Knit and Natter Friday!

Wasn’t the weather last weekend just wonderful here in the UK? The view from through the French windows  early in the morning with the sunlight playing on the hedge just filled me with joy.

As did my son and Mr B and his fiancée Miss G. They were lovely visitors. Encouraged Mr E ( who is doing well) with laughter and words, and helped me so much in the garden, chopping down ivy from the garage roof where I couldn’t reach and helping me with scary new lawnmower which turned out not to be scary at all. They deserved a cuppa in a local cafe.

After they left on the Sunday I took some flowers to my Dad’s grave. It would have been his birthday this week and I wanted some quiet moments of reflection.

Then I took a walk round the village and browsed an antique shop as you do, and GUESS WHAT. I found a WW1 sawdust heart, priced £75 , way beyond my pocket.

But it shows everything I had been reading about them. The use of preprinted pictures. The circles are called coloured wheels, there are sequins and beads, and the edging has braid and tassels. The only surprise is that it is actually much bigger than the one I have to make.

So this week I have added seed beads to the letters on mine. These just got lost in the felt. Next I tried adding sequins, but try as I might I couldn’t get them legible across the heart, it is too small and if I made the letters bigger the word Remember no longer fitted in , added to which they just looked garish. Out they came. However, I must say I can see why they were used for soldiers with shell shock, pushing the sequins, beads and pins in was very therapeutic.

So I settled for adding yellow to the stitching and made a composite stitch. I added just three sequins on the front, and now I am living with it , to see what I think. Across the back I added a short row of sequins to join the backing fabric together. I very much wanted to have some sequins somewhere, as per the instructions, to pay homage to the occupational therapy for the soldiers of WW1.

Yarn and Pencil wrote a wonderful post about junk journalling. Oh my does it look good , but also such fun. I admired her creativity. I looked at the materials. I thought I have kept oodles of paper and well stuff from other crafts and bits and bobs pulled off everything. Could I make one? Cue, massive rummage through all my boxes of goodies. Then a rummage round charity shops. Then a trip to the craft shops. Now the floor in the guest bedroom is littered with , well , junk. All I need now is the courage to get going.

There are 1000s of You Tubes on the subject, mostly from the USA, so I have been trying to figure out which glue does what. And what is the difference between junk journals, scrapbooking, art journals, smash books etc. I am now over thinking the whole thing. And although there are all these You Tubes, there don’t seem to be any books or very little written down anywhere. I really do like the idea of putting all my stuff to some use. Watch this space as the saying goes. Have you ever tried jounalling and have you any handy tips to pass on please?

Sandra at Wild Daffodil posted an update on her coastal crochet blanket, which is lovely btw, but resulted in a flurry of comments, culminating in a visit to Nudinits webpage. Oh my! I did laugh. Do check it out for a good giggle, thank you Sandra.

From there it was a short hop over to Amazon, where I thought I might buy the knitting book, till I read that only two characters were in the book. But Amazon don’t let you go that easily. “Here are some books others looked at.” they say. WHY, did I fall for that old chestnut? Needless to say two books are now on their way to me, which come on, I really don’t need. Have you seen my cupboards, floors, corners of all the rooms? Do I need some sort of therapy? I wonder is there a book for that…. no, don’t go there.

You see I have a reputation to live up too now. It was St George’s day this week and Little Miss F’s nursery was doing all about St George and the dragon. Miss F just had to take in

You know who. Apparently, and I have this on good authority via the teachers and Mrs T, that Little Miss F said ” MY NanaCathy made this. She can make ANYTHING”.

So of course I need oodles of stuff don’t I?

Which is all a very long way of saying there is not much output to share this week. The Sunday scarf is a bit longer and a lot wider. And the Eastern Jewels tile blanket has a corner and a triangle and part of the next tile.

And a few more ends to stitch in.

A gal can’t do everything now , can I? Unless anyone knows a way of making all the things and have a clean house and food on the table and a pretty garden.

One last picture to finish with.

You just can’t beat a picture of blossom and blue skies. Who knows the rain may hold off a little this weekend , so we can enjoy more of the same.

Love to know your plans for the weekend, mine include,yarn, paper, glue, thread oh and maybe some floor cleaning. That would be me using the stuff I have, it counts as tidying doesn’t it, if I lift it off the floor and do something with it.

Have a great weekend and Be Happy,

Cathyxx

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Knit and Natter Friday.

Once again thank you for all your good wishes and kind words for Mr E. I am delighted to say he came home on Monday , and we are both learning to adapt to the new reality. He is doing great.

The weather has helped. We have been basking in glorious sunshine in North Yorkshire. Nature has gone into over drive. In the space of a week the frogs have laid spawn and we have tadpoles; bees and butterflies have reappeared, and I am told that swifts and swallows are here. I shall keep looking for them. Spirits have lifted. Mr B and Ms G are coming to lend me a hand this weekend. We may even figure out how to use scary new electric lawnmower, between the three of us. All new gadgets terrify me, especially if they can fuse the house soon as look at you.

With spirits lifting the urge to create has returned. One Unicorn now on its way to Wiltshire.

She wouldn’t tell me her name, she says she will whisper it to Little Miss F, who I am sure will be delighted with her as she only eats chocolate apparently. I suppose that’s what happens if you are made over Easter.

I completed the first tile for my blanket.

Not at all certain I followed the instructions correctly for the cross over double trebles but heigh ho, who is going to know?

I decided I better  get a wriggle on with my WW1 sawdust heart. I decided I would cover it with  a pillow cover type thingy, incredibly I did manage to follow the instructions for this. I spent a long time thinking about what I wanted to say with my heart. I remembered a few lines from a poem by Laurence Binyon entitled For the Fallen. This is the verse.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

I have previously made some felt of a sunset and done nothing with it. It seemed right to use this.

I wanted the words remember me to be included within the sunset. However I think the effect is too subtle. Now the point of sawdust hearts is that they are decorated by using sequins and beads pinned into the heart. Should I use seed beads to go over the letters do you think, or embroider the letters with a more contrasting thread. Thoughts and ideas please.

I should add that I making this in memory of my Great Uncle from Liverpool who died in December 1917 of wounds.

Finally I have been doing a little knitting, on my Sunday Scarf, which is asymmetrical and the pattern is just two lines long and is copyrighted by its owner on pain of something absolutely awful happening to me should I divulge how you make it this shape. The best thing is I can knit this  whilst being too tired for anything else.

Hoping so much that this warm weather continues for a while, it makes everything feel just that little bit brighter.

May the sun shine on you this weekend,

Be happy

Cathyx