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a postcard from...

Dear...

 

pottering about at home...

In true *J* style he fished out my Mother's Day card from the bottom of his school bag this morning. In true Mum style I told him how lovely it was... and he quietly turned it round 90 degrees and smiled sympathetically at me. Oops. Just in case you're wondering, it's brown tissue paper branches with tissue paper blossom on a watercolour background. Branches work anyway up don't they?

I love my little jam pots. I come from a family who 'decant' everything into something nicer for the table, and I like the rustic look so these will be used the next time we sit down to a weekend breakfast of chunky toast and jam. These are quite common at the Antique Centre where I sell my furniture but I've never come across them in a charity shop before. They're not marked and are probably a cheap take on Tremar pottery.

It's been gloriously sunny here today and I've been outside a little despite developing a bit of a heady cold. *E* has always had a corner of the garden ever since she could walk. Last year she enjoyed pottering about in her corner but noted that she started a few things off too late. Her sunflowers didn't peak until October so it was agonising waiting all summer for them to bloom. This year she raided the bird seed for sunflower seeds and started some off early. I wasn't sure about the quality of bird seeds but sure enough they have sprouted. I think her upcycled fat ball tub cloche helped protect them from some of the freezing nights we've had.

These will be potted on of course, they can't go straight in the ground here because we have a Springer Spaniel who thinks he can help with the pruning. It's our fault for heaping praise upon him when he helped out with a bonfire one evening by bringing all loose branches to the fire and dropping them. He does this with each and every bonfire now even if the branches are still attached to trees.

I'm still getting used to only having two animals to feed every day. When we had four it felt like a more major part of my day. I'd love to have chickens but I'm not great with birds full stop, and the fields have plenty of foxes roaming about. I wouldn't want to wake up one morning to a massacre!

baring all...

It's not every day you bare your top half for 7 complete strangers! If you find a lump, like I did, don't let the thought of that put you off. Get it checked out. Even the needle biopsy wasn't as painful as I expected it to be, and I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to needles. I was fortunate enough to be able to take along a good friend, who did and said all the right things and took my mind off things in the waiting room.

Mr H must have been more worried than he let on because looked rather anxious when I got back, and he suggested a nice lunch out at one of my favourite cafes. Halfway there he realised that there would be a few charity shops and even managed not to moan about the possibility I might want to pop into them!

I found two little pottery jars for jam and marmalade (I haven't taken a pic of those yet) and a book I've been hoping would turn up in a charity shop, for 10p. My favourite find of the day is the ball of yarn pictured above. A whopping 150g of pure wool (it looks like Rowan Felted Tweed but probably isn't) for the grand sum of 50p. I think this might find it's way into my pebble beach blanket because it's quite a good colour match with one of the predominant south coast pebble colours. Happy days!

I keep reminding Mr H how lucky he is that I'm not a Jimmy Choo type wife! Two jam pots, an old book and a 50p ball of yarn and I'm as happy as a pig in clover!

pebble beach mood board...

Little bit under the weather today so I snuggled under the 'me' blanket with all my bits and bobs nearby - roll of crochet hooks, dog, various piles of wool, a pile of pebbles...

If you've just tuned in, this previous post 'to the sea' will explain how I've come to be putting a mood board together for a blanket inspired by a sussex pebble beach.

I finally narrowed it down to hexagons on the basis that I like those traditional patchwork bedspreads. Something tells me that it would look more 'pebbley' if I used DK (as per smallest swatches above), but I know I'd get bored if it took too long and was too fiddly. The grey and cream hexagons are in aran weight. I'm going to dig out some chunky and work up a hexagon in that just so that I've explored all possibilities.

I've got various bowls and glass vases full of interesting pebbles but this weekend I'll have an opportunity to hand pick a few more, for colour reference. I realise my mood board is missing some bluey greys, some dusky pinks and some ochre. It's going to be a major challenge to find a wool range to meet my colour needs. I'd rather avoid acrylic if I can. It would be a good project for hand dyed wool - I have a book on this and it looks as though the colours I'd need are fairly easily achieved using basic ingredients. Those ochre tones could probably be done with onion skins. Far too much bother for me at the moment though. I already have enough creative pursuits going on for one house to cope with!

I've also done a few plain squares for *E*s sunflower blanket...

I keep squinting at this and wondering whether it would stitch together better like this or whether I should add another border round the sunflower squares and perhaps a yellow or green around the oatmeal squares. Either way this looks like an improvement on the original which was started very soon after I learnt to crochet and I was just buzzing with the fact that I could finally crochet so I didn't give much thought to how long a whole blanket of sunflower motifs would take!

I love being able to log my progress and create photographic mood boards. In my days as a graphic designer this used to take a while and usually involved A1 mounting boards and a can of spray mount. They'd have to be physically taken or sent by courier to the client. So much time was wasted back then!