Gratitude Sunday

Joining Taryn in this heartfelt tradition. A time to slow down, to reflect and be grateful.

This week I have been grateful for

...The lovely few days of sunshine. Feels like were are still clinging onto summer and winter has not quite reached is. Apparently this month is going to get nasty.

...Some quiet time to catch up on my knitting. Still have a whole bunch of things to make for Xmas. 25 days and counting.

...Almost time to put the Xmas decorations up! Getting excited.

...My Mum still buying me an advent calender. Somethings you should never grow out of.

...The chickens finally eating their food. Had a few hiccups with them not eating and turned out no matter how hungry they got, they did not want to eat their feed. We bought a different one and been mixing it with cooked veg scrap and they are loving it now.

...The chickens are still laying! I read somewhere that this breed (gingernut rangers) was great layers. They are starting to look a bit scruffy so I think they are going to moult soon so that could be the end of the eggs until spring.




P.S I totally forgot to post this! I sat on the bus on the way to work and wrote this post but totally forgot to publish it! 

Blind DIY

Remember the other week I was talking about crafts using Hessian fabric? Well I gave my bathroom blind a bit of a make over.

This is what it looked like before. It was about 10 years old and incredibly faded. After I put it through the wash to see if it could be saved. I managed to get rid of the icky mould build up, I decided it would be ok to use. 

I carefully unpicked it all and took the backing and thermal lining. Used the old piece of fabric as a template and cut a new piece of fabric from some upholstery hessian. I chose this type because it has a large open weave so it could still let some light through.

I machined-sewed the bits that held the hardware on but to give it a nice neat edge I spent most of the day hand stitching it. 

My rubbish attempt at stich invisible stitches.

And here it is finished! I managed to hang it wonky to boot. I really needed another pair of hands to help me do it.

The Bee Keeper's Quilt

I have been working on the Bee Keeper's Quilt project of a while now. It's the kind of project that has lots of little components that are joined together, known has "hexipuffs", super cute and very easy to master. The pattern is available here from the wonderful Tiny Owl Knits. Her videos are wonderful to watch. Almost like a kindred spirit to me, I love her whinsy patterns too. She is a little crazy and all kinds of cute. And her cat, so so so cute!

So here is my version so far. It's worked in DK on 3.5mm DPNs in the round. It needs to be worked quite tight, so the stuffing doesn't come poke out. Guage doesn't really matter either. The methods I used to make them is a long tail cast on, KFB as an increase, K2tog as a decrease and I use three needle bind off to finish. But the pattern describes many, many methods of making them yourself. I like to leave long tails on the work too, that way if you line them up correctly you can use them to join the hexipuffs together.


I don't really have any plans for colour schemes, just using up all my left over scraps and trying to use up all the icky colours that have been given to me. Here is a bunch of herxipuffs I have knitted up this week.

 

Here are all the other hexipuffs joined together. Nice and "clashy clashy" as my Mum would say. Nice hodgepodge (I love that word) of random colours.

 

Business and preparation

Autumn is definitely upon us now. It is cold and murky time, a time to cosy up inside. Firing up the central heating which has been named Clunky. To chase away the cool, dampness that has been hanging around for the past few days.

The nights are drawing in too, it makes the day seem so short. Many times I have felt myself longing for bed around 8pm, which is far too early. Last night I gave in at half past 9. 

I felt that was acceptable after a hard days work. Yesterday I had to repair the chicken coop after the feathery ladies escaped. Luckily there was no Mr Fox around, so everyone is safe and accounted for after their adventure.

I have also been working on the decorating. Still going! Although it was all the boring white gloss for the wood work. Now it looks fresh and clean. I also need to make some soft furnishing for the living to help with the cosiness factor. Maybe some curtains just to help keep the warm in a little more. I came across some ideas for burlap (or hessian as it is called in the UK) curtains.

Here are some examples I have found on Pinterst:

The colours I picked for my living room are brown and purples anyway, so hessian would fit perfectly.  I would post a picture of my living room but it is about to chuck it down so has gone very dark!

Digging around further on Pinterst (as I am sure users of that site are well aware how often this happens!) I came across some pretty interesting combinations of hessian and lace:

 

Some possible future projects maybe?




I have also made mayonnaise. It was a very stressful thing to do and I managed to use eight, yes eight egg yolks! Now I have a whole bunch of whites sitting in the fridge ready to be made into meringue.