Tea and Crochet

I was trying to think of a lovely title for this post, as it is a post about lovely things, but inspiration seems to be lacking today! Perhaps I should have called it lovely tea and lovely crochet!
Today is the first day of our week off properly, as we would have had the weekend off anyway. The Grand Prix yesterday was amazing, and as spectacular as the driving was, there was also a display by the Red Arrows which was breathtaking. The rain held off for the race, and we had amazing seats, but afterwards it did rain a lot and was very muddy, but it all added to the experience!
It took twice as long to get home as it did to get there, as a National Express coach had broken down on the M1, so we arrived home rather tired, and decided that today we would have a gentle day.
We had lunch together in town, and then got coffee to take away and took a long stroll through the park. The park in Chelmsford is really pretty and seems to go on forever. There is a small part near to the town, which is where the crocuses blossom each year, and then you walk along the river and under a bridge before you end up in the much larger park, where there is a really big pond. It is too small to be a lake, but too big to be a pond...I wonder if there is a name for it?! There were lots of ducks wandering about, some baby Cootes were peeping away, and the scruffy grey looking cignets we have been watching growing up are almost full sized swans now. We sat by a weeping willow and breathed the slightly cool, slightly damp air, and just felt really relaxed.
On the way home, we noticed new shops are springing up along the railway arches. We popped into the new delicatessen, and I was really excited to see they stock Tregnothan Tea. I enjoyed a pot of this a few years ago when we went to Claridges for afternoon tea, and I wanted to buy some to bring home, but they didn't have any. When I looked online, the postage and packing was more than the tea, so you can imagine how pleased I am to have a local source of it! At £3.75 for a little box it isn't a tea to drink every day, but is really, really lovely. It is refreshing and light, and is the only tea grown in the UK. We are enjoying a pot right now. It isn't quite raining yet, but it feels like it soon will be, so it feels like the perfect cosy afternoon.
While I was watching Three Go Mad, the new programme from River Cottage the other evening, I felt slightly at a loss as I have run out of wool for my crochet ripple blanket, and although I ordered more it has not come in yet, and although technically I am knitting Noah's Ark still, I have hit a dry spot for inspiration. I have been thinking that I need a small project to keep me amused, just something quick and easy that I can work on, but wasn't sure what. I finally visited www.themakingspot.com and downloaded a free pattern for a crochet necklace. One of my friends had made a crochet collar earlier in the year that I thought looked really nice, and I have some background thoughts about buying or making the same dress in a variety of colours, and then customising with different buttons, trims, etc, so I am going to sit and drink tea and crochet a collar necklace this afternoon.
I have also discovered a lovely new blog, and plan to make this for dinner tonight http://tastyherbalist.typepad.com/modernhousewifevoli/2012/01/smokey-meal.html with a few tweeks, as I have spinach but not kale at home today, and some River Cottage flatbread. That seems like the perfect overcast Monday food to me.
Blogger seems to object to putting paragraph breaks in at the moment, so apologies if this comes out as one big clump of text. I have tried telling it in html but it definitely seems to have its own mind!
I hope that it isn't raining where you are, and that you have a delicious pot of tea to drink, love Mimi xxx

Rippling Along!

One pot of tea and an episode of River Cottage later, I have my first ripple done! I think I have probably made the blanket a bit too wide, and it will take a bit longer and eat a bit more yarn than I would like, I do like a nice blanket that is big enough! I have made it so it will go on our double bed and hang down the sides a little. The first stripe was dove grey, the next one will be light sky blue...but I must away to the kitchen before I can start that...

Spring Thoughts

It is a curious day today, it is the first day of three days leave from work for me, but it feels like a normal day off! Usually a day off and a day's leave feel different as soon as I open my eyes, but not today. The other curious thing is the weather..it looks slightly overcast outside but the breeze is warm and it is heavenly out there. The air is almost sweet, and you need a cardigan, but not a coat.

So, dressed in my stripy dress, silver cardigan and Mary-Jane shoes, I set out for an adventure on my own. I took the bus halfway to my little library on the hill, and got off in the village before instead. I actually got off a stop early because it was so warm and lovely, and could smell hedge clippings, and saw so many bursts of purple crocuses and the first of the daffodils nodding in the breeze.

I had two shops in mind; firstly, Yarn Therapy, and secondly A Little Bazaar. I visited the latter first, with nothing in mind, just to have a look around. It is a lovely little vintage shop where the two rooms are lined with shelves and cabinets which have plenty of notices saying 'please touch!' and some cupboards that bore labels instructing 'open me!'. Down the middle of the room are rails of vintage clothes, and you can have a really good rummage about. I came away with a vintage book, a dark red hardback called 'The Modern Woman's Medical Book' which I think was published in the very early fifties. It is really worth a visit if you are in the area, they really have friendly service there, and offer you a cup of coffee to drink while you browse. As I was paying, the lady asked me if I would be proposing to anybody today (the legend is that on leap day, girl's can do the asking!) but I said no, because I wasn't too sure my husband would approve! However, the rest of the legend, which is less well known is that if you propose and the man says no, he is meant to give you a silk dress by way of consolation...so perhaps I should have asked every man I met and hoped they all said no!

There used to be a little tea shop in a curious glass cube of a building called Tiffany's, the inside being Tiffany blue with lots of photographs of Audrey Hepburn. Alas it seems to have changed hands now, and when I walked in I couldn't help but notice that it smelt very faintly of wrung-out dishcloths! They didn't have any scones either which was a bit of a shame, but I think it is very much a cafe now rather than a teashop, so I had a pot of tea and a toasted tea cake, and they were both very nice indeed. It came with a teeny pot of Wilkinson's Strawberry Jam which I love, so that was extra good. I also read another chapter of my new library book, which is just fantastic. It is set in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and is called A Discovery of Witches. A great big chunk of a book, I am sinking into it like a feather eiderdown. If you have read The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, it has the same kind of feel as that, so far.

Duly refreshed, I went on to Yarn Therapy. I have had in mind for years, since we went to Lyme Regis for our wedding anniversary one year, to crochet a ripple stitch blanket in colours that reminded me of the waves as we walked out along the Cobb. I did start one a year or so ago, but I didn't like the yarn I had chosen at all, and it was all too soon abandoned. I was in a bit of a quandry about the yarn this time, because I wanted to use something nice rather than my usual market bargain yarn, but at the same time can't afford to spend lots...and blankets do eat up wool! I remembered visiting Yarn Therapy a while ago with Mum, and they had a lovely range of wool by a company called Drops. I seemed to remember it being soft and lovely in beautiful colours, and being reasonable in price. I was so pleased to discover I had remembered correctly, and chose four colours from their Nepal range, which is part alpaca! I have a cream, light grey, light blue, and purpley-blue. I am going to use the random stripe generator to make my pattern, and then plan to set off rippling along. I am having a special birthday this year, and I like the idea of having a blanket I can say that I made in the year I was thirty!

I have quite a lot of craft projects on the go at the moment...I am knitting a Noah's Ark set, as I have mentioned, and this afternoon hope to start my first ripple stripe on the new blanket. I am also knitting the bolero from this month's Vintage Life magazine (which I was very disappointed with as a magazine; I calculated there was less than 25% content, the rest being photographs, adverts, or bumpf) in cherry red, and am going to wear it as a bed jacket for when I am reading, to keep my shoulders warm! I also hoped to cut out my daffodil brooches this afternoon, but they may to wait until Friday, as it is nearly four o'clock already, and I have dinner to cook before my dance class later!

We have been busy having lovely adventures since we last caught up. Our weekends have fallen into a lovely pattern of an adventure on Saturday then a relaxing Sunday. This Saturday we went to see The Woman In Black as I really enjoyed the book, and some parts of it were filmed locally (the causeway out to Eel Marsh House is actually the causeway out to Osea Island!). It was good but very different to the book, and there were quite a few giggly teenagers in the cinema with us. I jumped as much when a man shouted at them to shut up as when the film was being scary!

Then on Sunday we went to The Gardens of Easton Lodge for their Snowdrop Sunday open day. I have taken lots of photographs which I must get onto the computer so I can share with you. Debbie, I hope you enjoyed it when you went! We loved it...and I bumped into several other library people there on the day!

Now it is time for a pot of tea and some crafting before I start cooking Peppers Stuffed With Sunflower Seeds and Lentils....

Love
Mimi
xxx

Turning To-Do into Ta-Dah!

I took my crocheted blanket with me to book club tonight, to show the other girls, and to give the book I used to one of them who wants to crochet her own. I am very proud of my blanket and was pleased that the group liked it. Although I made it for me, it was rather nice for the blanket to bask in some admiration! After all, I am rather biased towards it!

As well as loving the finished article itself, I rather loved the act of finishing it, too. Inspired, I stitched together some squares for a baby blanket that I started years ago. Unfortunately, the border I have started to put on it is all crinkly and just won't lay flat, so I may have to rip it out and re do it. Happily I found an online tutorial which suggests crinkly borders are a common problem, and suggests some ways round it. Now it is actually stitched together I don't feel a strong an urge to get it finished, which is odd! Perhaps in my subconscious, the stitching it together was finishing it, and the border is a new project!

Finally, finally, I have my ripple stitch blanket under way. I am using 'Soft Waves' from Jan Eaton's book of ripple patterns. The colours are all sea-colours inspired by Lyme Regis, and as well as using the stitch pattern to make the ripples, I am using the suggested pattern for the stripes of colour too - 4 of cream, 1 of lilac, 2 of grey, 3 of mid blue, 4 of dark blue, then start all over again. I did have a moment of indecision, as to if after I finished the 4 of dark blue I should go back to mid blue and down the scale to white, or just start with white. I opted with the latter, and am glad I did. This is a bigger blanket than before, this one is designed to go on the bed, whilst the granny blanket is for the sofa.

The act of finishing things seems to be just what I need recently. Of course you could argue that I have really only started the Lyme Regis blanket, but the creative process for that began a long time ago, and it is as though the making it is only clothing the process and thoughts in wool. I seem to need to finish things off and tidy up at the moment. I have spent happy hours tidying out and cataloguing the fridge, freezer, dry goods and spice cupboards, something that has been on my 'to do list' for a while. Ticking things off feels good.

You see, I am far better at starting things than finishing them. I remember reading that about my star sign in a girls magazine from the 70s, and I don't know if reading it planted the seed, or if I was like it already. Either way, I think (and hope!) I am conquering that a bit now, and my unfinished objects and projects are endangered species!

I have read several books about decluttering, and they all agree that by clearing space in your home, you create space in your life. The logic goes that if you clear a space on your bookshelf and appreciate its emptiness for a while, you have made space for new discoveries that you would not have had room for in your life before. I wonder, if by finishing off these things, what new things I have made room for in my life. Finishing the first blanket and starting the second are in some ways a relief of sorts...until now I have had the ideas for them both percolating away in the back of my mind. By doing them, creating them, making them, the brain power I was using percolating away on them is freed up for something else. I wonder what it shall be?

Before I forget - Book club! We read the biography of Agatha Christie by Laura Thompson. As you know, I love her Poirot and Marple novels, and found her biography interesting. I think that Miss Thompson needed a better editor with a red pen as she quotes too extensively from the novels, and does seem to have gone in with an idea and used only evidence to support her ideas, but on the whole it was a good read. I was amazed at how beautiful she was in her youth. 'I was a beautiful girl' she herself said, and it made me think - how awful if we get to old age, and realise that we were beautiful in our youth, only at the time we never appreciated it at all. Perhaps it is finding grey hairs that make me think about this, and I don't by any means think I am gloriously beautiful, but I do think that we should appreciate what we have got while we have it, rather than mourn its passing too late!

So when you look into your mirror tonight, even if you see some grey hairs as I do, or wrinkles appearing under your eyes, look on yourself with a kindly eye and think about all the things that make you lovely now.

Days of Ice and Snow

As I type this, my fingers are wrinkled with cold, and I can see my breath puffing out in front of me, it is so cold at home. Of course, it is my own fault, but you see, I do so love to give our little flat a really good airing, and the fact that it is 2 degress celcius outside wont stop me!

On Sunday evening, I was not to pleased about the snow, mainly because we were stuck on the M25 in it. We had been to Southampton to celebrate the 21st birthday of my lovely sister-in-law. The family enjoyed the most scrumptious Sunday lunch at a restaurant called Dock Gate 4, and got a great deal of amusement out of the packet of glittery '21's that were scattered across the table. Alas, when we came home, it started to snow, lightly at first, and then whirling flakes falling thickly. It took us four and a half hours to make our way home (it had taken just two to get there!), but there was something really scrumptious and cozy about getting home, making up hot water bottles, and getting into bed with cups of tea, to listen to Radio 4 and get warm. It also made me very glad that I had put all of my fluffy bedsocks in a little shallow basket by the side of my bed for easy access!

On Monday morning, I could not believe how thick the snow was. We could not hear any trains going past, and soon realised that dear Carl would be working from home that day. As for me, I wrapped a scarf around my head, and felt like Little Red Riding Hood, put on the only sensible footwear I could find (some pink trainers! all of my other shoes are high heels, or ballet pumps!)and set off in the snow for work. I love how everything seems softer, quieter, muted. I was one of the first out of my road, and so mine were the first footsteps. Such fun! It wasn't as cold as I thought, or perhaps I had made a good job of wrapping up, but when I got to work, I treated myself to a hot chocolate to warm myself through.

It got worse as the morning wore on, and suddenly, for the first time in my ten years of libraries, we were sent home! An unexpected snow day was such a lovely gift! I scurried home as quickly as I could, but found it slow going- where the snow had been walked upon, it had compacted and got very slippery! I sat on the sofa with dear Carl while he worked, and I crocheted a slipper, just to test out a new pattern. I shall certainly be buying the right sized crochet hook and making some properly! Then we dashed out into the back garden and made a snow man taller than both of us!

Tuesday we both set off for work, although it took me a long time. The buses were running very late indeed, and by the time I got to Danbury I was frozen through. Thankfully the library does not open until the afternoon, so I was not late opening up. The ice seemed even icier, slippier and more unforgiving, if that is possible. Once home, I was utterly exhausted, and after dinner, I snuggled in bed with a hot water bottle, and the most delicious book, which I finished this morning, and highly recommend- A Vintage Affair by Isabel Wolff.

When I left home this morning, I found that everywhere was hazy, almost misty with cold. The pavements are still sheets of ice, and seem to be getting slidier still! At least, so far, I have not fallen over. Happily today was my half day, and I treated myself to a delightfully silly film (Bride Wards!) and a cup of tea, before hurrying home for a lavender scented bath.

I am hoping very much to go on a snowdrop walk this weekend, and rather fancy making some bread, too. This evening will be another early night with a good book (What Would Audrey Do? by Pamela Keogh) and a hot water bottle.

Oh, someone asked what neeps and tatties are? They are really tasty- potatoes and swede, all mashed together roughly, with a nob of butter, a good grinding of black pepper, and a little grating of nutmeg. Oh, and swede are like turnips. Very tasty indeed. Actually, next time I make some, I think I will make extra, so I can have neeps-and-tatties-bubble-and-squeak the next night!

One last thing- there is a beautiful 'puzzle purse' Valentines card on MarthaStewart.com that I want to try and master. I am going to be all about the handmade this Valentine's Day, and little token gifts. Sadly we do not have a good history to Valentine's Day...I guess it just matters more to me than to Carl. Still, I have lots of lovely little things planned for him. Persephone, my favourite publisher, is offering a wonderful thing, where they will giftwrap any of their books and post it to your valentine along with a note to say not to open it until February 14th. I am torn between sending 'They Knew Mr Knight' to myself, or trying to drop a hint to dear Carl....I suspect in the end I shall do neither, as I have bought too many books this month as it is, and I do hate dropping hints!