Hello crochet!

Oh my giddy goodness, I cannot begin to tell you the great joy I felt this wind swept, rainy, grey weekend just gone when I EVENTUALLY got round to picking up yarn and hook to crochet again. Hello, my old familiar friend, how I have missed you. It's been at least a month since I last crocheted away and boy was I ready for it. 

For those of you who do crochet, you know when you get that great urge to just desperately be left alone in a room with just hook and yarn to feed feed feed the addiction and you can't because of other commitments or plans. Oh, the sheer frustration!!! (Ok so maybe I'm being a wee bit dramatic now). That is how I have felt over the past month, as sad as it may seem to those who don't crochet and reading my blog it is quite true. I seem to have been knitting if I have had a spare evening/moment to make something with wool and crochet was always there in the back of my mind but just not coming together.

And so, my dear blogging friends I have had a pleasurable weekend of doing a bit of crochet here, there and everywhere and it has been B*L*I*S*S* to say the least. Planet Penny's Cotton Club rainbow cotton has been swallowed up into feeding my addiction and what a divine brand of cotton this is to hook away with. 

How I love pink, red and orange together, colours to feed my soul during the grey-ness.


Talking of colours, wasn't today typical after having such a miserable wet weekend, it was blue skies and sunshine as we trundled off to work and school. I seem to be doing a lot of lovely drives along Sussex country lanes to see my patients these days and today I just could not help noticing the yellow everywhere. Does that happen to you on some days, when all you do is keep noticing a particular colour in all sorts of places?


Yellow, is a colour I could have done without many years ago and even to this day, I have no yellow clothes. But, give me mustard and I'm in love :0) What I am trying to say is that I have tried to make a conscious effort to enjoy and notice the colours I've never really "warmed" to {this included red up until a few years ago, utter madness as I now love every shade of red going}. Today, I stop-started in my car during my lunch half hour to capture that yellow and I am pretty pleased that I did, have a look why.


Firstly, my crochet this morning while I ate breakfast

A brilliant field of rapeseed flowers

Some weedy flowers

How bright and beautiful the hedgerows looked on this pretty day. So uplifting and essential for me working within my role. I have always been a firm believer in nature restoring what life strips away.

Tiny daisies for making daisy chains this summer

I am very grateful for yellow today, it is becoming a more comfortable colour for me and I know that this will no doubt be reflected in my future craftiness. 


Last but not least, I'll leave you with this pretty posy Alice picked for me last week, and yes it does feature the all gorgeous yellow. It's my thank you to you for reading and commenting on my ramblings and for providing your blogs as an endless source of inspiration.

Well, I guess that's me for today

I'm off to indulge in some Victoria Sponge baked yesterday with a hot cuppa and my crochet before bed.

I hope to show you the rainbow blanket I'm making for a friend's new baby girl very soon.

Wishing happy, carefree sunny-shine days to come your way

 xox

First scarf

You are all so sweet putting up with my silly nostalgic posts, thank you for your generosity and lovely comments, as we all know, the comments are the best-est bit about blogging. As the lovely Faith put it on her most recent post, blogging can be such an inspiration and a joy to "meet" such kindred folk who appreciate the love of craft and yarn. 


Right, on with the business at hand. Do you remember me posting about my "first scarf" here 





Well, at long last it is finished and I can finally wear it, especially since we are having serious April showers and blustery chilly winds here on the South East Coast! 


I pulled over in the countryside yesterday to have my lunch in-between doing some home visits and thought why not make use of the rare rays of sunshine and take some pics of my finished scarf. So here it is...

on location!

I must say that it's been great for using up left over yarn and ended up really long. Both ends fall to the ground if I just wrap it around me once and when Andy saw it he immediately said it looked like a Dr.Who scarf! Well, that wasn't the intention, I have no idea what or who Dr.Who is as it wasn't a TV program that I grew up with, in fact we only got a TV in 1979 when I was 9 years old so I no idea what he was talking about ... until he google imaged this...

                                         

I must say that it made me giggle at the similarity :0)

Needless to say this is not my tribute to Dr.Who! Instead, this is my very snuggly, wrap around "first scarf".

It's sooooooo warm and I love the colours, especially the mustard, one of my new favourite colours.

Ok, so I don't like taking photo's of myself but I had to give you an idea of what it looks like all wrapped up.

Yay, I love my new super cosy, all wrapped up "first scarf". If you have some scraps of left over yarn think about knitting or crocheting one of these, easy peasy to make and so great to wear.

I hope your week has been good so far, I'm off to pour myself a glass of wine and relax on the couch to watch Water for Elephants

See you all soon 

xox 

Flora and food

Ok, so this might just bore the pants off you but I'm going to post it anyway! It's a tiny keepsake post for me to look at if I feel a little nostalgic or melancholic about my childhood. So, please forgive me if this is not for you but here goes anyway...

Ok, so I know this may seem weird and yes, you're probably right it is darn right weird but forgive me for the need to record these familiar food labels which I grew up with! I just couldn't help myself when I went into a supermarket :0)

Right, that's that! I'll be back with my latest scarf to show you  in the next day or two...brrr it's much colder than I expected it to be on coming back from South Africa. 


I'm still in denial and refuse to take off my sandals and skirts! 

Is it a boy or girl?

Thank you all so much for your lovely comments on my previous post, I loved reading each and everyone of them. It truly was a wonderful trip home and over the next couple of weeks I'll be sharing a few more photo's with you.

In the meantime, we are back in our little groove of work, school and home again and I am a little relieved that the weekend has appeared so quickly! It's going to be a busy one though, I'm going to a day hen party tomorrow, one of my ex-colleagues is getting married at the end of May and then we are off to Brighton to meet the new little addition to our family.The baby I knitted the pebble vest for here. 

Little baby Connie Grace was born on Easter Monday when we were far away in South Africa and we are just so excited to meet her this weekend. I was convinced she would be a boy and not a girl, don't know why but I just felt that that was what my Sister in law would have. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I spotted a sweet blue and white striped baby grow in an Oxfam charity shop a few weeks ago and was chuffed to see that it was a bargain at 50p and had never been worn before as it was in a pile of baby clothes apparently donated new by Marks & Spencer? It's the first time I've seen this, maybe they are end of range clothes or seconds? I'm not sure.


I stashed it away thinking it would be perfect to give to the new baby when HE was born! Oh dear, how wrong I was!! 

So, after eating humble pie I pulled it out last night and came up with a little transformation plan. You know, waste not, want not.... and so a little Connie baby grow was created. 

Nifty or what? Her very own personalised brand new baby grow :0)

It's too sweet for words and makes me feel very broody indeed! 

Wishing you all a joyful weekend whatever your plans are and

see you all soon

xox

Where the sun shines

Dearest Blog

With weary eyes, limbs and spirits we have returned from the land of my birth, my heart held space, my childhood and memory filled space. Durban, South Africa, how can I begin to describe you? Your red soil, wild flowers, open green spaces, Indian ocean, wild life, humming crickets, melting tar, humid sweaty sleeps, spar-letta sweetness, hadeda cries, women singing in Zulu, animal skins, rusty cars, sub-tropical banana trees, sugar cane fields, shoeless children, thorny paths, telegraph poles to the sky, your beating taxi's, beaded crafts, rich coffee, accents, ijuba, cacti, fruit abundance, acacia and jasmine scents, suburbia, downtown markets, chaotic driving, bunny chows and bean roti's, fraud and corruption, paintings of the hurt, tribal rituals, familiar ground, Sunday Tribune, Koo jam, Mandela fabric, irritable warm wind, poverty, heart of darkness, your history, your restless discontent, your beat of change.

Hand printed t-shirt

Tala game reserve

Durban sun set

Amahewu (maize based porridge)

African Art Centre - Florida Road, Durban

Kikoi wrap

My all time favourite frangi pangi

Open spaces

African Angels

Mummy and baby

Coffee

General Store - Howick

Inside the General Store

Zebra

Mango

Hand made, restored, revived and recycled shop: Mooi

Childhood nostalgia tomato sauce: All Gold

Lazy lizard

The blue and the green

The breeze

Granny and Grampa's girl

Beautiful friendships

Local is lekker

Pink leaves

Delicious prickly succulents

Fence

Rusty enamel mugs

Bug on Bougainvillea

Scooby wire

Zulu dance

Strelitzia

Red dirt

Another day in paradise

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika