bee handmade

Church Farm

Church Farm at Ardeley is one of my new favourite place, particularly in the sunshine. Nice food, farm shop, animals, woods, bluebells ... Need I say more?

retrospective

Firstly some crafting. I made a drawing folder for a young friend of mine who was three years old last week. I just made the pattern up as I went along and then cut out some felt for the applique lettering and motifs. I realised that the structure was a bit to floppy half way through so inserted a rectangle of perspex into the fabric behind the crayons. He can draw on the go now!

I finally got round to processing 5 lomo films which have been sitting round for ages. Here are a selection of holiday pictures from 2009 and 2010.

Holy Island. The upturned boats were traditionally made into sheds.

A walk in Portugal

 

Portugal pool. Wish I was there now.

A coastal walk in Cornwall. We were out for about 8 hours in total. It was a lovely day.

 

Afternoon tea in St Mawes. One of the best I've had. Light and delicious scones. Chilled water in a glass carafe, cream and jam in pots NOT packets. As you can see P had to supplement his tea with a cool glass of beer!

Brooklyn Bridge

 

New York. This is the view from our hotel window. I was convinced I was going to drop the camera.

Alhambra in Granada.

I only have 5 weeks left at work now which seems quite surreal. This post by Peonies and Polaroids struck a chord as I still have "The Anxiety, The Panic and The Vomits" at 31 weeks. I think that all the stuff about blooming during in pregnancy was a big conspiracy theory to lure me into months and months of tiredness and nausea! Hey ho, on the downward slope now. It had better all be worth it.

 

gifts

Flowers for our two year anniversary. Beautiful.

 

The first gift for the rapidly approaching new arrival. Knitted by my mum. Teeny! They just need some buttons. We don't actually have anything practical yet - I think I need to make a list and starting believing it's a reality!

best laid plans and one from the archives

The chairs were supposed to be finished today but I've been scuppered by dreary November rain.  The two lessons learned about spray painting are as follows:

• don't try to spray paint outside during a small window of opportunity when it isn't raining.  This results in using up the paint too fast as most of it disappears into thin air.
• don't construct a spraying area from a tent of dust sheets to resume the job indoors. Despite having windows open this results in nearly gassing the household.

So I can't show you lovely new chairs. This pretty white orchid can provide some distraction.

 

Time for one from the archives I think. I thought I'd written about this book before but, after searching through my posts, I think I must have imagined it.

This Japanese craft book is quite hard to get hold of. I think it may be out of print but ebay eventually came up trumps. It has a lot of good ideas and patterns for soft toys which aren't too twee and 'sugar coated'. One of the best things about the book is that it serves as inspiration rather than being too prescriptive. I've made three of these rabbits now, all for children of friends. They have been well received so the proof was in the pudding.

This was the first 'Hoppity'. She had her own hat and scarf and a pocket to keep her carrot in (one never knows when a snack might come in handy).

 

The only other pattern I've used from the book is this doll. She's destined to be the friend of a little girl named Alice. The beautiful pink fabric is from the Cloth House in London which is a veritable treasure trove of fabric, button and trimming delights. Just walking past it makes my credit card jangle in my purse.

 

 

auriculas

The sunshine this morning, and a glance at the beautiful wedding anniversary bouquet from my parents, made me think about flowers on my commute into work.

Anniversary flowers.

I love auriculas. Here are some from my parents garden.

And some magazine tearsheets.

They always seem like proud little upright flowers, quite different from other more blousey beauties like peonies and ranunculus. Their colours really sing and each one looks like a small, perfect sculpture.

I've had an Elizabeth Bradley auricula needlepoint on the go for more years than I care to remember. I really need to finish it!

Some ranunculas.

Of course I have a fondness too for the flowers used at my wedding, hydrangeas and sea thistles.

in keeping with the flora and fauna theme I'm pleased to report that our vegetables and salad leaves are actually thriving. I'm shocked as I was pretty sure we'd manage to see them off. I'll post pictures of their progress soon.