Worthy Farm, Shepton Mallet, England.

This.



This is what makes every year so special. I love no place on earth more than I do Glastonbury Festival. Not my own home, my parents home, my garden, not even my local yarn shop. I love Glastonbury Festival and I cannot begin to even explain how happy that makes me. It sounds utterly ridiculous but it's amazing.

I'm on a bit of a Glastonbury come down at the moment, which means I've been very tired and I'm quite grumpy! I really don't want to be back in reality and this time it's going to last until 2013 :-(

I wanted to share a few photos with you although nothing can come close to being there. If you ever have the opportunity to go, do it.

Above was taken from The Park.

Tibetan prayer flags in the Greenfields


Greg. I took him to Glastonbury in 2009 and on the way home asked the campsite crew to look after him. They have ever since.


Shangri-La. One of the great things about Glastonbury is you can be whoever you want to be.


The Unfairground.


The locals!


Greenpeace, a very important charity to me


Hurrah! Some bunting craftyness in the craft fields!


Elbow on the Pyramid Stage, Saturday.


It's all over* :-( Beyonce closes the festival, Sunday.


*well not quite. We stayed up til 4am in an underground Piano Bar singing along with Irish folk. Only at Glastonbury eh?!

You know what, I'm feeling a lot better for this little reminisce. I'm going to go now and apologise to all who I've snapped at today! Bye!

x x x x

A little sewing project

Hopefully by the time you are reading this, I'll be a couple of hundred miles from home, tent pitched, Oxfam Blanket purchased and soaking up the atmosphere on the best place on Earth ever. If not I'm stuck in long traffic jams...

To keep you occupied while I'm away (can you guess where I've gone!?) I cleverly scheduled this post to authomatically appear in my absense! Enjyoy :-)

I love owls me, I do! Have you seen that really funny picture of an owl with the O Rly? caption? Well it's here incase you haven't!

My partner and crime and I love owls. Not as much as our friends who went to an owl santury this weekend clearly but love them we do. I've had a lovely owl cushion for a couple of years now which I originally bought from ebay but have since seen everywhere.

Here she is!



When I took a trip home to my parents house I found a friend for her, a green owl (but I don't have any photos of him on his own...)

So a couple of weeks ago I was feeling a bit creative and not sure what to make. Ah-hah! I know what... So I gets my sewing machine out... some felt... my fabric stash... I think it took about 2 hours or so, it seemed pretty quick though... Want to see? Of course you do... ... ... !



!!!!!



Now given that this pattern / style belongs to someone (although I can't find out who) I can't really go doing a tutorial on this, but you know what I really don't think you'd need it. The little feathers on his front are made from felt, it was easier because I didn't have to worry about the edges fraying. The applique has all been attached with a simple zig-zag stitch on my machine, and the buttons were left overs from a coat I was changing the buttons on!

x x x x

Swapsies!

I'm a little bit addicted to Ravelry, a website for people into knitting and crocheting. People like me. The only group I've joined is "We love Lucy" which is anyone who likes the Blog Attic 24 although it's a pretty random bunch; some knitters, some crocheters, some who just like talking to nice like minded people.

Anyway I'd seen that a few people got together a while back and had a swap - you know, pairing up, sending yarn over seas - and it seemed quite exciting! When the next one was suggested I thought I'd give it a go. Why not!

I am so glad I did, I was proper thrilled to bits with all the things my partner Nanita sent me! She's from Belgium, sadly she hasn't got a blog but I wish she did because she makes awesome amigurumi! My design tech teacher always used to say "a picture is worth 1000 words" so here's the proof!






LOOK how much yarn!!! Look at the colours!!! Boyfriend said "send it back!" haha! He thinks I have too much already...


This is quite possibly my most favourite thing - A BEE!!!! He is bloody awesome isn't he? I love him! Look at his antennae! :-D


These chickens are also amazing, I need to take some photos of their bums, they have really cool feathers at the back!


And look, a really funky tin for all my random things :-D I really like this because I've got loads of "objects with faces" on and it's just really me!

My partner did a great job and I'm biased of course but I think I got the best partner ever :-D She took so much time finding out what I liked, making me a bee... I can't really say how amazed I was - actually a little speechless (yes I know...) when I opened it. I can only hope she liked her parcel just as much! As soon as she gets it I'll put some pics up that I took before it went on it's journey.

That's all for now, I've got some hexagons to crochet...!

x x x

P.S Nanita received my parcel and took a lovely photo, here's what I sent her!

Hexagon blanket

H-e-l-l-o! Yes I felt the need to spell that out, a big welcome to you all! What a week. What a long and borrrrrrrrrrrrrring week! It's been one of those where on Wednesday you think tomorrow is Friday and the real Thursday and Friday end up being a real disappointment - "this should be the weekend in my mind!"




Well nevermind, it's Friday now which is fan-flipping-tastic. I wanted to quickly share with you my current project! I realised I haven't actually made any attempts to blog about it and I should have done because I'm loving it!



I've wanted to make a hexagon blanket for absolutely ages (infact while I was making the granny squares...) so I'm really happy that I've finally started.

These photos admittedly were taken several months ago. The projects been on & off while I made other things, but never far from my mind :-)



It took a while to decide how to join them all as I wanted the hexagons to be fully formed with a white border, not colourful circles with a white border making them into a hexagon shape... Erm, does that make sense? Perhaps not! It did mean I had to figure this out by trial and error. When I dc'd them together there was a kind of ridge between them; this would not do! I've decided a much simplier option is to sew them together :-)



So I made a start! Back when I was visiting my parents, I made use of their lovely grass.



I'm much much further along than this but I don't want to show you all at once you see or it will spoil the journey of making! Hope you like :-)

x x x x

Under the Tuscan sun

The lovely Teresa of Oregon (give her a wave!) said I should put up some photos of my travels so I thought why not! I'll be able to look back and think about all the nice things I saw and did :-)

I took far too many photos (not nearly as many as my brother who was on several hundred on day 2) so I decided to make a couple of mosaics so you aren't here all day...


Some of the little features in European cities (think Florence, Rome, Paris, Barcelona...) are just beautiful! I just don't see this sort of thing back in England, look at the amazing door bells and post boxes!

And of course the buildings are just stunning too! The leaning tower of Pisa leans a lot more than I actually thought, I really am surprised it's still standing to be honest.


The range of colours of the builings, gold, pink, yellow, blues are really beauttiful.


If you've followed my blog for a while you'll know I love flowers! Tuscany hasn't disappointed me, even though it's so hot they still have an amazing variety of plants that obviously love the climate and look stunning!


A little more unusual but something I also really love is the grafitti - not like we end up with here in England with a load of rubbish "tags" and mess - these I like to call street art! They're done with stencils and I've seen loads when I've been to Europe (you can see my set here) There were a couple I didn't want to post because there was a bit of swearing involved & I didn't want to offend anyone :-)

See you soon!

x x x

I need to stop cooking the tea towels

And I need to blog a bit more! I shut a tea-towel in the oven door (apparantly) but it's ok! I haven't blogged in 33 days and that's not ok! But you know how life is, everything suddenly happens all at once instead of spreading itself out across the year. I mean there are 365 days in which for things to happen, but in the last 33 days I have been to 2 weddings, a funeral, London, Yorkshire, Scotland, London, Tuscany, London and then London. Somewhere between all that I managed to keep on hooking and participate in a crochet swap on Ravelry, yay!

This is me, enjoying a glass of Vino Rosso on holiday, look I'm crocheting!






I found some fab yarn in Florence (Firenze) and started making a stripy cushion cover straight away because I couldn't wait to use it. Tuscany was very beautiful, we had gorgeous weather, a fabulous villa and pool, great company... I'm not sure what more you could have asked for really!





Most of my projects recently have been little things, like the monster and flowers I made my friends kids when we went over for their wedding (#1!) The Pattern for the monster is from EssHaych and I thought I'd given his face a twist of my own, but then I was looking on Rebecca Danger's blog which I've visited lots but not recently and saw that most of hers are like him, so it was obviously stored somewhere in my subconscious!






The flowers went down well too, especially at the tea party.













For Wedding #2 I made another crochet card but this one had an extra little touch because they got engaged in Paris and I had just the button!









I've been making more hexagons too but I think I'd better save that for another time (soon though!) because I don't want to bore you too much information all at once. I'm also really excited to share with you the swap I was in! All that needs much more photography and time, time I don't seem to have but I am trying :-) I'm not sure how parents manage to blog, I seriously think they must be a breed all of their own! Better go, the supermarket is calling to me...

x x x x

Happy (belated) Easter

What a LOVELY weekend we've had! The Easter bank holiday weather exceeded all expectations and didn't let us down :-) I went down to London to see my folks and home friends, it was nice and chilled and I had a fab time, apart from getting stuck in London for THREE hours on the way down because the Blackwall Tunnel was closed. Our Satnav diverted us away and all was good until it said "After 200 yards, take the ferry." Other half and I looked at each other; "Ferry?!" I'm still amazed that in our Capital we've not got enough bridges or tunnels on my end of the Thames but an old car ferry!

So onto happier things! My mum always gets me cool things for Easter so I now have a hen mug and plate to go with the plate I bought last year (Matalan if you live in the UK)







We visited a lovely town called Tenterden which has the cutest little shops ever! Lots of little homeware places, coffee shops and an old steam train which my Dad loved! To be fair I enjoyed myself too, we had an old carriage to ourselves and it was a nice trip through the countryside.

I bought this pretty little milk jug and some little forks for cake eating, a very important activity in this house!




It now sits in my cupboard of pretty kitchen things :-)




Hope you've enjoyed your Easter break, enjoy the Royal Wedding tomorrow if you're watching!

x x x x

Knit one purl one...

Hello there! I'm sorry I haven't been a very attentive blogger, life has been very busy lately and it doesn't look set to stop - between now and June 4th I'm away every weekend :-o Nearly everyone I know has decided to get married this year and I'm off to Italy in a few weeks so could do with a rest before this all kicks off :-)

I've been knitting (yes I know!) and I'm really enjoying it :-D I've always said "I don't like knitting" and this is really a terrible lie - I just haven't been very good at it. Now I've put my mind to it (and discovered tutorials on youtube) I'm getting a bit more adventurous!

So... I started off with a scarf :-) Nice and easy huh? And yes I know it's the hottest April on record since records began, how was I supposed to know this!





Here it is before I blocked it. I hadn't learnt to knit the end of the purl rows to stop it from curling...





This is me! But I cut my head off because I was pulling a stupid face... ;-)

What this is all leading upto however is Alice's Spring Explosion Tea Cosie on her blog. Since I started reading Crochet with Raymond I've wanted to knit everything! So she has definitely insprired me and was also a huge help when I got stuck on bits! So Alice, this ones for you, ta!!

First things first, casting on and then knitting one side... I'm using a stitch holder!!! Things are getting technical!!!






And then all of a sudden (after a few k2togs)...





:-D





Tea pot bottom shot.





Now I need to make some pretty flowers and leaves for the top. Something for the Easter weekend me thinks...

Thats all for now, I might see you in a bit if I survive the chaos that will be May! Happy Easter!

x x x

Baby Granny Stripe is.... Finished!!!

It's finally time to reveal my finished baby blanket. Yay!!!

This has probably been my favourite thing to work on, it hasn't taken me a hideous number of months to complete and I couldn't put it down! I am so pleased with the edging too, usually I get so bored of my projects I hurry to finish, but not this time.

So here we go... Drum roll...

Yay!





Ohh I know I shouldn't be this pleased but really I am thrilled to bits, I hope my friend loves it too and that it keeps their baby snuggly and warm!

I think the edge it my favourite part actually. Remember how I said the blanket looked quite "girly" before and my friends might be having a boy, well I really think this has toned the pink down a lot!





I did treble clusters around the edge and into that single trebles into each st and 6 into the corners. I wish I'd taken a photo before doing the shells because it was lovely and round! The scallop or shell eddging was a little improvised. I looked at some tutorials and ended up using a mix of a few.

Now if I remember rightly it was sl st, 1 dc in next st, 2 hdc in next st, 1 dc in next st, sl st









I can't wait until this little one is born and I can finally give the blanket away. I'm going to be very sad to see it go so I might just have to make another.....!

x x x x