Seahouses X

A (belated) eye-candy post from our trip to Seahouses at the end of March.

Rockpools at the end of St Aiden's beach.

'Found Art' timber block boat stands at Seahouses harbour.

Beach monsters fossil/shell collection.

'Painted' rock formations at Cocklawburn beach, near Berwick on Tweed.

Infinite reflective blue space, Bamburgh beach.

...Making time

It's been a while since I've been able to make time for Making, mostly because Life, the Universe and Everything has been getting in my way! Prior to my daughter moving out in January we reached Off-the-Scale-Stuff-and-Clutter territory - a state of existence where it seems perfectly reasonable to consider "somehow" propping a three-seater settee on its end "somewhere" in a house already piled high with moving-out-boxes (because my daughter set her heart on it over a year ago, before her first house sale fell through, and it was being discontinued in December). Even if I had had the head-space for Making, I certainly didn't have the physical space for it - just a pop-up work-station in a corner of the kitchen for adding the glue and glitter to my crocheted snowflake decorations, because my actual work-station was buried under presents and wrapping paper and other Yuletide-related paraphernalia. 

No sooner had my daughter left, than work on Jackanory Corner commenced, bringing with it a different kind of Stuff-and-Clutter. Buckets and trowels and rolls of wall-paper and pasting tables and step ladders and paint-brushes and rollers and a whole lot of dusty Mess! Although I think that DIY counts as a creative activity, it's not the kind of creative activity that truly fills my heart with joy. Fortunately, my daughter's friend's new baby proved to be exceptionally knit-worthy, so in between all the plastering and wall-papering and painting and cleaning, I did find time to whip up a couple of pairs of woolly bootees (pattern from Zoe Mellor's "Head to Toe Knits"), which helped to scratch my creative itch. I love this pattern - it's perfect for new/knit-worthy babies. Not only are the bootees super-cute, but with the fold-over ribbing keeping them snugly in place, and the stretchy garter stitch providing plenty of growing room, they don't get lost, and they last for months!

In February my Dad had his long-awaited hernia operation, which (literally) removed some of the pressure he'd been under, health-wise, and my Mum had an initial dementia assessment at the beginning of March, to be followed by a CT scan later this week. We haven't had a formal diagnosis yet, but if you think it's Autumn when it's actually Spring, and you think that Jeremy Thorpe is the current Prime Minister, then it's safe to assume there's something going awry with the 'little grey cells'. It wasn't 'til half-way through March that I felt able to carve out some quality Making time, and finally put Jackanory Corner through its paces. It felt so good to be able to work on something, uninterrupted, in a calm, organised, tidy space. 

The 'something' was my twelfth Wiksten top* (if you include the one I made for my Mum). I now have enough of these versatile smocks to live in them all year round, and that's pretty much what I do! I ended up giving the very first one I made to my Mum, as the sleeves were a little too short for my liking. She wore it so much that I made her another one for her birthday. One got downgraded to a kind of cover-all for messy jobs after I accidentally got paint all over it, but the rest remain in constant use. There are two sleeveless ones that can be worn over anything, a couple of thick cold weather ones and several thinner warm weather ones (although they are roomy enough to layer in cold weather too). Most have pockets, a couple don't. I've made them from all sorts of different fabrics - chambray, flannel, double gauze, cotton, even curtain fabric - and the pattern works brilliantly with all of them. This latest one is made from a heavy-duty black denim throw that I found in a charity shop, and I'm so pleased with how it turned out. It has a really utilitarian feel, and just like a favourite pair of jeans, the longer you wear it, the comfier it gets. I know this because I've been wearing it almost constantly since I snipped the last thread on the final seam! 

The main item on my current to-do list is my 'Homage to the (Granny) Square' blanket. I was doing ok with it before Christmas, mostly keeping pace with others in the online course's Facebook group, but now it's April, and I'm still plodding through February's tutorials, while more and more of the group are reaching the finishing line. It hasn't helped that I'm currently working on a more fiddly set of squares, which I can't easily set aside and then pick up where I left off a few hours/days later. So I really needed the confidence boost that completing the Wiksten top gave me...

...and Jackanory Corner is helping too. One of the first things I did when it was properly clean and tidy, was to lay out all the squares I'd completed on the floor, in a rough approximation of how they might appear in the finished blanket. The interplay of colours is central to the design, and the choice of which ones to use in each square, and how to arrange them within the blank blanket template is left up to the maker - there is no 'set' sequence to follow, and no two projects are ever the same. Having the space to see how the squares are working together and being able to visualise the blanket more as a whole has made the task of choosing which colours to use more/less/next a lot easier. I just need to keep making time for Making it!

*I would have put a link to the pattern, but it seems that Wiksten have recently ceased trading 😞. A massive loss to dress-makers everywhere, in my humble opinion!

...'Jackanory Corner'

Warning: Contains scenes of amateur DIY which some viewers may find distressing. Professional plasterers and decorators may wish to look away now. 

At the end of January, when my daughter's Tardis bedroom had finally been emptied of it's 'enough to fill a small terraced house' contents, I started work on Project Sewing Room - quite a daunting task for a cautious DIYer. The outside wall of this room has been 'problematical' ever since we moved in 23 years ago. We always suspected that the thick, textured wallpaper covering it was hiding a multitude of sins, but with three children in the family the room always had at least one or more occupants, and the opportunity to tackle what lay beneath never really arose. So we just kept painting over it and hoping for the best. Even when we had our windows replaced seven years ago, and the installers did an absolute botch job of plastering the window surrounds (rough lumpy plaster literally smeared on top of the wallpaper), my daughter just hung fairy lights everywhere, and after a while we almost stopped noticing what a mess it actually was.

I was right to feel apprehensive, though, because once we started to peel back the wallpaper it practically fell off the wall, along with scary amounts of ancient plaster, leaving large holes around the window which went all the way through to the brick. Above the window we even found the remnants of some Rupert the Bear wallpaper that had probably been there since the house was built in the 1930s. It was obvious that previous owners had never done much more than skim over the original plaster, and at some point someone had applied horizontal strips of black tar-paper, most of which was still tightly bonded to the wall. In an ideal world we should have taken the whole wall back to the brick and had it properly re-plastered, but we don't know any plasterers and were worried that we wouldn't find anyone interested in doing such a small job. We also knew we didn't have the skill or know-how to tackle this task ourselves. So we decided to follow in the footsteps of past inhabitants and do a 'patch' job instead - leaving anything that still seemed relatively sound in situ, repairing the damaged areas, and then literally papering over the cracks! 

It took me nearly two weeks to prepare the wall for decorating - scraping off the loose tar-paper, filling and sanding all the smaller holes, and building up incremental layers in the large damaged areas each day, until they were finally flush with the surrounding plaster. I levelled out the obvious 'step' in the plasterwork left by the window installers as best I could - reducing it to more of a gentle slope. Not exactly a perfect finish, but still a big improvement on how things were before.

Once I'd reached the 'it's as good as I can get it' stage with the patch job, we covered the entire wall with Wallrock Dampstop Thermic wallpaper - the modern version of the tar-paper previously used to combat damp/condensation. This went up surprisingly easily considering those 'gentle slopes' around the window and all the other lumps and bumps it had to cover - clearly visible in the photo below!. 

I papered over the top of this with a slightly textured vinyl wallpaper chosen to loosely (very loosely) 'match' the wallpaper on the other three walls, and then the whole room got a new coat of paint to tie it all together. The papering and painting stage took another couple of weeks - even working at a snail's pace every osteoarthritic joint in my body was howling in protest by the end of each day.

Once the alcove at the end of the room had been papered and painted we moved my daughter's old wardrobe into position and I took a day off from the decorating to have a clothing declutter. Even though not having to share a wardrobe with my husband any more technically gives me extra storage space, I wanted to take the opportunity to get rid of all the clothes that no longer fit me and/or never get worn. So I sorted them into keepers, hand-me-downs for my sister, hand-me-ups for my Mum, a couple of hardly-worn things for my daughter to sell on Vinted, a few sentimental things saved for upcycling, a big bag for the charity shop, a very small bag for the bin, and 'Hey Presto!' a tidy wardrobe containing only things that fit me and will get worn. I love it!

We also decided to splash out on a new spare bed - the Hemnes day-bed from Ikea, which pulls out to convert from a single to a double and has 3 big storage drawers underneath. Once the bed was made up with some of my daughter's old discarded cushions, a cosy blanket and a couple of rescued charity shop friends, my husband christened it 'Jackanory Corner'. I think he really hit the nail on the head. It's the perfect place to curl up with a book for a while, and makes me wish I was the sort of person who felt refreshed (rather than hungover) after a nap, because if I was, I'd definitely be using it for that too! 

One of my main aims for Project Sewing Room was to have enough storage space for all the fabric and sewing paraphernalia I've squirreled away in various nooks and crannies around the house over the years. My friend gave me a set of three 'vintage' Ikea cupboards when she was clearing out her Mum's house after she died - unlike their modern equivalents they're constructed from solid pine, rather than particle board or veneer, so they're really sturdy, with plenty of drawers, shelves and cupboard space for a sewing hoarder to fill. They've been stacked up against the wall in our bedroom for nearly a year - we thought we'd only be storing them there for a few weeks, but then my daughter's first house purchase fell through. It's lovely to see them finally installed in the space they were intended for, rather than having to squeeze past them at bedtime every night!

I had another sorting and decluttering session before filling the cupboards - gathered all the sewing-related "stuff" I could lay my hands on, and went through it all very methodically. Now I have designated drawers for ribbons, tools, threads, fasteners, buttons, and more. I even have a little drawer for pins and needles! It will be so nice to be able to put my hands on anything I need, without having to think where to find it first...

...and on the other side of the room my little sewing table tucks in perfectly next to the wardrobe. 

I feel so very lucky to have this room of my own. It was worth all the hard work and plaster dust in my hair to get it to this point, and I can't wait to start on some new projects soon. Happy times await me in this cosy little space.

P.S. Best of all, the slopes, lumps and bumps are barely noticeable now - if you ask me, they're all just part of Jackanory Corner's rustic charm!

...staying frosty

December and most of January seem to have passed in a blur -  a hectic, tiring blur - with  very little to show for themselves blog-wise! My daughter finally (FINALLY) completed the purchase of her new home on December 16th, around 18 months after she first started the house-buying ordeal process, and just 6 weeks before her self-imposed target of "moving out before the age of 30". All the heavy lifting is done but we are still packing up belongings from her childhood bedroom. I think she may actually be a Time Lord because that bedroom is literally a TARDIS - she is already running out of storage space in a six roomed house - and we still have at least two car-boot-loads to go!

Christmas came and went fairly unremarkably, and in the New Year my Dad was given a date for his hernia operation (at the beginning of February). We are keeping everything crossed that the operation doesn't get postponed, as he's in near-constant pain with the hernia now. My Mum has her "memory" assessment at the end of January too. She has been losing quite a few of her marbles and it feels like I've mislaid a couple of mine recently too - keeping track of two 80+ year olds' prescriptions and appointments is turning into a full time job. Thank goodness I took early retirement!

So there are just a few bits and pieces to "report" on here...

Remember when I swore I'd never make a Claire Garland knitted rabbit again? Well, all I can say is "Never say never". My Mother-in-Law's friend loved the Teeny Tiny Bunny I made for my M-i-L so much that my M-i-L asked me to make another, for her to give her friend for Christmas. Words cannot express my utter despair upon receipt of this flattering request! I ended up having to confess how much I'd hated making the first one (despite it being oh-so-very, very cute), but then (being of a masochistic saintly disposition) I said I'd be willing to give the Little Baby Bunny pattern a try instead, if this would be acceptable. The Little Baby Bunny is slightly bigger than the Teeny Tiny Bunny (the clue's in the name), and better still, legs are optional. My M-i-L decided that she actually preferred the legless paws-tucked-in version, so a deal was struck...

...and three soul-destroying weeks of procrastination (and whining) later this was the result. It's oh-so-very, very cute, I agree. Claire Garland is an absolute genius - 100% agree. Now disregard what I said before. Sometimes "Never again!" really does mean "Never again!"  

It didn't help that what I really wanted to be doing was working on my "Homage to the (Granny) Square" project. But by the time I'd procrastinated and whined my way through self-inflicted Bunny Hell it was the week before Christmas and I had to focus on mass producing crocheted snowflake Christmas tree ornaments (this year's handmade stocking filler) instead. I used this pattern, but there are loads of different variations on You Tube. They are very quick and easy to make, especially once you memorise the pattern. To stiffen them up and add some sparkle I drew a circle on a piece of cardboard and pinned the points evenly around the edge, then used diluted Mod Podge and a generous sprinkle of biodegradable white glitter (both sides) to add a delicate, crystalline shimmer.

At the beginning of January my daughter's best friend had her first baby, five weeks early. So I abandoned my plans to make matching booties, hat and cardigan and made an aran-weight version of this lovely pattern instead. If you want to enjoy a brand new baby cuddle at the earliest opportunity you have to be adaptable!

Other than these modest creative efforts, all I have left to share are a few photos of the frosty park, lit by low winter sunshine. Lovely!

...colour crochet mania

For my birthday this year I was treated to membership of an online crochet course I've been coveting for months - 'Homage to the (Granny) Square', by Sue Maton at The Mercerie. The course runs over 6 months, with permanent access to the online material once the 'live' course is over. The start date was 1st November, and for the past few weeks we have been focussing on colour theory, making colour wheels...

...experimenting with tone and colour harmonies...

...exploring the Rowan Felted Tweed colour range (the recommended yarn)...

...playing with possible colour combinations - I used an online app for this...

...until finally arriving at our own individual colour schemes after (in my case) hours of careful deliberation. 

I was thinking about the beach at Seahouses (never far from my mind's eye) when I made my choices. The centre of my blanket will predominantly consist of the first five colours, which remind me of the sand dunes and sky at sunrise/sunset. The border will utilise the four blues, representing sea and sky. The vibrant red is my "wild" colour - inspired by the huge red poppies we saw growing wild amongst the dunes last summer. 

This is probably the most ambitious (and expensive) project I have ever embarked upon. I never usually buy expensive yarn - my "stash" consists of odd balls bought in sales, charity shop finds and cast-offs from friends. I still have oddments of yarn from when my children were little (30+ years old!). Those same lovely children clubbed together to give me a voucher for my local wool shop for my birthday, to help with the cost of the yarn, and I found an online shop offering a 25% discount for the rest. Even so, it feels a bit 'wrong' to be spending so much money on myself, especially during a global recession...but I'm itching to make a start with these gorgeous colours, and I know I'll love every second of the making process. Hopefully the finished blanket will be both beautiful and useful, and enjoyed by all of us for a very long time.

Hot off my hook - keeping my hands busy while I wait to embark on 'The Blanket of Joy' - is this wondrous creation, made of cheap and cheerful Stylecraft yarn - leftovers from this year's 100 day project, my daughter's Rose Cottage blanket and the Attic24 Harmony blanket that got me back into crochet just 12 short months ago. 

I made it up as I went along, starting with two large, identical hexagons, which each formed an 'L' shape (for the sleeves and body) when folded in half. I widened the back and lengthened the body with some big granny squares, and then added more length, and breadth at the front, with another ten rounds (starting centre back, going up the front, round the neck and down the other side). I added smaller granny squares to the sleeves, to make them 3/4 length, and then did a few decreasing rounds to gather them in slightly.

Sticking to traditional granny square rules I gave almost zero thought to colour combinations - mostly just grabbed the nearest ball to hand at the start of each round. I fully accept that it's at the loud and garish end of the colour scheme spectrum, and probably not to most/many people's tastes! My daughter has already named it 'Joseph' and I suspect my husband is refraining from comment on the grounds of 'If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all'...but it's a really warm, substantial garment (like a blanket in clothing form), and I will probably live in it all winter. It also fits beautifully with my 'Pushing 60 and Past Caring' style aesthetic!

...Seahouses IX

Day One: First (rather blurry) glimpse of the beach, late afternoon, wind whipping the waves and driving sand across the shore, with Bamburgh Castle on the horizon. All this photo needs is a swooning lady with a heaving bosom in the foreground to make it the perfect front cover for a Mills & Boon historical romance.

The wind drove us away from the scouring sand towards the rocky shoreline at the start of the beach. I've never explored this section before - the path takes you onto the beach just after the rocks, and they're often under water unless the tide is quite far out. We've always just walked away from them, in the opposite direction, which turns out to have been a "Big mistake. Huge". (Roberts, J., 1990, Pretty Woman) These stratified rocks are AMAZING, carved and shaped by wind, sand and water into sweeping curves, etched with intricate swirls and patterns, and especially beautiful when softly lit by the low autumn sun. What a welcome back!

Day Two: We walked from Seahouses to Bamburgh along the beach. The wind had left hundreds of pebbles perched on their own little plinths...sea snail colonies huddled among the rocks...and porcelain-fine sea urchin shells scattered on the sand.

Day Three: We walked the length of the beautiful crescent beach at Beadnell Bay, on an overcast, windy day, pausing to watch the kite surfers sweeping back and forth across the surface of the waves, occasionally becoming airborne, like leaping salmon. Picked up a glowing turquoise shell, half-buried in the sand, which faded to pearly white indoors, away from that big, blue, reflective space.

Day Four: Rain was forecast, and rain came. We spent most of the day indoors, relaxing, reading, watching films, then mid-afternoon decided to disregard the weather and head for the beach. Even when it's almost entirely stripped of colour, misty, cold, and wet, this is still my favourite place to be - complete with prehistoric cave paintings and sentimental Valentines doodled in the sand.

Day Five: We packed up the car and parked by the beach for the final walk of the holiday - heading straight for the rocks this time! I will never grow tired of this beautiful place. 

...a long weekend in Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Earlier this year my in-laws floated the idea of a trip away together for my husband's birthday. Initially we discussed traveling to Edinburgh by train, but eventually we decided to stay closer to home, and have a long weekend in Newcastle-upon-Tyne instead. Newcastle is top of my "Cities Most Likely To Move To" list, if we ever decide to leave Leeds. In fact, it's pretty much the only contender. My younger son went to Northumbria University, and we got to know the city quite well during pick-ups, drop-offs, and visits in between. I was thrilled to be returning!

• Day One: My F-i-L wanted to travel there and back via the Tyne Tunnel. As a semi-retired mining engineer he's obsessed with large underground holes - filled or otherwise - so this came as no surprise. I prefer to salute the Angel at Gateshead whenever we head North, but compromise is everything in this game, so we dipped under the river, came up the other side and then, at his request, drove a little further past the city to visit Northumberlandia, the Lady of the North. Turns out this 'land sculpture' was created using earth from a neighbouring surface mine...well fancy that! We had a wander around the Lady's curvaceous contours, with a running commentary from our own on-site expert, and a cake-and-coffee break at the on-site cafe... 

...before heading to our city-centre apartment, just down the street from Grey's Monument, with (literally) a bird's eye view of the city below us. 

• Day Two: We took the Metro to Tynemouth Station Market, which advertises itself as not just a market, but a good day out! I can certainly vouch for this - it was big, bustling and busy - with loads of different stalls, selling something for everyone, all under cover of the glazed Victorian station roof. We browsed up and down the platforms for ages, and I had a long felting/knitting/crochet-related chat with a lovely lady called Mairi, a.k.a. Raggy Badger, before purchasing a card and a little felt fox with a woolly scarf from her colourful stall. I so admire anyone who has the courage and commitment to "put themselves out there" and sell their work in this way - I always try to support with a purchase if/when I can. I also rescued a "pre-loved" doll (nice face, but in need of some TLC), from a mountain of dishevelled Barbies on a second hand toy stall, and bought two jars of homemade jam - strawberry and rhubarb, and raspberry curd. Both absolutely delicious on toast!

After we'd finished at the market we had a walk through the town to the beach, paused for a cake-and-coffee break, and then called into the amazing Razzberry Bazaar, a one-of-a-kind shop selling "an eclectic mix of creatively colourful clothing, accessories, gifts and homeware from around the world". Tucked away in a little back room there were some bolts of beautiful cotton fabric reduced to just £5 per metre. I couldn't resist buying the last couple of metres of some cotton lawn patchwork fabric - little 3" squares individually machine-stitched together. What a bargain!

 

In the evening we went along to the Alphabetti theatre for a 'pay-what-you-feel' performance of Sugar Baby, a darkly funny and somewhat surreal one-man play about an extraordinary day in the life of Marc, a small-time Cardiff drug dealer (played by Ben Gettins). We all enjoyed Ben's energetic performance, which really brought the story to life...but the narrow bench seating was excruciatingly uncomfortable, so we were quite relieved that it only lasted an hour! 

• Day Three: After a leisurely breakfast we headed down the hill to the Quayside Market. Having picked up all those bits and pieces the day before I was trying to "look, not buy", and was doing quite well until we came to the Cotfield Mirrors stall. This is run by a husband and wife team (Alan and Carol), who specialise in mosaic/stained glass adornment of mirrors, furniture and more. Alan's style is quite precise, utilising intricate geometrical patterns, whereas Carol's work is more eclectic and unconventional. She incorporates pottery fragments, ornaments, shells, and other decorative found objects into her designs, and the longer you look the more you discover. I especially loved her tiny tableaux made from miniature model railway figures - flying kites, rock-climbing and sunbathing - inside little tins and broken tea cups that were grouted into the frames. 

Carol told me she often works on commission, either to a specific theme (e.g. Alice in Wonderland, Beatrix Potter, seaside, fairies, etc.) or a personalised design, using objects/items that have sentimental value to the customer (e.g. costume jewellry, watch faces, etc.) as a starting point. I couldn't afford any of Carol's more intricate work, but I really liked one of her 'simpler' mirrors, framed in a recycled wooden cable reel and decorated with the rich blue/white/gold/floral fragments of a ceramic vase. I decided to take the plunge and spend the money my parents gave me for my birthday - with instructions to "get yourself something you'll really enjoy" - because this mirror fitted the bill perfectly. Quite fortuitously, it also turned out to fit the wall space in my hallway perfectly too! I couldn't get a photo of it in situ without getting reflections of distracting clutter in the mirror, so have borrowed Carol's own photo instead, which really does it justice.

Copyright Cotfield Mirrors Handcrafted Mosaics 

Next stop was The Biscuit Factory, an independent art, craft and design gallery, with a lovely roof-top cafe, which we always try to visit whenever we're in Newcastle. I was happy to find that it had survived Covid and was still in business, showcasing and selling a wide range of work by all sorts of different artists. After the obligatory cake-and-coffee break we had a leisurely wander round the gallery. Having already blown my budget on Carol's mirror I came away empty-handed this time, but with a head full of inspiration and ideas.

The walk back to the city centre from The Biscuit Factory takes you through a rather run-down "no-man's-land" kind of area, alongside a busy 4-lane highway and over a series of pedestrian bridges across the A167 motorway, which intersects the city. I stopped to take a photo of this abandoned, semi-derelict building as we passed, and thought to myself, "Even the 'bad' bits of this city are beautiful!"

Our final stop for the day was at the Laing Art Gallery, as my in-laws wanted to revisit the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition, which we had all seen together on a trip to Durham a few years ago. My M-i-L recalled that she had found it "disappointing" at the time (so did I), but they were prepared to overlook Einstein's other theory ("insanity = doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result") and return for a second viewing. Maybe I was just feeling a little tired at the end of a long day, but even with yet another cake-and-coffee break beforehand, I was firmly in Einstein's camp on this occasion. I appreciate the historical and religious significance attached to the book, but peering at it from 3ft away, through glass, in a very dimly lit room just doesn't do it for me! The book obviously needs to be preserved and displayed with great care, under very special conditions, but the exhibition would be vastly improved by the addition of some high quality reproductions (done to scale) of its individual pages, displayed in a well lit room, perhaps accompanied by replicas of the tools and materials the artist would have used to create such amazingly detailed and intricate work. Hey-ho! You can't win 'em all!

• Day Four: We packed our suitcases and headed for the coast on the final day of the holiday. My M-i-L wanted to visit Spanish City at Whitley Bay, as she had heard about it but never seen it. We had one last cake-and-coffee break at Valerie's Tearoom and then walked along the beach for a while, in a vain attempt to burn off a fraction of our four-day accumulation of cake-and-coffee calories. I may never be able to look at a fruit scone again, but as holidays go, this long weekend in lovely Newcastle was a great success!