Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all you lovely mums out there!

My Pet Plants ... the carnivores living on my window sill

It all started with the teenager. He saw them in the garden centre, and was immediately fascinated. And, as I've always been keen for him to share my love of gardening and the natural world, it wasn't hard for him to persuade me to buy them. So, home they came.

At first I was unsure about them. They struck me as being the delicate, demanding sort of plants that don't survive long in the spartan conditions of my care regime. Let's just say I'm not the most consistent of pot-plant parents. My charges tend either to be forgotten about completely, or over-watered to the point of root-rot and gangrene. It's a harsh climate in my house that's best suited to bomb-proof cacti and succulents that can withstand weeks of neglect.

But, determined not to disappoint the teenager by killing his new pet plants, I placed them on my very best south-facing window sill where I can't help but see them multiple times every day, and made a note-to-self about stepping up a gear and trying not to kill them - for at least a month or two, anyway.

Quite miraculously and against the odds, they and I seem to have found a way of getting along together. Their care labels advised me that they were swamp plants, and I've discovered that in a well-ventilated room it's very, very difficult to over-water them. So, four months' down the line, they've not succumbed to root rot and gangrene.

I've noticed how flies from the garden tend to be attracted to them. I've read that they secrete nectar to attract them, and I've had a good old sniff, but haven't spotted any tell-tale odours. Indeed we've all watched with interest to see how many flies they catch.  The Venus Flytrap, true to its name, has caught a few. Like a new mum whose toddler has just taken his first step, I was really excited when I spotted its first victim, and then alarmed when that cup went black and died off - a frenzied check of the gardening books reassured me that this was normal.

I suspect that the pitcher plant is a little more discrete, and that deep down at the base of those finger-sized pitchers there's a host of half-digested bugs. 

The books tell me that they're both going to die back for a period of hibernation over the November to March period, which will be traumatic for me as my unconscious will insist that I've killed them! 

All the best for now,

Bonny x

Seed Stitch Gardening Socks

I've been having a play with my standard sock pattern and designed something that's a bit chunkier than the normal vanilla sock. The seed stitch with the Dutch slip stitch sole creates a much more resilient sock that works well with boots. All things told they're perfect for wearing with wellies for an autumn tidy-up outdoors!

WIP Wednesday ...

I'm really looking forward to seeing the spring bulbs and, in anticipation, I'm working on a row of cheerful tulips. I've up-cycled some old bed-linen for material, drawn out my posies and I'm working in tapestry wool and stranded cotton.

Instagram Royalty at Osterley Park

Last Wednesday I got to play with Ros Atkinson (@her_dark_materials) at Osterley Park, where she hosted a fun workshop for about a dozen enthusiasts. She'd set the props up in the Osterley kitchen before we got there, and we had a couple of hours to go nuts and take photos.

WIP Wednesday

What have you got on-the-go at the moment? I've not got a lot of knitting to show for WIP Wednesday. There's the usual collection of things that have lived in the WIP corner for a-g-e-s, and with which I have totally fallen out of love with, and am never likely to finish anytime soon - short of a miracle.

London Institute of Photography

Last week I shimmied over to the London Institute of Photography on Brick Lane to do their beginners' course. I've been taking photographs pretty much all of my  life,and it's been something that I've hugely enjoyed doing. I've owned a succession of fairly respectable cameras, but I've pretty much always kept them on automatic or some other-semi automatic programme that did all the thinking for me. I haven't troubled my head with the physics of how any of it worked. And I've been delighted with myself on those rare occasions when the planets have aligned and I've bagged the odd decent shot here or there.

But last week all of that changed. I explored the mysteries of the exposure triangle, learnt how to pan, investigated how to achieve shallow depth of field with good bokeh, and how to get greater depth of field for landscape or street photography. It was an eye-opener as I discovered more and more of what my respectable but not-very-fancy camera could do, and how the art of taking a decent photo actually has more to do with technique than simply being in the right place at the right time.

Minestrone Soup ...

I'm in the throes of seasonal grey. I am filled with admiration for those people who can enthuse about all the seasons and extol the delights of our great British seasonal variety.  I try. I really try to mimic them and muster some enthusiasm for January, but it always defeats me. January is just a month too many in the book of my year.

If January were cold and crisp and full of frozen cobwebs and ducks slipping and sliding on the lake over at Osterley Park, where the WonderDog and I like to stretch our legs, it might be different. But right now, right here in the Big Smoke January is cold and grey and wet and miserable.

So I'm hunkering down and making soup. I've been on a health crusade since last June, which involves not eating many processed carbohydrates so I've left pasta off the list of ingredients and bigged up on the beans for this fortifying Minestrone: a small midday fix for the January blues.

January ... bleurgh! - time to grab a book ...

I'm back for my start-of-the-year moan about January. I know I do this every year: so grey, so bleak, so ... predictable.  I've just taken down all the Chrimbo decorations, sent the cards for recycling, clinked all the empties off to the bottle bank and then, to add to the grimness, I've taken the pledge for a dry month - no more vino til' February 😨. I'm about as cheerful as that pitiful pile of denuded conifers waiting on the Common for the council to carry them off for composting.

So, what do you do when it's so grey and uninviting outside? You could do worse than reach for a good book ...

Cold grey London skyline

And if, like me, you're a crafty type you may enjoy the Golden Thread by Kassia St Clair, which sets out to explore the history of fabric, but in effect gives us an needle's eye view of world history. It's a whimsical subject that takes you on a romp through all the ages of clothing from the linens of ancient Egypt to the silken robes of the Chinese emperors to the woollen sails of Viking longboats to the space-age fibre technology of what astronauts wear on moonwalks. It's all there, and it's all compelling.

Farewell to 2018!

I've not been around much in Blogland recently.  I've been busy with other real-world business, with some travelling and with much seasonal merry-making.

Yesterday on the way out of Dublin Port I was struck by the dramatic low clouds, and the number of people walking along the breakwater. From the distance and the elevation of the car ferry's deck they looked like an army of ants marching off an excess of roast turkey and plum pudding.

It's coming ...

I know! I know! Shoot me now for mentioning it, but we're getting rather too close for comfort given how little Christmas shopping I've done. Eeeek! Every year I swear it'll be different next year. Next year will be the year when I finally get my act together and don't end up doing my usual demented dash for the festive finish-line.

I find it hard to get geared up for Christmas until it's officially December. It's a state of mind. I remind myself of my mum who has this tendency to not really feel like she needs to leave the house until just about the time she's supposed to arrive at wherever it is she's going to.  It is a tendency of hers that used to leave me hanging around a lot after Brownies.

Anyway I'm in my customary seasonal denial, frittering away the time with my needle. And this is what I've got to show for my head-buried-in-the-sand approach to the coming festivities:

Royal School of Needlework, Hampton Court Palace, London

On Tuesday I spent a fun day at Hampton Court Palace. Now I have to confess that it takes very little enticement to get me to spend a day in such a wonderful place. However, on Tuesday, I had a very special reason for being there: I was taking part in one of the Royal School of Needlework's sampler days, which involved a tour of the Royal School's workrooms and then a workshop in their studio.

and a big "thank you" to all my lovely Festiwool customers ...

... hope you all enjoyed the fair.

All the best for now,

Bonny x

Festiwool 2018

I'm looking forward to Festiwool -this Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Priory School, Bedford Road, Hitchin, Herts. SG5 2UR. If you're in the area do please drop in for a feast of yarn and woolly delights.

All the best for now,

Bonny x

London in the Autumn

I've been really busy with work recently, which has buried me under a blizzard of paperwork and left me at the mercy of a series of unforgiving deadlines, but I'm determined to carve myself some me-time this weekend. And starting today I ignored all the other calls on my attention and headed off with the WonderDog for an early morning jaunt around the common. It was bracing; we've just had our first frost of the season here in London, but it got the air pumping in my lungs and blew away the cobwebs more effectively than a bucket of coffee could have done.

Ealing Common

Ally Pally Knitting and Stitching Fair 2018

For all of us in the stitching community there's nothing quite like the big Ally Pally Autumn Fair. There are lots of other craft fairs, but this is the big'un, and I, for one, always feel like I'm missing something if I'm not able to go.

This year I got an early ticket for Thursday morning. I rocked up 5 minutes before the official opening time, and the place was already pretty much full to capacity already. I'm a bad girl who likes to come by car so that she can transport her swag bag (day's shopping ... wicked 😈) home with minimum muscle strain. I was able to find a space in the free car park, but only just ... .

A chum, who trolleyed in on a late ticket that afternoon (after 3 p.m. entry), told me that it was fairly civilised when she was doing the rounds, but I'd have to say it was a bit too much of a push when I was there.

Still - gripes about how many of us there were apart - it was a great morning out.

Dog Mattress

Gosh I've been away a long time. I've been crazy busy on a non-crafting project, which has slowed down progress on absolutely everything else in my life. But it's finished. Hurrah! It's over, and I feel like a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders. It's a long story, but it's finally done and dusted, and I'm really excited about moving on to other things.

One super-quick sew that I have managed to knock out was this little mattress for the dog's bed. I measured the exact size that would fit inside his basket, added a 3 cm seam allowance all round, as I was planning on sewing in a very thick wadding, and quickly cut up some fleece that I'd bought in ages ago.

Autumn Cowl Pattern

This cowl is knit in my own home-dyed yarn. I chose 4 ply wool, which I had dyed with cochineal to produce the deep burgundy red, coral and salmon pink (as the dye bath got weaker), onion skins, avocado stones, pomegranate and turmeric for the golden yellow, walnuts shells for the muted brown, log bark chips for the purple and indigo over-dyed yellow for the green. I've been experimenting with natural dyes of late, and, in truth, these colours were chosen from the kaleidoscope of what I had to hand. I passed a happy half hour playing around with the little hanks of wool in my stash to produce what I thought would be a pleasing combo of autumn colours. I'll be honest there wasn't  lot of science that went into the selection, and things got edited further as the cowl progressed. I hadn't, for instance, reckoned on including purple, but it quickly became apparent to me that if I used only my favourite fire colours the composition would look a bit flat without something from the opposite side of the colour wheel to spice it up a bit.

The finished cowl weighs 50.51g - so you'll need just over 50 g of wool in total to knit it. It's a project that you could knit up from oddments left over from sock-knitting. If you want to buy the wool for the purpose, you will do just fine with little 20g mini-hanks of each colour, and you will have loads left over for another creation when you're done.

I've used 3.25 mm needles, which have produced a tension in stocking stitch on the colourwork of 33stitches x 40 rows for 10 cm². The finished cowl measures 20cm long and 50 cm around. It is knit in the round.

As summer draws to a close ...

I always come on-line round about now to complain about how I want summer to go on for ever. And I don't want it to end. But even I know that everything has its season, and this year we've had a pretty good run of summer. It's been fabulous: long and hot and sunny.

In these final days I've been busy with my needles, enjoying the cool of the evening breeze on my terrace as the children played in the garden below. I've finished the Fair Isle cowl that I'd been working on with my home-dyed yarn. Without any prompting from me, Emi (age 12) admired the colours, which made me feel good. He's not given to much comment where my knitting is concerned, so it's significant that he volunteered something positive.

High Summer Makes

It's a strange experience knitting with wool on the Costa Brava in hot, steamy August, and then trying on your knitted whatsit, in the bright sunshine, all kitted out in your bathers. I'd say it's a bit surreal, but autumn is coming, and I know I'll be very grateful for my woolly whatsits in the fullness of time and in the depths of the autumn chills. That said my fingerless gloves with bikini combo was downright weird.

My neighbours think I'm a bit strange. Everyone else is lounging by the pool, or soaking up the rays on the beach or fingering their way through a dog-eared paperback whilst wallowing in the shallows. I'm reclining in the cool of the shade having a party all of my own, knitting and sewing with headphones on listening to "The Prisoners of Geography", an interesting take on geopolitics, and how everything is the shape it is because of geography. This is the life!

I've been working on a design for my guests in October. Our project is going to be all about colour-work. This autumn I've got big ambitions to design a Fair Isle jumper that will channel my inner land girl from the 1940s. I'm thinking of lots of autumn golds and russets and browns; fiery earth colours.

Here's my project palate, which is all 4 ply merino that I've dyed myself from natural dyes.

I've found a great pattern book by Mary Jane Mucklestone, which is full of colourful inspiration. I've also found a great programme on the internet called StitchFiddle, which is fabulous for designing your own cross stitch and Fair Isle patterns. I had been using another quite expensive design software (which I won't name in case they sue me), but I think StitchFiddle is much better. The other (nameless) software kept needing upgrades, for which you needed to remember a lot of abstract details from when you subscribed, which made the whole process feel like it was just too much trouble to be bothered with.

I've stitched together a little cushion from the last cactus design that I stitched, and its been trimmed  with a really joyful turquoise trim. If the WonderDog were a better behaved animal I would use it as a scatter cushion on the sofa, but, despite being five years of age, the WonderDog still likes to chew things with the result that much of what I possess has frayed edges and comes emblazoned with teeth marks.

I found a lovely suedette/ faux suede upholstery-weight fabric on-line in the Yorkshire Fabric Shop, which I've used as a backing. They send out samples before you commit to purchase a serious length of anything. In fact I used the sample that they sent to back a couple of the little key-rings (also photographed above). It's a really opulent, chic fabric and I've got big plans for a whole set of cactus-inspired cross stitch cushions all backed in this marvelous faux suede.

I'm tempted to swap cacti for boats as my go-to design fetish. Down in the town they've decorated the streets for summer. One street is shaded by the most colourful parasols ever, all suspended in the air. Another has an armada of little boat kites, which bob up and down with the wind.

Anyway, Happy Friday, and all the best for the weekend,

Bonny x

What the Dickens ?

The other day we trooped along to the Espai Carmen Thyssen in the Monastery here in (very) sunny Sant Feliu. We love our monastery, and support all the events that they host there. Every year the lovely Baroness Thyssen brings a selection of paintings out of the Thyssen vaults for a specially curated exhibition - just for us. These exhibitions take a theme and use the art from their extensive collection to narrate and explore it. One year they chose the exploration of the West (think USA), and told that story from a Spanish perspective, which was really interesting for someone brought up with an English-speaker's bias, who had always thought in terms of her cousins across the pond. This year the theme is the evolution of landscape painting, which is also interesting in its own right, and includes a healthy amount of local art.

Having looked around the landscape exhibition one of the attendants told us to pop upstairs to the Pepa Poch exhibition. I'll be honest: I'd never heard of Pepa Poch before.

Knitting on the Bias - a short guide to everything you need to know ...

What could be nicer for late summer or early autumn than a swishy scarf, knit on the bias for extra swing? - Something just perfect for wrapping up a little in the evenings when the sun sinks, and things start to cool down just a little.

Read on for our all-you-need-to-know guide and pattern for creating a great patchwork scarf knit in triangles to devour left-over yarn from your stash.