The Great Bluebell Hunt

Around this time of year the English countryside plays host to the wonderful Hyacinthoides non-scripta, which to you and I is known as the English Bluebell, a glorious deep violet blue scented flower which dominates the woodland round here. In fact we have many of England's most beautiful bluebells woods right here in my native county. It’s illegal to pick any wild flowers here in Britain, or to dig up any to move them to your garden for example, but each year many people go in search of the glorious swathe of blue and that wonderful scent.

Sadly the English Bluebell is under threat from the prolific Spanish Bluebell which looks similar, but does not have such a gracefully curved stem (the Spanish is completely straight) and has no scent. Saldy, even when the two are cross pollinated, the strains of the Spanish take over. I went with my sister and Mum to a local English Heritage site where we could stroll through the bluebells woods, and the gardens of the manor house.

There were many different varieties of chickens strolling about..this cheeky chappy caught my eye…

And these darling hairy piggies which I’ve been trying to find the breed name…they are sooo cute! If you know what they are, let me know!

These are definitely not native to Britain, but they were certainly pretty to look at!

The garden were full of stunning flowers

And lovely little surprises at every step…

The weather was beautiful. Sadly it’s been chilly aswell. I’ve found some cultivated English Bluebells at a local garden centre, so I’ve planted some which will hopefully give me my own little bluebell wood next year!

I have also been having fibre adventures as well as floral adventures. I finally finished my Mosey Legwarmers! Yay!

I love the cabled back ‘seam’

 

I ran out of the lavender yarn before I got round to the pompoms, so I chose this lovely lilac colour to make them

and then so it didn’t seem odd, I crocheted a ruffle at the bottom in the lilac. I really like how it turned out….

I also crocheted a tribal fringe belt which I found on Ravelry here

I’ve been doing a Tribal Dance class for the last month, so tribal accessories have been in my mind a lot recently. I don’t have any dancewear in green, so I used some stash yarn to create this. I actually really love this belt now it’s finished and I think I’m going to use some of the left over yarn to create some matching falls, or to plait into my hair in long pigtails.

The yarn is a mixture of acrylic, fancy novelty stuff, cotton and chenille. I fancied a mixture of textures and colours.

Love it!!

And then ‘cos I was on a roll, I took apart several silk flowers, and mixed them together for a hair slide.

And then because I obviously have startitus at the moment, I started this Tribal Tassel Belt which was on Craftster ages ago. I’ve had it bookmarked for ages and finally got round to starting it. I’ve had to learn Tunisian Crochet in order to do it, and not just any old Tunisian Crochet, but double sided Tunisian crochet no less! You use a long crochet hook with two hooks, one at each end!

But look at the gorgeousness that it creates!

I love that you get a different effect on each side.

Yes, I know, I succumbed to my favourite colours…

 

Spring break!

So the time is upon us at last! That time of year which used to be called Easter Hols and is now dubbed Spring break by the Educational Authorities, they who must be obeyed. I don’t care what it’s called, I just know that I have two weeks off from the educating of young minds (whether they want it or not!) – hurray! Mind you it’s been full on so far, I’ve had my haircut, a slightly different cut which parts more to the side than before and a soft side fringe. It really needed it, I’ve always had fine hair, but there’s always been lots of it. Since I started on the Warfarin I’ve noticed that my hair is a little thinner on the top – not quite the crown, but more towards the front and it made me self conscious, so now my hair parting is a little more on the side and covers it. Yes ladies, I have a girlie comb-over! The Warfarin’s also made my nails really soft and brittle, so I’ve been taking calcium tablets to strengthen them again. I’ve had my friend, her partner and her adorable daughters over for a visit. I’ve been to our local S&B meeting in which we totally ripped the piss out of the knitting magazines which we’d all brought in to swap. Someone bought in the Son of Stitch n Bitch to give away, but to be honest, looking through the patterns, I don’t know any male who would have been happy to wear any of the knits in there. Am I alone in looking through a magazine and feeling lucky if I find one pattern in there that I want to knit? This is why I stopped buying magazines. And since the advent of Ravelry, you can find so many wonderful free patterns out there, I have no need to. I taught a friend to crochet and I took my Baroque and see how much more I’ve done? That’s nearly two whole arms now! Don’t worry, there won’t be any more! I do have to do the front panels though, because no matter how rose-tinted my spectacles are, I know that I’m not that skinny at the moment! *lol* I might even get it finished in time to wear over the summer! And then what? Hmmm, what to knit/crochet next? Better check the Ravelry queue!

Look, I finished my cardigan recon! I’m quite pleased with it, it looks completely different! I used the crochet corkscrew technique as my inspiration and after cutting of the unflattering ribbing and the ugly ribbed collar, I used a crochet hook in approximately the right gauge to crochet along the edge of where I’d cut. I did this once in sc to secure it, then in dc, then again in dc in another colour.

Each time I crocheted along I increased to give me that ruffly look, so the first time was just a single stitch in each stitch, the next row I did two stitches in each stitch, then the last row I did two in each stitch again. It took forever but I think it was worth it.

I did a row of sc in each colour on the pockets and on the left pocket I added a jaunty little crocheted flower.

I like how curly the ruffles are. I’m now checking through my knitwear to see if there are any other unloved garments there that are likely candidates for the old cut‘n’shut treatment!

Did I tell you that I had my eyes tested recently and my prescription’s changed a little, so I needed some new specs? No? Well I don’t need glasses all the time but I do need them for the pc and driving (I’m long sighted), and I lost my driving sunglasses recently so I thought I’d check my prescription before I got some new ones. And I also wanted to try out buying my glasses online which I’ve heard is soooo much cheaper than buying from the opticians. I don’t really know anyone that’s done it, but I’ve seen articles in magazines and online so I thought I’d be a trail blazer and give it a go. So armed with my prescription I went a hunting. I have quite a small narrow face and while I kinda know what suits me, I do like to try specs on for fit, because if they’re too wide, I look ridiculous. But I tried out a few of these virtual mirror type of applications and I found one or two sites that gave really detailed measurements of the frames, so I grabbed an old pair of mine and matched the dimensions, and found a couple that I liked. This pair cost me the whopping sum of £15 and have dark red frames. The other pair (which are in the car already sorry) were black decorative acrylic frames with a black tint to use for sunglasses and cost me the princely sum of £39! And they’re both lovely and at that price I could probably afford to have a pair in each room! Sometimes taking a risk is soo worth it!

A week or two ago, the college I teach at had a staff training day with what they laughing called a Learning Fair (sadly no fun involved though, despite the jocular name) and lots of ‘educational’ lectures. The Learning fair consisted of lots of stalls from teachers unions, Human Resources, and various support departments within the college. Boooring! Most of us signed in (gotta make sure you get paid!) and then whizzed round the fair collecting all the freebees. This was one such freebee. A very plain black bag with long shoulder straps which is big enough to get an A4 folder in. Now the size was perfect but I was less than thrilled about the advertising blurb on the side.

One choppedy chop later and I had a piece of white felt cut out which covered that motif nicely, thank you very much!

Then I crocheted a black flower from some regular black acrylic yarn using SkaMamas pattern for a crochet picot flower and sewed it all together. Tada! Much better! I’ll try to get a better picture of it, the background’s a bit dark to see the bag properly. It was late. It was dark. I was tired and excited at finishing it!

And while M spent yesterday travelling up to Manchester to see his footie team play, I spent the day shopping with my Mum, then came back to have a peaceful evening with a glass of wine, playing Mario Galaxy and chomping on Bourneville Orange! (Yummy). Today has also been productive; I’ve been out to lunch with the girls and then I’ve completed an assignment! That feels so good! While I’ve been doing teaching practice the assignments have kind of been put to one side. M’s back at work tomorrow so I’ll get the place to myself for a few hours and hopefully I can get some more work done tomorrow. I need to get enough to to be able to go to London to see Graham Norton in The Birdcage without guilt! I wonder if they’ll let me take piccies? Have a good week folks! 

Snow joke!

Yes, it’s another snow day! I’m a little relieved because I have a heavy cold and haven’t slept, but the downside is that I’m not going to be able to give the observed lesson that I’ve spent all weekend preparing! I’ve been playing with my new laminator which I bought to help me prepare professional looking materials that should be a bit more durable. I’ve been making flash cards and board games, and also these!

So I didn’t actually spend all weekend working, I was quite the social butterfly! Saturday lunchtime I went to the local Stitch n Bitch session with some of my local Ravellers. We had hot chocolate and chocolate cake and were all snuggly and warm despite the blizzard like conditions outside. Unfortunately there were also small people there with very shrill and screamy voices and I did come away with a whacking headache. I was a bit worried about my WIP being covered with sticky chocolate fingers, and a cup of tea was knocked over someone's projects that they were trying to assemble. Luckily the victim was the perpetrators Mummy so the tears were saved till later presumably. I didn’t quite like to ask what yarn had been ruined by said flailing limbed toddler, but it looked soft and silky and very expensive looking! *Eeek!* I finished my project quicker than I’d anticipated (a One Skein Scarf for a friends birthday) and so I was able to help out one of the other girls who was trying to learn to crochet. I did warn her that I don’t crochet  text book style, but she said she tried copying the books and found it really awkward, so she was happy for me to show her how I did it. It was nice that she managed to make a sizeable section of crocheted fabric by the end of the afternoon.

This is what I was making; a One Skein Scarf for my friend for her birthday. I used two shades of fingering weight green yarn, held together for a nice variegated colour effect.

My friend’s a red head, so I knew these colours would suit her. The lighter green is a mohair blend so it made the scarf lovely and soft! The funny thing was, out of seven of us who were there, three were redheads. That’s unusual isn’t it? :-)

 

So that was how I spent Saturday afternoon, then Saturday night I went round to my friends for a birthday party. There was supposed to be about twelve of us there, but in the end there were only seven of us; the others couldn’t get there because of the bad weather. (Our weather is coming in from Siberia at the moment!) So we had take-out pizza, silly party games like pass the parcel and we had party bags (we all took a few little bits to contribute to the bag), bright pink iced birthday cake and balloons. We tend to have adult kids parties and they’re normally riotous! The next one will be fairy fancy dress themed :-) We haven’t decided yet whether it will include a pub crawl! This was my contribution to the party bag, laminated bookmarks to commemorate the event! 

Of course there was plenty of magical glittery fairy dust incorporated into the bookmarks, most of which is still magically enhancing my desk and floor here!

I also made Susie a button brooch since she’s been admiring mine for a while.

So here’s some photos of the more sedate moments of the night.  I had to censor the others!

Susie’s Barbie pink birthday cake came complete with magical relighting candles which took about fifteen minutes to fully extinguish!

We all came away with something from pass the parcel.

Ally’s cat Bentley came down to visit the girls.

And when I got home, Pippin helped me to eat the piece of bright pink birthday cake that was in my party bag along with the sweets and chocolate; the radioactive glowing bracelet, party poppers and those things that you blow through the end and the rolled up paper tube winds out. What are those things called again?

And just because we may never see this much snow again for a while, here’s another picture perfect snow scene!

Well, I’m not one to turn down a bit of fun time, so now I’m going to go downstairs and get all my chores done as quick as I can, and then I’m going to play on the Wii for a while till M gets home. I’ve just ordered the Wii Fitness Trainer so I’m waiting excitedly for that to arrive. It’s a shame that just owning the stuff isn’t enough to get you fit, you actually have to have the time to use it too!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow….

Here in Middle England we’ve been visited by Jack Frost and the Snow Queen this week. I know there are many parts of the world that get snow regularly and can cope with it fine, but here we get snow so rarely that it’s a real event. Monday was a training day, so no college, and a fine dusting of snow that the Hound of the Baskervilles and I enjoyed.

Then last night it really snowed hard; we ended up with about eight or nine inches of snow and it’s still snowing! So a snow day was declared good and proper! After M and I had finished dancing round the kitchen, we donned our cold weather gear and went up the park. The only activity going on was kids out playing, dogs being walked, sledges and tea-trays being slid on and I even saw a snow board!

I’m sitting here now looking out of the window and watching the occasional car attempting the hill (hee hee!). I’ve just seen a group of lads dragging a bath tub up the hill so I bet they’re going to have some great fun! I just watched one car skidding and sliding all over the road. You’ve got to say, where would the driver need to go that desperately that they would spend nearly three quarters of an hour plus the time of five people trying to dig and push the car up the hill?

So you’ve not stopped by to see me all excited about the snow and the fun we’re having here. You want to see the crafts don’t you? Well, the BPT hoodie has a tiny bit of an arm started. More pictures of that soon.

I’ve also done a little bit more of my freeform hat.

Keilo wanted to help me photograph it!

I’ve nearly finished an arm on my ‘Go for Baroque’ and I promise that you’ll see more piccies of that when it looks substantially different from the last photo I showed you.

And I also made this! A hot pink sweetheart necklace. A quick craft but very rewarding and matches one of my favourite hand knits. 

I thought I’d also show you another project from the vaults. This one’s probably about nine years old, but a favourite of mine.

It’s just a group of granny squares pieced together, with vintage embossed metal buttons to close at the corners of the front flap. The strap is made up from smaller squares. At the time I didn’t line the strap which I should really have done because it stretches a bit.

The orange looks kind of peachy in the photos, but it’s a really bright orange; actually all the colours are bright and vivid. When you make a crochet bag, you really need to line it because otherwise, things tend to drop out. Ask me how I know this!?

So there we have it. Lots of snow and lots of work at home. I have a one to one lesson to do tomorrow, I’ll get it all planned but I’m not holding out much hope for it. I also have a party to go to on Saturday night and a Stitch n Bitch meeting Saturday lunchtime. I’d also really like to go to see My Bloody Valentine 3D at the pictures! *Sigh* so much to do and so little time!

Have a good weekend everyone!