Tag Archives: Bunting

More Hearts…More Pompoms…

Hello!!! Is it Thursday already? This week is galloping by. Firstly, because I know you’ll want to know, Henry is still doing nicely. The medication has been finished, and as I write he is snoring contentedly, in his bed. This is a relief, as when he first came back the only place he wanted to be if he couldn’t have a warm lap was a warm keyboard.

The only little cloud on the horizon is the visit to vet next Monday for the removal of the stitches. This will probably require the entire squad of nurses and maybe one or two brave volunteers from the waiting room as he will NOT be a happy bunny!

Oh, and some hair restorer…

His tummy was shaved for the ultrasound, his head was shaved for the spinal tap, patches were shaved on his legs for the drips, and his throat was shaved for the operation. Thank goodness it’s summer, I don’t think he’s be happy in a jumper, however beautifully knitted!

But pompoms, I hear you cry, you said there were pompoms!

There are SO many pompoms! I found this wonderful gadget…

Do you remember the Heart and Pompom bunting…

…which I made in January?

I still love it, but I made the pompoms with a little gadget which my mum had given me because she wasn’t very happy with her results. Well, I tried really hard with it, and made so many pompoms using up my leftovers…

but they were never as firm and fluffy as I wanted them to be.

Now I have found this gadget…

…and it is wonderful! The smallest sized one makes a beautifully firm pompom in just few minutes and it is so compulsive I had to pack the gadgets up and put them away as there was a danger that my entire stash would be used up!

The solution was to make a larger version of the Heart and Pompom Bunting – the tutorial for that is here. I just worked the last row in the pattern in the main colour and added an extra row in the contrast colour to make the hearts bigger and made the joining chain slightly longer between the hearts so I could use slightly bigger pompoms.

Would you like to see?

It was hard to find the best way to show you. When I hung it up inside I realised how much my house needs redecorating, and the light wasn’t right so here it is outside the studio…

There’s actually a bit too much light here, it rather bleaches the colours, but I’m not going to complain about sunshine! (If you can’t find the pompom maker locally I got mine from Clothkits thank you, Kaye!)

Now we have another sunshiny day I’d better get out into the garden. All the strong wind over the last couple of days has blown my little plastic greenhouse and flowerpots all over the garden. (Higgins has done his best to round things up but the toothmarks are a problem…)

Talking of Higgins, he’s rather had the spotlight taken off him with recent events but if you were wondering…he’s fine…

You see…?

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Happy Friday

How lovely it’s been today to have nothing but happy smiling faces on the television! It’s been a miserable year in the world so far, with earthquakes, the tsunami, uprisings and war and sadness, so the happiness of William and Catherine and all the people in London celebrating with them has been so uplifting. I said I was just going to switch on to see the dress, but I watched the lot, and cried and still managed to carry on needle felting… there was only a little blood!

I hope you had a lovely Easter. We did, and Higgins had boys to stay and he loved that. I’ve had to eat rather a lot of hard boiled eggs over the last few days as the boys forgot to take them home, but they’ve all gone now. (I think I would have enjoyed the chocolate ones more, but strangely they remembered those!)

Higgins discovered the joys of a hammock…

…but I found it a little disconcerting to be hit by a low flying dachshund landing on my stomach when I was lying in it myself, quietly reading.

Now it’s time to get organised and think ahead.

So much is happening in the next few weeks that I need to get to grips with it all, make a list and tell you all about it…then it must be true!

Watch this space …

Lifting the Gloom with Hearts and Pompom Bunting….

We really need something a little cheerful at the moment don’t we? January is such a gloomy month. Higgins and I went for a ‘squelch’ this afternoon and although it quite mild, it was what my Mother calls a Tupperware box day, and no one’s taken the lid off.

But, the days are getting longer(by about one and a half minutes a day apparently) and I have little daffodils bursting into bloom in front of me as I type.

I was really lucky to receive a lovely gift at Christmas, a beautiful jug which I have been coveting for about five years. Do you remember this post when I was given a pretty little mug for my birthday? Well my clever Daughter-in-law tracked down the very jug I have been hankering after all this time from the same designer, Gabriella Miller.

And I’ve found the little notebook I mentioned in the other post, where I had expressed my desire to have some Gabriella Miller pieces as well as all sorts of useful notes and pictures.

However, I’ve been working on something to cheer up the gloom, and the bareness left now the Christmas decorations have been consigned to the attic for another year. I’ve been playing around with a crochet hook and the yarns left from the cushion and blanket project which are a real splash of colour in themselves. And with February round the corner, and Valentine’s Day there are hearts, and I still love the pompoms so I thought Hearts and Pompom Bunting…

I’ve been fiddling around with the pattern and written it down which I’m really proud of because I got so excited about the whole process, and the prettiness of all the colours. I’ll do a few photos as soon as possible to turn it into a tutorial if you think you’d like make your own version but in the meantime, want to see some more?

(By the way, do you like the cup, saucer and plate on the top shelf? Another Christmas present which I love!)

And finally, bringing all the cheeriness together… Planet Penny Hearts and Pompom Bunting

A cheerful note on which to start the weekend! Have a lovely one, I hope the sun shines for you. See you soon x

Ed to add: You can find the pattern for this bunting here…

Frogging…

When I mentioned ‘frogging’ to a friend the other day I was met by a blank stare. However, when I then said ‘Rippit, Rippit’ the blank stare turned to enlightenment, and sympathy.

There’s been a lot of ripping involved with my latest cushion. It’s not that I haven’t knitted fair isle before, but I’ve not had a palette of seventeen colours, and I wasn’t changing the background colours as well as the pattern colours. I’m blaming Kaffe Fassett and his book Pattern Library. I think he has a special sort of brain that doesn’t get boggled, because boggled my own brain certainly became.

The crochet cushions are the same back and front, but I didn’t think my sanity would last long enough to knit both sides, so I dug out some needlecord in a really pretty blue and some gorgeous red wooden buttons which I think work well.

Too late I noticed I’ve got the nap of the needlecord running both ways which makes one side darker than the other, but I’ve decided it’s a design feature!

So, would you like to see it? Here’s a little hint…

…and another…

This is the reverse side!

…and that’s quite pretty too, but here is the finished article…

I have two more little cushion pads left so I’m having a ponder about what I do next. There are the lovely grandala ideas over on Crochet with Raymond, I could do Lucy’s granny stripe, zigzags might be fun…

In the mean time I have been resting my eyes from all that colour with some pristine white cotton crochet, another bunting experiment. I have resisted so far because I’ve seen lots of other versions of crochet bunting but I deliberately didn’t look too closely at anyone else’s so I could invent my own take on it. So far, I’m liking it…

Well it must be time to finish blogging, if only because Henry the cat has come to sit on the keyboard and I can only access some of the keys. Have a lovely weekend…x