Fibre East: Thank you!

A big thank you! to all the lovely people who stopped by to say Hello! and buy wool at Fibre East. The weather was a bit of off-putting, but inside the big tents, summer reigned unchallenged, and the mood was warm and sunny.

Fibre East Tomorrow ... see you there!

We're off to Fibre East tomorrow. You can find us in the Leicester Marquee. We've got our fingers crossed for nice weather.

Emi's made a Lego sewing machine to bring me luck and celebrate all the sewing I've been doing recently.

Hope to see you there!

Bonny x

The White Lough on a sparkling summer evening ...

When we're back home in Ireland our default dog-walking venue is the White Lough, which is just a hop, a skip and a jump away from my parents' home. It's a firm favourite for an after-dinner romp on bright summer evenings when we need to walk off a few calories.

Evening Daisy ...

I happened to be in the garden last night at the bewitching hour when the sun was setting and the garden was filled with the most amazing golden light. Here in Northern Ireland, at this time of the year the days are longer than they are back in London, and it's a joy on a sunny summer evening to sit outside and admire the play of light and shadow under the foliage canopy.

All the best for now,

Bonny x

Who needs Carcasonne when you've got Caernarfon?

Now I have to 'fess up to having driven past this place dozens of times, dashing back and forth from the Dublin ferry, without ever stopping to have a proper look. I've gasped and sighed over other medieval citadels here and there and further afield, but I've never given Caernarfon a second thought. I'm a numpty! And that's official.

Just stop and take a look at what I've been missing. Isn't it magnificent?

Caernarfon Castle, Caernarfon, Wales 

Hay-on Wye ... a Welsh Timbuktu ... sort of ...

I love Hay-on-Wye. It's totally my kind of town. Mr B and I are in the habit of going there on a fairly regular basis to shop, shop, shop. We love it.

Friends will be puzzled by this shop, shop, shop business because neither of us is the type to hang around aimlessly in shopping malls, or to partake of retail therapy with any kind of glee or gladness, but Hay-on-Wye is different. It's the Timbuktu of Mid Wales: a town that's totally devoted to books!

Hay-on-Wye Castle

School's out ... and it's officially summer ...

It's been a long time coming, but, finally, Emi's got his summer hols. Not having to get up at the crack of dawn this morning was blissful. And today is quite possibly the best day of the year: this first day of the summer holidays, when we can wind down from all the day-to-day stuff that usually has us rushing around trying to keep up, and savour the several weeks that lie ahead of not having to do very much at all. Call me lazy, but from where I'm sitting right now, that's a sweet, sweet prospect.

My black hollyhock -  summer on a stem ...

Ode to June ... and TGI Friday ...

Crumbs it's way too hot down here in the Big Smoke. It's been like this for ages, and for some reason all this hot, hot weather has inspired me to sew. Perhaps it's because I've felt the need of some relaxed summer dresses - the kind that fit loosely, and help keep you cool when the mercury's way up. This is what I've been up to this week:

I rustled up these summer dresses over the course of the last few days. They're all pretty easy, and made from wonderful summer cottons that I bought on the Goldhawk Road. The red one was cobbled together when I discovered that I didn't have enough of either the red or the green flowery cottons to make the entire dress, and I have to say, necessity being the mother of invention and all that, I'm really glad that my erratic fabric buying forced my hand. I'm rather pleased with the not-so-matchy contrast.

My purple dress just involved following a pattern. And, whilst it's perfect for hot, dusty summer days in Spain, it doesn't enthuse me as much as my improvised dress does.

It's sewn from a fabulous Liberty Cotton that I bought on my favourite shopping street last year. And it's an absolute delight to wear: really light and floaty. I know I'll wear it to death from here on in.

As I've sewn, and ripped, and pressed out seams and tacked up hems I've listened to the wonderful alternative version of world history that I mentioned last week. It's an epic read (or listen in my case) that runs from the days of the mighty Persian Empire to the fall of Saddam Hussein. Maybe I got so much sewing done because I was totally engrossed in the narrative.

It's been a busy old week all things told, and I didn't get around to much restrospection on what I got up to during June. I've been trying to take a review of the month just gone as each new month of the year kicks off. It went really well for January through March, but then my wagon came off the tracks as other demands on my time left little energy for retrospection of any kind.

But June deserves to be treated differently. June was a big month for me. You see Mr B, my husband, had surgery to replace the ligament of his left knee in June. It wasn't a huge deal: it was never going to kill him. But it could have turned out badly. He could have been left with a long, painful recovery, or a permanent limp. As things went he's made a splendid recovery, and I'm feeling really blessed that he will be restored to full health and will be able to do all the things that he used to do. We're tennis buddies for one thing. We both play a really rotten game of tennis: he's a bit portly and I'm as blind as a fruit bat. But that doesn't matter because we play as badly as one another, which means that we're perfectly matched. We have epic battles on court. Any decent player would destroy either or both of us in the flash of an eye, but pitted against one another we're stiff competition for each other, and every victory is hard won.

Together we ski, cycle, hike and swim. None of it is done to any great athletic level, but it's fun and it's life-affirming. It would have been sad to have lost all of this from our lives. So I'm feeling very grateful.

And I'm also feeling grateful for long summer days with nothing very pressing to do. For lazy walks in the park, the locomotive panting of the WonderDog who invariably finds the coolest, darkest corner of every room we enter, the semi-meditative delights of cross stitching, the soft berries ripening in my garden and the long stemmed beauty of my hollyhocks - I can't tell you how much I love my hollyhocks. Summer totally rocks!

All the best for a fabulous weekend,


Bonny x

T-shirt Up-cycle - a patternless pattern ...

I've been mulling over the idea of using a simple T-shirt as the beginnings of a summer dress.  I started off with a small, white vest-top from Primark for a little girl aged 3 - 4 years.  It cost me the princely sum of £1.30, and then I used bits of left-over lawn cottons from other projects to make the skirt, which cost me nothing. What do you think of the result?

Just read on for my pattern-less pattern:

Mid-Summer Meadow of Cornflower Blue ...

Last night I took a short-cut through Walpole Park on the way home. As I was steaming along I came across the most beautiful sight: a mid-summer meadow of cornflower blue. I was enchanted. All I needed to complete the scene was for Puck and Bottom to wander in stage left ...

Pink Clematis Pin Cushion ... how-to

I have to say these tapestry pin cushions have become a bit of a habit ...
This is my latest creation:

I've worked this design half cross-stitch on a 10 mesh interlock needlepoint canvas using 4 ply tapestry wool.

Here is my stitch-pattern:

I started from the black-lined square in the centre, and counted stitches from there to fill in the other colours. I finished off the white background in dark green thread.

When I'd finished the tapestry I trimmed the canvas to 1 cm of the stitch work, cut out a square of the same dimensions in short-pile velvet for the back. I found a dusty pink velvet at my local fabric store, Ealing Fabrics, that was perfect for the job. And, as luck would have it, the lovely lady behind the counter was able to pull out an upholstery trim that was a great match for the backing velvet.

Having overlocked the edges of the velvet I sewed it to the tapestry, right side to right side, around 3 of the sides of the square that they created. Then I turned the work so that the right sides were out, and the worked seams were inside. I stuffed the cushion with some toy stuffing and sewed up the final side of the square.

Now the only thing left to do was attach the upholstery trim around the edge. This type of trim is known as gimp braid, and it's got a marked tendency to unravel. I tried to end-stitch it, overlocking the ends to keep them intact, but my efforts were a bit of a failure. The only way in which I could keep this braid together was by securing the ends with a fabric glue. Using a paintbrush I dabbed some fabric glue, front and back, on the cut ends. The glue dried clear, so it wasn't very noticeable where the fabric had been treated. I sewed the braid around the cushion using an invisible stitch, taking small stitches from the wrong side of the braid, and sewing those to the cushion, pulling the thread taut after each stitch to pull the braid against the edge of the cushion. When I got right round to where I'd started I finished off the trim with a little bit of fabric glue so that it overlapped slightly, and sat snugly on top of where it started. 

All the best for now,

Bonny x

Loganberry & Lemongrass Jam ...

Yesterday I made some Loganberry & Lemongrass Jam, and it was a big hit with the troops, a really big hit. Just read on for my recipe:

Loganberry & Lemongrass Jam