Tag Archives: Kaffe Fassett

Taking out Stitches…

…or ‘frogging’, as it is sometimes called. If you’re wondering why, as you unpick your precious stitches, you will, ‘Rippit, Rippit’!

Today was the day Henry went to be frogged! He was not impressed…

I took as a good sign just how MAD he was about the whole thing. Only 4 stitches but the fury, the spitting and snarling …phew! We’re both glad that’s over…

Higgins checked out the crate…

…and the patient…

…a risky business with that cold nose!

so Henry went to bed, and I had a soothing cuppa, and did some therapeutic baking.

When my children were very young we lived for a few years in Pembrokeshire, in fact my daughter as born there. We were very rural and I didn’t drive, so we were very self sufficient, and any treats were homemade or foraged. Jam was always blackberry, although as the children complained about ‘lumps’ it was bramble jelly, there was a freelance apple tree, and one amazing year the biggest field mushrooms I’ve ever seen.

I was always baking to feed these hungry mouths and a favourite was Welsh Cakes. I haven’t made any for years, and was amazed to find I could dredge the recipe up from memory (this is the memory that never knows where the car keys are!)

If you’d like to try them out, I’ve added them to the Recipe page which you’ll find at the top.

I have a knitting project on the go too, some birthday socks for a dear friend. Hard wearing and colourful was the key, and I must extol the wonders of Twitter again. I tweeted for recommendations and got an answer back from the lovely Pip of the Sock Yarn Shop. I wizzed over and had a really hard job to choose from all the lovely yarns and colours but finally settled on a Kaffe Fassett design for Regia. I ordered in the afternoon and was unwrapping the parcel at 8 o’clock the following morning!

…and I got a free bag to keep it in!

I think I’ve been creative enough today to join in with Handmade Monday, despite the feline frogging! Have you heard about it? You’ll find a guest post explaining it on Craft Blog UK which is well worth a look in itself if you’re a fellow blogger.

So I think it’s time to get back to the knitting needles if I’m to finish the socks by the end of the month, and offer a warm lap to Henry to make up for the indignities of the day.

See you soon…..x

Splash of Colour – November

Better late than never, they say, but I can’t believe it’s Friday and I haven’t managed to post all week. Higgins and I have just got back from our walk, and the rain has started so I can sit down without guilt while he sleeps off the exercise (and the obligatory bath, well he is very low slung!)Emma over at Silver Pebble feels just like me about winter, but has come up with a ‘cunning plan’ to keep the Winter Blues away. She has invited fellow bloggers to post a blast of colour at the beginning of each month between now and Spring to keep our spirits up which is right up my street (although anyone who has been visiting Planet Penny for a while now will know I don’t really need an excuse to get colourful !)

I need a bit of cheering up now though. We’ve had a tiring, noisy but ultimately great weekend with family and now they’ve all gone home. The little boys, one four, one nearly five and one six year old very nearly ran Higgins’ legs off and he had so much fun. Although he was puzzled, very puzzled about the blue stripy human puppy which every one wanted to cuddle. It made exciting squeaky noises and was, allegedly, very nearly as cute as Higgins but wasn’t allowed to play.

Tim has gone back to work for two weeks and it’s just me, Higgins and Henry. There’s been a lot of sleeping but lately he’s been looking at me saying, “I’m BORED!”

So, November colour…Well, there’s been a lot of orange about…

There’s been sunshine too…and pink… I found a strangely speckled dahlia…

What do you think? I like my flowers to be a true clear colour on the whole, but I don’t want to sneer at it’s brave attempt to carry on flowering.

But orange? I am generally heard to say,’I don’t like orange, but…’

I’d run a mile from any clothing in orange, it would make me extremely miserable. But a blue bowl full of clementines, now that would make me happy. Nasturtiums? I love them. Pot Marigolds. Pumpkins. Autumn leaves. Terracotta tiles. I’m sure you can add to the list. And the book that is making me happy at the moment, and adding an extra splash of colour is Kaffe Fassett’s Quilts en Provence. It’s full of orange, and I love it!

One day, I will make one!

So every time the mud outside gets too much I shall escape to the sun and Provence and dream…

Back in the studio, someone else is getting a colour fix, but he’d better not eat those cushions!

I'm not chewing...I'm not!

I shall be back next week with my latest colourful cushion, another fair isle which has been progressing rather slowly. Have a lovely weekend, I hope the sun shines where ever you are and if you are celebrating Guy Fawkes Night, enjoy the fireworks!

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