My Week...

The beginning of this week was perfect for hibernation at home, cosy with cups of tea and a Harry Potter movie-marathon and a big bundle of crochet while it rained outside. We snacked on homemade raspberry crumble and ice cream, and it was perfectly delightful. We had Christmas in July with friends - it was because of lateness rather than design, but next year we plan to do it deliberately as we all have birthdays in the months either side of Christmas. I made one-hundred and forty pompoms for Big Knit hats, and we counted the ones that have already arrived - there are 873 so far. 

I have had a couple of little adventures this week - I've been to Wolverhampton and Liverpool, and had a mooch around the shops and Galleries, searching for inspiration. I had a look around the Tate, FACT and the Liverpool World Museum, and bought lots of plastic from the comic book shops. I also went to my first ever Clothes Swap with my little sister, we had a splendid time and I found a very sweet little skirt to bring home. It's been a lovely week.

A Thrifty Day Out

Yesterday, over tea and toast with my family, a plan was hatched - a trip to a weird and wonderful place called Dagfields. Armed with a bag of sweets for the journey, we jumped in the car and went off on a spontaneous adventure. 

My thrifty heart was filled with joy when we arrived and saw a variety of buildings all full of the most random artefacts imaginable. 

We started in the book shop, this was just the outside, the shop itself was a tightly-packed rabbit-warren filled with every genre of book I could think of, including a shelf labelled "female authors" which made me happy indeed. There were biographies of the stars, books on every battle in history, fantastic works of fiction and a children's section that would fill any imagination to overflowing! 

We wandered through to the first antiques and collectables building and I could have spent a lifetime mooching it's aisles, looking at all of the treasures. There were bits and bobs from every era, oddments and wonderful pieces of ephemera. Every shelf was piled high, I don't think I have ever seen so many THINGS! All of my little purchases came from this one building, it was amazing. 

The highlight of the other rooms was this kooky little corner, with T-Rex skull models and a quirky-faced wooden statue, and jumbled combinations of tiny Netsuke, Lego figures, various vintage Disneyana and a very beautiful 1970s pink telephone.

My haul was small and pretty modest - A funny-faced little doll, who looks to be an Uneeda Perfekta doll from 1967 (my research was a little inconclusive), a Saint Etienne tape (a present from my husband), a pretty vintage bead purse, and a Handkerchief vase. All of this for under £10. I was a happy little thrifter. 

I must say, I left behind so many things that I could quite happily have found a home for, including several other Handkerchief vases, a beautiful handmade wooden drop-spindle, pretty floral biscuit tins, records, books, and collector cards of Starlets from the Golden Age of cinema. 

What a strange and wonderful place to visit.

My Week...

What a week it has been. There have been so many adventures and happy days. We started the week with a visit to the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour, and of all of our adventures it remains one of my favourite places. The highlight was seeing the Hogwarts Express, it was splendid. We ended our trip in London, mooching around Covent Garden and Soho in the rain, and it was like coming home. 

There have been visits to Shrewsbury, for shopping  and more mooching (and a delicious Vegan breakfast at Optimum Joy, a new favourite place!) and a trip to Chester with my lovely mum and dad for even more shopping and lots more mooching, and I've even managed some knitting time - a pair of chunky socks. 

Happy Easter lovely folks. 

My Week...

This week has been delightful, full of happy moments and time spent wisely enjoying the first bits of spring. Sunday was a day of gardening, taking time to have a little look at the plants peeping out, breathing in the fresh Spring air, and having a chat with the Chickens. They are quite rightly fed up of the grotty winter weather, and were very happily trotting around munching on the weeds that flew over the fence to them. 

There was a lovely little jaunt to the big city on Monday - my sister and I had an adventure in Liverpool, where we shopped, and had lots of tea and delicious cake. It was absolutely delightful. I had a couple of thrifty-finds in local shops, I picked up a peachy little vintage tin from the market, and some fabulous floral fabric from a charity shop - two of my favourite things. The week was topped off nicely with a train journey to another city, this time Birmingham, to spend the evening with the charismatic Morrissey. "Every Day is Like Sunday" was the encore, and I was so happy I could have burst. 

My Week

The days are passing so quickly and it's suddenly December. I am finally allowing myself to feel festive, and this week has been about buying gifts, spending time with family and being cosy. There has been plenty of crafting - my latest pair of Frankensocks is cast off and all of the pesky ends woven in, and my mood blanket reached the sixty-square milestone.

There are lots of lovely things happening over the next few weeks as we get ready for Christmas, and although I am ever so busy in my little shop I will be making efforts to enjoy festive jumpers and lots of chocolate and good cheer. 

My Week

As always I have found the week has passed me by in a whirlwind of adventures, beginning on Sunday with a trip up into the pretty Welsh hills to Ruthin Craft Centre for the beautiful Julie Arkell "Away" exhibition. I have loved her work since the first time I encountered it, feeling drawn in by her very unique style of nostalgia and sentimentality, and her unashamed thriftiness, keeping every little odd-and-end and finding a place for it somewhere. 

My second big adventure of the week was taking the train to Chester with one of my dearest dears for her Birthday shenanigans. There was sock knitting on the train, vintage shopping, dress buying (Cath Kidston sale dress, it would have been rude not to...) much, much tea drinking and cherry scones that were so large that we were somewhat shocked. The other highlights of the week have been flowers from husband "to make our place nice", kittens discovered in a pile, crochet procrastination and postal My Little Pony loveliness from another of my dearies with a sweet Blythe doll postcard. I am truly so very lucky to have so many sweet dearies in my life. 

My Week...

As the year continues to fly by, I am busier and busier with my little shop and filling my days with stock making and working on new ideas. The teeny-tiny bit of time I've been keeping for myself has been dedicated to yarny-exploits - I pottered around the car boot sale on Sunday in pursuit of yarny-goodness, and happily filled my little tote bag (covered in unicorns, most delightful) with pretty mustard and pink 4ply and some very splendid sheepy-wool. I also made space in my little bag for some other goodies - Ingrid Bergman's autobiography, a pastel-pink box for storing my cassette tapes (my dear sweet little car, Mavis, has a very retro and somewhat stylish tape player, given that she is a lady of 'a certain age'), and a handy-handbag for outings.  

I found more yarny-goodness on a little charity shop mooch on Tuesday in a rather fetching peachy-pink, and adopted a doily that looked lonely all on it's own in a basket. I came home to two little parcels - a book of poetry by Patti Smith, which I devoured over a cup of tea, and a light-up crochet hook, which was a lovely surprise from my lovely husband. I was gifted a bag of fabric and bits-and-bobs of half-done projects on Wednesday, and found the back of a jumper all knitted up, but sadly that was all there was of it, so with the help of a friend it was unravelled and made into a thoroughly useful ball of foxy-orange yarn.  

 

I have been busy working on a knitted blanket in lovely summery bright colours in the evenings this week, I am knitting strips that I will stitch together. It is a nice and easy project, garter stitch and not too stressful, unlike the little project that I started this evening, which involved the learning and understanding of the "Magic Loop" technique. It was necessary so that I could finally start one of the Knitted Monsters from Rebecca Danger's fabulous book, and I must confess that after getting past the scary learning-something-new bit, I rather like it and it isn't nearly as complicated as I had led myself to believe.

My Week...

This week has flown by in a whirlwind of crochet, tea and spending nice bits of time with friends. I found a delightful pattern for making little fingerless gloves, perfect for my newly-acquired sheepy-wool which was crying out to be cosy mitts, so I settled in on Saturday evening and crocheted away. I worked my way around my blanket a couple of times on Sunday, and I'm sure that one day soon it will make a very warm little bed cover.

I am utterly thrilled with the progress of my windowsill garden, now flowering away nicely with pretty little white Gypsophilia. The next one that looks ready to bloom is the Delphinium, and I have high hopes for my tiny greenhouse plants. 

I found some lovely charity shop treasures this week, with the thrifty luck on my side for more fabulous sheepy-wool, some pretty coral 4-ply, and crafty books (Amy Butler and Applique). The yarn was put to good use quick-fast, and during an afternoon of excessive amounts of tea I made another pair of cutesy mitts, using strands of both coral yarns together to make a rather splendid blend. This afternoon I enjoyed a rare catch-up with some of my dear friends, and taught their sweet little girl how to crochet, and we made friendship bracelets, because we are best friends - As always my week has been full of tiny moments to treasure, but none more so than a seven-year old telling me that I have a special place in her heart. Such sweetness. 

My Week...

It has been a funny old week, one full of thinking, and quietly making things and spending time with family and friends. I've been thinking about how I spend my time, and who I spend it with, and about loyalty and making better choices - as I say, it's been a funny week. So I've been cocooned in our cosy little home, with my serious "thinking-about-things" hat on, and trying to come to useful conclusions. I'm not sure if I'm quite there yet... But aside from all the thoughts and the thinking, there have been some useful bits to my week... I spent Sunday with my lovely husband, and we baked a blackberry pie and spent time in the garden, picking apples and tidying up ready for the long winter ahead. We had a little bit of excitement on Monday, in the shape of a new arrival - a bunny called Clarence, who needed a forever home and has settled into our funny little family quite nicely indeed. He rather likes apples. 

I spent Thursday with a dear sweet friend, catching up, after months apart, over tea and cake, buying nail polish, swapping crafty ideas and swooning in vintage shops. It was a very splendid day, and a reminder to make the time to enjoy good company and be happy. 

My Week...

As with all good weeks, this one has been full of lovely crafty opportunities and spending time with wonderful friends. On Sunday I discovered some long forgotten goodies at the bottom of my yarn stash, including some delightful Colinette chunky pure wool, which I started whipping-up into a very cosy scarf ready to be gifted at Christmas. I also absolutely had to try out a very pretty crochet heart pattern that I found, it's one of the most spiffy ones that I've made so far, from many, many attempts at hearts! Monday was a "work in a cafe" day, followed by a "tea with little sister date" and it was just splendid. On Tuesday there was vintage and charity shopping accompanied by lots of tea (and possibly a very large piece of cake...) with a dear friend, where the adoption of yet another lost-looking little bird may have occurred. There was also the acquisition of mustard beads and a book on the collections of Victorian folk, which promises to be a very good read. After the shopping portion of the day there was an extended hound-hugging session with my two favourite Greyhounds, Freya and Chester. They are wonderful cuddle-buddies. 

Thursday started off perfectly with gorgeous mail. There is something so exciting about letters, and the tales that are shared. The afternoon was spent on one of my favourite seasonal adventures -  Brambling! It was a real family outing with my sister, my dad and his fluffy little dog. We found lots of Blackberries, and there are big plans for baking this weekend. Friday was a special, really rather important day - it was the nine year anniversary of the arrival of our special little companion Honey, who despite being a grumpy-pants, is the friendliest cat I've ever known. She was a skinny-miss when we found her, and she was very pleased to have a new home after seven months in RSPCA accommodation, her little life being saved by a member of staff who fought for her. I like to think Miss Honey was just waiting for us to come along so she could adopt us, I hope she is pleased with her choice every day. 

A Little Bit of Shopping...

I must confess that I love to shop. I know it's a stereotypical "girl thing", but I just can't help it. My favourite places to shop are little quaint independent shops, charity shops, markets and antique centres. So I took an opportunity to have a mooch around the sweet little local towns of Shrewsbury yesterday, which is just full of lovely shops and quirky little nooks. 

 I had a small but quite exciting haul - a hardback copy of the "Tamara Drewe" graphic novel, an adorable ceramic bird and some brightly coloured plastic bead necklaces (to be split for bracelets!) all from the charity shops, and a very sweet 1940's brooch from the antiques centre, which apparently is a "Sweetheart" brooch, with dried flowers. I've tried doing a little bit of research online but haven't found anything out yet, but I love it and all of it's pretty pink and floral goodness.

Shopping and Makings...

I had a lovely little mooch around the charity and crafty shops in Chester on Tuesday and came home with quite the little haul of goodies...

Cotton for crochet flowers, a see-through flower bag, some children's clothes to re-purpose, a Cath Kidston Cowboy cup and a sweet Budgie ornament.

I spent this morning sewing - making an age 14-15 dress into a cute skirt, and a little girls shirt into a tote bag. So now I will be on the lookout for more dresses to up-cycle, since it was such a bargain at £1.50 and so easy to alter - all it needed was a waistband and a zip!