Under the Apple Tree

We've reached the stage with our house where we're running out of projects and looking for what to do next. It's funny when doing up your house becomes a hobby and you start to think, "What shall we do when we've done everything?" Of course, that will never happen, however, we have made two new projects for ourselves, both rather large, though one more so than the other. The first is that we are going to replace the bathroom. Only the suite and the floor, as the whole room is tiled and it would be a mammoth and expensive job to replace them. They are large and white with bevelled edges, and there is a row of coloured mosaic tiles around the centre. Perfectly inoffensive, and plenty of potential for improvement.

The other, somewhat larger job is that we have begun to strip the paint of the front of the house. It began when Marno, after a few weeks of saying what a bad state the paint on the bay windows was in, took a chisel out to the front garden to see how easily the paint would come off. Low and behold, it stripped off like wallpaper over most of the surface, revealing very well preserved sandstone, typical of the majority of houses in Cardiff and one of my favourite features. We are hoping to be able to keep the sandstone bare and just treat it with a weatherproofing finish, but I want to paint the sills, which are currently black gloss, a nice matt charcoal grey, rather more period I think!

Here's a progress shot;  it's not particularly clear, but you can see where we've removed the paint on the bottom bay (n.b. not all of it came off like wallpaper - there's still a fair bit to remove from that one!)

So what was I doing under the apple tree? Well the point I was getting to with the above is that, what with all these projects suddenly piling up around our ears, you'd think we'd make the most of the weather and get on with it, but it's been so gorgeous here, we spent a lot of Saturday sitting on the picnic mat in the shade of our beautiful apple tree, chatting, (me) knitting and reading, and generally chilling, followed by a lovely barbeque at a friend's house in the evening.

 View from the picnic mat


 I made a little progress on my Shellseeker, which is charging along, for me. I'm so glad I changed my technique, it's made such a massive difference to my speed, and the alpaca couldn't be more perfect for this project.

So all in all, a rather pleasant weekend with far too much relaxing and certainly not enough work, but you just have to make the most of these rare moments of warmth and sunlight I think.

There's what I'm reading - The Help. A fantasic book, which, on this very rare occasion, I'm glad to have seen the film of before I read the book, because it's written in the accent of the narrators of the story, and it really helps to have that fresh in your head. I can imagine it would read rather peculiarly otherwise.

Last Friday I was due to have some friends over from our church with their little ones. There were supposed to be four of us mummies and six babies and children, but in the end, only one friend could make it with her two - a seven month old and three year old. Anyway, in anticipation of such a crowd, I hastened to the kitchen to make a gargantuan chocolate fudge cake. There would be plenty for all for us, but hopefully not too much left for Marno and me to have to finish. Unfortunately, as I was in the process of making, which was the day before, the friend who did come texted me to say it would only be her. Oh dear! I foresaw myself wrestling inside for the next week until the chocolate cake was finished, as there was no way it was going to be demolished the following afternoon...

 Several slices later, I packed it off to work with Marno yesterday, to remove the temptation once and for all. It went down very well with his boss!

xxx Sam

A Room With a View

As is probably obvious from my severe lack of posts recently, I just haven't had the time to post, and when the time has presented itself, in the evenings, I generally find I'm too braindead from looking after a toddler all day to compose anything. Harsh as it may sound, looking after a toddler all day, every day, does sap your brain power. I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about what projects I'd love to be working on, whilst sitting on the floor with Noah and being handed pieces of toddler sized puzzle (or whilst trying to have a peaceful breakfast!) with accompanying "uh, uh" sound. We frequently refer to Noah as a seal at the moment, due to said sound.

This post is being written whilst I wait for dinner to be ready, with the laptop plugged in on the kitchen worktop. I took these photos a couple of weeks ago, when the cherry blossoms which line our street came into full bloom. April must be my favourite time of year in our home, and the view from our bedroom window is of the cherry blossom tree immediately outside our house. The pink complements our bedroom decor perfectly, most conveniently!

As you can see, I've been messing around with the camera effects. The fifth and sixth are vivid and the last is toy camera effect. I love how you can create instant atmosphere, especially if you're not a fantastic photographer - I'm not!

I have so many posts to write, and I really am going to try harder to make time to post more often. I can't believe I'm not even making once a week. I've decided to expand my content repertoire to include a bit of cooking and baking as well. I cook every night, so have plenty to say about that, and have been really getting into baking recently. I have a plethora of cake photos just waiting patiently to be recalled from the depths of my blog photos folder. I'm hoping to have a finished Apres Surf very soon as well; just the neckband to knit now. It's Wonderwool Wales next weekend, so I've been planning on what projects to buy for. I also ripped out my pathetic attempt at the Spring Forward sock this evening, ready to recommence with renewed focus sometime soon. I have a couple of small projects I have yarn for already, and I'm definitely ready for a small one considering how long I've been slaving working on Apres Surf.

Have a fantastic and restful (if you need it) weekend :)

x Sam

A Rapid Transformation

Since putting the curtains up, we became more and more dissatisfied with the browny-grey colour of the dining room walls. We bought a new paint sample in a lighter grey, and also tried the same white that the cladding is painted in (bear in mind we are not neutral people!) and just hated both of them. This room is a problem because in the morning it gets bright sunlight, but for the rest of the day has no direct sunlight, so although not dark, it needs a warm colour to make up for lack of direct light. Because the kitchen was completely tiled before we ripped it out, we'd just painted the dining room in the colour that best complemented the adjacent middle room, which is a gorgeous yellow. But because the three rooms are interlinked, the new colour for the dining room walls had to go with what was already there. Well I finally had the obvious idea of painting it the same colour as the kitchen, and its been a roaring success!Its gone from a room I didn't particularly enjoy spending time in, to a vibrant, smile inducing space in perfect harmony with its adjacent rooms and really enjoyable to sit and eat in (or to sit and write a blog post in!).

Unfortunately, because of the shape of this back area of the house, its hard to get a good angle which encompasses the whole space, and I also took these photos while Noah was having his nap, so they are rather rushed, but you get the general idea. Oh, I also have only put one curtain back up because, due to my perfectionist tendancies, I can't bear to look at the other one hanging there and awkwardly rumpling because it's slightly too long! It will be reinstated when I've taken it up.

 View from the middle room

From the kitchen (try to ignore the stripy high chair!)

 Our old Ikea shelves which I painted with acrylic eggshell to tie in with the cladding and kitchen shelves. They're not finished yet - the top shelf needs some things added.

 Nigella Lawson spoons set

 Photos on the ledge. 

We're currently deciding what to do with this wall. We don't want to hang pictures again and make another disaster, and I quite like the photos just sitting on the ledge, but Marno still prefers the idea of putting photos, though not the current ones, up. We'd do a uniform wall using the same frames, two parallel rows of six frames if we do do it.

 Close up of the ledge
 

 Shelves detail

I got this absolutely gorgeous card in Nest Vintage Living in Cardiff. I won't link because I'm sure I've mentioned it before. Its by Sally Swannell, and she has the most gorgeous selection of her prints as greetings cards. I had to but this as it just made me feel happy and warm inside. Everything about this print just says warmth, love and contentment. I'm hoping to get a pretty frame for it at some point. What a fab and cheap way of bringing art into your home - just buy it as a card (though this image is printed on high quality card, so you have to be a bit choosy).

Have a beautiful weekend; the weather's meant to be gorgeous here!

xxx Sam

Too much going on

I finished the dining room curtains the other week. I am reasonably pleased with them, but they are slightly too long on one side, which I think is due in part to my inaccurate measuring (I did rush these a little...) and the fact that the wall is unlikely to be straight. It's great to have curtains up in this room finally, and to have got rid of the ugly vertical blind, but I feel like whatever we do with this room I'm never entirely happy.

Well, this is my favourite photo of the curtains because it hides the too long bit on the left...

... although it is in clear view here!

I just wish the kitchen and dining room were always this tidy!

Frustrations with this room focus mainly on the wall colour - is it right or isn't it? It's a rich colour, "Silt" by Little Greene, but I don't know that its right for a dining room. It's right next to the strong pink in the kitchen too, so although it goes, I think it may be better if it were toned down a little, maybe to French Grey. The curtain colour doesn't clash with the wall, which we were a little afraid of, but something just doesn't gel. I'm not convinced about the rug either. It went very well with the vertical blind, funnily enough, since it was cream, but not with this curtain fabric. I love the spotty tablecloth because it ties in with the kitchen walls, but something needs to pull it all together. Oh, the photo wall is in an obvious state of unfinishedness, with gaping holes and too many frames I'm not happy with.

So all in all, rather a lot of amendments to make to this room!

I've realized lately just how many projects I have on the go, or have in my head, waiting to be written down so I can get round to them one day. I downloaded a really good app yesterday, and took great delight in creating lists of current and ongoing projects, and of ideas which have yet to be realized. I also made a lovely list of the things we need to do on the house, to which I've just realized I shall need to add after re-reading what I've written above!

Is it possible to have too many interests though? I mean, my main creative pursuits at present are knitting, spinning, designing and making sewing patterns, a bit of sketching... there are definitely more. My issue at the moment is I have so many clothing designs in my head (and other items such as soft furnishings and bags), but I don't have time to bring them to fruition. I also have a slight fear of designing knitwear, I realized earlier when considering it. I can't put my finger on the exact reason, though I think it may have a lot to do with the maths necessary to calculate a pattern, but I'm pretty sure if I just went ahead and designed and knitted a pattern that it would come out fine and perfectly wearable. You see, I'm one of those annoying creative people who feel like, if they're following a pattern whgich has been written by somebody else, they're not really being creative. However, I definitely want people to buy my patterns and make them, so is that fair? I suppose different people have different needs when it comes to feeling creative. I also think it stems very much from my Fine Art training - I would never have copied somebody else's painting and handed it in as my own piece of work, therefore why would I do it with any other creative skill? I'm thinking out loud a lot here, so you'll have to forgive my ramblings.

And I only wanted to make the point that I have an awful lot of projects on the go, so does that mean that I'm happy being a jack of all trades and a master of none? I want to be a master of them all, but that's not likely to happen! I have four Kim Hargreaves books, from which I've knitted from two of them, two hats and two cardigans. I was flicking through them last night to see if there were any more projects from them I fancied doing. I'm thinking at this time of year that Wonderwool Wales is just round the corner and am aware I need to plan what to spend money on there, rather than wandering round aimlessly and coming away with nothing useful. I don't know whether to buy yarn for one of Kim's designs (or for any other in my Ravelry favourites), or to take the plunge and buy yarn to make one of my own designs, which I'd probably need to plan in full before Wonderwool. That's what I really want to do, which I suppose answers my question, and I just need to swallow my apprehension and get on with it, accepting the fact that it will be a drawn out process.

Its funny what you can find inside yourself if you will engage in the conversation - you so often come to your own conclusion.

I'd love to know if other people have these thoughts and questions in their heads too. If your reading and you have any insights, I would absolutely love to hear them.

Love, Sam x

Winter evenings

We've been blessed with an incredibly mild winter here in Britain; we haven't even had frost here in South Wales. We had a delivery of four tons of logs a few months ago, which I think I mentioned a while back, and we've barely used any of them. As January runs into February, I'm hoping that the mildness will remain, and give way to the new life of spring without any rude interjections of unseasonal weather, such as snow in April, as has been known here in recent years. So with that intro, you may be wondering why this post is entitled "Winter evenings". Well we have got the woodburner going some evenings, and over Christmas we decorated the shelves in the middle living room with fairy lights, which we've been reluctant to take down yet, as they aren't Christmassy particularly, but they do bring more cosiness to the room on these dark evenings.

Let me explain about our living rooms. We have a summer living room and a winter living room. This may sound very grand, but let me assure you that it isn't particularly. The front, or summer, living room is at the front of the house and has a large bay window. It is open to the hallway and is quite cool in winter, but it as also South facing therefore gets the sun all afternoon. It is painted in Little Greene's Normandy Grey, which is possibly the most relaxing colour known to man, and is perfect for sitting in in the summer months. The middle living room is entirely in contrast. It is heavily influenced by Marno's South African roots and is painted in Farrow and Ball's Babouche, a beautiful, deep and warm yellow, and furnished with dark wood pieces and a dark sofa, as well as housing the log burner. This room also has the original tiled floor, which enhances it's warmth, though the previous owners didn't take advantage of it - the room was magnolia before we got our hands on it! Its is an incredibly cosy room. Well, what seems to happen every year, quite spontaneously, is that we will have spent the winter being cosy in the middle room, then, all of a sudden, when the evenings are drawing out and warmth is returning to the air, one of us will comment that we've not been in the front living room for ages, and we will find ourselves almost immediately migrating to that room, not to sit in the middle living room for months on end. Then, when the evenings are drawing in and the chill returns, the same thing will happen but the other way round. I think its a great thing actually, as it helps us make good use of the space in the house and not to neglect one room permantly in favour of another. It also means we benefit from the advantages of each room in the seasons they are most pleasurable.

So, I took some photos of the middle room the other night, as I said in my previous post, and I have to show them before they become a little unseasonal. Just have a little break from whatever you're doing, and  feel the warmth and cosiness. I hope you can get a little pleasure from it too.

Mmmmm, lovely :)

We still have a couple of things we want to do in here. We are planning another shelf above the sofa, quite high up, and we want a couple of wall mounted oil lamps to go on the chimney breast, with something in between them. We were joking the other night about me painting an old fashioned portrait of Marno; very dark colours with significant objects strategically placed within the painting. Joking aside, I'd love to do something like that. It would certainly be original, in a slightly paradoxical way.

I've just (literally) finished my Moon hat and its currently blocking, so photos of that to come, and I'm also in the middle of making curtains for the dining room. There are the usual unfinished projects on the go as well, so plenty to be getting on with.

xxx Sam

The Selfish Crafter

I can't deny it. I love making things for myself, or for my home. I know why it is; it's because I'm slow. I'm a slow knitter. Consistent but slow. I'm less slow at sewing, actually a reasonable pace, and I suppose if I was going to make something for someone, it would be better for them if it was sewn rather than knitted, if they ever hoped to get it. But the thing with this speed problem is that more and more things I want to knit, or design and sew, build up, and by the time I've finished (finally) the thing I'm working on, I have to choose out of that multitude of things. I do often run knitting and sewing projects alongside, but I never knit more than one item at a time. I think I need to change that actually.

So it may come as a surprise after reading the above, that I have actually made some things for other people! The other week I finished a beautiful pair of curtains I'd been making for some dear friends to go in their beautiful, Laura Ashley adorned, living room. The fabric was duck egg blue dupion silk. They were my second ever pair of curtains, and I must say, I am incredibly pleased with them. Unfortunately I'm less pleased with the photos I took of them so bear with me.

 

Ignore the cheeky chappies in the foreground.

I did take a couple with the curtains closed but becaue it was daytime, they didn't come out too well. I didn't interline the curtains as we didn't want them to look too grand. I love the more raw look of silk; so although they do look quite posh, they don't look over the top. They finished the room off really well, so I was really glad to have been able to use I skill that I have to help someone else.

This post started off being about how I never make things for anyone else. Well here's another thing I made for the same friend.

A lovely knitted heart from a sweet book called Vintage Hearts and Flowers by Kate Haxell.

This was actually the first "thing" I knitted. Not that one though, but this one...

... nestled in amongst our collection of ceramics, prints and cards on the living room mantelpiece.

The tall buildings on the far left we bought in Halkidiki in Greece many years ago. Marno loves ceramics and collects small pots with beautiful glazes. My mum writes the calligraphy Bible verses which we have a few of around the house.

I got these lovely prints from the makers gallery in Painswick. They're actually cards which I framed, but they look perfect (the hare print in the first and second photos of the mantelpiece is also one of them).

So, after that digression, my conclusion is that I need to speed up, with knitting at least. But I'm sure the reason for my lack of speed is my poor technique. My knitting is very neat but could be so much faster. The thing is, I don't want to spend time on knitting practise when I could be knitting an actual thing. Maybe if I knit something thats masses of stocking stitch I can practise as I go, but would that mess up my gauge? I'm just vocalising my thoughts here, so if anybody has any helpful advice, please let me know.

xxx Sam

After... and before

Oooh, how exciting; blogger have updated the options for designing blogs so I've given myself a little makeover. I adore the leafy background, and the font I've chosen for the blog title... mmmmm :) So I'm planning on a major increase in my blog usage. Actually, my new design has inspired me to do something I meant to do ages ago. When we moved into this house I documented a reasonable amount of the work we did, but I never got round to showing all the rooms in their before and after states. The reason the design inspired me is because it reminds me of our bedroom - gorgeous, soothing green walls with a few dashes of pink and some lovely charcoal grey. A delicious selection of colours!

So, to restart, and also continue, as I wrote about this a couple of posts ago (which have been few and far between of late), we've finally finished our kitchen! I can't believe its actually taken six months, from first stripping off the delightful beige tiles interspersed with mini cottages, with a truely sensational (!) scene of a whole village above the hob - delightful! to putting my lovely new compost caddies in place, which were just delivered this evening. There are still a few things to finish off - please ignore the hideous electrical paraphernalia above the far left window! It will be boxed in eventually. I need to put more stuff on the larger shelves and hang some things from the hooks, put a clock up and other things on the walls, but thats the kind of stuff that comes with time.

 

 

The kitchen is long and narrow, so I've started with the far end and I'm kind of going round in a circle clockwise (apart from the next photo which is a little detail). One of my favourite details is the tiling between the hob and extractor fan.

Mmmm lovely bread bin by Falcon from Amazon and Compost caddies by Typhoon, also from Amazon. We chose to grout the tiles in grey because the kitchen joins onto the dining room, which is painted in Silt by Little Greene, which is a grey-brown colour, and the writing on the bread bin and colour of the caddies ties in perfectly.

 

You can see the electrics peeping out of the top of this photo.

 

View over the breakfast bar to the far end.

From far end down to sink end. As you can see, there ae plenty of hooks crying out for exciting things to hang from them...

 

And the breakfast bar end.

Our kitchen is really difficult to photograph due to its narrowness, so I hope you get the picture (no pun intended, chuckle). 

Here are a couple more close ups of little bits I love...

 Little bird cup size measures.

 I love this photo of Marno and me; feels like a long time ago now. This was taken at Grantchester, one of my favourite places in England, even though I've only been there once, but it was in an April and the blossoms were all out, and we had the most delicious cheese scones you can imagine.

I love having a utensil pot!

My spice shelves. Marno thought I should buy identical pots to decant all the spices into (yawn, I certainly don't have time for that!), but prefer them to look used - I'm keepin' it real! Hahaha!

A delightful little brown owl, keeping guard over them. 

In the process of writing this, I remembered I did have some things I was waiting for somewhere to hang, so I rushed upstairs and got them, but photos will have to wait for another time.

I have two more photos, but they're both "befores". I didn't want to spoil the beginning of the post with them ;) but here they are just so you can get the general idea. They were actually taken on our second viewing of the house, so please excuse me and the vendor lady.

Delightful, orange pine units. You can even see a couple of the cottages to the right, though unfortunately we are obscuring the whole village scene with our heads!

Horrible glass cabinet with tinted orangey glass and fake lead. Its incredible how many people thought it was nice, including my mum!!! It looks like something is growing out of the top!

Well, there you have it. A ridiculously long account of our kitchen. Oh no, there was something I wanted to add. It was actually in defence of Ikea, where we got the kitchen from. I read the other day on a blog someone disparaging Ikea and calling it generic (ok, I can't exactly argue with that), but not everyone can afford bespoke furniture, and not everybody has the patience, or indeed time, to scour antiques or flea markets to find the right furniture that way. Yes, Ikea is mass produced, but you can still make it your own by using other things, such as paint and accessories, or whatever you like (incidentally, the paint in the kitchen is Rhubarb by Paint Library). Having said that, we have far less Ikea in our house than we had when we were younger and in our flat. You just have to be selective. We have our own original artworks, and collect things when we go away, so it all adds together to make a lovely portrait of the owners of a home.

Thank you and goodnight!

xxx Sam