Hooray for HRH!

You can say what you like about the Queen, but I think she's a pretty amazing lady. 60 years of doing anything is pretty amazing, let alone being the reigning monarch of the UK. Now, I definitely wouldn't go so far as to say I'm a royalist but I can't tell you how much I've appreciated having a lovely long weekend for my birthday! And what a weekend it was!

Everything kicked off early with work's excellent Jubilee Party at the Tea House in Vauxhall. Costumes were worn, corgis had tails pinned on them, caption competitions were won (oh, yes), much Pimms, complete with gin-soaked fruit was drunk and a splendid time was had by all!

The following day ended with a trip to the V&A with my sister to admire the beautiful dresses in their new ballgowns exhibition. It was absolutely stunning and we rounded our visit off with a couple of delicious peach bellinis from the bar. What a great start to a birthday weekend!

On Saturday we received a visit from my friend a and an incredibly boozy 30 hours! We had a pretty good lunch at The Ship at Burcombe and spent the afternoon lazing in the garden (with more bellinis and some very tasty G&Ts) before heading out to The Haunch of Venison. We rounded off the day with dinner at home chatting and laughing till late.

Sunday, we were slightly hungover, but not so bad that we couldn't enjoy a delicious breakfast of pain perdu with bananas, strawberries, blueberries and honey. Mmmmmmm. Luckily, the weather held out and we were able to have the first picnic of the weekend and the very fabulous Parklife. Lying on a blanket eating and drinking while we read the papers and enjoyed the relaxed grooves and chilled-out atmosphere was the perfect way to while away the afternoon.

Sunday evening saw a party at our local to celebrate the landlord's birthday where D and I were joined by my good friend P for some good old banter and a lot of laughs!

Monday, day five of the fantastic jubilee birthday-fest was also D's nephew's birthday so off we toddled to Blandford to give him some gifts and to hear him play on his new guitar. He was having a sleepover with two friends which must have been brilliant, although I suspect that his mum and dad won't have had a great deal of sleep that night! Our evening was spent in the delightful company of my sister who came over to help really kick off the celebrations.

My birthday itself was wonderful and the best day of the weekend! I managed to restrain from present unwrapping until 8 o'clock - how impressive is that?! My sister wasn't feeling on top of the world so D and I had a quiet breakfast together and waited for Mum and Dad who arrived pretty early so that they could admire the new garden. Lots and lots of my presents were garden related (including a very swank Rob Ryand watering can and a pair of Sarah Bernhardt peonies) which was absolutely perfect!

Sadly it was too wet even for my family to picnic, but we picnicked in the kitchen anyway! The Pan Bagnat that I'd made the day before was a bit of a triumph and definitely a recipe that I'll be adding to my repertoire for future feasts.


All was not lost even if it did rain as I'd taken the following day off so managed to squeeze in yet another picnic and a visit to see the glorious roses at Mottisfont with Mum and Dad. The roses were gorgeous and I blissfully snapped away until my camera battery finally went flat and then we went on to see the Patrick Lichfield Polaroids exhibition in the house itself. We even went on a wetlands walk through a part of the estate which isn't ordinarily open to the public, where we saw all kinds of wildlife, including damselflies, a kingfisher and even a barn owl. What a wonderful day!

And if that wasn't enough when I finally re-entered the world of work on Thursday I was completely spoiled rotten by my gorgeous friends at work. Thanks to everyone, family, friends and her majesty, for a lovely, lovely birthday! Hip, hip, hooray!

What a Wonderful Weekend

 

 

Best in Show

Alllium

 

Foxgloves Galore

 The last three days have been an absolute whirlwind of delights, with trips to the Chelsea Flower Show and Malmaison in Oxford all rounded off with a bit of knitting, quilting, running, and some quality time in the garden. 

Kaffe Fassett's Emporium
of Fabrlc Delights

Roses, Roses, Roses

Having narrowly missed out on tickets to Chelsea last year, my sister and I were determined to make it and she booked our tickets in January. I can tell you that it was definitely worth the wait and lived up to all of the hype and way beyond my expectations. It was all so beautiful that I ended up feeling rather overwhelmed by it as we strolled the pathways soaking up garden after garden after garden. The Brewin Dolphin Garden deisgned by Cleve West which won best of the show gardens was a worthy winner and my sister and I were both really taken by the Laurent-Perrier Garden designed by Arne Maynard. 

We had an absolutely smashing picnic and I went completely belly up for the whole Artisans' Retreats area. The Kaffe Fassett exhibition was probably my favourite thing of the entire day, though I'd be hard pushed to say that there was anything about the entire day that I didn't like!   

 












Oxford was almost equally lovely and D and I had the most delicious meal followed by an afternoon of browsing bookshops and a picnic supper in the Oxford University Parks before retiring to our rather lovely accommodation that D had booked through the university. What a wonderful weekend!

The Joys of Spring

I don't know if it's because spring is in the air, but I've been feeling really creative lately and I can't seem to get enough of crafting. The week before last, it was my mum's birthday and I'd started a quilted cushion cover for her sometime in February. As is all too often the case with me, I'd started with enthusiasm and completed quite a lot of it, but then I'd totally run out of steam and the poor cushion cover lay in a heap on the back of the sofa until I was quilting against the clock. Now, I know that necessity is a great motivator, so I got up early on the Saturday before the actual birthday, edges the necessary bits of the quilt and sewed the sides together to create a rather lovely (if I say so myself) present for my very lovely mum.

I made the post and Mum loved her present and the crafting bug seems to have bitten. Since finishing the cushion cover, I've started another quilt, from a Hometown jelly roll by Sweetwater for Moda. I've never tried anything with a jelly roll before and wasn't quite sure where to start, but Emma from my new knitting group came to the rescue and kindly loaned me a copy of Jelly Roll Quilts by Pam and Nicky Lintott. It's a great book and shows clearly how to make the most of a jelly roll. I was really sceptical that you would get an entire quilt out of so little material, but having cut and pieced it's going to be a full sized quilt. I've really enjoyed having a day of cutting and sewing and I'm hoping that I should be able to get the whole thing finished in a matter of weeks, rather than the months and months and months that it took to make my first one!

On the needles, Olive is coming along really well and I'm already well past the bustline. I've also cast on a shrug from Ravelry by Katya Gorbacheva which is giving me the opportunity to use some beautiful vintage needles that have been languishing in a pen-pot on my desk. I've also started up the sock monster manufacturing again and have half a dozen sock-skins ready for sewing and stuffing. Busy, busy, busy!

Off the needles, D and I celebrated the birthday of a very special two-year-old with a delicious lunch at the True Lovers Knot pub near Blandford. We've also helped our local landlord and friend celebrate the opening of his new pub The Haunch of Venison. (He's still working on the website, so I'll post a link when it's up and running.)

Speaking of running, I've started that up again as well and am following a nice, gentle training programme, which I hope will help me feel fitter and more energetic - and full of the joys of spring!

Busy, busy, busy!

Here it is - the finished quilt.

What an incredibly busy few weeks I've had - I'm not sure I've had a single spare moment since my last post here. Highlights have been two weddings, a ball (of the dancing variety, not the kicking type), a flower show, a spot of culture at the V&A, the boat races at Henley, a house-warming party, a surprise gig and even a finished quilt! All of this has meant that I haven't had a great deal of time for crafting, but I am absolutely thrilled to be able to say that I have finally finished my first quilt and it has been christened with a picnic at the family day of Henley Business School.

Afternoon tea - heaven!

We spent the day and an evening at the races in Henley, complete with a picnic lunch, afternoon tea, a trip along the course on a beautiful wooden-hulled steamship, finishing the day with a picnic supper in the grounds of the college as we watched the fireworks that were being displayed from the bridge in town. I really do love all picnics, but I think that this one might have been the most memorable of all. And it was made all the more special by being wrapped up in something I'd made over the last six months, with a whole lot of patience and plenty of love. (If only I could finish more projects...) Of course, I already have a new quilt in mind and am currently resisting the urge to buy some of the beautiful Japanese prints that are available from Saints and Pinners.

The other high point of the month has been a trip to the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show with my dear sister. She bought us tickets as a treat and it was wonderful. I took well over 100 photographs and I think I would have taken more if I'd charged up my camera battery the night before! Here are three of my favourite gardens from the show:

The conceptual gardens, the RHS edible garden, the poets' gardens and the small gardens were all just stunning. Inside the vegetable and floral display tents there were the most incredible arrangements and displays, my absolute favourites were the huge displays of allium and agapanthus and the amazing centre stand that had flowers, fruit and vegetables ordered by colour. It was such great fun! The garlic garden was also pretty cool and very beautiful too.

I came away from a wonderful day completely inspired and with a very long list of vegetables, plants and flowers that I'd love to have in my very own garden when it's finished. What a gorgeous day - thanks, Amanda!

Other highlights of the last few weeks have been two fabulous weddings. Huge congratulations to Rachel and Neil and Jenny and Adam! Dancing and dodgems with friends and lots of lovely fizz at Tidworth Polo Club summer ball was also great fun. A fantastic girly night out was had by all and we stayed up laughing and chatting until the sun came up! A surprise support slot by D for the Barnstormers topped off an amazing weekend last weekend.

On the needles, Bunting is getting more and more cat-like, but Coraline is taking a bit of a rest. I've been flexing my fingers with a bit  of crochet and the blanket that will complement my quilts is steadily growing...

And to finish this post, here are some of my favourite Instagram photos from the last month for you and a link to my updated online shop as cute as buttons:

Here comes the summer

What a lovely couple of weeks I've had. Work is great and I'm embarking on some wonderful projects and home is lovely. Last weekend was pretty cultural, and I got out and about with visits to the beautiful walled rose garden at Mottisfont Abbey, the brand new Constable & Salisbury exhibition at Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum and to the Made to Last exhibition which is being hosted in the cloisters of Salisbury Cathedral  as part of Salisbury International Arts Festival.

I took literally hundreds of flower photographs at Mottisfont, both on the Olympus PEN and the new Diana F+. The colours of the roses, and the foxgloves, and the clematis were all staggering, and in the warm sunlight, the flowers seemed to glow. This time of year is so precious, I want to try and capture every second, every glint of light and every shade of colour. If any of the film picture come out okay, I'll upload them when I next post here. Watch this space...

The festival is wonderful for the city of Salisbury with events and activities taking place at dozens of venues for a jam-packed fortnight. Sadly, I missed one of the opening events which was an aerial ballet by the Argentinian dance company, Voalà. It would have been great to see, but I had a prior engagement for some baby cuddles with the adorable Flora, which could not be missed for all the dancing in South America! The Made to Last exhibition was well worth the visit, with some really unusual modern sculptures in the quiet and contemplative setting of the cathedral cloisters. I posted a handful of pictures on instagram (which, yes, I am still smitten with) and here's one of my favourites. 

This weekend has been all about family and friends and, very importantly, music. D has always been an amazing musician, but a non-practising one until this weekend, when he re-emerged onto the scene with not one, but two, amazing acoustic sets at the local. He totally rocked and I am very proud of him! Special thanks to George and Sarah and to my mum and dad, who came along to support him on Friday and Sunday respectively.


Here are a couple more instagram pictures that I've taken in the last fortnight of the bunting celebrating the anniversary of the Festival of Britain at the Southbank Centre and the stunning alliums from outside Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum.

 

On the craft front, I am delighted to report that I have finally found just the right colour orange for Bunting. It was pretty tricky and I needed the help of the lovely knitting departments of both Liberty and John Lewis (frankly, visiting any knitting department is no hardship) but I am there. I've also started Bunting in earnest and have rediscovered the lost art of french knitting thanks to this superb tutorial from Donna Vokes. My parents moved house two weeks ago and my mum discovered an old french knitting dolly, made from a wooden cotton reel with four teeny tiny nails hammered into the top. It turns out that I had completely forgotten how to create icord with a dolly, but now I've started again, there's no holding me back!

Coraline is still growing. I did get to the yoke, but then decided that I would actually prefer a longer line cardigan, so I'm adding an additional
couple of inches, which means fourteen more (very long) rows of stocking stitch. Gah!

The good news, though, is that my quilt is almost, almost finished. The pieces have been pieced, the sandwich quilted and all I need now is some dark brown cotton to match the ribbon that I am planning to use as a border. I can hardly wait to be snuggled up on the sofa, on a chilly autumn afternoon with a good book and a cup of tea, all wrapped up in my own hand-made quilt. I just have to resist the urge to make a matching blanket from Jane Brocket's The Gentle Art of Knitting, which I finally received this week. No new projects until I've finished something! (Let's see how long that lasts...)

This year, I resolve to ...

What with one thing and another it's been a bit of a slow start to the new year, and after a rather nasty bout of illness, I am now engaging with the world at large again!

December was incredibly busy, both at work and at home (sorry for the lack of posts) so the break over Christmas with D, family and friends was very much appreciated. It's been really lovely just relaxing, taking it easy and doing only nice things! And I know that it's not everybody's cup of tea, but the snow really was very special. When the snow in Salisbury was at it's deepest, the light took on a magical quality and I rushed out with my Olympus to take some pictures. I could post more here, but I've a feeling this post is going to be quite photo-heavy so I'll restrict myself just to this one of the Art Centre looking magnificent in the white,

I'm rather hoping that 2011 will be the year that I finally learn to quilt. My parents have very kindly ordered me a quilting book and they gave me some templates and some templates and some really lovely fat quarters. (Isn't that just the best name ever?!)
I'm going to start with a very simple diamond patterned cushion cover, maybe with a denim backing and border, sewn on the machine with had stitched quilting. Or at least that's the plan and as soon as the book that my folks have ordered I'm going to get stuck straight in.

On the needles, I've had a really good month. A Christmas present Baird for my sister, a lovely little asymmetric cardigan for Jenny's bump, and a cracking Capucine bobble hat for Shona's birthday.  I can't tell you how much I enjoyed making a pompom, I totally regressed to being a kid, which must've been the last time I made a bobble! The study blanket is coming on brilliantly. I've now got ten and a half squares, so probably only another forty-nine and a half to go! I think that my next big project will be a little cardigan and I'm thinking about using my Rowan Kidsilk Haze to knit up Melissa Wehrle's Grannie Smith Cardigan. It'll be lovely to finally make something successful out of it!

I haven't done a huge amount of baking, but I did come across this ingenious idea for Christmas presents for everyone at work. It's a really fun gift to give and everyone loved them. Here's a link to the chocablog website for the particular recipe I used.

I have been out and about a fair bit though, with trips to Mottisfont, Bath Christmas Market (twice) and ice-skating at the London Eye with my dear sister, which was just about the most fun ever. Here I am messing around on the ice - in the snow!

Right now, I'm relaxing on the sofa with a mug of fruity tea, my knitting one one side of me and the cat on the other, watching a showing of the Royal Ballet performing Swan Lake at Covent Garden, and it's really rather beautiful.

I'm going to leave you with a few of my favourite pictures from New Year's Day in Bournemouth with some lofty aims for the year ahead!

Look after myself

Be as good a person as I possibly can be

Be creative

See the beauty in everything

"Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts." Charles Dickens 

Buttons, buttons, buttons

Buttons Galore!

I've had a really lovely and busy couple of weeks preparing my wares for the annual Walker Creatives Christmas Craft Fair. So far, I have twenty four bracelets, twelve pairs of earrings and eight rings ready to go and in just about every colour of the rainbow. I'm feeling quite nicely ahead of the game, although I do have a few little gift bags to make up.

I've temporarily suspended my Folksy site, As Cute As Buttons so that I've got as much to sell at the fair as possible and then I'll have a really good photoshoot next weekend and  re-list everything ready for a little bit of Christmas custom. As always, if there's something you'd like made up specifically, do let me know and I'll do whatever I can to help.

I have started my own Christmas shopping already, which is frankly staggering, considering I normally leave for a madcap dash along Oxford Street on Christmas Eve! My sister and I visited the Bath Spa Christmas Market yesterday and I picked up some really lovely things as well as being quite inspired with some of the goodies on offer. Next weekend, I'm meeting a friend for lunch so I'll be able to visit the Winchester Cathedral Christmas Market too. I'm so lucky living the in South West - there are so many beautiful places to visit and really nice things to do. Salisbury even has its very own ice rink in The Maltings, so I'm really looking forward to giving that a go!

On the needles, I am still busy and in addition to my afghan blanket I have have two secret surprises on the go; one for Christmas and one for just after. I shan't tell you any more than that, but will post pictures when I don't need to be such a secret squirrel!

And just before I head off to finish making my gift bags, here's an early Christmas present that I have given myself! These smashing letters were from Urban Outfitters of all places and I LOVE them!

Getting Craftier

Cheadle and Buttons

It may only be the end of October but my thoughts are already turning to Christmas! At work, I am organising a charity craft fair with the incredibly talented and stylish Juliet, for everyone to sell their homemade goodies, whilst raising a little bit of extra money for the National Literacy Trust. I'll be selling button jewellery as I did last year, which means that for the next four weekends I'll be creating, threading and glueing a new collection. This is the first batch and I'm really liking them so far. To see more of Juliet's work, check out her Jules and Clem shop on Folksy - it's gorgeous!

Pale and Pretty Buttons Bracelets

Bubby for Acorn

I've also been doing quite a lot of knitting and even some crochet. I've picked up Cheadle again and have finally managed to finish the plaited centre panels. (If you look really carefully, you can see a bit of them in the background of the photo at the top of this post.) I'm a little bit nervous about picking up an even amount of stitches above the central panels, but I am so determined to wear it this winter that I really am going to go for it. D and I are heading down to Cornwall in a couple of weeks' time, so I shall take it with me so that we can have a little bit of quiet time together - wish me luck! I've also made a second Noe Noa scarf, this time for my sister's birthday. I'd sort of forgotten how to crochet so the first couple of rows weren't quite perfect but before too long, I got right into the swing of it, although as the birthday approached I still found myself hooking right up to the wire! I completely forgot to take any photos, so Amanda very kindly got two of her dogs to model it – here are the results!

Tiggy Looking Lovely

Not so much a model as a prop.



"Look at me, look at me!"



Proper Posh

In other, very exciting news, D has graduated from Henley Business School with a very well-earned MBA! Last Friday we checked into the very-fancy-indeed Hotel du Vin for a couple of nights' of utter luxury. And as wonderful as the hotel was, the ceremony was even more amazing! I felt so proud to see him walk boldly across the stage, shake hands with the vice-chancellor and collect his certificate. We were joined for the day by D's twin and celebrated afterwards with champagne in the bar. Heaven. If you've never been to Henley-on-Thames, I can assure you that it is well worth a visit. It is such an idyllic location on the river with lovely pubs, bars and restaurants. (And the poshest loo in the world...)

Last but not least, I continue with the books and the baking. I've just taken a lovely tray of flapjacks out of the over ready for a picnic in London town tomorrow with my mum, dad and sister. Right now, I'm trying very hard to resist the urge to scoff the lot. The recipe is one of the easiest you could imagine. Melt 150g of butter in a medium sized pan with four tablespoons of golden syrup and 50g of brown sugar. When it's all mixed up add in 275g of porride oats and pour into a buttered and lined brownie tin. Bake at 190 degrees for 20 minutes (or until it looks yummy), leave for ten minutes to cool, cut up into snack sized squares then wolf down with a nice cup of tea.

Flapjacks - Yummy!

Last but not least, I've read quite a few books since my last post that I would heartily recommend: The Glass Room by Simon Mawer, The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas, No and Me by Delphine de Vigan and The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan.