hop on

I told you I had knitting content coming up didn’t I?  Well may I present to you the Easter jumper,

 

The cavorting bunnies on the bottom of this were adapted from a vintage pattern for a baby cardigan.  The sweater itself is just your basic bottom-up, knit in the round pullover with a yoke.  There would have been short row shaping but I forgot and couldn’t be bothered to frog and re-do.  I am not a poster child for ‘proper’ knitting. 

 

This jumper has it’s problems.  The yoke part of it is bigger than I’d like it to be, I think my gauge went a little off.  When in knit the bunnies on the bottom I should really have staggered the yarn as I carried it over as it peeps through in places.  But despite these flaws I love it.  And that’s what matters in the end isn’t it? x

just like old times

It was half term again this week so I took the customary trip back to my mum and step dad’s in North Yorkshire for a few days of being spoilt and pampered.  Mum and I went to York for a day’s shopping and a very brief walk on the walls.

It’s funny.  When I was a teenager I knew York like the back of my hand.  My friends and I would get the train over on a Saturday morning and spend the whole day there, finding all the vintage shops, eating tuna melts when they were still a novelty and not something you could get in Sayers, hanging round by the river and later, as we got older, going to the cinema for afternoon double bills, finding a seat in the Cross Keys so we could play pool on the purple table and going to this funny club, the entrance of which used to flood in bad weather to the point where you had to cross a gang plank to get in.

Now when I go back I hardly recognise anything.  There used to be a ton of little second hand shops and those incense-smelling hippy shops that 13 year olds love.  Now they seem to have vanished.  The last one I knew about had closed down when we went this time and those that are still there are more expensive and less, well, grotty.  Is this a sign of getting older, that I’m lamenting the ‘good old days’?  Surely in a student town there should be enough interest to keep a vintage clothes shop going?  Have I suddenly and become out of the loop?  Or does everyone just get their clothes from H&M and Topshop now?  Crikey…

Some of the good old things are still there though.  Like silly street names, the Minister, the Army and Navy store and dogs that want to get in every one of your shots x

bright red cheeks

I’m blushing at the moment.  Fran over at Certain Creatures has nominated me for two blog awards, my first ever.

Nice Blog Award Rules:
1.) Recipients of the award are asked to link to the nice person that gave them the award.
2.) Link to as many other blogs as they want to give the award to and write a motivation for the person.
3.) Must also make sure that they let the bloggers who won know about the award.
*
Fabulous Blog Award Rules:

1.) Put logo on your blog or post.
2.) Nominate 10 blogs which you think are fabulous.
3.) Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4.) Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5.) Share the love and link to this post and to the person from whom you received your award.

Fran has the most beautiful little blog.  She sews, she paints, she makes me feel inadequate on a daily basis and so I’m doubly flattered that she’s nominated me.

And to pass the blog lvoe on, I nominate…

Laura at Dropstitch, who’s always ready to pass on the crafty love

Mick at Much-Adored, who puts up with me even when I don’t knit anything for ages

Mooncalf at Make Do and Mend - who’s knitting output is just incredible

And to finish, a promise of two finished knitting projects - one big and one small – some embroidery, a half-finished crochet project and a partridge in a pear tree very, very soon x

the reason i have a ukelele

read: a month in the country, j.l. carr

‘There was a throaty smell billowing off the bilberry shrub and withering heather when we disembarked on a sheep-cropped plain high in the hills.  There was no shelter from the sun, but it was dinner time and the women and girls unpacked hard-boiled eggs and soggy tomato sandwiches wrapped in greased paper and swaddled in napkins.

So, eating, drinking, dozing, the day passed until the evening came.  Then, as the first star rose and swallows turned and twisted above the bracken our wagons rumbled down from above the White Horse and across the Vale towards home.

Ah, those days … for many years afterwards their happiness haunted me.  Sometimes, listening to music, I drift back and nothing has changed.  The long end of summer.  Day after day of warm weather, voices calling as night came on and lighted windows pricked the darkness and, at day-break, the murmur of corn and the warm smell of fields ripe for harvest.  And being young.

It is now or never, we must snatch at happiness as it flies.’

If that doesn’t accurately describe the memories of my childhood, right down to the bilberries on the side of Sutton Bank and the White Horse, then I’m the ringmaster’s assistant.  I can’t wait to go home x