summer florals

Today I've been fooling around with some summer florals. Yellow is a colour I tend to avoid as a rule, but I'm seeing a few pretty yellows out there at the moment and find I'm much more inclined towards it:

boot sale booty

On sunday, my weekly boot fair adventure seemed like such a chore in the 29 degree heat. We wanted to do it quickly so me and Mr Monda decided to split up and do an isle each, meeting at the end of each isle to report that everything seemed to be pretty 'guff-a-loo-lah' (my new favourite phrase). It seemed like a waste of a perfectly good sunny morning until we spied these little beauties in the last isle:

I think it was a mum and daughter sales team, and the mum (who was probably in her 80's) was driving a hard bargain with me, probably because she didn't really want to let them go. She wouldn't take less than £5 for them so I put them down and was about to walk away when she asked me what I wanted to pay for them. £3 I said, £4 she said, and then we settled on £3.50.
It seems quite silly that these pretty little china cups (and a saucer) can make me feel so happy, but they do, so I'll have that. I know after the wedding, I won't be able to part with some of the pretties I have collected. I think we're going to need a bigger house.

sail away

I don't want to sound like a stuck record or anything, so I'll just shut up and show you my latest entry for the nautical themed spoonflower contest:

Click on image to enlarge

I had a dream

I remember my dreams quite vividly - and I do quite enjoy how my head invents the things it does.

My wedding is on my mind a lot at the moment. I've been collecting vintage china for quite a while now and almost have enough for the wedding - I just need a few more bits and bobs which I'm sure I'll pick up at boot fairs over the coming months, anyway I digress. I had a dream that I should draw some of my china, so I did:

I think I might pop up to that London tomorrow and visit the wemake summer fair. It will be nice to just be a visitor for change without the mad panic of having to get everything made, labelled and set up.

Summer Sale

It looks summer is finally here, and the shops are celebrating with a sale (any excuse).
The CK Sale starts today:

and if CK is not your cup of tea, the Habitat Sale also started this week:

I've already browsed the CK online store and didn't buy anything (I know, self restraint!). I'll be popping into my local habitat today for a spot of window shopping also.

busy bee, that's me

I'm just popping in quickly today - I have lots to do, which to be fair does include an interlude to watch the footy (come on England!) but I will crochet at the same time some it's not a complete waste of a hour and a half. I do hope we win - it would be so disappointing to be going home at this stage.

This is a little something I've been working on today - I'm thinking home furnishings - wallpaper, cushions, curtains etc. What would you call this colour? Looks like a muddy aubergine to me, or maybe mocha? I love it nonetheless:

Yesterday I made some rhubarb and vanilla jam. It only cost me the price of a bag a sugar, a vanilla pod and a lemon as the rhubarb was free from my sisters allotment - bonus. The jars I used were also recycled.
It's such an easy recipe, so I'm going to illustrate it and I'll pop it on here later in the week.
Enjoy the sunny day, whatever it is you might be doing.

weekend visitors

This weekend we had a couple of visitors in the form of my nephews. Look at the little suitcases! They are such little dudes.

 

We kept them pretty busy, we made wooden spoon puppets, played football, went to the park, watched wallace and grommit, ate pizza and picked strawberries. It was a jam packed weekend, but one of the best things we did, was to make t-shirts.
We had one pack of iron on crayons (£1) and two t-shirts (75p each) all from Asda.
We drew our designs onto tracing paper, then coloured them in using the crayons. When they designs were done, I ironed them onto the t-shirts, and voila.
This one was designed and coloured by my 4 year old nephew (i love it):

and this one was drawn my me but coloued in by my 2 year old nephew:

This was the best fun and the boys loved their new t-shirts, and for £2.50 - what a bargain!

save the date

I'm playing with my save the date cards, which are not cards at all but tags. I'm going for a vintage and handmade feel - which will echo the style of the wedding itself.
This is the first attempt - it needs tweaking but I'm pretty happy with it:

a month of birthdays

June for me is a heavy month of Birthdays - my sis (today!), dad, nephew, a couple of friends and a friends little boy, plus it's also Father day this coming weekend. It is full on - lots of presents to be wrapped and cards to be written.
Maybe (just maybe) this time next year they'll be getting some of these - new designs I've been working on:

around these parts, there is some of this going on:

I'm still hooking away on my granny stripe. I'm trying to do at least 2 rows per evening - it doesn't sound like much but this is a double bed sized blanket and it's taking it's sweet time.

Dead heading with very pretty results

oh and a couple of Dinosaurs in a park - as they do, when nobody is looking.

My head is full of wedding stuff at the moment. We're not getting married until January but there is so much to think about, and ideas are filling my head. I'm working in my 'save the date' cards this week - they'll have printed and stitched elements to them. I'll blog my progress later in the week.

and it begins

World Cup fever is officially here. I've picked a few red and white and football themed favourites to share with you - by way of my support for England:

England World Cup football Meerkat, by Nifty Knits here

Red and white bunting, by giggleberry here

Sweet button blooms by lilfishstudios, here

flutterby cushion by Greenolive, here

and lastly, by far the coolest thing I've ever seen done with a crayola crayon

 by the pleasure of tiny things, here

You can read more about this World Cup commission for carved crayons on her blog by clicking the link above

a little obsessed

well, I don't mid admitting that I'm a little bit obsessed. You see, after leaving my job and taking myself off onto an illustrator course, I'm pretty much spending each day doodling away designs for my portfolio. I am obsessed by this, but actually that isn't the obsessed thing I was talking about.
I'm quite obsessed by the fabric design competitions they have going on over at spoonflower. It's a healthy obsession though, as these competitions are providing me with an almost weekly design brief. I like this because I can spend my brain power on designing and not thinking up clever briefs and themes for myself.

Anyhow, voting is up for the robot themed fabric. I changed my submission about 4 times before I finally entered this one:

click on pic to enlarge

If you like this, could I please ask, ever so politely for you to pop over to spoonflower and vote - it only takes a minute (as Take That once said) and I really would appreciate it very much.

As an aside, does anyone know what possible reason a man in a big TNT van would be doing visiting a house on my street each day at the same time for about 20 mins, usually at about 5.30? I have a theory, which doesn't involve the delivery of parcels, but the reason this irks me so is that he takes up the space of at least 3 cars making it impossible to park if you happen to come home at this time of day.
This is one of the things you notice when you are a stay at home, busy body, curtain twitcher, like myself :o)

here comes the rain

After a spell of quite a few lovely warm and hot days, it is now raining. Rain is generally a bit crubbish but I do accept it is necessary for the survival of our lovely planet. I'm happy about the rain though because the garden really needed a big drink, so I've created some celebratory designs - and called them 'happy rain':

I also wanted to share one of my boot sale bargains from the weekend:

I totally love the 60's pattern on this little jug, but I think I love it more because it was just 20p (so fickle). Can you believe that? This might be the best 20p I've ever spent. It was probably 20p because it was a bit grubby and dusty and just thrown in the bottom of a box, but after a little wash up, it's good as new. Ahhh joy.

a little bit of this, and a little bit of that

I don't mind the weather when it's hot, but It's juts horrible when it's humid and muggy. Today it is so humid, the kind of humid that just zaps away your energy, and I've found it quite hard to do anything for any great length of time.
I'm still playing with my robot designs and have submitted the top one into the spoonflower competition.

It's called 'i heart robots':

 (enlarged view of design above)

and my granny stripe is coming along nicely - although so hard to even touch the wool on hot hot days:

I'm not so sure about the colours actually - but as I already had the dark blue and aubergine coloured wool (and lots of it), I had to use it.

I hope it's less muggy tomorrow as I need some energy for my fave sunday event - the local car boot sale.

I am not a robot

Thanks to everyone who voted for me in the spoonflower contest recently. I came 45th out of 116, with 211 votes. I didn't expect to win, but just putting something out there was a good thing for me.

This was the winning fabric:

Pic via spoonflower - designer Emma McCann

It's great isn't it.
Spoonflower always run competitions - a forthcoming one being on a robot theme. I've been working on a few designs this week:

I'm not sure if any of these will make it as my final design yet as I still have more in the pipeline
I'd like to ask for some help from fellow bloggers. Which one of these designs would you pick if you were purchasing a robot fabric and why? All comments gratefully received.

Apparently, Marina isn't a robot either. I love this song:

granny stripe, part 2

I was eager, perhaps too eager with my first granny stripe attempt from my previous post. The more I looked at it, the more wrong it looked. It looked too stretched, so how did I manage this? I wondered to myself. Perhaps it's the wrong type of wool, I thought. Have you heard the saying that 'a bad workman always blames his tools'? Yep, well I was blaming the wool.
Was it the wool, really? No, it was not the wool, that was fine. So what then? The pattern is right but the stitches are wrong. After looking in my crochet bible, I realised that I was working trebles where I should have doubles and double trebles where I should have trebles. Doh! If this was my court of law, the poor wool would have probably gone down for a stretch - I guess I'll never make a lawyer.

This is attempt number two. It's looking much better - and far more like it should (but still a bit wibbly and wobbly)

I wonder if it will be as lovely as this one day?

picture via Attic24

You know, it really is quite simple when you get the hang of it. Getting the hang of it is the hard part.
Practice over - let the granny stripe blanket commence!