Autumn

I made a rag wreath to put up for autumn. I followed the instructions here and it was a breeze, I only had to cut into a couple of fabrics to get a wider variety of colours - the rest came from the scrap box and were mostly in strips anyway.

Since I started reading blogs, especially ones from the US, I've wanted to put up decorations for autumn. A couple of years ago I started to collect ceramic pumpkins when I could find them (which is not many places) so that I too could decorate my house in a seasonal way.
The husband does not understand this at all and was heard to moan that 'no-one else has ivy and pumpkins on their mantelpiece'. No imagination. He also insists that the clock remains in the middle of the mantelpiece. (In case you thought I thought it looked good with the pumpkins).

I don't go too much for real pumpkins - when my daughter was little we made the mistake of giving our carved pumpkin a name and she was upset when I said I would have to throw it away. Unbeknown to us she retrieved it from the bin - we only discovered this when a really terrible smell manifested itself in her bedroom and was tracked down to the now-mouldy pumpkin. Shortly afterwards Pumpkin went on holiday, on the train (and she believed us).

Pansy Doiley

I've surprised myself with this doiley. I taught myself to crochet from a book (so I suspect I may well be doing lots of things wrong) but I've only ever really crocheted granny squares and afghans before. I shamelessly took inspiration for the doiley from this one that I saw on Knot Garden's lovely blog. Took a while to do all of the 16 pansies but I finished it whilst in Wales at the end of August. It was meant to be a Christmas present for my Mum, but she saw the pansies in my workbag and asked what they were for so that was that secret out of the bag.

The Tropics?

No - the Palm House at Kew Gardens. Last weekend (yeah, I know, I'm Johnny Come Lately when it comes to posting) my Mum and I had a city break in London. On Saturday afternoon we took the train to Kew and believe me, it might as well have been the tropics it was so hot. I don't think I've seen so many pretty summer dresses in years.

You can just see the edge of the Palm House peeping out of the top right hand corner of the photograph above. We only managed a small portion of the whole gardens - I'd like to go back again. On Sunday we went to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in the morning and in the afternoon to the final performance of Latin Fever, starring Darren & Lilia from Strictly Come Dancing. (The next series of which, by the way, I shall boycott if the newspaper reports are true and they are going to get rid of Arlene Phillips in favour of a younger model - good grief, she's only a year older than Len Goodman and no-one's talking about getting rid of him.)

So, nothing on the creative front to report, think I've got ennui.

Wales

Some pictures from our annual holiday to Wales at half-term. My family have been going to the same place since 1948. It hasn't changed much, we always joke that it's like stepping back into the 1950's - yellow cellophane on the dress shop windows, a 'Picture House' with the week's film chalked on a blackboard above the door. My kids fish in the same rock pools that me and my cousins used to and make sandcastles on the same beach.

I've gone back to the knitting - I've seen this little bunny egg cosy on so many blogs that I had to buy the pattern from Little Cotton Rabbits. I'm not very good at doing the faces - the one on the left is about the best - the one in the middle has one eye that is larger than the other and the one on the right has a funny nose. I hope I'll improve but the sad thing is that I did the one on the left first.

I wanted to try out some different colours but cotton yarn can be on the pricey side so I went online and found Texere Yarns - they do lots of yarns at very reasonable prices so I ordered these nice bright 4ply cottons in 40g reels.

A Finish

The cot quilt is finished - big enough to last a while I hope. I had some red and white wavy stripe fabric on hand which was ideal for the backing. You can see how very simply I quilted it - but it was enough, I think, and meant I could avoid the bulky bits where 8 seams meet which would have been a recipe for disaster as far as my quilting is concerned.

Remember these?

Well, I'm pleased to say that they did eventually transform themselves into a bear. I don't know why I left it so long to sew them up because it was easy peasy when I finally got round to it, mainly because you don't need to darn in the ends if they are going to be inside the bear anyway.

I think I might call him Norbert (pronounced the French way - i.e. 'Nor-bear').