Coffee Shop Chalkboards

There's a little coffee shop near work which is inside a shipping container...with plenty of outdoor seating for the finer days. I haven't actually tried the coffee, but their sausage rolls are pretty good - if slightly over-heated for my taste. Their chalkboard is often entertaining and I've been collecting photos for a while. It's taken a few days sick in bed to get round to gathering them all into one place. There's just one from a little bakery where I often stop to buy bread later in the week when my weekend baking is all gone, and the first one is somewhere I passed taking a different route to work.

I feel sure that "May the pies be ever in your flavour" must be a parody of a famous line, but I haven't been able to identify it.

Hot off the needles...

I did add the blackbird - and I see I need to brush a few strands of stuffing off him. Still not sure where this will hang, but for the moment it's where I can see it in front of me when I sit downstairs, so that I can decide if anything needs to be adjusted or secured a bit more firmly.

Frankie's Woodland Wreath from Ravelry.com

Blackbird from Arne and Carlos' Field Guide to Knitted Birds.

The Goldilocks zone

No, nearly, yes.

I don't know why the one on the left just didn't work, whether it was just because the yarn was slightly thicker. Or the colour was off - it's a beautiful blue but just didn't look right on the wreath, hence my debating whether to include them at all.

The middle one, the yarn is finer and is probably pure wool with a slight lustre, so maybe that's why it looks better, but the stem was wrong.

The one on the right is fine and I'm just going to go and knit another few stems. I also incorporated a stretchy bind-off which lets the bell flare out a little more. I just came upstairs to find yellow beads for my blackbird's eyes. I hope he'll fit on the wreath, or maybe even hang in the centre. He's turned out very well. 

The home straight

Back in Christmas '14 I finally finished  a woodland wreath as a Christmas present, using a pattern from Ravelry by Frankie Brown. At the time I bought two of the polystyrene wreaths, because I knew I wanted to knit one for myself. And ever since, I've been buying odd balls of green and brown wools any time I saw them.

Well, come the end of October this year and we suddenly had an unexpected house guest for nearly a month. I knew she could knit, so I suggested some knitting as something to do that would be therapeutic and relaxing, found her a couple of patterns and some wool and pulled this out to start for myself.

I just have some flowers to add - I've finished some pink and yellow ones, and am in the process of deciding whether I want to add the bluebells or not. Just because they're in the pattern doesn't mean I have to! I'm also planning to knit a blackbird from the book Lorraine gave me and see how he looks on it. C thinks the scale would be wrong, I don't think it will matter and I'd like to see what he looks like.

So I'll be back in a few days with the finished project - when I've added the last details and found somewhere to hang it.

In the meantime, here are a few work-in-progress shots.

Basic wreath with a garland of leaves, ivy and oak

Add the holly and some colour starts to give more life to it

And the mistletoe looks good too

Here I've added the toadstools and little pinecones.

Now the fauna - hedgehogs and owls.

December favourites

Most of my December stamping was for Christmas, as I still needed a last few cards - but there was also one special birthday in there and I finally turned a very late "new house" card  (I originally stamped and coloured the main panel back in October) into a combined New Home and Christmas one - and received a WhatsApp video of the boys excitedly discovering the light-up element.

The old pier stamp did indeed work well for a foggy scene (though I messed up the masking and had to change it from being a one layer card) - looking forward to making a more summery scene with it soon. Thank you, Lorraine.

Ring out the Old...

...Ring in the New

Thank you, Lorraine - your gift was perfect to use to make a card on Monday to ring out the old year and ring in the new. It was such a dark gloomy day that I didn't manage to capture the sparkle on the leaves and the gloss on the berries.

Merry Christmas

Wishing a peaceful Christmas to you all.

We went to Wild Lights on the 21st - more photos to follow whenever I get a chance.

This year's Bûche de Noël

November favourites

Despite November being a month which, for various reasons, left me with far less time to stamp than usual, and less energy, I found that I had plenty of favourites at the end of the month...

I've been collecting various "on the way to work" photos, I just haven't found time to upload and edit them yet but hopefully that will come soon.

The first card uses one of the first stamps I bought - and I'm thinking it must be 25 years ago as the Knitting & Stitching show celebrated its 25th anniversary this year - the little palette stamp. 

I was nearly going to use a photo from the Wild Lights at the zoo last year (we booked for this year, with an ocean theme, as soon as the booking opened), but in the end I went for a sunrise one December morning last year as I waited for the bus to work. 

October Favourites

I think I was starting to feel a bit better after being off work for a week in September...there certainly seem to be more cards I really liked to show for October. The last one is a 9 "x 7" (ish) canvas, and all the flowers and the bird were cut from assorted scraps.

There weren't many photos from last November to choose a header from - a few from the bird reserve in County Wicklow, and a few from a frosty day in the park - so I went with the reed beds in the reserve.