Colourless

Ten minutes ago I was getting ready to settle down to writing a really colourful post about my Madeline Tosh {1 and only at £20.00!} skein I bought in Loop, London a couple of weeks ago and CRASH-BOOM-BANG, Blogger has decided that I am not worthy of uploading a photo or two. It also seems that Blogger has been causing hastle with lovely people trying to comment on some of my posts, so sorry about that and I really appreciate your efforts at trying :0)If you do want to contact me feel free to e- mail me at violetsandvelvet@gmail.com

So, needless to say I am feeling a little irate, let alone frustrated as Wednesday late afternoon is my guaranteed time on the computer. Alice is in an after school club and Andy is not home from work yet, so there are no queues for the laptop!

Ho hum, I guess I'm going to have to go for that cycle I was umming and ahhhing about and release my frustrations in my pedals and the blustery day we are having today.

I hope your world is not colourless today and hope to be back as soon as blogger behaves. Take a deep breath Penelope....


ed. Oh my goodiness I've found another way to upload my photo's but I have run out of time to tell you about it! I'll just have to keep you waiting with this sneak peak :o)

Tired of waiting

Hellloooooooo, this is a quick and friendly post just to say hope you are having a relaxing weekend so far and to say that I wanted to tell you about my second purchase from Loop in London

View from a cocktail bar in the OXO tower on London's South Bank 

I could not resist this STUNNING book by Jane Brocket which many fellow knitting bloggers have already featured on their blogs. I was desperate to get my grubby paws on a copy and since my LYS didn't have it I ordered it to loan from my library, paid 80p for the pleasure and have been waiting with bated breathe for it to arrive for 4 weeks now. I normally like to 'study' a book before I purchase it but this time I got tired, so tired and impatient, tired of waiting, waiting , waiting  and so when I was in London a week ago it simply had to go in my basket.

Here it is...

It's difficult for me to express how very much I L-O-V-E this book, my very FIRST knitting book ever and I could not have asked for a more gentle and beautifully orchestrated knitting book to build one's confidence and knowledge together with quirky ideas for what wine to drink with your knitting or cake to have with a cuppa and your knitting. You will not be disappointed if you buy this beautiful book of sheer knitting (and two heavenly crochet blankets) pleasure.

Go on you know you want to spoil yourself xox 

Footloose and Fancy Free

A sweet hello to everyone from me, how has your week been going so far? Joy of joys it will be Friday tomorrow and I can breathe a sigh of relief at having a rest from such a chaotic, yet fulfilling and enlightening week at work.

Thank you for popping in and all your lovely encouraging and kind comments they really do make blogging complete! Welcome if you have commented for the first time and may have added your name to the followers list. I always try and pop in to your blogs to say hi and nice to meet you if I can xox

Back to today's post, Do you like the colours of the above photograph? I like taking pictures of my feet, in fact I have always liked my feet in comparison to having met people who really hate or intensely dislike their feet and never wear flip flops or sandals or go bare foot. Something I find hard to relate to as I was mostly bare foot as a kid growing up in Sunny South Africa where it was completely normal to not wear shoes. Anyhow, I wanted to show you my feet in Loop in London (see previous post for details of my visit there). I loved the carpet and thought my shoes rather suited it, hence the photograph despite having a few interesting peeks / looks from other customers. The staff in Loop ignored me, ignored me in a good way that is, maybe they are used to people being loopy in their shop :0)

Stick to the subject Penelope!

Ok, so this post is about my feet first of all and then a little more on Loop. On the way up to London last Saturday I knitted on the 2 hour train journey there and back and a little on the underground tubes too. I started knitting myself some socks on two needles (yes only TWO...no DPN's for me at the moment)with the yarn I bought in my LYS in their May bank holiday sale shown here

What a sheer delight to knit with Manos 70% merino wool and 30% silk. So soft and so swift to knit with these socks took me no time at all and required little knowledge and experience as a knitter. I found the pattern in a great Erica Knight book called Classic Knits which you can access on Amazon via this link. I found it in my library and you can request it from yours too if you don't want to purchase it. It's full of simple yet classical knits and has socks on TWO needles for silly billy's like me who fear DPN's.

Here they are, ta dah....

They are not perfect by any means but I am rather pleased with my 'Slouch socks' and after finishing sewing them up a couple of nights ago I haven't wanted to take them off in view of their softness, comfort and warmth not to mention just having a lot of foot appreciation in this house. Poor Alice and Andy have had enough of me dangling my feet in their faces! Needless to say a request or two has come my way from a certain little lady :0) for autumnal socks please.

What a pleasure and sense of achievement making your own socks can bring, I've always been able to sew my own clothes if I desired but socks have remained out of the equation of fabric uses. Just love them and I am sure many more 1 skein wonders will appear from this pattern in the future.

Do you want a peek at my Loop yarn I purchased on Saturday? I'm already onto a new pattern I found in Loop and although this is quite ambitious for me I hope I haven't gone too far out of my depths with it. I'll show you what I am making very soon. So here's a peek at the yarn first.

Such heavenly, girly colours don't you think? It's very lightweight and I am being a bit ambitious here but hopefully I'll succeed.

So I'm off to be fancy free on my bicycle, new socks and birkenstocks on and off I go. Hope to catch up with all your lovely blogs over the next few days and bring you more news of my creations xox

Loop(ing)

*{Loop = Something having a shape, order, or path of motion that is circular or curved over on itself.}

Hello to all of you, it's wet and grey and windy here and I have just awoken from a sneaky under the granny blanket sleep after a delicious big vegetarian roast dinner and upside-down pineapple pudding and custard made by my beautiful husband.

I slept little last night having arrived back from a jam packed day in the city (ie. London) yesterday and a 2 hour train ride home eventualy led to getting my weary feet into bed at 1.30am. Boy was dog tired but boy was it worth it!

Yesterday was a day of reunions with a dear long time friend from University back in the late 1980's, a day of catchup, nattering, laughter, meaning, checking out each other's wrinkles(hee hee) and just girly frivolity ad decadence. To end it all we had a beautiful high tea at the Landmark Hotel, followed by cocktails at the top of the OXO tower and "staying strong" au revoirs back home again. Just beautiful to see you again Amanda, your strength and beauty as a mother of 3, your courage and intelligence. We must not leave it so long next time (it was 6 and half years since we had seen each other), we must make that LOOP* again.

It always is good fun to visit London but I like coming home, I'm not a city girl and like a slower pace of life... oh dear I am getting old! Enough of that i also wanted to share with you what my first 2 hours once I had arrived in London consisted of, prior to my reunion with Amanda.

A little sparkle of a dream, a loopy, threaded one, a big desire held in a little place inside of me to go to Camden Passage (Angel tube station) to visit here...

I was in such a state of inner excitement that initially I walked right passed it!! but this too had it's benefits, I discovered Camden passage vintage and antiques markets, shops and cafes ... too beautiful, it brought out that bohemian side of me and I was transported to a different world of memories and life when I lived in London. Loved it all xox

There is a stunning shop called Fat Cat Face and it was full of all things vintage and retro, I found it hard to pull myself away to go and find Loop {have a browse around their website, it's sumptuous}

Groooovy........

Ok then back to Loop,

What a window display, stunning don't you think? with Julie Arkell's whwhimsical little papier mache and knitted sculpture suggesting we all just knit more.

Inside this indescribable shop was row and shelf after shelf brim with colourways of yarn that would make your heart melt, that is if you a a yarn lover, stroker, admirer like I'm becoming and I know most of you who pop into my blog are so I'm preaching to the converted. So here is a little taster of the inner depths of loop

I feel speechless and overwhelmed looking at these photo's again. It was a truly one off experience for me, the staff were so lovely and helpful and the books and tension squares and ready knitted patterns were all perfect. A little part of my soul was colour filled again and an injection of bubbly enthusiasm was gained.

I heart you Loop xox

By default I found out it was public knitting day and I felt a little chuffed that I had without knowing been knitting on the train up to London and on the tube :0)

Did you do some public knitting?

Needless to say they had a 10% off all sales in Loop and I did me some shoppin'

I'll show you very soon, hope you have all had a weekend of the loopiest kind x

Ribb-it, Rabb-it, Frogg-it, Make-it

Hello again, thanks for stopping by, your comments are great and I really appreciate them and I do try and pop into your blogs if you have one. It makes me smile when I switch on the laptop and see a new comment, such simple pleasure so Thank You once again.

Anyone for some ice-cream? Strawberry, mint, vanilla?

Do you remember my ice-cream colours of Debbie Bliss yarn I was making into this ?

Well, my plan for it turned out rubbish and I was not at all happy with my hooking results so I decided to frogg-it or
rabb-it(ing) as the lovely Alice calls it in her house. There was no means of rescuing my 'trying to be fast at making a cushion cover', 'thinking how clever am i' alter ego mania. Hence, the little balls of cotton ice-cream all frogged and popped in a 40p charity shop find. A find of one of my favourite kind....

The tin kind that is. Ooooh I love a little bit of tin crockery I do, especially with a pretty flower pattern painted on it and a pretty place to pop my wee balls of cotton xox

A lovely beginning to my evening yesterday especially when I came home and found this month's ed. of Country Living on my door mat.

Simplicity... it ain't gonna take much to please me!

40p for the tin bowl + 40p for a wooden spoon, vintage needles and hook = one happy bunny



Now that I have ribbited, rabbited and froggited I need to be mak'in it, so I have decided to make a long wanted and much lusted after pretty pastel baby garland which I hope to share with all you lovelies soon. 

I hope you have all had a marvelous week so far and are looking forward to some R & R this weekend. I am off for my girly pamper day in London on Saturday with a very special friend who went to Uni with me and has always been an important part of my life, she is flying over from Zurich for a few days and I can't wait. 

I'll leave you with a practical solution I came up with on Monday when we went to Brighton (with crochet in my bag of course). It's a simple solution if you have access to a cork or two and if you are disorganised like me and just chuck all your knitting/hooky stuff/equipment into a big old bag to carry over your shoulder when you go out.

Ta dah....

This was a much needed solution after all those months of having a prickle every now and again from my little scissors!

Remember what I said about simplicity!

till next time

over and out

Penelope xox



Shalom cardy changes direction

Hello all you lovely blogging peeps, have you had a lovely weekend? We had a complete contrast of sunshine and an afternoon on the beach and swims in the sea on Saturday, followed by a blustery cooler, wet snuggle up Sunday. It was my perfect weekend weather wise. A beautiful balance between indoor and outdoor activity.

On a hot sunny Saturday why not have a bbq and invite friends over? I made these veggie skewers for the bbq and enjoyed picking rosemary from our potted garden to make a lemon, rosemary, crushed black pepper and olive oil dressing. I used feta cheese but it's so crumbly may use hallumi in future. They were delish, hmmmm!

Followed by Sussex Strawberries and homemade meringue with a dollop of cream, even more delish! 

Sunday was a welcomed rainy day, I think the earth here in East Sussex thought it had gone to heaven and was sapping up each and every raindrop to make it lush again. We so needed a day of rain, it feels like 2 or even 3 months have passed with not a drop. This was a perfect excuse to try and finish my Shalom cardy knitting mentioned here with the link to the pattern on Ravelry.

Now as you may well know I am a novice knitter, an impatient one at that! and have been DESPERATE to knit myself a cardigan because I live in them and have just about every colour under the sun in my wardrobe, alas all bought and I simply have needed to knit myself one. To force my hands to go out there into the world of the unknown..... i.e. knitting an adult pattern! 

But boy oh boy did I underestimate my size! It soon became apparent that my size 14 bust and shoulders were going no where with regards to this cardy! The author of the pattern does suggest an increase in stitches for us ladies larger than a size 10 but I definitely underestimated this one. Anyhow, I just happen to live with a slim little lady aka Alice who has also been requesting a cardy so the obvious happened... it became hers and she loves it!

It was an "experiment" anyway as I only bought super cheap 25% wool and 75% acrylic to knit this one up with as I was already doubting my size calculating skills but it has defnitely turned into a win-win situation with Alice happy to oblige by loving and wearing her mama's experiemntal knitting and by me getting to admire my (almost adult) cardy skills!

Looks sweet don't you think? a little big on the shoulders but snuggly and fun to wear. As you can see she hasn't decided on a button yet so chose one of her round badges from her ever increasing collection with an anchor on it as we spent the day (inset school day) in Brighton with Granny. She thinks this is a good idea as she can chop and change her badges depending on her mood or outfit! I've definitely missed the fashionista boat!

We did have a marvelous day in the North laines of Brighton and a lovely lunch and time spent together. I aso managed to get to a gorgeous yarn shop called Purl (here) but boo hoo it was closed! So to cheer myself up I took a few photos of the shop front for some inspiration in the future.

(Not brilliant photos through the window but I think the purses are such a fab idea)

Last but not least Granny was keen for me to admire her sweet smelling roses...ahhh a perfect end to a lovely memorable day.

Perfection!

I'm off to read your lovely blogs now so Cheerio until next time xox

Alice experiments

Have a wonderful weekend embracing each and every moment with those you love.

Celebrate your life!

I know I will be xox