I so missed the green hills of England.

The flowers in my little back yard are also loving the wet stuff. I took these couple of photos last week, the thyme now in full flower and my osteospurnum beginning it's second flush. Even my sweet peas are beginning to flower despite looking a little bedraggled, and the scent of them is wonderful (even though I have to bend right down and stick my nose right in as they aren't yet high enough for me to catch a whiff of it as I breeze past). Speaking of whiffing,  I have been around my neighbourhood sniffing the roses lately, oh there are so many many houses round and about here with the most beautiful roses! They are tumbling over walls and gates and begging to be sniffed. I don't grow any myself, but hope to remedy that sometime, especially after seeing these. I think I would quite fancy a rosebush or two rambling around my house, but in the meantime, look at these lovely summery napkins I bought last week ::

I have recently developed a bit of a Thing for paper napkins. Its on a par with my thing about teatowels. Sally my lovely, you started it when you sent me these wonderful flowery CK napkins, and now I cannot stop looking out for them. I think they're a great way to have colour and pattern at the table and it does successfully stop the mucky Little People wiping their hands and faces on their sleeves. I have them in a bowl (the napkins, not the Little People) and we love selecting which ones we are going to use each day at mealtimes. Currently Little Lady favours the roses, and Little Man chooses the CK flowers. The stripes are not so popular, so have been relegated to picnics.

You know how a napkin is folded into quarters, well I've been cutting them up into four squares with no folds so that they go further. Which means its not too much of an expensive retail addiction. And  as well being functional, decorative and recyclable, you can do also do this sort of thing with them. That's a good rainy-day activity if ever I saw one.

Wet weekend

Hello, how was your weekend? I don't know about your part of the world but here in North Yorkshire it was (and still is) exceedingly wet. Oh yes we had the full dramatic weather-works here :: we had drizzle, we had ploppy-droppy Big rain in both light-shower and big-torrential-downpour format, we had thunder and lightening and spectacular hailstones the size of jellytots. It was fun! It was fun because we had nothing planned for the weekend and we were free to stay indoors in our pyjamas watching it all unfold. It was fun because we were not camping in it/getting married in it/holding a garden party in it/on holiday in it. I was glad to be indoors, happy to be under the Attic24 roof with nothing in particular to do, nowhere I needed to be other than home with my family. 

Sometime during the middle of Saturday morning, I came up here to the attic with my lovely man. He was doing his thing on the computer, I sat in the window seat with a freshly brewed coffee in my favourite mug. I was reading the August issue of Country Homes (divine, there is inspiration and eye candy by the bucket load). The rain was quite heavy, large drops pattering down on the rooftop, bouncing off the velux window. I could hear the Little People playing downstairs, chattering and shrieking with laughter :: I've no idea what they were up to but they were in the hallway and the game involved some plastic skittles, rackets and foam balls, and it sounded like the most fun ever.  I was suddenly very aware of the present moment, and an extreme contentment with life at that exact time, like all was absolutely as it should be. It was wonderful. I tried to explain it to J, tried to say how happy I was to be right at that moment in this house listening to rain and laughter, to feel so happy just being at home on a wet day in July. However J was tuned in to his computer and I don't think he really got what I was saying, but no matter, I got  it.

I think you might say I experienced a DMM (Domestic Magic Moment). I love it when that happens.
Did you know there's this whole school of thought based on the business of being aware of the present moment you are in? Its called mindfulness, and I just love that whole concept. I read about it in a magazine a few years ago and it's stuck with me ever since. Well some of it at any rate :: I don't really go in for full on meditation or breathing exercises, but I do like to try and be mindful of the present moment, enjoy focusing on the small things, lifes small pleasures.

And talking of small pleasures, whilst the Little People were doing some colouring on Sunday (another wet day) I had time to sit and work on my hexagons. I sat on a cushion on the floor with all my yarn spread out and I must have sat for a hours as my bum went numb. I couldn't stop, it was soooooooo enjoyable!! I love the simplicity of hook and yarn and fingers and the way I can indulge my colour fetish to the max with this Rowan yarn.

I mean, just look at these!!!!  I am so in love with them!

I'm going to love seeing this blanket grow, spreading warmth and colour through my days no matter what the weather.

Reasons to be Cheerful #12 :: Salad days

I adore salad and we eat it with most meals during the Spring and Summer months. Through persistence and over-exposure we have successfully managed to get the Little People to love this kind of salad, which pleases me greatly.
Our greens of choice are lambs lettuce or baby spinach :: the Little People happily eat these leaves, but still spit out lettuce/watercress/rocket (we need to keep at them with these). Add to the leaves some sweet cherry tomatoes, cucumber, red pepper, red onion and cubes of feta cheese and mix. Sometimes on very lazy Salady days I'll add in baby new potatoes and some shredded cooked chicken or smoked mackerel, a simple honey/mustard vinaigrette and it becomes a complete meal in a bowl.

I love the ease of it, a bit of chopping and tossing of ingredients with a homemade dressing and plenty of seasoning and voila! The best fast food. 

Sale fever

I went to a sale last week, it was a sale with a Reputation. I had heard talk of it at Knit and Natter when I was new to this town last Winter, and it sounded like My Sort of Thing. Apparently this sale happens a couple times each year and is advertised on the front of the local paper, and I had been eagerly waiting for it to come round this summer.  Are you curious? Well let me tell you more...there's a small shop in a village a few miles from me that is full of gorgeousness. Gifts and lovely things for the home, some big name stuff (think Cath Kidston, Emma Bridgewater) and some lovely hand made items too. Pretty and quirky, vintage and modern, colour and pattern and all round lovliness.
The shop is tiny, bijou, and rammed to the rafters with stuff, its far too small to hold a sale really. So the clever ladies that run it decamp to the chapel next door, spread out a little. They string bunting up outside to let everyone know this is an Event. Tresle tables are set up inside the chapel all around the walls ready to be laden (and I mean laden) with goodies. There are ladies wearing pretty aprons in the little chapel kitchen setting out glasses of lemonade and piling a huge wire cake stand full of fresh strawberries. Refreshments for the Sale-shoppers.

In my excitement I arrive early and get to wander round the chapel before anyone else arrives. I am  sooo excited. There is a mass of Cath Kidston bedding all at half price. There is Emma Bridgewater pottery at half price. There are pretty cushions, delightful childrens clothes,  and there is yarn. Yes a whole area full of crates packed with delicious yarn, of the Debbie Bliss variety.  I get busy. Oh Joy, this is like the best type of jumble sale! I rake and dig, select and discard, sort and stack the yarn until I find balls all of the same type. Its merino aran wool, and it's only two pounds a ball!! By rooting around I manage to find ten different colours, sixteen balls in all get plopped into my bag.

By this time the sale has officially opened and when I look up from my own private yarn-fest I find I am no longer the only one there, in fact the place is absolutely mobbed. Its packed full of ladies raking and digging, selecting and discarding, chattering and exclaiming, the noise is incredible.

I leave the yarn and go over to the Cath Kidston tables. I have to wrestle my way in, have to use elbows. Its every woman for herself. I umm and ahhh over the bedding. I think I might have mentioned before but I am not sure about CK stuff, its quite full-on pattern for me. I keep picking up duvet covers (HAlf PRice!) and putting them back again. Pick up, carry around a bit, then put it back. The fact is that even though it is Half Price (!!) it is still bloomin' expensive. In the end I settle for a couple of rosy pillowcases for £5 each (normal RRP is £15, how extortionate is this stuff?) and an Emma Bridgewater tea towel for £3.

I'm feeling dazed and shattered by this point, the noise and the crowds have worn me down. I bump into Lovely C and I do the yarn thing again with her, but I have Sale Exhaustion. I can no longer think straight. I go and pay (ooo yes that was quite an expensive half an hour even if everything was  !! Half Price !!), then push my way across to the lemonade and strawberries. Ahhhhh refreshment, that's better. I had no idea that la-de-dah ladies could be soooo noisy and pushy. It was like going into battle with no forewarning and no armour.

But I came home jubilant, very happy with my yarn which I think is going to become a granny square something or the other (a bag maybe?)
And I do like the pillowcases too, like laying my head down into a soft bunch of roses. I'm not sure if they go with my Laura Ashley bedspread, what do you think?
J was quite approving of them too, which thoroughly delighted and surprised me, but then again he is quite knowledgable about bed linen. He understood what I meant when I said it was Superior 200 Thread Count Cotton Pecale. It thrills me to talk bedding with my man.

July

 

So it's July already, so long June. I do love turning the pages on my two calendars, not that I'm wishing the year away you understand, but there's something refreshing about greeting a new month. New possibilities, new plans, activities and reminders already penciled in, its going to be a busy old month.

We have started off July in a fair bit of chaos as yesterday The Lads arrived to overhaul our central heating system. It has not gone smoothly. Yucky water leaked. The wrong boiler was put up, taken down again and eventually replaced with the right one. I am told that it's proving a "nightmare" of a job for The Lads due to such limited space in our small kitchen for access and pipey things.

Right now I am thankfully up in the Attic where there are no radiators and no pipes and downstairs is very chaotic indeed. The carpet and floorboards are up,  actually it's been very interseting to meet our one hundred year old floorboards in the hallway under the mucky blue carpet, we are hoping to have them restored at some point soon. I've been in a few of my neighbours houses recently with beautifully sanded and waxed wooden floors and I've been pointing and exclaiming "ooooohhhh!! I Want My House To Look Like That" ! I am dreadful in other peoples houses, I lose all sense of thinking privately and seem to exclaim !!! a lot out loud. I get over excited very quickly. I wonder how it is that everyone elses houses seem to be so much more appealing than my own, even though I dearly love my house to distraction. I keep reminding myself that my house is a WIP, and other folk have lived for years in their houses. We've been seven months in ours, thats all. Stay calm, it WILL happen. Our house will end up being gorgeous. Yes, Gorgeous.

 

Hey now, I can't welcome in a new month without chatting a while about the weather. Its glorious as it happens, very July-like and lovely and I am most pleased. I am wearing a strappy vest top and cool linen trousers with flipflops and feeling Summery. Long may it last.

This month I've opened up the first page of my new Academic Year diary.
It's my attempt at trying to get my life into some sort of order after a particularly forgetful few weeks where I have forgotten a lot and appologised a lot for aforementioned forgetfulness .

 

It has to be said, I'm the most chaotic, forgetful, ditzy, air -headed person you could imagine and much of my life is spent flying breezily and cheerfully by the seat of my pants. Mostly this is ok and I bumble along, going with the flow and trying my damndest not to screw up the really important bits of my life. I miss appointments, forget to pay bills, forget to send birthday cards. I end up having to say sorry a lot. Occasionally J gets cross and lectures me about trying harder to be more organised, tells me to write things down and make To-Do Lists.
I used to be a Lister, yes I used to have notebooks galore, endless scrawl telling myself what to do. But I grew out of the habit, and these past few months I've ballsed up on quite a few occasions, which has started to make me feel very bad indeed. Particularly as it has impacted on the lives of the Little People ( I forgot Little Lady's parents evening, and then Little Man's non-school uniform day :: Big OoOOOOpses)

So I got to thinking that perhaps the list-writing might indeed be beneficial. And so the idea of a daily diary to contain the lists (from good old WHSmiths). As well as being great for writing lists, I also now know that we are currently in week twenty-seven of the year, that on Saturday the sun will rise at 04:51, that there are 25.4 millimetres in 1 inch, that there are 1321.85 Million people in China. And I am getting used to writing lists again, daily reminders of things Not To Forget. Actually, isn't it great being able to tick things off? Tick, done. Feels good, yeah, onto the next thing. My life is in order and it feels good.