Attic24

This Week

See? See the sunshine??? Late Summer I tell ya, late summer!! It has been a glorious week full of brightness and warmth here, and I have love love loved it.

I have looked up and seen the changing treetops and acknowledged that Mother Nature is tipping us out of Summer and into Autumn.....

....but my toes are still out and I am a happy bunny going about my busy business this week. And boy, have I been busy. We are full into Yarndale* preparations this week as the festival opens to the public at the weekend and I am working hard with the rest of the team to get everything ready.

Today I gathered together this scrumptious pile of colourful crochet and went forth with my step ladder to do crazy yarn things with twenty five lamp posts in the park.

This is the third year we have decorated the park for Yarndale*, it is such a fun thing to do and the response we get from the public (of all ages) is wonderful. These yarn-covered lamp posts do a good job of guiding our walking visitors through the park to the festival during the weekend so they do have a purpose, but the fun/creative element is still a driving force for me taking this on.

We actually stitch the crochet panels in place and they do stay (mostly) intact for five days before I carefully take them down again and store them away to be used the following year.

Oooooooo just look at those gorgeous yarny blooms! This year I've really enjoyed helping my lovely friend Sheila with her charity project called "Flowers for Memories". This is a project dedicated to raising awareness and funds for the Alzheimers Society, in case you missed this, you can read all about it right here.

The response to Sheila's request for knitted and crocheted flowers has been incredible, with more than 5,000 flowers arriving here in Yorkshire from 22 countries worldwide. It has been emotional and humbling, and both Sheila and I have been at times quite overwhelmed by it all.

Last weekend we counted and colour-sorted the flowers ready to start building the display. The idea was to create 5 large fabric panels, pinning each flower in place to create a beautiful field of blooms....

...here you can see Sheila in action, working on the yellow/orange section of the display. We have spent many, many hours on this project, and this afternoon the last flower was pinned. WOW. It is a totally breathtaking sight I can tell you. I promise (hand on heart) that there will be a tonne of photos to share next week, but for now I don't want to spoil the surprise. Thank you to every one of the 400+ ladies who sent flowers, they are priceless little works of art, each and every one of them. Flowers will be for sale during Yarndale* (all proceeds go directly to Alzheimers Society), and we will be writing a full report after the festival.

I'm so sorry that I've not been around so much just lately here in the Attic. I really love being a part of Yarndale* and am very proud of the lively, inspirational festival that we've created, but at the same time I absolutely can't wait for life to return to some sort of normality and for me to have time of my own to spend here again.

Lots of love to you all, will be back soon xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

*Yarndale is a yarn festival held over two days and I am one of the five organisers. You can find more details about Yarndale here.

 

Seasonal Change

September is a month where the change of the seasons makes me feel a little bit unsettled and it has to be said, not particularly glad. I am a Summertime girl and at this time of year the slow descent from Summer into Autumn makes me feel a weeny bit bleugh. I can see Autumn creeping in with the early morning mists, feel it taking hold with the drop in temperature, and yet I am not ready to give up on Summer just yet. I re-paint my toe nails a pretty summery pink and defiantly keep my flip flops on throughout September. After all, this month really IS still Summer (it is, it is, its is, stamping flip-flopped foot with authority) at least until the Autumn Equinox on the 23rd.

I can see why so many people love Autumn though, the season brings with it a certain atmospheric beauty and the quality of the light, especially in the early mornings and early evenings, is often breathtakingly beautiful. Yes, I'll give it that.

We've had some very lovely late summery weather here in my patch during this past week, with clear blue skies and warm sunshine. I have thoroughly approved, and have felt relieved and happy as I've gone about my busy days.

One of the things I really enjoy about the return to school after the long summer holidays, is the return of my daily walking routine. We became rather lazy and house-bound during the end of the summer holidays, staying close to home and not venturing out at all from day to day unless we absolutely had to. Really, it was a miracle that the school uniform, multiple pairs of footwear and hair cuts happened at all, given that nobody ever wanted to go anywhere. It was a major effort to organise a ten minute walk to the shops. I loved the homeliness of our holiday routines at the time, but now I am back out and about every day, I realise how much I have missed walking.

It's the same every year, I remember writing about this very thing last September. The joy at walking the Long Way home just for the pleasure of being out and about in the fresh air.  Strolling along the canal tow path, taking in the still-green of the trees, the light and colours of the slowly changing seasons. And trying to summon up some gladness for it all.

I can confirm that sunshine most definitely helps in the search for gladness. Even the sight of those treetops changing from green to orange made me happy against the brilliant blue of a sunny (late summer) sky.

One really great, heart-skippy thing about this time of year is the appearance of Dahlias on the market, oh happy day!

The plant stall has moved to the top of the high street which makes it a bit out of my way these days, so I need to remind myself to walk up there for flowers. Yesterday morning I wasn't disappointed, in fact I was rather overcome with happiness at the sight of those buckets brimming with floral colour.

I treated myself to two bunches, one for home and one for my studio, the stems tied up with brown string and wrapped up in stripy paper. Dahlias are most definitely a very good reason to love September.

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Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Honestly, it has given me such a silly amount of pleasure writing the title of today's post, I really am very easily pleased. So today, short and sweet, I am sharing a little bit more of the crochet bumble bee I showed you yesterday. I few weeks ago I made a woolly sign for Yarndale which features some colourful flowers, and the bumble bee just had to buzz in.

I loved the bee so much that I immediately made another one, stitched a small safety pin on the back......

....and wore it every single day. It's just a silly little thing to have attached to my clothing, but it has delivered a lot of pleasure. I seem to remember from somewhere that bees bring good luck, so I am going along with that idea.

I made another bee this morning so that I could write up a tutorial for you, and absolutely love love loved the way it looked when it landed in the centre of this mandala flower. I have this mandala on my studio table, it's adapted from a pattern by Barbara Smith  which you can find here - you may remember this from my blog a few years ago?

So on a whim I decided to make my little bee his very own flower to sit in (using my own flower pattern here)....

....and turned it into a pretty brooch.....

....which I immediately pinned to my person. Bee+Flower=Happy!

I've just finished writing up the pattern for you which you can find in my left hand sidebar.

{BUMBLE BEE PATTERN}

It's a little bit fiddly (DK weight yarn with a 3mm hook) but a lovely thing to crochet and wear or gift to friends as a good luck charm.

Grab some scraps of black, yellow and white yarn and go get buzzzzzzy!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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ps anyone coming to Yarndale, it would be fab if you could wear a flower/bee brooch so that other Attic friends might say hello - I'll be wearing mine x

 

Back in the Attic

How long? Three weeks? Have I really been gone from the Attic for that long? It's all been a bit of a blur to be honest, the usual end-of Summer, start-of-school, pre-Yarndale* rush of activity that leaves me breathless and a little bit bewildered. But despite the complexity of my life during late August/early September, I have been feeling remarkably happy and calm.

This year I managed to purchase three lots of school uniform and sports kit (including 8 pairs of shoes/trainers/football boots/pumps), associated academic paraphernalia and three haircuts with more than a week to spare. It was a miraculous personal achievement for me, and even the Little People seemed impressed with my unprecedented organisational skills. I was impressed with myself too,  who knew I had it in me to be so organised? Maybe at the grand old age of forty six, I am finally changing my last-minute ways. Maybe, we shall see....

Schools here in North Yorkshire were later than usual to return after the summer holidays which stretched to almost 8 weeks this year. Today is the start of my first full week back to routine (oh, the joy!) and the Little Peeps are all gently settling back into school life. This is the beginning of my life with three children at three different schools as Little Lady has now started at secondary school (a different one to Little Man). As a result of this fact I feel the need to be uber-organised in order to help them (and me) cope with all that is coming our way each day. We are trying hard to establish some good home routines (homework, bedtimes, morning routines etc.), I sincerely hope we won't land at Christmas in a stressed-out, jibbering heap.

I have really enjoyed the end of the summer holidays here - the weather has been a bit unreliable but there have been snatches of pure beauty in amongst the unseasonal cold/wet stuff.

J and I managed to engineer a whole day to ourselves (thank heavens for my fabulous in-laws) so we packed a picnic and went forth to tramp across the hills together.

The colours and the light were really lovely on that day, they reminded me of my Harmony colours actually, that beautiful, soft blend of blues, greens and purples.

I'm working on a new blanket design for Autumn/Winter. I've been working on the idea in fits and starts since May, and at last after a lot of indecision and mild angst it all seems to be falling into place (yeehaw!). I had the idea for this blanket many years ago, but it's been harder than usual to make the reality match up to the vision. I'm excited to share it with you, need to crochet a bit more of it first as it'll be much easier to show you what I'm planning than to ask your imagination to fill in the missing bits!

It's less than two weeks until Yarndale* happens, there is SO much going on, and so much still needing to be done. It's all good though, it's keeping me very busy and I'm enjoying the focus of these intense days of activity.

In amongst everything I decided to crochet a little life size bumble bee to buzz around the yarn flowers. It's a pretty darn cute little make, if a little fiddlesome, I'll share the pattern with you tomorrow so that you can get buzzzzzzzzy with your 3mm hook and put a bit of hooky insect life on your favourite woolly. See you then...

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* I am one of the organisers of Yarndale which is an annual creative yarn festival.