Monday Meander #7

Pretty miserable weather yesterday, so not much scope for meandering very far. I cheered myself up with a pot of Earl Grey at Treacle & Co, instead. I love the bunny lamp and the 70s/80s milk bottle.

Shoreham Sky, Yesterday Afternoon

Taken just after we got caught in a torrential hail stone ridden, ten minute downpour! My boots are still damp.

Monday Meander #6

I didn't seem to meander very far this Monday, either. Husband and I are taking a much-needed week off this week, and we planned to saunter to the marina to catch a film this afternoon. However, I was just putting my boots on to leave the flat when I got these weird zig-zaggy patterns in front of my eyes and the beginnings of a headache. We got as far as Boots on the bus, popped in to get some migraine tablets, queued for ages, and then had to fill in an enormous questionnaire at the medicines counter before they'd even consider letting me have the migraine tablets I'd picked up. They didn't. I got different ones. By this time, we had ten minutes to get to the cinema and I'd rather gone off the idea. We decided some Fresh Air would be better for us, anyway. So, of course, we went and sat inside at Scoop and Crumb for an hour! Husband wanted to celebrate being a non-smoker for three years today with an ice cream sundae, and who was I to stand in the way of that?!

This looks like this humungous concoction was all Husband's, but, actually, that one was mine (a "Banoffeebocker" - caramel and banana ice creams, toffee cake pieces, caramel sauce, cream and caramel crunch pieces and two wafers on the top. Yummers.) and Husband's was the much shorter one behind! It did make my head feel much better, though. Maybe doctors should prescribe ice cream more often. Would probably cure a lot of diseases.

So, full of ice cream and buzzing with sugar, we had a lovely wander (buzz) around town, in and out of a few antique shops where I managed to restrain myself from buying a lovely 1930's trio decorated with black and orange trees (very proud of myself, but, man, it was hard as those babies were GORGEOUS), and I took a few photos of all the lovely new wrapping papers out now in Paperchase:

I love that yellow. Lush.

And I always like their brown-paper papers. You can't really tell here, but the patterns are spot varnished so they shine nicely against the flat, brown base. Fabbo.

Love those strawbs. Just looking at Print and Pattern, I see Bowie Style had the same idea today!

Husband and I are off to Cambridge for a couple of days tomorrow, so I'll see y'all on our return.

Agghh! Ran Out of Red!

Nice Pear

I was early for an appointment around Seven Dials last week, so to waste a bit of time I popped into Sixty Seven, a very nice shop just off Dyke Road. I was just leaving, when a range of just amazing acrylic brooches caught my eye. There were several owls, birds and the odd tree, but I just had to have this orange pear, orange being my couleur du jour:





The letters are burned into the card, which, quite frankly, makes the simple-yet-effective packaging almost as awesome as the brooch itself. I don't know who made it; the mark on the back enigmatically says only "KC Made in Brighton", and there's nothing on the Sixty Seven website. If the real KC could step forward, I'd like to gush sycophantically in your ear about just how great your brooches are, please.

Monday Meander #5

 

The corner of Eaton Villas and Denmark Villas.

Oh Dear ...

... I seem to have subconsciously drawn David Tennant.

Cardilicious

You may remember that late last year I took a couple of old knitted dresses I had, altered the grey one so it fitted better and cut the other (purple) one up. Read all about it here. Well, after procrastinating for a couple of months, even though I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the shrug/cardi half I had left over, I finally got hold of some grey felt yesterday and put my long-held plan into action. I was inspired by this post here, which I came across via a photo of the finished article on Pinterest.







The top half of the old purple dress was still pretty much as it was after I hacked it in two, so I cut it along the centre front to make your basic cardi shape, then laid the cut edges along each other and cut through both halves of the front in a gentle curve to make the rounded bottom edge. After tidying that up a bit, I took a large square of felt, cut it into strips and then squares. I folded each little square in half, cut flower/petal shapes out of each one, then laid them all out along the neck line of my shrug. A quick pin and a couple of stitches in each one later, and I had myself a finished cardi. There's no fastening at the front, so I can either wear it open, or, as I have done here, just fasten the top edges together with a small safety pin on the inside. It probably took me a hour to 90 minutes from start to finish last night. I do like a quick and satisfying project!

What's more, I've been blogging five years today. Happy Bloggerversary to my blog!

Signs of Spring

It was a glorious day today. I was far too hot in my two pairs of socks, jeans, t-shirt, dress, cardi, coat and scarf. The scarf came off after 10 minutes, the coat was undone at the same time and the cardi had to go half way through the afternoon. What's more, it wasn't properly dark until 5.30pm. Spring is coming! Woo!

Here are a few lovely blooms I snapped outside Gunns Florist on Sydney Street early this afternoon, all waiting for people to take them home to their loved ones for Valentine's Day:

Such beautiful colours.

Liquid Loveliness

I went over to Lovely Jan's to do a bit of dyeing today:












We used icing dyes for these. The way this type of dyeing works is that you get a mahoosive jar, fill it 75% or so full with vinegary water, add your dye, dunk in your yarn, and wait. Then just periodically add your other colours on top. If you agitate the liquid about a bit, the dye will sink down and get caught in the middle of the yarn or down the sides of it, producing really random and rather tasty results. I also dyed another skein in a kind of burnt orange in addition to this red and blue but obviously didn't get myself together enough to take a photo!

Monday Meander #4

Clifton Terrace, a road I'd never been down before:

Finally, A Breather

Phew! Well that was frantic, wasn't it? 48 rough pages in 32 days, all in now and an invoice for them sent off. Annnnnd breathe. Or rather, catch up on gym visits, do several loads of washing, dust, tidy, clean, iron and generally tidy up. I get the comments back on the roughs on 2nd March with artwork due 8th April, so at least I have a bit of break at the moment. I think they're going to squeeze in the cover before I get the comments back, so I'll be starting on that next week some time.

But, in the meantime, I'm going to enjoy spending my first weekend off this year with Husband, getting out and about, eating cake and ice cream and generally relaxing. Then it'll be back to eating properly on Monday. Honest, guv. We've not been too good recently; money was getting VERY tight before I was paid this Monday, so we were living on cheap food, ie bread, and using up what I had in the store cupboard, ie anything I could make from the four different types of flour I have knocking around. But the money is in and proper, healthier and more carbo-light food has been purchased. Hurrah!

And for an illustration to this post, I hereby present to you the work of Fred Blunt who I just discovered today. LOVE his style.:



Right, I'm off to start my relaxing weekend with dinner and wine and follow it up with a bit o'knitting and a fillum or two. Have a good one, everyone.

Beautiful

Between Bears from Eran Hilleli on Vimeo.

Embroidered Cuckoo Clock

I HAVE to give this a go. Just amazing. Go to embroidery genius Aimee Ray's blog here to get the low down on how to make it (all images from her blog).

Oops...

... I didn't go for a Monday Meander today. In fact, I've barely left the flat. I received my first payment for the new job today  - hurrah!- so I've been paying bills online and buying food and generally getting things sorted in between drawing farm buildings and boats and tractors. So, instead of a nice landscape, have some legwarmers:



I knitted these because the sole came away from one of my favourite boots a couple of weeks ago and I haven't been able to get it fixed until now. So these will keep my ankles and shins warm while I'm wearing shoes! I'm SO trendy.

24 Hour View of the Sky

Isn't this photo just AMAZING? And awesome, in the proper sense of the word. It was taken by Chris Kotsiopoulos in Athens at the end of December, and includes over 500 star trails, 35 shots of the Sun and 25 landscape pictures. Fantastic stuff. Go here to read all about how he got this stunning single image together.

Thimble Genuisness

I came across a tutorial today on The Wind and the Sail blog describing how to make this fab thimble necklace. Love it!

(Photo from The Wind and the Sail blog/Laura Stantz)

A Folksy Friday

Thanks very much to Philippa of Court & Spark for including my heart-fabric badges in her Folksy Friday today. Cheers me dears!

Last of the Crafts

Well, we're nearly at the end of January, I'm on the 5th out of six stories I'm roughing out for the first part of the new job, and I need to wrap up (LOL!) the rest of the gifts I made for Christmas (which seems about 100 years ago now). So, here we are:

Purses. Along with PJs, my family also got a zip purse each with a home made lipbalm inside:

Sewing Jar Kit. Following this tutorial, I made one one these for Lovely Sam and filled it with vintage spools of thread and the like I found at the craft fair we did back in November:

Tea towels. I bought a load of plain tea towels back in the summer with the vague notion of screenprinting on them, but as I already had them and a whole load of embroidery thread knocking around, and in the spirit of making and giving without necessarily buying anything new, I embroidered a whole load of tea towels, too, mainly using Jenny Hart/Sublime Stitching patterns that I already had. Some of them have glow in the dark thread, which is just an awesome invention. Do excuse the crumples, the photos were taken before I ironed them all :

And, lastly, teacup candles. I had SO much "granny china", as my sisters call it, taking up cupboard space and shelf space and all other spaces, that I just had to DO something with it all. These took me two attempts. The first time, I ordered the wrong kind of wax and it just turned out crap. I ordered a second batch of wax from here (soy this time, which is generally kinder all round), and made these babies below, which I put together with their corresponding saucer and cake plate:

Phew! There it all is! It seems a lot all laid out like that, but it didn't seem to take that long to get it all together. You can easily make a batch of candles or lipbalms in an hour, and the teatowels I stitched over the course of a couple of weeks while watching too much iPlayer. I'm not one of those crazy people who plan months and months a head for Christmas, so I shall wait and see what strikes me as a good crafty gift idea come the autumn for this year!

Aggghhh....

....I missed posting yesterday by 21 minutes! Bah! There'll be two today to make up for it. In the meantime, have a ladybird:

Stop Telephoning Me

Now, I can't link to these pictures here as they're very well protected, so go here and have a good, old laugh at the genius-ness of it all. If you like Lady Gaga, Beyonce and retro illustration, they're made for you.

Monday Meander #3

I miss blogging a little something from a series every Monday, like I did last year with my weekly calendar pages. I realised yesterday that I posted a picture of the seafront from the past two Mondays, so maybe I could carry that on as a new project. I'm loosely calling it "Monday Meander" so it can encompass wherever I might walk on a Monday, not necessarily the seafront. Today, however, the seafront it was. I was so engrossed in my roughs and listening to "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett on audiobook that I looked up at 3.50pm and realised I'd better get a move on or there wouldn't be any light left to take a photo in.



The orange caught my eye straight away; I almost ran down to the prom to catch it. The photo doesn't do it justice, but the orange was so, well, orange, that it rendered me speechless, a feat in itself. It was taken at 4.10pm, quite early for such spectacular colour, I thought. A brisk walk along the prom later, a quick trip to Tesco for milk, and I'm back at my desk with a pot of tea and an evening's enjoyable work in front of me.

Yarn Bomb

I came across this on the seafront earlier today:





It's part of The Woolly Bus Project, an appeal organised by Cocoon Knits here in Hove to raise money for The Marlets Hospice by yarn bombing an open top double-decker bus. You can read all about it, and get involved if you like, on their Facebook page here.

Grey and Brown