❉ It was our half term week last week and we spent our days being as slow, lazy and uneventful as possible, which was rather blissful following the last few weeks of underlying stress. We pottered and pootled, idled and lounged, and occasionally we got dressed and ventured out into the cool damp Autumn.
❉ We walked a little in our local neighbourhood, visiting the shops for food supplies and stopping in at our favourite cafes for the comfort of a hot milky drink.
❉ The farm shop is especially good at celebrating the seasons throughout the year with it's plants, flowers, produce and decorations, and there is always a lovely display of some sorts in the front entrance. Last week it was all about the pumpkins as we prepared to celebrate Halloween.
❉ I love the flower section of the farm shop best of all (although the bakery also makes me swoon) - at one time when I was much younger I had dreams of becoming a florist, well, that's to say I loved the idea of faffing with flowers and calling it a job. I occasionally buy single stems from here when something especially appeals (eucalyptus stems are a favourite), but it's quite a pricey way to acquire flowers for the home. Pretty though, isn't it?
❉ On Friday I sat for a few hours in the cafe with my yarny friends and finished attaching my latest mandala to it's hoop. I really really love the serene colours in this mandala, they came together quite by accident and remind me a little of my Harmony blanket colours (blues and purples with a dash of pink and green). I followed the Bougainvillea Doily pattern by Zelna Olivier using around a dozen colours of Stylecraft Cotton Classique DK. I added two additional rounds to make it the right size for attaching to a 45cm hoop and I'm really happy with how it turned out. I've got it hanging against the blue/grey wall in my studio at the moment and it looks especially lovely against that colour.
❉ Sampling for my Sweet Pea blanket continues, and I've been working on the colour order for the stripes during the past few weeks. It takes slow, consistent time and effort to work through this part of the design process, but I absolutely love love love doing it. I spend hours and hours (literally) crocheting up a series of thin stripes to represent the whole blanket, getting a feel for how the colours like to play with each other and how my floral colour story is choosing to tell itself. The above photo is the result of the first sample being all wrong - sometimes I keep the wrong ones as a reference and sometimes I decide to pull it all apart and start again from scratch.
Yesterday I finished sample number four and it made my heart skip a beat, so I think I'm pretty much there with it - so happy about that! I've been doing the nitty gritty sampling too - weighing out yarn and working tension samples so that I can gauge how many stitches, how many pattern repeats, how many rows etc. It's all good fun and makes me ridiculously excited for the blanket journey to actually begin. Sweet Pea yarn packs will be available in about four weeks I think, the week commencing 3rd December. Bring it on, I can't WAIT!
❉ On Monday the Little People returned to school and J and I went to have a leisurely, unhurried coffee followed by a trip to purchase a modest box of fireworks for the evenings entertainment (for those not in the UK, we light fireworks for Guy Fawkes Night on the 5th November). It was the usual fun - as you know we don't actually have a garden so we make do by using a flower pot filled with earth on the wall of our back yard. Fortunately the fireworks were just the right level of noise and crackle to entertain the Little Peeps without being too scary dangerous - there were only a few which made us run for cover!
❉ The sparklers were a hit, ahhh, so nostalgic! I love the smell of them, they instantly transport me way back in time to my own childhood. We had fun prancing about in the back street with our neighbours, the Little People dancing and twirling and lighting up the night.
❉ It's been very stormy today, wet, grey and howling. The trees are clinging on to their leaves but I feel sure there will be bare branches before long. It's that strange time when the seasons are merging - still Autumn but with the edge of Winter making itself felt. I don't mind it too much, but the low light levels are hard going I have to say.
❉ I bought a new candle on Monday, oh it smells soooooo good! It's Orange & Star Anise and just right for these cold, dark Autumn evenings - warm, fruity and comforting without being too Christmassy. I'm not mad keen on the gold patterned glass jar, but I'm loving the scent so much that I'm willing to overlook the glitz.
In other news, I've started making a smaller companion paper toadstool to go with the one above that I made last week. I've gathered some moss (real moss which I'm air drying), some thin copper wire and some gorgeous paper butterflies to create something of a mini Autumn sculpture thingy. I am stalling with the sticking of all the little toadstool gills though, I need to really be in the mood to get all gummed up with glue.
❉ And so the days are ticking along, a sweet combination of creative energy and slow, nothing-much days, of gentle parenting and the juggling of yarn and time and responsibilities. It's all good, more than good actually, and I am so grateful that I can say that and feel it too.
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