colour craving

I love colour.

I think this is partly a reaction to the monochrome corporate culture of dressing smart, which I did for a good while. At work it was safer to stay dressed anonymously within the black/grey/navy spectrum if you didn’t want to risk offending someone.

Such restrictions currently do not apply and I find myself hankering after clothes that are fresh, colourful and spring-like.

Roll on the days when sunshine and warmth return and wearing colour and florals won’t look odd. Or require daily loading of the washing machine to remove mud.

In the meantime I will be wearing fair isle jumpers and bright woolly tights and making vibrant floral cushions to get my dose of colour.

I hope that this lively little collection will also help alleviate some of the gloom, if only temporarily, until spring really gets itself properly sprung.

pretty thing of the week

Times are hard. So it makes sense to take good care of your pennies.

This winsome wallet from online emporium The Curious Pancake looks perfect for the job.

It is made of durable double layer vinyl and has three slots for credit cards, a notes slot, and a change purse. It is a Poketo limited edition and comes with a matching badge.

The design is by Jolby, a studio run by friends Josh Kenyon & Colby Nichols in Portland, Oregon. They are obsessed with creatures and characters, along with colour, pattern, and texture. You can see more of their designs on their website.

I wonder if my pennies would be so happy that they’d snuggle in for any longer than usual?

Probably not, but at least I’d have something pretty to look at each time I had to part with them.

resolved

I don’t tend to make new year’s resolutions. The reason for this is that I am contrary enough to break them, usually within hours, which then leaves me feeling, well, a bit rubbish.

This year is different.

It started last year, when I signed up for a Contemporary Patchwork class. I did patchwork as a child, the fiddly English kind, with papers. And I did sewing. On a machine and everything. But that was when I lived with my parents and at the time there was not a lot else to do of an evening, apart from watch telly.

I grew up, moved out and acquired a social life. My time and enthusiasm became directed – ahem – elsewhere.

Fast forward to last year. Ogling fabric and looking excitedly at stuff on t’interweb had gradually morphed in my head into “I could make that!”

Except that when it came down to it, procrastination (and its evil twin, self-doubt) meant that I couldn’t. Or rather, didn’t.  I needed kicking into gear.

In my class, the rotary cutter and I were introduced. We got along famously. Hallelujah, I was sewing again.

So, the resolution. This year I will sew. Instead of excuses, I will make nice things (well, things I think are nice, anyway). I will finish projects (instead of creating a project graveyard in the cupboard). I will put what I make out there and see what comes back (instead of being too embarrassed to show anyone).

I’m thinking I might finally have found a resolution I can keep.

If you feel the same, have a look at Very Berry Handmade’s giveaway, and if you like, tell them about it. You might even win a prize.

why do they call them afghans?

Afghans… why exactly do they call them that?

Granny squares, crochet blankets, rugs… call them what you wish. I have long had a liking for them, even before they started to weave their woolly niceness all across the interweb recently.

I gave my little collection of them away a few years ago, all apart from a red one that we sometimes take with us when we go camping. Regrets, I have a few… although really I have enough obsessions taking up house space. Good job I can’t actually crochet.

So hooray for online collecting, where I can indulge myself cost and guilt free and gather up a great big wodge of woolly afghan crochet loveliness.

You can see all of these images and many more in their full glory on my Afghans board on Pinterest.

pretty things of the week

This week I couldn’t choose just one pretty thing, so it has to be thingS, plural.

These prints are by Elisandra Sevenstar.  What a fabulous name that is – like a magical character in one of the Ursula Le Guin or Alan Garner or Susan Cooper novels of which lad and I are so fond.

Sevenstar’s prints are available to buy on Etsy – click on a picture to visit the shop.

starry eyed

I do love a star or several in my patchwork.

The celestial lovelies above were all found via Pinterest, but if you click on the photos you can visit the clever people that made them.

I wanted to see those sharp pointy angles in flowing retro florals. So, astral inspiration having struck, I have been experimenting.

I came across a fab tutorial to make wonky stars and decided to give them a go. They are officially called “liberated” stars, but this sounds to me too much like they have burned their bras and achieved equal rights.

Wonky is better, as this is how a lot of my patchwork turns out anyway.