Attic24

Gardening Activity

Today I introduced Little B to the idea of planting seeds. We had this great conversation on the way to nursery about how things grow from seeds and he told me all the things he would love to grow in our back yard. Watermelons were top of his list (they are his favourite fruit) followed by Elder flowers, then bananas. Oh dear. I felt really bad telling him no, nope, er-noooo to his three most favourite requests and seeing his enthusiasm dwindle in front of my eyes. But when he hit upon pumpkins as his fourth choice, well that was just brilliant. YES! Yes yes yes, let's see if we can grow a pumpkin! So on our way home from nursery we stopped at the shops and purchased a packet of Mammoth Pumpkin seeds. Slightly worried about the Mammoth word, but we will cross that particular bridge if and when we come to it.

He couldn't wait to get started, oh such excitement!

I gave him a flower pot, then he went to fetch his old plastic spade. I said he could use his hands for the compost but he was insistent that he do some proper shoveling with his spade, so I stood aside and let him do it His Way. We used an old plastic spoon as a dibber, and very soon three hopeful pumpkin seeds had been planted and carefully watered in.

We found a lolly stick and I told him the letters so that he could write his own label.

It was super sweet, a real delicious part of an otherwise ordinary, fairly mundane Monday. The whole experience reminded me of a very similar time with Little Lady six years ago, and also reminded me that I still have many of the very same seed packets lurking in the cellar!

I fetched them outside and we had a good look through the packets, opening them up so that I could show Little B how different all the seeds look. He was so full of excitement and begged for us to do some more, so I thought, what the heck, what have we got to lose? These seeds are old and I've got no idea whether they will actually work or not, but hey ho, we will give it a whirl.

We planted yellow and purple beans, cosmos (for Mummy) and two varieties of sunflower. Now I really must remember to water them (!)

It's coming together out here now, slowly but surely, although I would still love some bigger greener stuff. I keep visualising some huge pots filled with big lush green things, but those ideas will just have to wait a while.

For now, I'm really happy with my little pots filled with cheap n cheerful annuals, and somewhere cosy to sit a while when the sun is shining. Now then, here is a question for you.........

........shall I paint that wall????????????

It's in a dreadful state of disrepair and falling to bits, really it needs completely re-rendering and my idea is to eventually have a narrow raised bed built against it (using stone to match the house) for some permanent planting. But I'm toying with the idea of a quick fix for this summer and slapping on some paint.

Maybe white, or maybe a soft blue??

Or shall I just leave it be?

x

♥...more little snippets from the Attic...♥

Geranium Love

October 2012

Autumn Inspiration

Yarndale 2013 :: The Yarn Bombing

Easy Like Sunday Morning

♥ Today I took my first coffee of the morning outside at 7.30am and enjoyed sitting in the gentle warmth of a blissful sunny summer's day ♥

♥ An hour later at 8.30am, I was walking in the park with Little Lady and Little B on a search for some late elderflowers ♥

♥ I already made a batch of eldeflower cordial last week, but as we all love it so much it's disappearing very quickly. There are plenty of elder trees growing wild in the hedgerows of the park and we easily managed to collect the required 25 heads before heading home ♥

♥ I don't wash the flowers as that takes away the fragrant pollen, but ideally they do need to be critter free. So I leave them outside on the table for a while to give the insects and spiders a chance to climb out. These flowers were laden with pollen (atchooooo!) and I'm hoping they will make a great cordial. I make a variation of Sarah Ravens recipe {1kg of sugar dissolved in 1.5 litres boiling water, 25 flower heads, 2 lemons & 2 oranges thinly sliced and 30g citric acid} ♥

♥ 9.20 now, and time for a spot of breakfast. I love to eat breakfast outside on a summer's morning, listening to the caw-cawing of the rooftop jackdaws, a distant radio, the gentle sounds of the neighbourhood easing into the day ♥

♥ I pegged out a load of laundry (so many socks!), then had a little chat to my newly potted-up flowers. Little B and I went to the market yesterday to get a few more blooms to go with the geraniums. I loved reading all your suggestions, thank you so much! I've got blue trailing lobelia, some red and purple daisies (osteospermum I think they are), some pale yellow marguerittes and some verbena. Oh, and some petunias which Little B chose, he was so insistent that they were his "best Favourites" that I brought them for him ♥

♥ I am seriously love love loving my geraniums, sorry to keep going on about them, but they are really lighting up my days! The colours are incredibly intense now that the flowers are beginning to open fully, wow, they please me very much! ♥

♥ I really like seeing the row of flower pots lined up on top of my wall and I'm looking forward to watching them fill out a bit as summer progresses. I planted some nasturtium seeds too yesterday, underneath the passion flower in one of my big pots. I hope they sprout ♥

♥ 10 am and I felt like baking, so made a batch of fruity flapjacks ♥

♥ Once the flapjacks were out of the oven and cooling, I  took these two stacks of mandala's out to the back yard to photograph them (this is Thursday and Friday's post, 65 of them!). This mandala project is bringing me a huge amount of pleasure, but cripes it's hard to keep up with the workload. I am doing ok though :) ♥

♥ 11.2o and I give in to pleas from Little Lady for us to make soup for lunch. Strange girl, it's a baking hot day and she is  desperate for soup, but I suddenly realise that actually she is asking for us to do this together. It is only she and I that are soup-lovers, the boys aren't keen, and so we get busy in the kitchen. We decide on carrot and coriander as it's simple and light and I have all the ingredients ♥

♥ 12 noon, and we are sitting down outside to slurp our soup together, it turned out good! We chat about making Sunday soup-lunch a weekly thing and discuss possible recipes for the future. Any good summer soups you can recommend for us to try? ♥

This morning was warm and sunny and happy and productive and relaxing. Busy and Lazy all at once. Such a beautiful morning full of nothing in particular, but yes it was indeed beautiful.

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♥...more little snippets from the Attic...♥

Elderflower Cordial

Geranium Love

Moments

Mandala Wheels for Yarndale

This week

Summer Solstice 2014

Bloomin' football world cup nonsense has meant that I was unsuccessful in prizing my hubby away from the television this evening. I had wanted to go forth into the glorious Yorkshire countryside on this special Summer's evening and do something happy and celebrationish with my family. Inexplicably, I adore both the Solstice days each year in June and December and it always feels really important to me that we celebrate them in some small way. I feel compelled to do it somehow, and am seriously miffed if it doens't pan out. Bah. I felt so very irritated earlier, stropping and harrumphing and deep sighing, but then I pulled myself together and set about arranging my very own personal celebration.

It's cloudy here but beautifully warm, so I took myself out to the back yard with a small jam jar of flowers and a couple of candles. I made myself a cup of tea in my rainbow mug, took my patchwork blanket to sit on and wrapped myself in my beautiful Home Poncho.  And I rippled. Oh those soothing rows of sea and sky colours worked their magic and I felt a wave of calm wash over me as I sat there quietly and worked.  I heard distant music, gentle adult chatter and the sound of children shouting and playing as my neighbourhood went about it's evening business. And I gave thanks for this life of mine, for the happy house that we live in on this friendly street, for these long summer days when the Little People can still play out at 9.30pm.

Happy Summer Solstice to those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, and happy Winter Sostice for those of you who are upsidedown! I hope your day has been wonderful wherever you are in the world ♥

ps the above photos were taken at 9.45pm x

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Edit to add :: thank you so much Laura in South Africa, for sharing these beautiful words, a Wiccan blessing for Summer........."As the sun spirals its longest dance - cleanse us, As nature shows bounty and fertility - bless us. Let all things live with loving intent and to fulfill their truest destiny."

 

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Summer Solstice 2013

Winter Has Arrived

Geranium Love

I can't tell you how happy I am this year pottering about in my little  4m x 4m back yard, prettifying it for the summer. It really is the tiniest of spaces but it feels cosy and manageable and gives me just enough outdoor space to play in without any tremendous responsibility. It is somewhere that I can sit with a morning coffee, crochet a little, chat with friends, play with Little B, grow flowers, sip a chilled drink on a sunny weekend afternoon with J and hang my laundry out to dry. And really, that is absolutely all I require from an outside space. Open greenery and a view would be lovely but at this busy time in my life, truthfully I am glad that I'm not burdened with hours of garden labour. Small and easy suits us just fine.

So I've got this collection of old pots which have been cleared of weeds and dead things, waiting to be planted up with summer colour. It's exciting! For various reasons I'm without a car so I can't indulge in any major garden retail therapy at a nursery or garden centre. Instead I am trickling in a few pots at a time when I can manage/remember, picking them up from the market or with the supermarket shop and carrying them carefully home with the groceries.

This year, I am mainly filling my pots with cheap and cheerful geraniums. I love these humble flowers very much, love that they don't mind a bit of drought, and that the substantial local mollusk population don't seem to like nibbling them either. In short, they are resilient and that suits my rather slap dash approach to gardening.

But most of all I love the colour of geraniums. I absolutely adore the bright and bold shots of red and pink dancing above all that greenery, it just makes my heart sing a happy song!

When I bought these plants, the flower buds were very tightly closed and so I only have a vague idea of what colour they will turn out to be. The plants all had labels so I was able to leave the white ones behind, picking out the reds and pinks, but I am still waiting for them to bloom....

...ooooooh, I am really looking forward to seeing this one open fully, I think I may swoon a little at that delicious red/pink petal combo!

Back in the Springtime before geraniums were really on my mind at all, I happened to catch sight of a pretty geranium mosaic on Facebook, made my the talented Felicty of Just Mosaics. There is a whole bouquet of mosaic flowers that you can choose from on Felicity's website, and you may remember that I already have a vase of tulips here in the Attic. That's her beautiful studio up above there look, where she creates her mosaic pieces, isn't it lovely?

Well, I loved the original red geraniums design that first caught my eye, but decided to write to Felicity and ask if she might possibly make me my very own picture which had both red and pink flowers in it. I also asked if I could maybe have my sky background just a little bluer please, if at all possible, and sorry to be so demanding, please, thank you! Bless Felicity, she is the kindest and most accommodating person, and she assured me that I could indeed have flowers in two colours, and a nice blue summer sky.

An extra-special thing that Felicity also did was to email me little progress updates as she was making my picture. Such fun! I watched each day as the flowers bloomed (in red and pink!), and then as the stems and leaves grew. I saw the terracotta pot arrive, and then the most gorgeous blue sky surrounding it all. And then, oh, what the heck??!! I got to see a mucky mess!! I think Felicity really got a bit of a kick out of sending me that particular progress report, naughty thing! But then finally, the finished picture was there on my screen and I was absolutely thrilled. It was just as I had imagined it in my mind.

The real deal is very much more beautiful than the screen images, I have to say. The colours are beautifully vibrant in real life, and of course it is all glossy and shiny and bounces light around the place which adds to the colour intensity of the tiles.

I can tell you (cos I just this minute counted) that there are seventy six individual pieces in this mosaic. I just love thinking about things like that, like wondering how many thousands of stitches are in my crochet blankets. I love handmade things very, very much. The talent, the time and the love that goes into designing and making handmade things is incredibly inspiring and a little bit mind boggling.

I've hung my mosaic geraniums in my kitchen, above my kitchen sink. Sorry I can't show you them in situ but my kitchen is rather small, dark and dreary and it's very hard to take pictures in there. I tried, but they all turned out fuzzy and pretty rubbish. You'll just have to imagine it, and know that it makes me smile many, many times each day.

Now tell me.....what are your favourite summer flowers for growing in pots?? I'm going to visit the plant stall at the market tomorrow and wonder what would look terrrifc with oodles of geraniums. Marguerites? Petunias? Marigolds? Go on, throw some floral ideas at me!

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ps if you like to bob about on Facebook, do go say hello to Felicity {Just Mosaics}, her page is a riot of colourful creativity ♥

 

♥...more little snippets from the Attic...♥

2012 :: Year End Review :: flowers

Open Studio :: June 2013

Summer Days

Oh I just love these glorious summer days so, so much, the long hours of daylight and the sunny warmth makes me feel very happy indeed.

I went up to the Attic for a short while earlier and drank in the lush green and blue of our summer landscape, marvelling at the fact that this was 8pm and all was still bright and golden. I love the feeling of Summer, the sweet emotion of it all.

I love coming downstairs in the early morning to find the sunlight streaming in through our front east-facing bay window. I love wearing my light cotton jammies covered in printed roses. I sit at the table and drink my frothy coffee and savour the still of the house with only one small child up and about, mentally preparing myself for the busy day that lies ahead.

This morning we were up early, Little B and I, greeting the day just after 6am. It meant that I found time for some early morning ripples, which pleased me enormously. I had thought last week that I was almost at the end of my coastal blanket, but after measuring it (then mercilessly stretching it and re-measuring it), I've come to the conclusion that it's just not quite long enough. I was disappointed for about a nano-second, then immediately thought yippeeeeee, cos truthfully I hadn't been ready to face The Edge just yet.

I have summer flowers on my table, a scruffy little posy plucked from the front garden with a few stems of alchemilla, some campanula, a few daisies and one single, beautiful rose. Much as I do every year, I wish very much that I had more roses to go at, more blooms to bring indoors. I should really see to that, how hard can it be to purchase and plant roses? Anyone?

I continue to balance and juggle my days, and it is getting easier. I am forcing myself to be more disciplined, more organised, making better use of my hours. This past week I have been working on a Christmas project for Simply Crochet magazine, which has felt a weeny bit bonkers in mid June I have to say. I've been continuing to work my way through a daily dose of mandalas (over 700 now, from 43 countries!), and I am now into my third week of working in schools on our Woolly Bike Project. I've taken some pictures as I've been working with the children, I'll share them with you in a day or two. It's getting easier, I am less fraught and more organised and the children have been absolutely wonderful.

I've been slowly buying plants to fill my back yard pots, bargain buys from the supermarket for very little money. Lots of geraniums have come home with my shopping this year (they were on offer at £1.33 each!), lavender and herbs too. I'd like some daisy type flowers and possibly some nasturtiums, but really I would be happy with just geraniums to gaze at. I do need to plant them now, rather than just looking at them and thinking about planting them. These big pots will go up on top of the wall when they are planted so that they get more sunshine, but I would love to have more greenery at ground level actually. Maybe some big pots of foliage might be good to stand against the wall?

When I cleared the yard a few weeks ago, I made space at the far end to put a couple of chairs. There used to be some old potting benches here, laden with lots of old flowerpots and miscellaneous rubbish, but after six years it finally dawned on me (talk about slow) that this is actually the sunniest spot in the whole back yard and should really be used for sitting in, not storing rubbish in. I'm hoping to get a bench here at some point, but for now, some old chairs and my much loved patchwork blanket do the job nicely. It's a lovely place to sit with an afternoon cuppa, face turned up to the sunshine and the gentle sounds of the neighbourhood in my ears.

I don't have much time for sitting outside at the moment actually,  but Little B and I do pootle out here most days. Mostly it is me hanging out laundry, or bringing in the laundry, with Little B looking for signs of wildlife. He was thrilled to discover this empty moth pupa yesterday, I just love his excitement over new discoveries and the way his face looks when he is absorbing so much new information about the world around us. He is soooo ready for school in September.

I am taking great pleasure in my little homely routines, the domestic tick-tock of my Mothering days feel so good at the moment when I stop to really see it and appreciate it and not just let it all rattle by in the blink of an eye.

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♥...more little snippets from the Attic...♥

A Jar of Summer

Juggling Act

Mandala Wheels for Yarndale

2012 :: Year End Review :: flowers

Juggling Act

On Saturday I welcomed seven lovely ladies to my studio and we enjoyed a wonderful hooky day together making birdies.

I love how each and every bird has it's own personality and character, and how different they all turn out, even with the same yarn and same hook size.

I'll soon be ready to share my pattern with you all here in the Attic, I'm very excited about doing that!

Last week I began on a five week stint of working three afternoons a week with three different local schools. This is a joint project between Yarndale and a local children's charity, with the aim of introducing children of all ages and abilities to the joys of working with yarn. With our help, each school is yarn bombing it's own bicycle which will form a "woolly bike trail" in the park for the Yarndale weekend.

What can I say? This is a major challenge for me on so many levels, and my juggling skills are certainly being put to the test. Like many working parents, I suddenly have Childcare Issues, and it's quite a stressful time actually. This is tough work for a quiet Attic dweller and non-teacher like me, going into a school and engaging/inspiring a classroom of 20 children for 3.5 hour stretches. But the children have all been fabulous and so eager to learn, I've managed to teach them all to finger crochet, the above bike is totally wrapped in lengths of finger crochet! We are creating a bicycle garden here folks (hence the greens and browns) and will begin to make all sorts of woolly mini beasts during the next four weeks to decorate. I am hoping I am up to the job, I am googling like made and trying to devise ways of cunningly making ladybirds and other critters out of pompoms and pipe cleaners. And googly eyes.

This is a sweet little trike that I'm working on in another school. These are weeny Little People (age 5 & 6) so I am keeping things much simpler here. We are wrapping the trike in lengths of stretchy jersey fabric first.....

.....then all sorts of rainbow themed yarn crafts will be added to decorate. I made these tassels this afternoon with 28 children, they loved doing it so much.

In between all this activity that I'm engaged with for Yarndale, I am also attempting to juggle my own Little People at a very busy time of year. Little B begins his transition phase into school next week (I think it's next week, could well be the week after), and there are a worryingly large number of school/nursery trips and activities which require food/the right clothing/money/filled in forms for each child. A residential trip for Little/Big Man. A coach trip for Little B. High School visits and open days for Little Lady. It's all very full on. I race about from A to B to C and every so often I remember to look up and appreciate the colour of the sky and breathe deeply.

Life on the home front is a shambles right now. So. Much. Mess. So much that doens't get done. I am hardly here at the moment, but I am trying to remember to sit still sometimes and appreciate the Little Pleasures. Fresh flowers. Kind friends and neighbours. Long, light days and balmy summer warmth. Juicy strawberries. Great coffee. A good nights sleep.

I am planning my food and shopping very carefully in these busy days, making sure that when I come in the door at 4.45pm, that I know exactly what I am cooking each day, that I can get off to a flying start. Tonight I made a simple risotto flavoured with sundried tomatoes, rocket and goats cheese, it was delicious and comforting after a long, busy day. Tomorrow I'm making fajitas, but using mixed beans and peppers instead of chicken as we are still doing our vegetarian thing. I've got a ripe avocado to make a bit of homemade guacamole and a small tub of sour cream. I think it's going to be good, and should all come together in 20 minutes flat. Great fast food.

The mandalas continue to flood in, with approximately 20-30 each day arriving into the guinea pig hutch in the front garden. As I am working in the schools during the afternoons, my mandala hour has been rescheduled to the evening shift, once dinner is done and dusted. Luckily it is mid summer here, and our days are long and light which means I can photograph them all individually in the back yard even at 7pm.

I am uploading them to the Yarndale Pinterest boards in batches each night, and the current count is 590 mandalas from 42 different countries around the world. Yeah!!! Isn't this something truly very special??!! Do go have a look, such a visual treat... http://www.pinterest.com/yarndale/

I will try to bob in here whenever I am able, but truthfully the next four weeks are going to be tough for me and Attic24 will need to play second fiddle I'm afraid. I hope you understand.

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♥...more little snippets from the Attic...♥

Granny Bunting for Yarndale

Introducing Yarndale

Mandala Wheels for Yarndale

Funky Lamp Yarnbomb :: Ta-dah!

Mandala Love

Last Week

Last week we were home from school and work, enjoying some relaxing family holiday time, a stay-cation if you like. There was much imaginative play going on around here, with dens and hideouts and simple fun with wool.....

....and buttons. Who knew a tin of buttons and a clothes peg could keep a four year old entertained for sooooo long?

I spent an embarrassing (but delicious) amount of time in my pyjamas, pottering about the house doing pleasurable homey things.

I baked (little iced lemon buns) and tried not to eat the baking. Damn hard work that. I do believe my waist line has reduced ever so slightly and I am thankful for that.

I bought Little B a new drawing set so that he has "pens of mine very own" and sat with him whilst he produced endless pages of drawings narrated with stories. Pirate ships sailing under big sunshiney skies, flowers and birds and robots and giant spiders webs.

We ate late breakfasts every day, and I even made scotch pancakes one morning which the Little Peeps smothered in syrup and strawberry jam.

I drank a lot of coffee and spent time catching up in Blogland and on Facebook and Pinterest, immersing myself in other people's creativity. I have sooooooo many ideas buzzing around at the moment for new projects I'm driving myself slightly mad.

I tried very hard to keep up with the mountain of mandalas that arrived each and every day. I had bizarre and funny chats (on the doorstep in my pyjamas) with my posties, and I marveled at the way the world wide web can reach so many corners of the planet. I have approx 500+ mandalas in the Attic now, from 38 different countries, you can see them all on the Yarndale Pinterest boards. The scale of it blows my mind somewhat.

I allowed the Little People to take over the house, spreading themselves messily in and out of rooms and across all available surfaces. This was the result of 4 children one morning (my youngest two, and my neighbour's two), colouring and stickering. There was much more mess when the lego came out to play, and when furniture was rearranged and all bedding from upstairs brought downstairs to make a Batman cave.

I gratefully received some tiny scraps of cut out paper from Little B, little notes of affection which touched my heart.

I enjoyed (for one morning only) crochet in bed with a cup of tea in that blissful early first half hour of the day before the Little People awoke.

We made a spontaneous up-and-out-the-door trip to the river beach, to drink coffee and eat chocolate after dinner one evening.

I sat and slurped coffee with J as the sun lowered in the sky and the Little People paddled, built dens and skimmed stones. It was pretty damn good.

I found beach treasure at the river which pleased me no end.

I swallowed down my loathing of public swimming pools and took the Little Peeps to the local pool early one morning. Walking through the quiet park, trying not to think bad thoughts about forcing myself into a too-small swimsuit and putting myself into a chlorine-filled box of water with semi-clad complete strangers. The Little People reeeeeeeeeeally enjoyed it, I did it for them.

I cleared out my back yard, yaaayyy!! In a fit of spontaneous, sweaty activity one afternoon, I cleared and emptied, swept and scrubbed, shifted and de-cluttered, with help from Little B and Little P (my neighbours 4 year old).

We evicted an enormous number of mollusks, relocating them to the back street (sorry neighbours), although of course they will probably re-home themselves back at number 24 at some point eh.

So I am all ready for some new colourful plant life now, yipppeeeeeeee!! After leaving my back yard to rest and lie fallow last year, I found I missed my homegrown flowers way too much. I am ridiculously excited about planting my pots up again this year, and am planning on a visit to Mr Plant Man's nursery this weekend.

♥

Last week was such a tonic, a lovely, leisurely relaxing stay-home week. Much needed as it happens, cos this week has been the total opposite. I'll update you soon on all that I am trying to juggle during these forthcoming weeks, I really hope I manage to keep all my balls in the air. Some days it seems like an impossible task. All I can do is try my best.

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