Red poppies

Well, back inside today doing a spot of tidying up and re-organising my work space - commonly known as procrastination! - since the sun has decided to disappear and the clouds are making everything look grey and cool. Not summer at all! So to remind me of the sunshine, I thought I would show you these lovely red poppies that appeared in the garden this year. A neighbour down the road has some ginormous poppies in their front garden and I can only think the wind has kindly blown some seeds our way to give us these beauties. We've had so much wind and rain these last few days though, I was frightened the petals would be blown off before I could get out there with my camera. But I was lucky:)

Three out so far and loads of buds waiting for some more sunshine to bloom. One of these would fill the palm of your hand easily and mmmmm, the colours! I feel a purpley-red yarn begging to be dyed just looking at the centre detail and the intensity of that red. Now, what could I use that for???? Mind is whirring with possibilities!

I thought I'd wander around the garden to see what else has come out in bloom over the last week. Mostly the bright orange lilies which are settling in their new home very well this year and have many more flowers waiting to open too. Funny thing about these lilies. I split the overlarge original plant last year and planted two new plants further up the garden. This one above has kept the strong orange colour but has a much more complex flower centre - a double lily even, a flower within the flower.

You can see it better in this close-up. But the second plant has done something strange. It is a much simpler bell shaped lily with paler colouring and distinctive markings. Both the same plant, honest! It must be the soil or that one gets less sun than the other? But it's really interesting how plants do this - fascinating.

Now I just have to wait for the mother plant to flower now to see which genes the children have inherited :))

Well, back to tidying and actually getting some work done. Quite a few things to show you on the needles at the moment too so back soon with something stripey.... :)

A long rambling walk

The sun is shining and the day is so beautiful that I just couldn't stay inside for another minute! Today, I decided, is a day for a lovely long rambling walk - with camera in tow. It's a truly mild, balmy day with a little breeze to stop you from getting too hot or sunburned so perfect really. So outside we go away from all the noise and people and absorb nature's ambience:) Want to come?

In real terms, this lovely place isn't far from my house, I can see it from the window - so no travelling needed, just across the road, and down a wee lane and then you can wander and enjoy. In Cornwall there are a lot of old mining sites with pools and engine houses now merging back into nature, softening the stark industrial look these places would once have had. Now this man made lake is a haven for a huge array of birds, butterflies and plants. More like a nature reserve really. I always think this engine house would make a perfect artists studio - think of all the light coming in that top window space! And the view! Shame it's a listed heritage building!

Moving a bit to the left of the building you can see the reed beds and nesting places of the multitude of birds - except there wasn't a bird in sight for the camera today. I think they were enjoying the balmy breeze and soaring on the warm thermals. Can't blame them:) I can hear the buzzards crying way up high and some seagulls have come inland a bit too - noisy lot!

Back on our walk, we move away from the lake and climb up the hill to the top to see the view. Don't have a panoramic button on my camera but from here you can view Cornwall pretty much 360 degrees. Past the moorland, rolling over the checkered fields and trees and way into the distance. To the left is the south coast towards St Austell, to the right you can see St Agnes and Newquay. In front here, you can see very faintly the hills and dips looking over towards St Ives and Lands End. Beautiful. I stopped here for a bit and just enjoyed the peacefulness of the place.

After dragging myself away, we follow the path back down and along, passing banks of gorgeous Rosebay Willow Herb. I love these flowers and remember them everywhere as a child. They just seem so colourful and expansive, filling their space in the world. Hardy, robust but delicate all at the same time. I would have this filling my garden if it wouldn't take over and submerge everything in a world of pink!

We pass more and more pink and I finally manage to get a close-up without the wind blowing madly. I think it was deliberate:) Every time I would click, a gust of wind would suddenly appear to blur the photo. But I got one! Right beside the last place I want to show you on my little walk - the pool.

Hidden away off the track is another pool, surrounded by trees and has the feeling of an undiscovered treasure. You have to wade through a lot of bracken and brambles to get here but it is so worth it. You feel enveloped as if you have entered a secret safe haven. It's very peaceful and there is little noise other than the drone of bees visiting the flowers. Sigh of contentment. I could sit here for ages, just watching the water ripple or listen to the trees gently rustling in the breeze. It reminds me of 'Swallows and Amazons'  a book I used to read when I was young, where the characters played on the water in small wooden boats with bright red sails, camping on the shore underneath the trees in an idyllic childhood of bygone days. This pool so reminds me of how I imagined that story all those years ago.

And then the world re-asserts itself and it's time to go home. Back through the bracken and past the lovely pink hedgerows, past the lake with its reedbeds, noisy seagulls  and lonely engine house, with everyday noises increasing as you go. Soon the path rejoins the rest of the world and we are back home again, still savouring our little adventure. Just what you need to recharge your creative batteries ready to get going on some new work and ideas.

I'll be back soon enough though, to enjoy it all another day:)

June is bursting out all over :)

June is here, the sun has been out, the garden has been going wild and the flowers are making everything  have a bright and cheery look all of a sudden. I've been away for quite a wee while recently but now I am back and raring to get going again. I have some finished projects to reveal, some ongoing larger projects on the go and a huge list of things I suddenly want to fit into my summer - weaving, dyeing, pattern designing, lots of knitting;) and oh, yes, lots more knitting!

I've been tidying out my shed/workshop in preparation for all the 'work' that I will be doing :) After I cleaned out all the clutter that had accumulated, I discovered my loom will need a little tlc before I can get any making done. But new linen for the rollers, clean up any rust and possibly a new wax or varnish will bring it back to looking brand new - she says hopefully! Then I can get onto rediscovering double weave. By the time I have made the repairs, I will have had time to read up all about it and refresh my memory - nothing like a new challenge:)

This will be my weaving view out of the shed window (I had to rehouse a few spiders and clean the window first :) Can't wait till all the orange lilies and crocosmia come out in the right bed, then it will be a riot of bright colour. Jungle garden:)) Ah, a good name for a new range of dyed yarns maybe? I was meant to convert this back to grass this summer but I don't have the heart to get rid of all the lovely plants and the garden has far too many plants already to relocate them. What a shame, it'll just have to stay as it is for just a little longer, wink:)

Some beautiful inspiring displays in nature at the moment too. This is the climbing hydranga just outside the shed window, to the left. It's in a lovely sheltered spot so it should flower well again this year. I'll have to go around and take lots more detailed shots while the weather is good. I missed a lot of beautiful detail on the irises a few weeks ago as I just forgot to grab my camera and take some close-ups. Hopefully if I'm blogging more again, I'll remember to think blog, camera, photos a little more often!

Hope you are all getting a little bit of sunshine wherever you are today:)

elaine x

Blue skies

Blue skies, sunshine and the wind has died down leaving a balmy early spring day. The sun actually feels warm on your face but it's still freezing in the shade. So we took advantage of the fresh spring feeling and decided to make the most of a wind free lunchtime and ate al fresco:) Albeit with a few warm layers on ! And, you may notice - salad! - organised in pretty patterns, just because I can :) And on the ryvita is some scrummy red pepper houmous - yum! Fruit juice in the lovely dinky cherry glasses. It has a juice jug to match and they are my favourites. Nice and jolly for warm days don't you think?

Aaahh! I feel like I've come out of a long hibernation - the fresh smells, the buds on the trees, the warm sun - they are all shouting it's nearly spring!! And all this sun is making me feel energised :) Energy, I have so missed you over the bleak grey winter months. It's all lovely and cosy bundled up warm by the fire knitting or crocheting but come March, I do love the cross into spring and it makes me impatient to be out and doing.

And doing is exactly what I have been up to the last few days. I've been looking around the garden now it's kind of warm enough to stand outside for more than a few minutes and a sad sight it is to behold - weeds everywhere, flowers needing deadheading - oops! - badly overgrown shrubs and trees, fallen leaves everywhere and weeds, weeds, weeds! A bit overwhelming but the sun is out and that heartens me for the lengthy task ahead. So, instead of crocheting my circles, I've been doing a little bit in the garden over the last few days. It feels like I've been doing a lot - and my back agrees! - but there are only a few tidy patches so far.

But amongst the tidying, digging and weeding, there are little gems appearing shyly in the sun...



Primroses....



 Forsythia......



Camellia.....



All bringing some welcome colour back into the garden. I'm looking forward to seeing all these buds flower on the camellia - it will be festooned in lovely pink :) Long may the sunshine last!!

Sunshiny garden

Hello, hello! Didn't mean to be away so long...... the sun came out and I started tackling the garden and, whoosh, time has disappeared - again! But things have been coming up in the garden, a little later than last year, but having a really sunny April has helped jumpstart a lot of the flowers - like these lovely tulips.

They are from a mixed bulb pack so I don't know the variety but they are lovely and bright! Of course, I did forget to plant them early enough so they grew rather later than probably everyone elses tulips but, hey! Same goes for all my daffs. I found the bulbs in a bag in the shed, um, the end of january and had to plant them in a rush. But they're all still flowering nicely albeit a couple of weeks after everyone elses:-)

Another lovely flowering plant in the garden is my pink rhododendron which is coming along nicely. It's only been in the garden a year but it seems pretty established in its little space now and looks happy catching all the sun.

One thing I love about the garden is surprise plants that grow. I haven't planted them and suddenly they are there! These lovely pinky purple flowers are one of them. When the leaves grew I decided to wait and see if it was a weed or a new surprise - yay! A surprise! I still have to look it up to see what it's called so if anyone knows, I'd be grateful. I do have lots of flower seeds to sew as well but I keep forgetting. Must put that on my to-do list pronto or it will soon be too late!

ETA: after checking, it's a drumstick primula - shame there's only one.....:-)

At least we are getting some more colour in the garden now. I do miss that in the winter and even early spring as I haven't got many crocuses or snowdrops planted as yet either so the garden can look a bit bare and drab. But that is a job for me to organise for next spring - remembering to plant them in time of course!

Have a lovely little stripey top finished to show you tomorrow now its all blocked and the buttons are on. Then I'm thinking of catching up on some dyeing and shawl knitting..... Back soon!

Lucy bag all finished!

Today, we have another finished project, my stripey lucy bag:-) Goodness, my WIP's are coming down a little - still not quite to manageable proportions but very nearly. So another one disappeared from the side menu - yay!

All I had to do for this was to sew on the handles and make the flower decorations but it seemed to take a while as I had to play with colour combinations for a while to get the four best flowers for each handle join. I think I may have enough extras to decorate a few more bags though:-) but they were fun to do and rather addictive!

I followed Lucy's tutorial for the double flower although after the first few, I realised I wasn't following the american terminology and I had a slightly different shape emerging, but hey, they look good too. I didn't bother with leaves as I liked the flowers on their own but I was also a bit impatient to get it finished so I could use it! A lovely bright cheery bag, especially on a dull winters day. Very Lucy but also very me;-))

There is a little knitting going on but mostly I'm still sorting furniture out after having to clear two rooms to lay some laminate. How come it all fitted in before but now it doesn't? That's what happens when you decide to improvise and move things in limited space - you end up with a pile of furniture in the middle of the room! You wouldn't think I'd drawn plans to scale and everything:-)) I know a bit OCD of me! Never mind:-) It'll all go somewhere.....

As long as I still have some knitting to hand to keep my sanity!

Just me in my garden.

I do find spending time in the garden restful and a great source of colour inspiration. The Asiatic lilies have come out wonderfully this year and you can smell their fragrance wafting across the garden. I love the smell - but outside. I once had a huge vase of them in a small bedroom and woke up find my eyes had totally swollen up as a reaction to the pollen. So I plant them in the garden where I can still appreciate the beauty and smell without the side effects!

I know they are big and blowsy flowers but I think they are lovely and bold - and exotic. Looking about my garden, I find I have a bit of a mixture, cottage garden plants like lady's mantle and daisies - big and in your face daisies;-) but also blowsy Dalias in scarlet, magenta and orange and gladioli in purples, reds and lilacs. Still waiting on some to show.

I love big daisies. It reminds me of Meg Ryan in the film 'you've got mail'. She said that daisies were such a friendly flower. Yes, they look happy and open - and they are loving all the rain we are having for our British summer but the rain is beautiful too....

I love the tiny little beaded raindrops on the lady's mantle leaves - like raindrops on cobwebs.

We also have this tree that is in flower right now with the most gorgeous scent - nearly like Jasmine. I can't remember what it is called but its from New Zealand and the bees just love it! When you pass, there is a distinct noisy humming of industious bees. The small flowers eventually fall off and carpet the ground in white. It is so thick at the moment, it looks like snow!

Subtlty, delicacy and in your face Dahlias:-) This is a much stronger red in real life - deeper in tone with a rich, velvet quality. I'll try and capture it properly again before it goes.

So when the weather is reasonably fair, I can contemplate the colours with the relaxing drone of the bees and the joyous cries of the soaring hawks overhead. Just me in my garden.

Crossroads and Gladioli

Not that crossroads and Gladioli have anything in common but both have been on my mind of late. The gladioli because they are now dying back and it reminded me I hadn't posted to show you the lovely richness of the purples against the green stalks. They are a little light here and don't show the deep rich velvetyness of the purple petals as well as I would have liked but you take what light you can for photographs at the moment!

The richness of colour combinations always makes me want to dye some yarn or fabric - play a little with colour. And I still mean to get round to it at some point this month, along with making presents for christmas. But there are very few people I know that would appreciate dyed yarn as a present - only my mum! Something knitted up with that dyed yarn would be a different matter, I suspect! But I'm taking a hiatus on the knitting for a bit to clear my head and give me space to think about direction.

I've always loved to learn new things. Weaving, spinning, knitting, embroidery, collage, painting.... I've always avoided putting myself in a category. I trained in Textiles but I love the conceptual aspects of art too. I love print, collagraphy as well as the humble potato print. I love collage, mixed media, balancing a composition. I love the subtleties and contrasts of colour, texture and fonts. The more I discover, the more I want to explore. And although I enjoy knitting, it doesn't let me address all these facets of myself that I feel need to be taken out and looked at with a fresh eye.

But confidence and time have a lot to do with artistic development - or not. Not having had the time for a long while to discover who and what I am and where I want to go, I am now in the position where I have a little breathing space to try and find out exactly that. But being creative requires positivity and a confidence in yourself and your work. So how to rediscover that?

I'm going to work small, start experimenting and explore materials and mediums and see what happens. I may not post every day what I'm working on but I'm going to try and produce some small outcome every day - even if it is only worthy of the bin or being cut up for collage. I need to get inspired!

Lavender's blue dilly dilly

Lavender’s blue dilly, dilly, Lavender’s green;

When I am king, dilly, dilly, You shall be Queen.

Who told you so, dilly, dilly, who told you so?

'Twas my own heart, dilly, dilly, that told me so

Call up your men dilly, dilly, Set them to work,

Some with a rake, dilly, dilly, some with a fork.

Some to make hay, dilly, dilly, Some to thresh corn,

Whilst you and I, dilly, dilly, Keep ourselves warm.

The garden is in full bloom!

Salad anyone?

The first produce from the vegetable garden! This is only some of the radishes so far - the rest are a little smaller and can wait a bit before being picked. They do taste a lot stronger than shop bought ones but I did read that the bigger you let them grow the stronger they taste.

The tomato plants are also on the grow with a few yellow flowers but no fruit as yet - there will definitely be an update when that happens!! The peas and beans are growing up the sticks imperceptibly but the lettuce is nearly ready to be picked. All we need is a warm, sunny spell for salads!

There has been some more planting going on and I will get photos of the new flowers soon but for now, here is the viola and marigold border that is the main view from the kitchen window (taken from the side so you can see the full expanse of the flowers).


Other garden progress - at last the peony has decided to flower for me. The bud has been sitting there for a while and then all of a sudden, bloom! A huge, big, blousy flower head. Just the one. Is this normal for peonies?

Anyway I love the pink! It's survived the heavy rain showers so it must be quite sturdy. And as always, all garden progress is being monitored....


Aren't you finished yet?