Attic24

Back Yard Flowers

I planted up my back yard pots sometime in the middle of May when it was still rather depressingly cold and wet. I stuck with my usual assortment of cheap and cheerful brightly coloured annuals, purchased here and there from the market and supermarket and potted rather haphazardly into an array of old terracotta pots and falling-apart plastic tubs that have seen better days. My whole back yard really does need a complete renovation job, but despite my neglect and the ancient state of my pots and garden furniture, the flowers are blooming and all is good for another year.

I can't tell you how much pleasure these simple little back yard flowers bring me every summer, they are just wonderful. Although I never have flowers in abundance and the pickings are always on the small side, this somehow makes them even more precious.

Sweet peas, nasturtiums, geraniums, African daisies, cosmos and lobelia, such happy little flowers and such a sweet, bright spot on my dining table at this time of year. The scent of the sweet peas is especially lovely, it's so nice to sit at the table with my crochet/knitting/planner and catch a waft of that gorgeous fragrance every so often.

These beautiful rich jewel colours constantly inspire me, they are so cheerful and uplifting, a real zingy reminder of the joys of summer.

I think this could be a good time to pick up my abandoned Summer Wreath and channel some of these brilliant colours into a whole heap load of crochet flowers and leaves. Hmmm...how hard might it be to crochet sweet pea flowers do you think? It can't be that tricky - I am definitely feeling inspired to give it a go.....watch this space!

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ps just found this on Pinterest....sweet peas coming up!

 

 

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Constitutional

Isn't it funny how some words ease into our language without us even really noticing? I was thinking this morning about the word "Constitutional" which J introduced me to many, many years ago. I doubt I even knew exactly what it meant back then, but nevertheless I got the jist of it and over the years it has become a familiar word in our family. I looked it up in an online dictionary just now, and in this context it means "beneficial to one's general physical wellbeing eg. a regular walk taken for the benefit of one's health". Did you know that?

Taking a short, feel-good walk is something we do quite often, most especially at weekends or during the holidays. You know the feeling when it suddenly seems Very Necessary to scoop up the moany, lethargic Little People and deposit them in the great outdoors to  blow away the cobwebs and let off steam? I always think of it as being primarily good for the spirit, but obviously there are physical benefits from stretching one's legs and breathing in lungfuls of country air.

We've started the long six week summer holidays here, and oh-my-word, it does feel good to ease up on routine and relax at home. The weather so far has been dull, grey and muggy, but at least it has been warm and (mostly) dry. We've made the decision to try and venture out most days for a short walk somewhere if we can, so on Sunday we decided to go for the early morning approach and set out not long after 8am. It was grey and overcast, with very still air that felt heavy somehow, but the calm waters of the reservoir were serene and peaceful.

We sat a while on a bench and played a frustrating game of I-spy (Little B chose something beginning with 'M' which after much failed guessing turned out to be M for Milky Way. Difficult child).

We pottered about on the sandy beach and collected some small fragments of pottery to add to our collection.

We walked and talked.....

.....took in the greenery of the scenery.....

.....and examined flowers and beetles and a very hairy caterpillar. It was a very pleasant way to start the day I have to say.

Yesterday, we took our constitutional in the evening after dinner and set out on foot to walk up the hill.....

....and into the cool, shady green of the woodland.

We had some rain yesterday which made the air smell amazing, all earthy and leafy, damp and fresh.

I'm always bowled over by the intense shades of green of the summer woodland....

....and being out in the evening meant that soft sunlight shafted in low through the trees as we walked.

It was muddy and damp, shady and cool, but really rather lovely to be out amongst it all.

We walked back home feeling very relaxed....

....and I thought to myself that there is a lot to be said for strolling about for the benefit of one's health. We should do it more often.

xx

 

 

 

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Colourwash Granny Blanket :: Ta-dah!

I have come to realise that over the years I've become pretty addicted to writing and sharing Ta-dah posts here on my blog. I love the feeling of bubbly excitement that rises as I upload the photo-story, and the pure happiness that spreads as I begin to find the words to describe my creative journey. I find it a wonderful and fulfilling way to round off what has often been many months of planning and making, and the whole process makes my heart squeeze.

Compared to my usual blanket-making journeys, this one has been mighty fast. Right from the very beginning when I sat in my studio and spent those hours snipping little bits of yarn and arranging them in rows, I was in love. I knew immediately that the making of this blanket would delivery huge dollops of pleasure  - the very simple granny squares combined with an exciting rush of colour-fix had me bowled over from the very beginning. I have love love loved this journey so much, it was everything I had hoped for, and a whole lot more on top. But oh, it all went by way too fast! One minute I was playing with yarn snippets and the next minute I was spreading out a finished blanket. In reality, this blanket started on 20th May and finished on 1st July which is exactly six weeks, and that fact has surprised me somewhat - I think I must have slipped into a hooky time warp or something.

This blanket came about as I wanted to use some of my rather vast stash of yarn left over from the making of many other blankets over the past couple of years. In total there are 44 different colours of Stylecraft Special DK, which makes me smile every time I think about it. Forty four, fancy that! You may remember I wrote about the start of this blanket back in June (this post), where I explained how I was ordering my colours to create a subtle colourwash effect through the rows. 

I have seriously loved messing around with these colours and watching the blanket grow and transform from cool to hot, then back to cool again. This blanket certainly ticked all my colour-crush boxes and kept me excited and swooning through every single one of the 144 squares.

At the end of May, we took a few days away from home and returned to stay in the rented house in St Annes again. We were blessed with a lovely dash of early summer and enjoyed day after day of glorious sunshiny weather. Of course I had my hooky with me (I don't travel anywhere without my yarn and hook) and spent some really gorgeous hours sat out in the small courtyard garden with a chilled glass of white wine and my blanket to hand. Blissful indeed.

I love that during that sunny time away I was working on row 8, which just happened to be the introduction of the yellow shades - totally appropriate as it happens (yay for sunny seaside holidays!) and I have some delicious memories tucked up in those warm rows.

Onwards through June, and the blanket continued to grow.....

....through the heat of the oranges and yellows....

....and gently down into the cooler shades of green.

The final (twelfth) row merged the greens with the greeny-blues, which took the blanket full circle and back to the same colours that I started with in the first row.

When I first dreamed up the colourwash idea, it was as if I could already see the blanket like a photograph pinned up on the wall of my Creative Mind. It was such an amazing feeling to see this blanket come together in reality, after having such a clear vision before I started making it.

I am normally in a full on dither over the edge of my blankets, and often ponder over it for weeks before deciding what to do. Not this time though, I was straight on with it, yippeee for decisiveness and vision! After making a dinky little linen stitch edging on my cupcake blanket, I had really wanted to try making a much deeper border using the same stitch (inspired by this gorgeous blanket on Pinterest). If you want to try this edging on a granny square blanket it's very straight forward, although the first row is a little bit faffy. If you look in the photo above, you can see that the (dc; ch1's) are worked into every alternate stitch along the edge of the granny squares. However, when you move across the join between two squares, you crochet the dc's into each corner space of the two joining squares. Then it's back to working them into every other stitch. Hope that makes sense!

Linen stitch makes quite a tight crochet fabric, so working a wide border means you need to adjust your hook size to stop the crochet from pulling too tight (ie I changed from a 4mm to a 5mm). 

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed making these neat little rows of colour, it gave me soooooo much pleasure! I worked out the colours in advance (21 of them to make a 10cm wide border), and I think the end result is stunning........

........mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!!! What a colour-fest!!!!

Here is my colour list for this border ::

♥ 1. Petrol ♥ 2. Aster ♥ 3. Turquoise ♥ 4. Storm Blue ♥ 5. Aspen ♥ 6. Lime ♥ 7. Gold ♥ 8. Spice ♥ 9. Tomato ♥ 10. Copper ♥ 11. Claret ♥ 12. Plum ♥ 13. Raspberry ♥ 14. Pomegranate ♥ 15. Magenta ♥ 16. Violet ♥ 17. Lavender ♥ 18. Wisteria ♥ 19. Parma Violet ♥ 20. Duck Egg ♥ 21. Cloud Blue ♥

I love it very, very much.

I especially like the way that the corner turn is so neat looking, and that this band of colours puts a joyful rainbow around the whole of the blanket.

So I guess you maybe want to see how the squares look with their rainbow frame?

I'll need to lay the blanket out on the attic floor, then run down three flights of stairs to grab the step ladders from the cellar. Then back up three flights of stairs to balance on the steps with my camera.

I'll need to wobble a bit and try and hold the camera steady with one hand held high up above the blanket.

Ok, I'm up the ladder.......

camera at the ready.......

the light is good.......

click

click

click..........

Ta-dah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What a heart-expanding sight, so much beautiful, glorious, bright, happy, harmonious colour!

I love the wide border and the way it works to frame the squares..........

........it's ever so slightly over the top but I love the exuberance of it. I really, really love it so much.

I explained in detail about my method of planning the rows in my previous colourwash blanket post, and I would love to think this might inspire you to gather together your own colours and create your own colour story. Please do let me know if you are making your own colourwash blanket, I would love to see!

As I've already been asked many times on social media about the exact colour placement for making this blanket, I am more than happy to give you all the information you need. As mentioned before, I used 44 shades of Stylecraft Special DK. There are twelve rows, and each row contains 12 squares (6 colours, 2 of each colour placed in each row). I made a table to detail the exact colour placement.......

Row 1	1	2	6	3	5	4	6	1	3	2	5	4
Row 2	9	10	8	1	2	7	10	2	8	7	9	1
Row 3	13	7	14	11	8	11	12	7	11	14	12	8
Row 4	18	17	16	13	15	17	14	18	13	15	16	14
Row 5	15	21	24	18	20	19	15	21	24	19	18	20
Row 6	22	26	19	23	21	26	25	19	22	25	23	21
Row 7	25	28	27	25	30	29	28	26	27	29	30	26
Row 8	29	33	34	28	31	36	33	29	34	31	36	28
Row 9	31	38	37	33	32	35	37	31	38	35	32	33
Row 10	40	39	41	42	37	38	40	39	42	37	41	38
Row 11	6	42	44	43	5	41	44	5	41	6	43	42
Row 12	1	5	2	3	6	4	2	6	1	2	5	3

♥ 1. Storm Blue ♥ 2. Cloud ♥ 3. Duck Egg ♥ 4. Sherbet ♥ 5. Sage ♥

♥ 6. Aspen ♥ 7. Denim ♥ 8. Aster ♥ 9.Petrol ♥ 10. Turquoise ♥

♥ 11. Violet ♥ 12. Bluebell ♥ 13. Lavender ♥ 14. Wisteria ♥

♥ 15. Pale Rose ♥ 16. Parma Violet ♥ 17. Clematis ♥ 18. Grape ♥

♥ 19. Raspberry ♥ 20. Magenta ♥ 21. Plum ♥ 22. Pomegranate ♥

♥ 23. Bright Pink ♥ 24. Fondant ♥ 25. Shrimp ♥ 26. Lipstick ♥

♥ 27.Claret ♥ 28.Tomato ♥ 29. Spice ♥ 30. Copper ♥ 31. Camel ♥

♥ 32. Stone ♥ 33. Gold ♥ 34. Mocha ♥ 35. Lemon ♥ 36. Saffron ♥

♥ 37. Mustard ♥ 38. Citron ♥ 39. Spring Green ♥ 40. Pistachio ♥

♥ 41. Lime ♥ 42. Meadow ♥ 43. Khaki ♥ 44. Teal ♥

I am doing a happy dance in my mind thinking about the pure joy this blanket is giving me and how much I'm looking forward to taking it out and about with us over the summer. I can't wait to see it spread out on the grass somewhere scenic, and on the beach later in the summer when we head up to Northumberland. There is a lot of happiness in those one hundred and forty four squares :)

Before a toddle off, I'll give you a few Blankety Facts and Figures ::

Yarn ♥ Stylecraft Special DK, a stash-busting project to use up left overs. I used 44 colours in total - I'm sorry I can't give you exact quantities of each colour.

Hook ♥ 4mm for the squares, moving up to 5mm for the linen stitch border.

Size ♥ Each granny square is made in 5 rounds and measures 10 cm (I crochet quite tightly with a 4mm hook). The border width is also 10cm. The blanket measures 140cm / 4.5 ft square.

Pattern ♥ Basic Granny Square pattern can be found in my previous colourwash blanket post here (scroll down near the bottom). I used the join-as-you-go method for joining the squares during the final (5th) round of each granny square, you can find a tutorial for this technique here. The Linen Stitch border pattern can be found here (although please see info up above re working the first row along the edge of granny squares)

Blanket ♥ Scrumptious in every way.

Me ♥ Swooning. I'm such a hopeless colour addict.

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Thank-you-very-much

If I could send you all a sweet little bunch of back yard flowers with my love and gratitude, I would. A couple of photos and a few words don't seem a huge amount to offer, but please know how grateful I am to have you here, and how much I appreciate you taking time to visit.

Thank you so-very-much for all your lovely words of late, for all the wise advice, understanding, virtual hugs and happy vibes. Your collective voices have touched my soul and I appreciate it more than I am able to say. Thank you, times a gazillion. With a cherry on top.

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ps for those of you waiting for an update on my Colourwash Granny Blanket, I will have a super-bright Ta-dah post to share with you tomorrow xx

 

The Past Six Weeks

Hellooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my word, it's unbeleivably good to be back here in my precious little nook of cyberspace after such a long and unexpected break. I can't tell you how many times I've sat down in front of my computer during the past six weeks with the intention of writing, but for an unknown reason I found I simply wasn't able to find the words. It's been the weirdest time for me, the first 'writers block' I've had in over eight years of blogging. It's hard to explain but I just couldn't find my way into any sort of a coherent blog post, so in the end I just had to stop trying as it was making me feel very anxious.

This morning I woke up with a light feeling in my heart (which has felt stupidly heavy of late) and realised that I really missed my blog and was ready to be here again, oh the relief!!!! I am so so so relieved, I confess I had myself worried back there for a while. Writing my blog has become such a familiar and trusted way to relieve myself of the huge piles of stuff that build up inside my head and heart on a daily basis. The process of writing and sharing images is very cathartic, and has always felt very natural to me, and very necessary too.  I'm one of those people who always has an awful lot going on internally - every day I have a huge tumble of colours, images, ideas, inspirations, projects, snippets of life and feelings reeling around in a tangle. I recognised many years ago that I desperately need an outlet for all of this stuff or else I start to feel rather uptight and antsy. I get twitchy, anxious, overwhelmed by so much going on and it doesn't feel good, not good at all.

Writing my blog has been an absolute gift, a truly satisfying and wonderful way for me to deal with all the visual, creative and emotional stuff of life - it feels remarkably good to put it all out there, to unclog my brain via a stream of images and words, to release it all out into the big wide world. It really does make me so so happy to do it, and that is perhaps why the past six weeks has felt so very strange for me. Blogging here at Attic24 has never, ever, ever felt like a chore. It has always felt like a selfish pleasure, an addictive outlet for my creative comings and goings and something that I could never imagine being without. There have been times when life has been a bit too busy or stressy and I've needed to take short breaks away from Blogland, but I've always felt a very strong pull to reconnect and come back to my precious little attic space. During the past few weeks however, I confess the pull wasn't there - I waited and waited and it didn't come. I simply didn't want to be here in the Attic, didn't have the energy to write, share, explain. I've felt weary, low, anxious, wobbly. So no great drama, but a simple need to retreat, lay low and pull through. 

I'm not going to apologise for being gone for so long, but I am sorry if you've been worried about me. And I'm sorry too for not finding the courage to leave a few words here to tell you what was what. I do have a tendancy to do the ostrich thing when I am stressed or anxious, and during the past six weeks my head has been well and truly covered in a  deep mountain of sand. But today my head suddenly popped up into the fresh air and after some deep breathing, here I am. Phewwww. I'm so happy about that!

Summer has been it's usual busy self so far, stretching my juggling skills to the limit. I've been diligent with my planning, attempting to keep my many balls in the air and my days and weeks in some sort of reasonable order. The Little Peeps are so tired (only two more days of school to go, yipppppeeeeeee!) and we are in that familiar, weary descent towards a much needed break from school routine. I absolutely cannot wait.

Plans for the summer holidays are minimal this year - we will only be away from home for one week out of six, and I am quietly, gently very glad of this fact. I need these days and weeks to be slow and simple, to stay close to home and appreciate all the extraordinary little ebbs and flows of family life. These days are precious indeed.

I'm very much looking forward to sharing some yarn and colour with you very soon,  I've got a particuarly photogenic blanket to shout about!

It's good to be back. Really, really, r-e-a-l-l-y good.

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