Gentle Arts

How many of you out there, like moi, have a trillion cookbooks by all the best known peeps, the Nigella's, the Jamie's and those Hairy Biker lads. But do you ever cook from them? How many of you have a trillion books on crochet, sewing, quilting, patchwork etc?

I imagine that like moi, you snatch them off the postman before he realises what has happened, you tear into the packaging and then devour the book from cover to cover whilst drinking your coffee and scoffing a biscuit or three dozen. You ooh and you ahh and you dream, you probable even blog about it and then....you put it on the bookshelf.....and there it sits and sits and sits. Am I hitting on any nerves here, go on, be honest?
Well there is a new book on the block and I can honestly say that I want to make virtually everything from page one to whatever it says on the last page (actually 152), and I am determinded to have a go. I am of course talking about Jane Brocket's new Gentle Art of Knitting. There are a total of 40 projects inside, all of them completely irresistable, and more importantly for me, actually do-able. Simple straight forward and easy.

I want those socks to wear in front of my fire.......and Mr Fairy can have the other pair.

I want to wear these pretty gloves on a cold winters morning when out walking the dog....

I will of course need these cushions on my sofa and one of these blankets over my knees whilst knitting another project..........

and talking of blankets, this one is a must for my bed where I will tuck myself up and carry on knitting something else from the book.....

I will drink my morning tea from a suitably dresses teapot and choose something to wear from the wardrobe that will be hanging on one of these pretties...

I love, love, love these coathangers and was seen recently outside a well known supermarket rummaging around in their coathanger bin, where I acquired four perfect wooden hangers (I did ask in the store if I could take them before anyone asks).  So easy and so addictive, I made these three over the weekend.

I love reading about her inspiration for each project and the advice she offers on the type of yarns and suitable replacements etc. I can thoroughly recommend this lovely book. Gloves are next on my list methinks. Happy knitting!


Dev x

May Scavengers Hunt

It's time to reveal my pictures for May.  I can't tell you how many times I forgot to take my camera out with me and has resulted in panic stations over the past few days in an effort to collate them all.  So here goes...in no particular order....

A building of local interest..not local to me, but by the seaside at Hastings.  It is made from half a boat.

Something Blue.....my gorgeous Monsoon bag.

A bicycle...

A butterfly...crochet by moi....

A red door, not as easy as it sounds as nowhere within 100 miles seems to have a red front door,  soooo.......

A cartoon character...The gorgeous Scooby Dooby Dooooooooooooooooooooo!

An emergency vehicle...Now I have an ambulance station at the end of the road where I work, so one would assume that it would be easy peasy, lemon squeasy to get a shot of one rushing off...Not so.  Also, I work in a rather sensitive area where a camera can raise a bit of a security problem.  So this was the best that I could do without causing a national alert!

Think Vintage....

I have owned this brooch about 20 years now and the lady who gave it to me was somwhere in her mid 80's.  It was a present for her 18th birthday and so I think this could be classed as a vintage piece.  I love, love it.

A portrait in black and white.....my gorgeous, tousled, Little Fairy.

A street light...A bit Narnian in my opinion, just add snowflakes and Mr Tumnus!

A sign of the zodiac.  This caught me out because I assumed that all papers with horescopes would have pictures...not so as I found out in a panic..so a google image I'm afraid. 

Texture, how about this juicy pineapple all gnarly and nobbly, nice with cream too.

And that's your lot...phew!

Now I need your help ladies because I am having serious problems in leaving comments on some of your blogs. I will try and explain because I am no expert and find anything like this really confusing.  So, when I log in and comment I seem to get 2 main ways of doing.  The easiest one and the most common is to click on the comments at the bottom of the post and type into the box, using a security word if necessary and the comment appears.

The second way and the one that is giving me grief, is when I click comments at the bottom, type in the box and then it asks me what account I want to use.  I click on Google account ( which is what I have always done in the past) and then use a security word and normally that is suffcient.  However, I am having problems when I do this and I have also noticed that it calls me an anonymous person??  Do you all know what I mean?  What is the difference?  Can anyone out there enlighten me.  I am also unable to see my list of followers on the right hand tool bar but according to my dashboard stands at 116.  Any ideas on that one?  I am floundering!  Someone HELP me before I lose the will to live.

Dev x