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The Knitted Home – Book Review

The Knitted Home - jacket
Every now and then I am asked if I would like to review a book, and I have to restrain myself from biting off the offering arm in my delight at the chance to see a new crafty publication!  This one, the Knitted Home by the talented Ruth Cross arrived to fit in very nicely with the subtle, monochromatic vibe I embraced to produce my  needlefelted sheep.  This book is a visual delight, and feels gorgeous too!  (Am I the only person to love the feel of the thick matt finish which seems to be used more and more for books and magazines?)
Throw and Cushion from The Knitted Home - Ruth Cross
Although some of the projects in this book are quite challenging, there are excellent clear instructions at the back of the book so even a completed beginner could get to grips with some of the easier patterns.  Ruth’s explanations of creating textures with stitches will soon inspire  the adventurous, and for many of the projects the main requirement is the patience to see a big project through to the end.
Footstol, The Knitted Home - Ruth Cross
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cable throw  -The Knitted Home - Ruth Cross
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textured knitting panels - The ~Knitted  Home - Ruth Cross
The project I’m looking forward to trying is this beautiful table mat.  I love this crushed raspberry colour, but I’m also dying to see whether it will work in Planet Penny rainbow colours.  It starts off with 24 stitches and ends with 360 stitches, so even that is a challenge in itself!
circular place mat - The Knitted Home - Ruth Cross
But there is also a neat little pattern for beginners which is also a great way to make use of experimental squares when you are getting to grips with stitches and patterns.  Turning them into lavender bags means you don’t have to accumulate a big bag of knitted bits to stitch into a blanket, just two little squares and you have the makings of a little pretty to hang in the wardrobe or drawer handle.
Stripey Lavender Bags - The Knitted Home - Ruth Cross
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Stripey Lavender Bags close up - The Knitted Home -  Ruth Cross
And now the even more exciting bit…would you like to win a copy?  I have one right here, sitting on my desk  and it could be yours!
 All you have to do is to leave a comment on this post and tell me what or who got you started with knitting.  If you haven’t started knitting yet, well you can tell me about that too!   You can comment up until Saturday 28th April, then I will put all the names into a virtual hat (Random Number Generator actually, I’ve tried getting Higgins to do it and he either eats the slips of paper, or the hat!) and announce the lucky winner on Sunday 29th April.
And if you can’t wait, you can purchase a copy of The Knitted Home at the special price of £16.00 (RRP £20.00) details below.
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To order The Knitted Home (9781906417727) for £16.00 including p&p*, telephone 01903 828503 and quote offer code JS190. Or send a cheque made payable to: Littlehampton Book Services Mail Order Department, Littlehampton Book Services, PO Box 4264, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3TG. Please quote the offer code JS190 and include your name and address details. *UK ONLY – Please add £2.50 if ordering from overseas.
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I’m linking up again with Handmade Harbour and Handmade Monday again this week and I’m looking forward to hearing your knitting stories.  Also, I would like to thank everyone who left such encouraging comments about my sheep in the last post.  I always read your comments although I’m afraid I don’t get time to answer as many as I would like and they are always much appreciated.  Thanks so much.
I’ll be back soon to tell you about my next adventure.  I’m off to London tomorrow to find out about a campaign just for bloggers.  Intrigued?  So am I, because that’s all I know about it for now.  Who knows, maybe I’ll meet some of you there.
Back soon…

A Pinboard for a New Term…

I don’t think it matters how long ago it is since you left school, the approach of September always feels much more like the beginning of a new year than the actual one in dreary old January!  And it’s so much more full of hope and possibility, we could have an ‘Indian Summer’ to make up for the lack of a British one, the evenings are still light, and it just feels like an optimistic new start.  So this has been a good time to get my little office up and running efficiently with pinboards, graphs and flow charts (pause to snort with derisive laughter!)  and slowly, slowly get on top of the teetering piles of paperwork.   It also means I can reclaim the studio space from being a dumping ground/spare room (thank goodness it was only Tim and I trying to shoehorn ourselves into the sofa bed!)   It now looks too tidy to use, even Higgins is surprised…

Miniature dachshund on a crochet cusion

…and here it is, I had to record it because it won’t last!

crochet throw on sofa

and in this one you can see the office at the end, it’s not ready for close inspection yet!

You might have noticed the old pinboard in the first photo, so full of stuff which had been there forever.

Very uninspiring, and in need of a makeover to celebrate the new look.  It was even more uninspiring once I’d taken off all the tatty bits and pieces…

You can see just how long some things had languished there by the interesting shadow effects!

So this is how the transformation took place, a quick and easy project as it only took a couple of hours.  All it took was some grey emulsion paint, I used a sample pot, and some white, I had plenty around as we’d been painting the studio.  Fabric and Bondaweb the size of the board, ribbon and glue and a few buttons.

After giving the board a wipe I painted the frame with the grey emulsion…

Once it dried I gave it a coat of white.  It doesn’t have to cover completely, just make sure that the brush strokes follow the shape of the frame.  Once it was dry I sanded it lightly to reveal some of the grey undercoat and polished it with beeswax.

I then cut a piece of Bondaweb to the size of the cork area of the pinboard and ironed to the back of my chosen fabric, in this case some jolly red and pink spotty Ikea fabric, peeled off the back of the Bondaweb and ironed the fabric directly on to the cork area…

To cover the raw edges I used a woven ribbon…

..and found just the right buttons to trim the corners.

Did you notice the Dove Christmas decoration on the old pinboard? That got a new lease of life…

…and the pinboard was ready to use…

Trouble is, it’s far too pretty to fill with Post-It notes, receipts and appointments, isn’t it?  So for now it looks like this…

 pinboard full of prettiness

…and I’ll probably have to buy another pinboard to use in the office!  Ho hum…

 

Lovely weather for ducks…

…and toads. I spent so long moaning about the cold during the winter I hesitate to mention the heat, but in Norfolk over the last few days it’s been hot,hot,hot… It was lovely to wake up this morning to the gentle patter of rain, and good that the dry spell didn’t break with a thunderstorm and a deluge that just runs straight off and down the drains.

Higgins has spent a lot of time lying around, too hot to get up to mischief (mostly). We tried a cooling spray of water from the hose but as far as he was concerned it was rain, and he was very put out. This morning when he barked to go out and it really was raining, he just sat and growled at it to stop. When it finally eased off enough for a quick sortie round the garden he was most intrigued to meet one of these…

I’ve not seen him wandering around the garden before, but he must have been feasting on our slugs for a while because he was really rather large. I hope by now he’s found another comfy spot for pest control duty.

I’ve been nibbling my way around the veg patch for a few weeks now, mostly salad greens and carrot thinnings. The mange tout have been tasty and the pea flowers very pretty…

… but my raised beds are not really big enough for such straggly plants. I keep finding enormous pods under the collapsed foliage which are definitely only suitable for ‘mange’ing the bits out of the middle. The beetroot are looking great though, and the little ones I thinned out were delicious. We had the first two courgettes for lunch, thumb size, and the first few beans, french and runner are beginning to show. Oh, and the potatoes I planted in two big buckets are looking really healthy. I just hope there’s something happening below soil level.

I’ve been trying to get some colour into the pots in the courtyard area by the studio to make up for the fact that my front garden is suffering from a) the dry and the heat and b) my inability to get things to flower which will take over from the spring flowers, aquilegia, poppies and all the other things currently running to seed. I’m finding the black walls of the studio a good background for bright colours. It worked well for the primulas…

…and now they are over I’ve planted a vibrant mix of dahlias and geraniums.

We actually managed to beat the blackbirds to the cherries this year, probably because we’ve had the best crop ever.

We can never get many as the trees are quite tall, and pruned to give a high canopy of shade, but Will went up and did his orangutan impression and we managed a couple of pounds of sweet dark fruit.

Trying to make the most of them I found a recipe for pickled cherries on the internet. Unfortunately not a good recipe, the amounts were all wrong so I had to improvise and won’t know if it worked for a month, but if it does I will let you know and share the recipe. Looks pretty though…

Cherry jam required stoning the fruit. Oh dear…Tim came into the kitchen to what appeared to be a blood bath…Juice on the work top, the floor, most of the utensils, my hands, arms, clothes… There was only a pound of cherries. I ended up with just a jar and half of jam which allows for testing…absolutely delicious…but by the time I had cleaned up and bleached the kitchen the project was probably not an effective use of time. Anyone getting offered cherry jam when they come to my house will know they are very special!

I’ve also finished a poignant project. A while ago I lost Jan, my much loved Aunt, a patchwork enthusiast. Her daughters-in-law passed on two works in progress along with her sewing effects, and hoped I might be able to make them into the family heirlooms Jan had intended. I was a bit stumped with the first one. It was a long strip of hand sewn hexagons, three to five pieces in width, and long enough to be the width of a double quilt. Looking at the prepared pieces, and the fabrics I had to work with, I wasn’t going to be able to complete something that size. And anyway, I really wanted to keep it as predominately Jan’s work and adding another nine tenths to it would take mean it was more my project. In the end I divided it into three pieces, and rejoined them to make a rectangle, piecing in hexagons Jan had tacked to card (old Christmas cards in fact, and rather moving to find cards from my grandfather, and other relatives now passed away amongst them) until I had something about baby quilt size.

Now I had to keep my fingers crossed for a baby! Last month, little Euan arrived. He would have been Jan’s fourth grandchild and she would have been so happy. But at least I could pass on the quilt she had made so much of, with both our names on the back, to give him a cuddle …

 

…and BREATHE…

I feel as if I’ve been holding my breath for months, waiting for this moment.  Waiting to open the doors and windows, to let in the sun and fresh air, to wander in and out without a coat…and here we are at last.  I don’t want a ‘barbecue summer’, well, not one that will barbecue me, but pleasant warmth, sunshine and light, and just enough rain for the garden (only falling at night please, if we’re having a fantasy lets get it right). 

  I’m scuttling about a bit at the moment. A little bit of gardening, a little bit of sorting fabrics and yarns, some sewing, some knitting, symptoms of a butterfly brain.  So excuse me if this post is a bit like that, I’ll settle down soon.

Firstly, the garden. You’ll excuse me if I don’t take you round the vegetable patch just yet.  It needs a little more  attention before I show it to visitors.  Too many old bean canes and dead flowerpots.  I do have lovely raised beds which I talked about in this post, and I have extravagantly enlisted the help of a gardening guru to make it look good enough for a photo shoot.

The wild plum is just bursting into bloom and  I love the ‘spottiness’ of the buds just before they open.  We started on the last of the wild plum jam on Sunday on warm scones.


In a couple of days it will just  be a froth of blossom.

The forsythia is doing it’s thing, quite a bit later this year.  Every summer I look at this unprepossessing nondescript shrub filling up the border and nearly give it it’s marching orders, and every spring I  forgive it.

There are assorted daffodils…

…and other, less assertive, little lovelies hiding their light under the bushes…

Meanwhile, back in the studio, there is a very different tree…

The little red bird is feeling a trifle lonely now that his pink friend has flown off to live with Elizabeth, I must get felting again.

…and then there is the knitting…

Quite big knitting as Higgins will demonstrate…

The ball has a history – which I’ll tell you about another time – but it’s just had a colour revamp before going off to our local Farmers Market tomorrow where the Knit and Stitch group are hoping to spread the knitting bug, (whilst spoiling ourselves with coffee and and the delicious, and very naughty, bacon rolls.

So, before that happens I must don my wellies and gardening gloves and head back out to the vegetable garden and absorb a little sunshine…

Happy Easter…

Have you eaten enough chocolate yet?  I must admit to not having many family Easter traditions in place here on Planet Penny because as a one parent family when the children were small, they would have Christmas with me and Easter with their other family and an Easter egg Hunt for one is a little boring (and also very fattening!)   But this Easter just happened to coincide with my daughter’s birthday so an excuse for chocolate and champagne!

A request was made  for a very special chocolate cake, as seen on the cover of this month’s Sainsbury’s magazine.

Much agonising from me as I have rather lost my cake baking confidence.  Cake and I cannot safely exist in the same space, one of us has to go, and it’s always the cake.  I’m afraid all the pep talking from my Weight Watchers guru has not brain washed me into portion control and point counting in these circumstances so I find it easier to confine my baking to those occasions when I have several mouths to feed.

It involves a lot of chocolate and cream and eggs and sugar and melting and cooling and more chocolate (and scraping and licking) oh! and raspberries – now they’re  healthy…and in the end there was this…

…which I think worked rather well and was transformed with candles into this…

…and was voted the best chocolate cake ever. 

Higgins had an Easter present too, all the way from Korea and very beautifully packed.

Inside was this…

He wasn’t very grateful.

And went to bed to get over it. He was eventually persuaded to get out of bed when he realised he didn’t have to actually have to go out for a walk  in it…

And even tried a few super hero stunts…

But when Henry the cat (who refused to be Robin) gave him a smack for looking silly he gave up and went back to bed…

It’s a hard life having to be cute all the time…

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