Author Archives: penny

About penny

I live in Norfolk, England in a cottage on the edge of the Norfolk Broads where it can be peaceful and beautiful, or wet and muddy, or occasionally wild and windswept. With me is husband Tim, Henry the elderly and opinionated tabby cat, and Higgins, the miniature dachshund with a massive personality. You’ll find me chattering on about wool and textiles, knitting and crochet, recipes, books and patterns, exhibitions and shopping and of course, the adventures of a small dog! Planet Penny has a Facebook Page, you can find me on UK Handmade and I am featured on Channel4/4Homes Favourite Craft Blog List.

Dungeness

We might live in a small country, but it’s amazing the huge variety of landscapes Britain manages to pack in. When we first travelled to the South Coast from Norfolk, I loved the winding roads, the hills, the woods and the green-ness, (although I’m suspect the locals trying to get to the M25 curse those winding roads!) But you don’t have to travel very far along the coast to find an altogether different landscape, wild, harsh, mysterious and beautiful.

I’ve wanted to visit Dungeness for a long time, especially once I had heard about Derek Jarman, and his garden, so I was very excited to find we had a trip organised, with steam trains!

I took lots of photos, so I’ll mainly let them do the talking. I hope they give you a flavour of what a magical place it is.

We’ll get the nuclear power station out of the way first!

Prospect Cottage, Derek Jarman’s home…

It’s privately owned, so you can’t go in the garden, but just stand rather conspicuously on the road with your camera!

I wasn’t quite close enough to for the poem on the end wall to show up, but if you love poetry, you can find it here.

It’s incredible how anything can grow here, and the wonder of the garden is how attuned it is to the landscape. For every gardener who has desperately tried to grow something tropical in a cold windy garden this is a triumph of going along with nature, finding what grows naturally, and mixing it with driftwood, rusty metal and flints and stones, and without boundary fences letting merge seamlessly into it’s surroundings…

Thomas bought me a wonderful book…

..which beautifully describes how the garden came about, with such fantastic photography it made my efforts seem a bit feeble…(but it didn’t stop me from trying!)

It’s amazing what get’s washed up onto the shingle!

There are two lighthouses, the old one…

and because the shingle has built up over the years and made this one too far inland there is a shiny new one…

We walked down to the sea…

(We could still see the power station!)

There was a mysterious tumbledown building surrounded with rusty fences and barbed wire…

…and everywhere brave little plants doing their best to bloom in these harsh conditions…

…and we even found an Open Studio to visit…
Where the artist has a novel approach to recycling his paint brushes…

Then off to the train…

…where we had to make a difficult decision. Is Higgins…

a dog…or a bicycle?

Ummmm…..

The train ride was great, but noisy and Higgins wasn’t too impressed.

…and spent most of the journey with his head firmly wedged between our shoulders to block his ears!

I found a lovely little train I would have liked to bring home…

Such a pretty colour!

Phew, a long post, and there’s a certain amount of hovering going on which suggests it’s a mealtime, so I’d better sign off.

If you still haven’t seen enough, have a look at this great little blog….where you’ll find another Dungeness fan!

See you soon …x

Flapping About!

Hello, Hello, I’m home and doing what I always do, too many photos, so much to say don’t know where to start…..flap, flap, run round in circles…….

BREATHE……….

…..and out….

Phew, that’s better….

We had a wonderful few days away in East Sussex, the weather was fab, we had time with the family and Higgins is still trying to catch up with his sleep! He had boys to look after, and he couldn’t possibly do his usual napping in a sunshiney place in case something good happened and he missed it. Also, he had a Very Important Job to do as an Artist’s Model, and he kept forgetting which was his best side…and if you’d like to see all the sides, you’ll find them here…

Until very recently Sussex and Kent were counties I travelled through on the way to the ferry, and I just got tantalising glimpses of interesting places in the mad dash to the port. It’s been lovely to have a reason to visit and explore, and you can catch up on some of the places we’ve been in these posts.

We visited Hastings Old Town on the first morning where the locals are fairly laid back…

…or a little scary…

…but the shops were very pretty…

…and they had the flags out for us…

well, I say flags…

of course not all of us are really into shopping…

I’m not going to gallop through everything in one session, we’ll all lose the will to live – so the trip to Dungeness will be in the next post!

I did manage to get the knitting out, and I’ve finished the birthday socks…

…and I’ve been experimenting with the lovely cuddly yarn I showed you before to make a sort of cosy collar.

It’s like a scarf without trailing ends. I’ve knitted it on circular needles and it’s just five rows of knit and five rows purl to give the ridged effect. I didn’t use all the yarn, I was being impatient, so I’m going to put it back on the needles to make it longer as the ridges make it scrunch up quite a lot. I’m going to experiment some more as I think it would be great with more stitches so it can be looped twice round the neck, or just adding an extra ball of wool so it’s long enough to pull up like a hood. I’ve a feeling I shall be fighting my daughter for this one!

Once again I’m linking this to the lovely Wendy of 1st Unique Gifts and Handmade Monday. Do go over and say hello and find all the links to other crafty blogs.

I’m being particularly ‘handmade’ this Monday too. I was very excited last week to find out I have been selected to take part in the UK Handmade Showcase, in the ‘Wonders of Wool’.

Have a lovely week, I’ll be back very soon…x

Silent Sunday

A Wave in Passing…

…to Handmade Monday! I shouldn’t really be here…I’m packing….. but I just had to fit in a quick post before we take off for a few days at the seaside.

I do seem to have packed quite a lot of little projects to take with me, you know, just in case. It would be terrible to have idle hands!

So, there are the birthday socks to finish…

…a few more squares to add to the blanket…

…and if I need a change, something warm and snuggly to made from this, I haven’t decided quite what yet…

as well as a couple of books, my camera, notebook….

I’ve just time to share the birthday cake, (well, pictures of it, that’s all that’s left!) which I made for a friend’s birthday party over the weekend. An extremely clever friend who built his own car….

…like this…

When I come home I will share the recipe of this, the most chocolatey chocolate cake in the world…it’s called Clovis cake!

All will be explained…..

So do pop along to Handmade Monday 31 to see who else is joining in. Sorry to be so brief, Higgins and I will be back soon with tales of holiday fun….

Byeeee! xx

Silent Sunday

A Push in the Right Direction…

…sometimes you need a little shove. I’ve got rather off track over the last few weeks with highs – birthday celebrations, and lows – the poorly pussy cat, so I’ve been really grateful for a bit of focus. So I’m saying a big thank you to two blogging lovelies who have put in a lot of work to come up with a ‘Big Idea’ which not only concentrates the mind, but introduces a whole new section of the blogging fraternity.

Firstly, there’s Silent Sunday. It’s a wonderful idea, which you can find out all about here, because if, like me, you always have your camera with you, even when the week is such that you just have no words… there is always a photo which will say it for you. Thank you Jay, photographer extraordinaire!

And then there’s Handmade Monday, curated by Wendy of Ist Unique Gifts who has concentrated my mind wonderfully over the last couple of weeks so I’m getting back on track. Thank you ladies!

So what have you been up to, I hear you wondering… Well, I’ve been tinkering around with the idea of making framed pieces using needlefelting, to give more of a context to them, and I’m just beginning to feel happy going in that direction. My first piece was this, which is in the folksy shop now…

And with my Handmade Monday hat on today I put the finishing touches to this…

…a framed flying pig….I’m very fond of the flying pig!

I’ve painted and distressed the frames I bought to experiment with, they are a soft Swedish grey with a beeswax sheen which is a favourite of mine. Quite a few pieces of nondescript furniture in our cottage have had that treatment! I wan’t sure what to put in the smallest of the frames but today I devised this….

…the ribbon along the bottom has been hand printed to say…

And just to add the little extra to the whole ‘handmade’ aspect of this evening, as I’ve been typing this, the room, no the whole house, has been filled with the smell of Banana Bread cooking! I feel SO virtuous!

Which reminds me, thank you so much for all the lovely comments about the Welsh Cakes. They really seemed to strike a chord, especially with expat Welsh ladies! I hope the recipe worked for you, and brought back a little taste of home…

If you want to meet all the other Handmade Monday Bloggers, you’ll find them here. And if you decide to join in, with this or Silent Sunday, do let me know, I’ll be paying you a visit!

See you soon! x