Wednesday 29 December 2010

I hope you have had a wonderful one

Hello, dearest bloggers, I am hoping that you have all had a wonderful Christmas with much happiness and merriment!

We have had a lovely time with family and are now looking forward to the new year.


Here is to wishing you all a very happy and healthy new year, may 2011 bring you joy from all the small things that make our lives oh so very big xox  Look forward to all your lovely inspiration and friendship in the coming year x Penelope

Wednesday 22 December 2010

Can I squeeze one more festive post in ?

I know I said Merry Christmas and see you all soon yesterday but I had this urge to do one teeny tiny festive post before we go to Brighton. So can I share a few photos with you?

Firstly this amazing centre piece for our Christmas table that Alice made yesterday at her art workshop. We just love it's natural festiveness...


a few little stocking pressies with twine and vintage Santa pictures a friend sent from Switzerland


Alice and I started the little tradition of filling a little box each year of fun little things, mostly handmade and "free" from nature or whatever crafty bit we have in the house and here is her box top I made last night, I'm sure she will be thrilled with it and all the bits and bobs I have filled it with.

We open these on Christmas eve and it's a little mummy - daughter thing xox




And last but not least a very quick fesive last minute ta da crochet moment ... an idea that came to mind last night when staring at the bare candles burning on the mantle piece


I thought they needed a little festive red jacket, some ribbon and holly and I was best pleased with the result, a very quick and easy thing to do if you have any time before Christmas xox


I'm off now to finish off our homemade crackers...wishing a Wonderous Christmas for you all
xox

Tuesday 21 December 2010

Have a Cool Yule

Here's wishing all of you and your families a very
Merry Christmas


I hope you have a peaceful, reflective and joyful time and would like to thank you all for your lovely comments over the past 6 months. It truly has been great fun blogging.

We are off to Brighton for family fun and festivities, so see you all sometime soon.

Image: Cardigan

Wednesday 15 December 2010

Twinkle Twinkle ... Twine

Well, hello there everyone. Such a busy, busy time of year isn't it? I look forward longingly to free time with no plans of food, parties, Christmas plays and shows and general festive functions. Don't get me wrong I am not a social butterfly but with work, church, family, school and Alice it's all happening!

I did sneak in some time to get hooking something festive from the dearly loved simplicity of twine. Ooooh how i do love a good twine at Christmas and managed to find this last weekend in one of the Hastings Hot Houses


I have always loved wrapping my Christmas pressies up in brown paper and using a festive twine to tie up the parcel and embellishing with fresh holly or buttons or badges etc

So here is the gorgeous twine I bought


and hooked this from the lovely Victoria at  Yarn around hook who found the pattern on Ellen's bloom blog




and this from the lovely Lucy at Attic 24 




It was such fun to use twine and it's so lovely and starched ready for shaping. I thought I might get some of Alice's glitter glue out and paint some on these stars for a more sparkly effect and then they will be truly festive embellishments for a couple of my pressies this year xox 


Anyway, I must dash to a friend's for mince pies and mulled wine! I do hope you are all having great festivity wherever you are and are finding little "free" moments to indulge in some crafting / hooking / knitting xox!

Thursday 9 December 2010

Hooorrrrrraaaay my favourite LYS is back :0) and a couple of little ta da's

Well, I can hardly contain myself with woolly excitement, my favourite LYS re-opened today after being closed for about 3 months after a massive leak from the flat above. I'm sure that those who do not appreciate yarn love might think I am a little strange to get my heart rate up over this, but I think those of you out in blog land who are "yarnphiles" (is there such a word?) will hopefully understand my joy.

I have mentioned it before, it's called Wa Wa Wools and can be found here and is owned by the lovely Fran.




It made me smile when everyone who was at the re-opening was feeling each other's woolly wears and equally ogling over the colour feast and new stock Fran has introduced.


Alice enjoyed sipping on some cloudy lemonade...


While I browsed! and came away with some of this heavenly Debbie Bliss tweedy Irish yarn ... oh the stuff that woolly dreams are made of...



I look forward to the knit and natter sessions in the new year.

I have been very busy of late, no surprises there at his time of year! After work I am busy making, sewing, knitting, crocheting etc. and in amongst this is our Church Christmas show this weekend which Alice is taking part in, so that will keep us very busy no doubt.

I recently joined my church's art and craft group that gathers monthly for a few hours of crafting/ painting/ sewing/ knitting /  embroidery and any other creative musings that people might have. It's a lovely designated "time out" evening each month that I really look forward to and this year I have contributed to our craft group's display in the gallery which displays all different people's work from canvases to watercolours, sculpture and photography etc. I felt a little shy doing this as I have no qualifications in the arts and most people's work is very professional but my friend's managed to coerce me!

We all took a small thick card block or two and used these to display our craft (what ever that might be) on. So my ta dah moment are my two little makes which are still not 100% finished yet but I need to hand them in tomorrow and thought I might not get another time (or sunlight) to photograph them. 

 
And


I need to get some PVA glue and stick them down and complete them tonight.

So thanks you for visiting ad sharing some of my musings, hope to catch up with all your blogs soon xox

Monday 6 December 2010

Splash of colour

I found out about a splash of colour last month via Planet Penny's blog which then takes you through to the origin of this marvelous plan for those of us fed up with the grey and dark of winter, Silver Pebble which is Emma's blog. Everyone is welcome to join in and do have a look at Emma's blog which shows you all her beautiful handmade silver jewelry



So here is my splash of colour for our December so far...



Taken on friday whilst walking along along the beach

And...

Taken in Alice's room on her pink mini Christmas tree

{Cabin fever set in after all the snow by the end of last week and after much pleading I gave in for her to put her little tree up in her room xox}

Sending you lots of happiness and colour this week xox

Friday 3 December 2010

Snowy days

Hello all you clever crafty people, thank you very much for visiting my blog, your comments are so welcome and I just love popping into your worlds too. How is the land where you are, all blue and green or white and brown? Yesterday, it was Mr. A's turn to be a stay at home daddy and I trudged my way to work through this


It took me about 1/2 an hour and to be honest with you I really enjoyed the silence of no cars, children having snow ball fights and making snowmen and seeing everyone walking again. It really made me think about how we forget in this modern age to do what we were designed to do i.e. walk rather than jump in the car to go round the corner! {I must stop before I get on my high horse about modern life!}

I loved that as I stepped out the front door the snow came up to my knees, so exciting for myself as a South African having been brought up with dreaming about snow in tropical Durban when I was a child.


Anyway, I managed to get to gym on the way home and had a fresh renewed energy for being back home.

I simply love all the red and green in the snow, perfect for the beginning of December festivities.


Our lovely Alice had had enough of doing "boy things" and wanted to get crafting with me and had decided that felt was the way to go.... so out came the felt box


And we decided to make a felt heart for our Christmas tree. I wanted Alice to get used to needles as she gets fearful of pricking her fingers, so she hand sewed this together with some mummy help...


We are so pleased with how it turned out, it might just become a handmade by Alice and Penelope Christmas gift for loved ones. It was super duper easy to do, all you need to do is cut out a template for any heart size you like and if you have pinking scissors cut out a heart and then a smaller one for the centre and embellish it with whatever you choose, buttons, bells, more hearts etc. We sewed this 3/4 way up and then stuffed it with cotton wool balls! A knitting needle make the perfect "stuffing" instrument to help you get into those tiny corners ;0)

Meanwhile, last night's snuggling indoors brought on inspiration for a new, quick knitting project for  Alice's Scottish granny's hands, some tweed fingerless gloves for this Christmas from this gorgeous yarn at £5.40 a ball(!!!) I managed to squeeeeeeeze out of my purse (without Mr. A looking of course :o)


It's quite course, but so warm and lovely to knit with...


I thought I might incorporate a cable for effect and I am pleased with it, so hopefully I'll be able to reveal a finished piece of work soon.


Well, that's me this morning, I now need some of this which I discovered the other day (don't you just love the packaging and colours x),then to wrap up and some family snow fun to be had


Hope you all have a blissful weekend and see you soon xox


Wednesday 1 December 2010

Choices choices ...

Lovely, lovely people, hello, how are you? It's still snowing loads here on the south coast and today, school has closed, roads are icy and Alice has a temperature... so what does that mean ? A stay at home day, wrap Alice up in bed with hot water bottle and Rahl Dahl story CD's,  catch up with some of my dietetic reading and project work, some  Christmas crafting when Alice feels up to it and hopefully time to do a little of my own knitting or crochet xox

So this is what it looks like down my road this morning


My poor rose bush has desperately tried to flower so late this year and now has no chance of blooming in the snow


Unfortunately, Alice isn't up to any more of this today but hopefully if she is feeling better by the end of the week, some more sledging can happen


In view of the snow, some quick chunky "snow" hats had to be knitted over the weekend for me and Alice, these took about 3 hours in total to make and are ever so warm with Angora and merino


Mine is quite slouchy but really warm 



Now for choices, choices... Mr. A really loves the 1970's and a lot of our music/furniture/fixtures etc come from this era. Well we were born in 1970 and 1971 so I guess we are allowed to revel in this decade! Our crockery is also included in the equation and Kathy Winkle's designs are favoured in this house. I was wondering if you could tell me which of these 2 plate designs of hers you prefer? I'm going with the blue and Mr. A likes the brown, if he had his way he would fill our house with brown, mustard and orange from the 70's.

So what would you choose?
{You may have even had these in your home at sometime?}






Poor Alice is going to have a warped idea of what was around in her childhood as we don't do modern.

The other choice is this....to tidy or not to tidy, a definite question! I like a lot of order in our small terraced home as there is little storage space, so things have a "home"  to try and stay/live in and then there is a little part of me that likes disorder and messy living and at the moment it looks like the top of my chest of drawers is truly representing this.


Oh well, we'll see how the day pans out, got to go as a little person is calling.

Hope your week is full of joy and small serendipitous  happenings and not to many choices to make xox