mmmmm summer....

Pinks and purples in the garden, in my dinner and on new linen colours being dyed as we speak....

Weekend in the country

Finally summer, and suddenly living in the country feels like being on holiday. It's been nearly two years since we moved here from London, yet I still pinch myself every day and even more so when I can come home from work and sit in a quiet, shady garden, slurp watermelon and watch the cats bounce around in the grass.

This weekend was also the Machen Agricultural Show in our village. I've been looking forward to it as last summer, our first in Wales, the weather was so atrocious that the show had to be cancelled for the first time in 75 years. But what a difference a year makes - families all in their lightest summer clothes all coming out to watch the dog and horse shows, enjoy the bouncy castles and meet some more or less usual animals. There may have been meerkats and owls and chickens of all shapes and sizes, but my heart belongs solely to the pygmy goats.

 

 

 

And also a little bit to this stunner: if I could style my house, my kitchen and my car after it, I would.

 

 

Feeling very much like that last sleepy goat after a morning in the sun, we retreated to our garden for the rest of the day. Progress on my rag rug was made:

 

 

 

In fact, that loom makes a lot more sense to me for rag rugs. I couldn't really see myself weaving lengths and lengths of scarfs and wraps - I feel that I achieve more wearable things by knitting, and knitting is much more portable and easy to just pick up whenever you feel like it. Warping and threading the loom still bores me to death, I absolutely hate it, but the quick progress you make weaving rags goes some of the distance to make up for that. Since looking into it, I have also discovered how addictive rag rugs are. There is a huge tradition of rag rugs in Sweden and once you start looking at them, they are mesmerising in their variations. I will assemble a few inspirational pictures for my next post to show you all.

 

I am still knitting! It may seem like I'm distracted by all kinds of other things, but really, all along, I still keep a project by my side! My current one is just...not all that exciting to show off. In a stash-busting effort, I pulled out a couple of my big cones of DK linen from Texere Yarns - they used to come in many more colours than they do now, which is a shame because at £6.50 for 400gr, they are incredible value for money - this loose tunic in a plus size is not even going to use up two of those!(just watch out for the variations in thickness) .

 

 

Top-down tunic with a tunisian neck with hopefully an interesting graduation between the grey and the brown. Main body is nearly finished, just sleeves left after that - hoping to have it ready for my summer holiday as all my cotton sweaters are so incredibly heavy to travel with!





Getting distracted

First of all, my sincerest apologies for the quality of the following pictures. Time seems to be hopelessly running away from me and I just seem to be gaining new timeconsuming hobbies that I really don't need!
Having safely shipped off the embroidery yarns to Belgium (where they seem to have been a roaring success) , I set about ironing and preparing all the vintage fabrics for the Vintage Bazaar in Frome...and boy did I not realise quite how many there were in the house!

In the end, this was our rather well-filled stall:

 

It was a lovely day out, and the hall at the Cheese and Grain looked fab and colourful. I kept sneaking off to have a look at the other stalls a couple of times over, finding some really useful french linen sheets to make clothes out of - I've done this before as antique linen wears like nothing on earth, but I've had to bring the sheets back on the plane and they are incredibly heavy and eat in to my luggage allowance usually reserved for cheese!

This was my favourite buy of the day - I'd spotted it on the stall behind us first thing in the morning but thought I would pace myself a little and see how the day went....that was until someone else looked like they were about to buy it and my heart leapt....I realised how much really I wanted it and pounced on it as soon as the customer had left!

 (really, these photos are shocking...)











I've also finally started tackling one of my Ercol armchairs.....and if I ever make a move to buy a dark stained piece of furniture with lots of spindles on that require sanding back, please talk me out of it!

Here it is before I started on it - I've now done most of it with a tiny little powersander.

And this is what I am trying to achieve, except in cherry red - I really like the smaller spindles being left natural wood:

picture from Fireflyhouse.co.uk

             

My other great distraction? A weaving loom. Specifically, a 4shaft table loom that someone generously gave me. Well, when I say "gave", I really mean " dumped on me because she got bored of it", but a great gift it is nonetheless. I've always pondered weaving - when I was little, we had a full size floorloom in our textile classroom that we were allowed a go on if we'd finished our tasks and I loved the weaving itself- but setting the loom up in the first place always seemed incredibly daunting to me and I don't think I would ever have invested the money in the equipment just to have a go.
So far I've only produced this really pathetic little effort ( it is that small because I can't count properly) but I've nearly got it set up for a rag-rug runner now, so hopefully I will have something slightly more impressive to show after the weekend :)

 

 

Special Order....

Last week I told you I was preparing a little something for Marylenes shop in Ruette. Well, here it is, or rather, here they are:

The new Squeaky Elliot embroidery threads!
These are a 100% wool crewel weight in 25 meter skeins.

These are currently exclusive to Marylene for her workshop with textile artist Lea Stansal next week, but if they are well received and there is enough interest, I will be adding them to my etsy shop too.
So feel free to let me know if you would like to see more of these :)

BIG SQUISHY SALE!!

A huge 20% off all Squishy Sock, Squishy Merino and Luxury Lace during the whole month of June.

Come and get them while you can!!

The Giant Vintage Rag Market in Frome

And now to something completely different....well, not completely, but a little.
I am delighted to have secured a stall at The Giant Vintage Rag Market in Frome at the end of the month - Saturday the 29th of June to be exact.
Over the years, I have amassed a bit of a collection of vintage fabrics ranging from the 40s through to my favourite 60s and 70s. I've never quite had the time to list them and post them on ebay as originally intended, so I am really pleased to be able to take them directly to the public where they can really see and feel the fabrics themselves.

I've been to a couple of events organised by The Vintage Bazaar and I can heartily recommend a visit if you are in the area - the atmosphere is always buzzing and joyous and they really value good quality stock - strictly no post-1980s or endless racks of clothing, just lots and lots of vintage fabrics and haberdashery.

If you are coming by, come and say hello! I won't have the yarns with me as such, but if there is anything you have your eye on, let me know and I can always pop it in the boot :)

3 country weekend

I had a little weekend trip to Luxembourg to visit my mother last week, and as usual, caught up with some of my favourite old (and some new) haunts.
Three countries in one weekend may sound impressive, but when it takes on average 20min to cross any given border, it's really not that much of a feat.
We started east to Germany and the town of Trier - a nice, mid-size sort of sensible town which reminds me a little of where I grew up in Sweden, with a market, a department store, a proper fabric shop and a couple of nothing-fancy-but-perfectly-useful yarn shops. Wolle Roedel is a German chain of shops, selling mostly their own brand yarns and a good range of KnitPro needles. They have yarns for every use, especially a big range of commercial sock yarns (including Regia) and a great choice of cotton yarns in lots of happy colours, perfect for baby blankets. It's a really nice shop to go in to - not as touchy-feely as more arty ones, but all neat, colourful, rows and clear labelling.

  I bought some of their funky thick sock yarn for some funky quick-knit socks. Sock yarn for lazy people, essentially.


            



We had lunch at my very favourite place in town: Biogate - a huge health food shop serving food on a counter in the middle of the store. They run a choice of 5 dishes of the day, always vegetarian and super fresh - not the kind of stewed, stodgy food you might associate with that kind of place. I always come away from there feeling like I've topped up all my vitamin levels for the next 6 months.



      




We didn't have much time as we still wanted to make it over to Belgium that afternoon, so I quickly ran to the Orthopedic shop in search of some Birkenstock sandals for the summer. I love Birkenstocks and a couple of years ago, I discovered that you could get the basic models much cheaper from these dusty old shops that sell support tights and other such glamorous things. I really enjoyed supporting this old fashioned little place, but unfortunately, it is now so old fashioned that the couple running it are about to retire and therefore had about 5 pairs of shoes left in the whole shop and none of them in my size. Still, it was fun while it lasted.

The other thing Trier has in spades are Konditoreien - pastry shops and cafes. We really didn't have time for a sit-down coffee and cake but couldn't resist buying a couple of slices of the glossiest, most beautiful chocolate truffle cake - to be enjoyed on my mothers vintage china when we got home.

We then drove on to Belgium and the small town of Virton. This is a whole new discovery for me this year - noone could have expected that such an unassuming place in the depths of rural Belgium would actually house a proper quality yarn shop! But La Compagnie des Laines does exist - and they are currently test-knitting the Luxury Lace yarn by yours truly with a view to stock it soon!
They also stock a range of Rowan yarns, Malabrigo in several thicknesses, the Wall of Holst that the owner Ornella and I are posing in front (in my Holst jacket. not that I wore it there to show off or anything...) and lots of Lopi yarn - they seem mad for Lopi over on the continent!

Finally, we popped in to yet another surprising place: the Atelier Patchwork a Ruette. Ruette is a village just outside of Virton and in the village there is a house with a car mechanics one side and a tiny patchwork and embroidery shop the other. Marylene runs embroidery workshops from there and I needed to go in and see her to drop off some samples we'd been working on.....but more on that soon ;)