Under the Apple Tree

We've reached the stage with our house where we're running out of projects and looking for what to do next. It's funny when doing up your house becomes a hobby and you start to think, "What shall we do when we've done everything?" Of course, that will never happen, however, we have made two new projects for ourselves, both rather large, though one more so than the other. The first is that we are going to replace the bathroom. Only the suite and the floor, as the whole room is tiled and it would be a mammoth and expensive job to replace them. They are large and white with bevelled edges, and there is a row of coloured mosaic tiles around the centre. Perfectly inoffensive, and plenty of potential for improvement.

The other, somewhat larger job is that we have begun to strip the paint of the front of the house. It began when Marno, after a few weeks of saying what a bad state the paint on the bay windows was in, took a chisel out to the front garden to see how easily the paint would come off. Low and behold, it stripped off like wallpaper over most of the surface, revealing very well preserved sandstone, typical of the majority of houses in Cardiff and one of my favourite features. We are hoping to be able to keep the sandstone bare and just treat it with a weatherproofing finish, but I want to paint the sills, which are currently black gloss, a nice matt charcoal grey, rather more period I think!

Here's a progress shot;  it's not particularly clear, but you can see where we've removed the paint on the bottom bay (n.b. not all of it came off like wallpaper - there's still a fair bit to remove from that one!)

So what was I doing under the apple tree? Well the point I was getting to with the above is that, what with all these projects suddenly piling up around our ears, you'd think we'd make the most of the weather and get on with it, but it's been so gorgeous here, we spent a lot of Saturday sitting on the picnic mat in the shade of our beautiful apple tree, chatting, (me) knitting and reading, and generally chilling, followed by a lovely barbeque at a friend's house in the evening.

 View from the picnic mat


 I made a little progress on my Shellseeker, which is charging along, for me. I'm so glad I changed my technique, it's made such a massive difference to my speed, and the alpaca couldn't be more perfect for this project.

So all in all, a rather pleasant weekend with far too much relaxing and certainly not enough work, but you just have to make the most of these rare moments of warmth and sunlight I think.

There's what I'm reading - The Help. A fantasic book, which, on this very rare occasion, I'm glad to have seen the film of before I read the book, because it's written in the accent of the narrators of the story, and it really helps to have that fresh in your head. I can imagine it would read rather peculiarly otherwise.

Last Friday I was due to have some friends over from our church with their little ones. There were supposed to be four of us mummies and six babies and children, but in the end, only one friend could make it with her two - a seven month old and three year old. Anyway, in anticipation of such a crowd, I hastened to the kitchen to make a gargantuan chocolate fudge cake. There would be plenty for all for us, but hopefully not too much left for Marno and me to have to finish. Unfortunately, as I was in the process of making, which was the day before, the friend who did come texted me to say it would only be her. Oh dear! I foresaw myself wrestling inside for the next week until the chocolate cake was finished, as there was no way it was going to be demolished the following afternoon...

 Several slices later, I packed it off to work with Marno yesterday, to remove the temptation once and for all. It went down very well with his boss!

xxx Sam

Wonderhaul

It seems like Wonderwool was months ago now, as we've got so back to normal since our little holiday in Pembrokeshire (of which more in a future post), which we planned to coincide with the weekend of Wonderwool. We went to Pembrokeshire for a week and returned the Saturday of WW, so did a slight detour home through Builth Wells, the town in which it's held, to stock up on yarn for projects for the coming year. Ok, so I only bought yarn for two major projects, but we all know I, shall I say, take my time, over large projects. However, I'm hoping all that is to change as I've drastically changed my knitting style in the last month or so, intentionally, as I'm fed up of taking so long to knit jumpers which I want to wear, like, now! Like I've said before, my knitting is neat and consistant, but the reason I take so long is the method I used to create the actual stitches - I would take my right hand off the needle and kind of physically wrap the yarn around to create the new stitch; a method which requires much more time per stitch (ok, we're only talking mili-seconds but it all mounts up) than the new way which I've been working on, and which now feels like I've always used, of tensioning the yarn with my little finger as I used to do anyway, but then resting the yarn on my forefinger and holding it taught so I can just pass it over the needle tip without having to remove my grip of the needle. Sorry if that is rather impossible to visualise! I assure you though, it's made a huge difference to my knitting speed. I thought, after the Apres Surf, that I wanted a simple (but bot boring) project which was mainly stocking stitch so I could improve my new technique and speed up considerably. I chose Shellseeker by Heidi Kirrmaier as yes, it certainly complies with the request for lots of stockinette, but also has two colours, in the form of stripes, which is another new technique for me. So far in my knitting career, I've only worked with one colour, though I have a kit waiting for me for the Fiddlehead mittens, which the Midnight Sheep kindly put together for me quite some time ago, but which I've always found a little forbidding. I'm certainly fearful of all those colours!

Aaanyway... here is the lovely yarn I bought for Shellseeker. Its by UK Alpaca and I bought a cream and a muted lime green.

Actually, a more accurate description would be a mix between lime and mustard, which sounds rather revolting but trust me, its gorgeous! I've cast this on now, using yet another new technique - magic loop - which I wasn't sure about to start with, but it's turned out rather well. I was going to post a progress shot here, but I've only done seven rows so far so it may not be particularly interesting yet. I'm also not a huge fan of progress shots. One or two perhaps, but I like to save it all for the big reveal.

Ok, moving on. A few weeks ago, my friend Lorna showed me this beautiful pattern by Gudrun Johnston. It is rather reminiscent of something you may find in my very favouritest shop in the world (obviously I realize there is not such word as favouritest, in case you are wondering) - White Stuff. It reminds me of a cardigan I bought in there when I was pregnant actually, a size too big to accommodate growth (!). I couldn't get it out of my head, and found myself accidentally purchasing some gorgeous yarn from the most fantastic Jill of Jillybean Yarns. I bought her Knot Another Granny Yarn in Staying Calm.

I realize the colour looks different in each of those photos, but its somewhere between them all. Hopefully you can see why I couldn't resist it, and lovely Jill gave me a discount as well, so I couldn't refuse :)

I also bought some fibre for spinning. This gorgeous rhubarb pink, which I'm hoping to spin into yarn for a short sleeved, button up cardigan - well, it's in my head at the moment. Then the plain white to practise with and maybe experiment with some dye, and the bit of blue just because it was gorgeous!

Again, none of these colours are true. The top one is taken with the toy camera setting, and the bottom one on vivid. I'm looking forward to messing around with these though.

Time to go, as I've been trying to squeeze time out of my lovely boy, but he's fed up of me writing now and keeps dragging my arm away from the keyboard. I'll leave you with this photo of me enjoying some fibre.

x Sam

A Turn About the Garden

Yes! I've been so excited to finally write this post. I've been leading up to it shamelessly, which could have been dangerous as there was always the chance of stalling again, but I have, in fact, actually finished the Apres Surf Hoodie.

I was debating whether to knit the hood or not for a while, as I don't generally get on with hoods, I find them rather cumbersome and awkward to place when wearing a coat over the top. This is probably just me as I realize it does sound rather ridiculous as I write it, but nevertheless, a valid consideration since I'm going to be wearing it myself.  But after having scrutinized many, many Apres Surfs on Ravelry, I concluded that the hood is more like a light piece of additional fabric, rather than a huge bulk, and it does finish off the design beautifully, so I went along with it and am glad I stuck it out.

The yarn I used is Fyberspates Scrumptious 4ply sport superwash, which I bought at Wonderwool last year (more on this years WW coming soon), and it has proved the perfect choice and was a really pleasing yarn to work with. The skeins are pretty generous so I have a reasonable amount left to stash! Man, that hood though. It really was a work of patience to work my way through it after feeling like I'd finished the jumper when I completed the three needle shoulder bind-off. Speaking of that, I did use three new to me techniques including the three needle bind-off, plus provisional cast-on and i-cord bind off. I found them all really enjoyable to use, which may sound peculiar, but that is whan I love about knitting - the ingenuity of it. It looks so complicated to the untrained eye, but makes so much sense when you understand how stitches work with each other to create such a variety of effects.

Here are a few more gratuitious photos of the hoodie.

I think overall, it fits really well and the colour and yarn are perfect. The only thing I'd do differently is change up a needle size for the i-cord bind-off on the body and sleeves. I did for the hood, which has come out perfectly, but the cuffs and waist are a tiny, tiny bit tight but probably only noticable by me.

After ripping out my Spring Forward socks at the end of my last post, they have been re-cast-on and are going somewhat speedily for me. I've just printed out my next project, purchased on Rav, so lots in the pipeline, but I'm going to save that for next time as well, as I bought the yarn for that at Wonderwool.

Well, goodbye lovely readers. Leave me a little message. Have you knitted something which has just taken months and months, or even years? I have to say, the thing that attracted my to this project in the first place was the juxtaposition of a hoodie, usually associated with beach bums or chavs (!), with the use of lace to create a garment which is both beautiful and casual. What attracts you to a project and makes you want to give your time to it? I'd be really interested to know.

xxx Sam

Disclaimer: The beach bums and chavs comment was entirely for effect you understand. I do possess a couple of hoodies myself, though generally only wear them snowboarding on on outdoor activities - I can't deal with that hood problem too often!

A Room With a View

As is probably obvious from my severe lack of posts recently, I just haven't had the time to post, and when the time has presented itself, in the evenings, I generally find I'm too braindead from looking after a toddler all day to compose anything. Harsh as it may sound, looking after a toddler all day, every day, does sap your brain power. I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about what projects I'd love to be working on, whilst sitting on the floor with Noah and being handed pieces of toddler sized puzzle (or whilst trying to have a peaceful breakfast!) with accompanying "uh, uh" sound. We frequently refer to Noah as a seal at the moment, due to said sound.

This post is being written whilst I wait for dinner to be ready, with the laptop plugged in on the kitchen worktop. I took these photos a couple of weeks ago, when the cherry blossoms which line our street came into full bloom. April must be my favourite time of year in our home, and the view from our bedroom window is of the cherry blossom tree immediately outside our house. The pink complements our bedroom decor perfectly, most conveniently!

As you can see, I've been messing around with the camera effects. The fifth and sixth are vivid and the last is toy camera effect. I love how you can create instant atmosphere, especially if you're not a fantastic photographer - I'm not!

I have so many posts to write, and I really am going to try harder to make time to post more often. I can't believe I'm not even making once a week. I've decided to expand my content repertoire to include a bit of cooking and baking as well. I cook every night, so have plenty to say about that, and have been really getting into baking recently. I have a plethora of cake photos just waiting patiently to be recalled from the depths of my blog photos folder. I'm hoping to have a finished Apres Surf very soon as well; just the neckband to knit now. It's Wonderwool Wales next weekend, so I've been planning on what projects to buy for. I also ripped out my pathetic attempt at the Spring Forward sock this evening, ready to recommence with renewed focus sometime soon. I have a couple of small projects I have yarn for already, and I'm definitely ready for a small one considering how long I've been slaving working on Apres Surf.

Have a fantastic and restful (if you need it) weekend :)

x Sam

A Rapid Transformation

Since putting the curtains up, we became more and more dissatisfied with the browny-grey colour of the dining room walls. We bought a new paint sample in a lighter grey, and also tried the same white that the cladding is painted in (bear in mind we are not neutral people!) and just hated both of them. This room is a problem because in the morning it gets bright sunlight, but for the rest of the day has no direct sunlight, so although not dark, it needs a warm colour to make up for lack of direct light. Because the kitchen was completely tiled before we ripped it out, we'd just painted the dining room in the colour that best complemented the adjacent middle room, which is a gorgeous yellow. But because the three rooms are interlinked, the new colour for the dining room walls had to go with what was already there. Well I finally had the obvious idea of painting it the same colour as the kitchen, and its been a roaring success!Its gone from a room I didn't particularly enjoy spending time in, to a vibrant, smile inducing space in perfect harmony with its adjacent rooms and really enjoyable to sit and eat in (or to sit and write a blog post in!).

Unfortunately, because of the shape of this back area of the house, its hard to get a good angle which encompasses the whole space, and I also took these photos while Noah was having his nap, so they are rather rushed, but you get the general idea. Oh, I also have only put one curtain back up because, due to my perfectionist tendancies, I can't bear to look at the other one hanging there and awkwardly rumpling because it's slightly too long! It will be reinstated when I've taken it up.

 View from the middle room

From the kitchen (try to ignore the stripy high chair!)

 Our old Ikea shelves which I painted with acrylic eggshell to tie in with the cladding and kitchen shelves. They're not finished yet - the top shelf needs some things added.

 Nigella Lawson spoons set

 Photos on the ledge. 

We're currently deciding what to do with this wall. We don't want to hang pictures again and make another disaster, and I quite like the photos just sitting on the ledge, but Marno still prefers the idea of putting photos, though not the current ones, up. We'd do a uniform wall using the same frames, two parallel rows of six frames if we do do it.

 Close up of the ledge
 

 Shelves detail

I got this absolutely gorgeous card in Nest Vintage Living in Cardiff. I won't link because I'm sure I've mentioned it before. Its by Sally Swannell, and she has the most gorgeous selection of her prints as greetings cards. I had to but this as it just made me feel happy and warm inside. Everything about this print just says warmth, love and contentment. I'm hoping to get a pretty frame for it at some point. What a fab and cheap way of bringing art into your home - just buy it as a card (though this image is printed on high quality card, so you have to be a bit choosy).

Have a beautiful weekend; the weather's meant to be gorgeous here!

xxx Sam

Pants Party!

I was trying and trying to come up with an innovative title for this post, but this one stood out the most for me, so I just want with the simple and obvious choice. Last weekend I went to a pants party!

Well ok, actually that wasn't exactly it, and and it was by no means limited to pants. It was a very old friend of mine's hen do, and she chose as her Saturday activity to do a Vintage Knicker Making Party, arranged by my lovely, also old friend, Carly (who's blog I've just discovered here). We collected in a room at the Tobacco Factory in Southville, Bristol; an absolutely fantastic location for any workshop of this sort. The room was large, bright and airy, with ample space for ladies and sewing machines.

The lady with the headscarf in a 50s housewife style was one of the teachers (not sure if that's quite the right word - sounds like we were at school). All three of the teachers were fab, friendly and helpful.

We basically were given a choice of loads of gorgeous fabrics from which to cut our knicker pattern. They were cottons, not your usual stretchy jersey kind of fabric. Then we drew around the template and cut out our pattern, sewed the gusset together, including a little jersey cotton for the gusset, chose our elastic to complement (or not!) our fabric, sewed it on and sewed the side seams, et voila - 21 pairs of knickers!

Me in action
I'm astonished they managed to get 21 people to make pants in such a short space of time, especially with such a vast range of experience. Some people hadn't done any sewing since school, and I didn't see one pair of knickers that wasn't at the least a very good effort. Everyone was really imaginative. I also couldn't believe we had to sew elastic, since although lots of people may have sewed before, sewing elastic onto a piece of fabric is not necessarily something they will have done. I only did it in the last couple of years.

Many embellishments were made

A small group of pants

A large group of pants

 

My pants

Well I'm pleased to report that my pants fit perfectly, thank you very much. What a totally fab idea and fun way to spend a morning. Also, it was the first time I've left Noah on his own for a whole night and day, which was both liberating but also clarifying, in terms of reminding me who I am now; a mummy to a lovely little boy, who has priority over anything I may wish to spend my time on. This was a very enjoyable treat but I'm certainly happy to wait a while to do the things I want to, when I want to, again (just don't be a little monster tomorrow ok Noah!).

x Sam

Thea Revisited

I've been wanting to re-post on Thea for a while. Mainly because the previous photos were taken whilst I was breastfeeding, and, shall I say, it fits a lot better now! I wasn't sure how much I liked it or was going to wear it, once I finally finished it, but since losing weight it fits a lot better and is even bobbling, I've been wearing it so much.

  

 

I also improved my Thea a little by sewing the buttons on again, in the right places this time (!) and also by stitching down the lower points of the collar, as the whole collar was looking really misshapen as it didn't ever stay in the right place.

Not a massively exciting post, but hopefully something more exciting to come soon. I've nearly finished the Apres Surf. When I'd blocked the parts, it looked absolutely humungous - I was thinking of renaming it the Apres Surf 'n Turf Hoodie, as it looked like the sized I'd be if I ate surf 'n turf all the time! But now it's dry and stitched together (nearly), it's a much better size, and I can't wait to try it on. Just the hood and neckband to knit now.

I've also put together my list of projects to knit on Ravelry so plenty to be getting on with. Nothing much else to report though, oh, apart from that we've decided what to do with the dining room - paint it the same colour as the kitchen, so it will be pink as well. Its going to be gorgeous and warm and inviting, instead of cold and muddy grey. So photos to come when its done.

I need some warmth in the dining room as it is, as the weather is fairly unpleasant at the moment, and the dining room has a large sliding door leading out to the garden, which means looking at lots of grey skies. I'm so looking forward to seing that first blossom on the apple tree, and the randomly placed tulips, planted by the previous owners, come up and surprise us, as they do every spring.

Hope you're having a lovely day, and thanks for stopping by :)

x Sam