...wedding fancies

Working on the principle of "just do a couple a day" I managed to finish all 25 painted pebble place settings for my daughter's best friend's wedding with nearly a week to spare. Once I got into the swing of it it really wasn't a chore, and I was really pleased with the finished product. My only quibble was with the irregular sizes and shapes of the pebbles - I would have preferred a more uniform set - but I had to work with the raw materials the bride provided! 

Feedback from the wedding was that everyone loved them, and from the photos my daughter sent me I do think they added a unique personal touch to the romantic table setting.

Given that I had finished the pebbles with days to spare my daughter decided to keep me occupied by commissioning me to make a decorative prosecco glass for the bride to drink from on the morning of the wedding. I was simply forced to order a set of special glass painting pens, and after much experimentation (turns out curved glass is tricky to write on, but the perfect surface for wiping clean and starting again), followed by a nail-bitingly tense baking of the glass in the oven, this was the finished result:

"Self praise is no recommendation", is what my Granny used to say, but who cares? I think it looks absolutely lovely!

...recovery

It's been three and a half weeks since my hip replacement surgery. I'm getting about with one stick indoors and two sticks outdoors and making progress, albeit slow. There has been a lot of bed rest with the XXSCat dog:

A lot of sleepless nights and a new hobby - capturing nocturnal shadows and sunrises when discomfort drives me from my bed in the wee small hours:

4:54am one day

3:14am another day

4:31am this morning

 A lot of finding simple pleasure in the flowers I grew from last year's seed gatherings:

Cosmos

Pincushion flower - Scabiosa

A lot of gritting my teeth and making myself do a little bit more every day - if only because there's a deadline looming:

Through all the 'New Hip Roller Coaster' highs and lows - the box-set binges, the pill-popping, the ice-packs, the ankle rotations and leg lifts, the tea and toast in bed, the biscuit-and-flower-bearing visitors, the tears of frustration and laughter - the XXSCat dog takes everything in her stride. 

After all, there is nothing that a quick power nap in a comfy spot can't fix.

...catching up

The past few weeks have been hectic. I had a hospital appointment when we got back from Seahouses, and came away with a date for my hip replacement surgery - 20th June! Which was wonderful and terrifying in equal measures, especially as we had just arranged for a bathroom and downstairs loo refurbishment to take place in late July/early August. The timing will be far from ideal, but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger... allegedly. Recovery post-op takes around 6-12 weeks and there were lots of loose ends to tie up at work so as not to leave too much of a tangle for the rest of my team to deal with while I'm gone. I ended up booking some leave for the pre-op period so that I could literally and metaphorically get my house in order - with so much to do at work there wasn't time to draw breath, let alone prepare myself for major surgery. 

The past week has been a mixture of "jobs I won't be able to do for a while after the op" - taking the car to the garage for repairs and the XXSCat dog to the vet for annual vaccinations, emptying our glass recycling bins at the dump, and cutting the hedges - interspersed with bouts of cleaning, tidying, laundry and anxious list-making. I had hoped to do some relaxing and unwinding too, but it turns out that (for me) getting ready for an operation feels very similar to preparing to go on holiday (I suffer from Pre-Holiday Dread Syndrome). Essentially this means stress levels increase exponentially right up to the point that the car leaves the driveway (or the anaesthetic knocks me out) and there's no choice but to surrender to whatever comes next! So rather than feeling serene and well-rested, at this point I actually feel completely frazzled.

Creative activities have helped to distract me a little, and will hopefully help a lot more in the weeks to come. The dolly below belongs to my friend's great niece, who lives in Poland. She is a wistful little thing who apparently has only one item of clothing to fit her - some well-worn pyjama bottoms! 

I have been working on a new wardrobe for her, using my own thuggish-looking baby as a model. When I was trying to find a doll with similar measurements to the photo I discovered that although their faces are very different, their bodies are identical - literally cast from the same mould. I have been promising poor thug baby a wooly hat and cardigan ever since I rescued her from the charity shop, so I will make her a set of her own once I've finished the emergency clothing parcel for her Polish twin. I'm not sure that red is really her colour though - perhaps a soft violet would bring out the blue in her fierce little eyes.

I did a bit of decorative patching on some comfy new jeans - they are intentionally well-worn, vintage-looking, and came with an artful rip in the right knee which (apart from being annoying to wear) was just a bit too "out there" for someone in their mid-fifties, even if I am a bit of an aging hippy type. I didn't have the patience to mark grid-lines, so the stitching isn't perfect, but I really like the effect.

I also embarked on what was intended to be a post-op long term project to use up all the random double-knitting yarn that has accumulated in my stash over the years - a rainbow coloured mini-mania-scarf blanket! This was (almost) a complete failure. Not only did I end up buying MORE double-knitting yarn in order to complete the rainbow spectrum (little or no red, orange or yellow-green in my stash to begin with) but after a couple of rainbow sequence repeats I realised that it was going to be far too garish bright for an entire blanket. So I cast off and turned it back into a scarf. Which I actually really love, but may have to wait a while to leave the house in, as my husband's tactful response was, "Hmmm. It is quite bright - maybe you should save it to wear in winter, to cheer you up!" Unfortunately he followed this up with a far less tactful remark - "It's a bit Tom Baker in Dr Who!" A quick Google search might have told him that it's actually far more Jodie Whittaker in Dr Who, but nvertheless, point taken, it's quite high on the quirky spectrum .

I started work on some painted pebble place settings for my daughter's friend's wedding in July. She wants 25 in total, and I've completed 4 so far. I think this will be a good project for post-op convalescing. I'd just spray varnished the Groom pebble in the photo below - it has a matt finish like the Bride's when dry.

There was also great excitement last week when my friend had a Little Free Library box installed outside her house. This is a wonderful, positive, community-based project which has resulted in a growing network of Little Free Libraries across the city. Our excitement was bittersweet because the lovely lady who championed the scheme in Leeds died (after a long illness) just a few days before the box was installed. This was the last box she decorated (it's a beauty!) and we hope to honour her memory by keeping its shelves well stocked for many years to come.

...Seahouses III

Back to the beach where land and sky meet, with my eldest son as our companion.

See how the receding tide leaves artful doodles around every pebble.

Observe the textures and patterns, the soft glow of sunlight through a shell.

Bamburgh Castle offers glimpses of heavenly blue.

Ferns take root in tiny crevices, pebbles are assembled to form a rugged cobbled path. In the village abstract expressionist timbers mimic Rothko .

The scaffolding is gone from Lindisfarne Castle - it braces itself against the elements.

The beach presents fresh treasures, jewel-like on the sand.

Rocks at low tide reveal teeming colonies of barnacles.

We venture out to sea to visit the seals, puffins and kittiwakes.

 

 A shell fragment shimmers blue in my palm as we say "Au revoir".

...miniature groceries

We called into a Lidl shop the weekend before last, and, as luck would have it, there in the Central Aisle of Random Joy were two little leftover boxes of doll's house furniture. A kitchen set, and a bedroom set. Naturally, I just had to buy them!

Nearly a year ago, feeling nostalgic for happy hours of childhood play and with a view to indulging my adult love of miniature worlds, I bought a flat pack doll's house from Ikea to decorate. It is still waiting to be assembled - partly due to creative paralysis about choice of decor, and partly due to having nowhere sensible to put it! Poor Miss Lavender, the prospective tenant, has been waiting patiently to move in ever since.

Having opened the furniture boxes to inspect the contents, it seemed only right to try them out for size. A space was cleared on the shelf, and in less than no time Miss Lavender was seated at her little kitchen table, admiring her smart new red and white kitchen. After a quick rummage through a little box of dolly accoutrements she was even able to enjoy a cup of tea and a slice of cherry pie.

As is sometimes the way on a quiet weekend, one thing led to another. Out came the air-dry clay, and before I knew it I had a basketful of vegetables (red onion, potatoes, turnip and carrots), a fruit bowl complete with fruit (apples, bananas, plums and an orange), a crusty loaf, and some Emmental with a little wooden cheese board! I painted and varnished them the following day (being so tiny they were dry in no time), and Miss Lavender celebrated by having a friend round for tea.

I really am going to have to find a space for the doll's house now. This was just so much fun!

...purple and green

"Red and green should never be seen!"

Apart from bright red berries against deep green holly leaves, perhaps?

 Either way, based on these recent garden lovelies I'd like to propose that purple and green should always be seen...

Purple and green are my friend Julia's favourite colours. A while ago I made her this pretty, lilac-hued, ruffle-edged scarf. She wears it all the time.

Over the past couple of weeks I've been working on this similarly proportioned sage green scarf, edged with sun-dew-plant-inspired tentacles, to give to her for her 50th birthday today.

It was quite a labour of love - those tentacles are FIDDLY - but she absolutely loved it, so it was absolutely worth it!

Purple and green should always be seen.

...two years later

I collected up as many photos as possible to look back over the past year's creative endeavours. There are a few bits and pieces missing, as I sometimes forget to take a picture before giving things away, but most of it is here.

There's been plenty of knitting - hats, scarves and baby clothes mostly. I've started and and abandoned a couple of jumpers for myself along the way. Just can't seem to find the right yarn or the right pattern or the right gauge, and end up unravelling them in hope of finding a more suitable project later.

It's been a great year for the rescued toy brigade knitted-garment-wise. No issues with yarn, pattern or gauge when I'm making things up as I go along!

There's also been a fair bit of miscellaneous making - a couple of  tunics, some collage pictures for friends  and some painted pebbles/wood.

I wonder what's in store for the next year? There will definitely be knitting - a 50th birthday gift is on the needles right now. I think I'd like there to be more sewing - after all, I need to see if my cheap and cheerful overlocker will work - and also more painting. Maybe some doll making too...