Abundance ...

I'm enjoying what I think is known as a glut! A glut of sweet peas. I'm not complaining.  The colours are divine. The scent heavenly.

I have two cane wigwams of them on my allotment and at the moment, I am stripping them every other day and what I haven't room for, I am giving away to friends.

I don't really need any more words, I can let the photos do the talking, but suffice to say I am A Very Happy Girl.

Shades of blue ...

The colour in my garden goes through cyclical changes as it progresses through the seasons. Spring starts with the welcome splash of sunny yellow with the narcissi and daffodils. It then gives way to the riot of colour that is the tulips. These are followed by the swathe of purple of the alliums, drawing my eye to the bottom border away from the by now rather messy tulip foliage. My acorn-shaped alliums are in full bud still and yet to flower, as are my few remaining allium cristophii, ready to explode firework-like at any minute.

At the moment it is a calming blue, with these autumn-sown cornflowers flowering like mad and I can barely keep up with cutting them and bringing them indoors.

They are wild, straggly and I love them!

I also sowed nigella in the autumn and although not quite as tall as their neighbour, they are flowering prolifically too. They are also providing me with endless photo opportunities as I find their flowers fascinating.

They are great for cutting and when they go over, the seed heads are almost too good for throwing away.

I'm a little over-excited that soon I'll be cutting delphiniums too. I've said before that it feels such a luxury to be able to cut from my own garden and these were top of my list to have on the cutting patch.

Soon, the colour palette will change again, with hot pinks and acid brights emerging. I have the first roses out which have already added some zing to the border. What's flowering in your garden?

Interpretation ...

I've loved having the opportunity lately of making some custom homewares for the customers in my Etsy shop. My love of colour is well documented here on this blog but it is wonderful to be able to interpret what other people might like with a mere suggestion of an idea. This pink and grey combination is another detour from my usual colour pairings but inspiring to play with.

From the seemingly limitless contents of my fabric stash, I can put together almost all possibilities of palettes, apart from, perhaps, black!

My brain has been nicely taxed too in making things I've never made before and I'm thinking that I might have to make one of these double oven gloves for myself too. They have been much admired by my craft club ladies so perhaps I can give them a lesson and make my own pair (or is it one?).

The perspex template I have been using for my current quilting project was perfect for rounding off the corners and I am now a dab hand at cutting curves with my tiny 28mm rotary cutter.

These Clover wonder clips were another useful bit of kit in finishing off the hand-sewing on the binding too.

This is the first set (one??!!) I made from the leftover scraps from the Spring Quilt I made last month and below is the complete order for the grey and pink collection, which includes placemats and napkins to co-ordinate.

I'm thinking I might make a couple more to add to the stock in my shop - what do you think? Or maybe use these as ideas for custom orders ... I'll have a think while I'm finishing up on my quilt top today.

Splash...

It is pouring and has been all day.

The rain is bouncing off the deck and the garden furniture.

Fortunately, it is not quite so dull indoors.

I have been to the nursery, picking my own dahlias.

Filling the house with colour.

And having a play with my macro lens.

Late summer...

Hot colours around Kew yesterday, captured on camera whilst walking and talking with Alice and Kristina.

The highlight of my day was Alice tentatively asking if we ever stopped for a drink or something to eat! Heehee.  Of course we do... eventually...!

Holidays have been taken and I am seriously considering adopting the habit of taking a siesta in the afternoon as a matter of routine.  Just an hour, but it seemed to make a whole lot of difference to the rest of the day.  Particularly if there were gorgeous beaches to wander along.

I am a creature of the shade and so have no tan to show off.  More an impressive (for me) list of three books read and reaching the letter K on my sampler (that I saved for my holiday, being light to pack) ticked off my to do list.

I am looking forward to the rest of the holidays to be able to write, write, write (deadline fast approaching), balanced out with some creative pursuits and perhaps some gardening.

Making me happy…

The first week of the school holidays has passed in a bit of a blur but it has been good to have No2 at home, even if all he does is sleep, play Xbox and grunt in reply to any attempted conversation.

For the first two days I looked after my two nephews and niece and I have to confess to being stunned at a period of quietness in the house only to discover they were playing… wait for it… a BOARD GAME!  Shock! Horror! No machines!

I have been able to spend 2 days writing and our book progress is steady, thanks to some self-discipline.  It means that I haven’t been able to spend as much time sewing or doing the other things that my busy hands usually like to do but s-l-o-w-l-y I have been making a quilt for my sister.

 

 

Putting together my quilt sandwich was made a whole lot easier after getting some clamps to hold it together on my kitchen table.  Crawling about on my hands and knees on the floor (usually with a nosy four-legged friend with a waggy tail helping getting in the way) was too much for my aching back.

 

(is it just me, or does this clamp remind you of an albatross?!)

As ever, I can’t wait to sew the binding on – maybe this weekend.

 

 

There are other projects in the pipeline too and this wonderful roll-up finally made it onto my work table after spotting it in a little quilt shop in Warwick a couple of weeks ago.

 

 

Look at that saturated colour.  I’d love to have a go at making one of these.

 

 

My front garden continues to make me very happy indeed.

 

 

And with that, I’m off out in the garden.  My back is already grumbling about the digging…

13 :: Anemones…

I’m not sure why, or if indeed, it is normal, but the anemones in my garden are still flowering.  Only a couple at a time and they are very small.  Rather than let them be wasted and unseen out there though, I have been bringing them in to enjoy.

 

9 :: 15 minutes…

16:11

16:26

A rainbow from my garden...

I have a late entry into this year's garden flowers.  This cosmos has all of a sudden grown to be about 3 feet tall in one of my wooden barrels and has decided to have a final flourish.  It is wrong of me, I know, to want to hurry it along so I can plant some more bulbs in its place!


I played around with the shape collage software one day and created a rainbow from the flowers from the garden over the summer months.

I think it fits rather nicely in with Splash of Colour for November, don't you?

Splash of colour...

I've been very excited about joining in with Silverpebble's Splash of Colour project and have already added some photos to the Flickr pool.

This columnar tree is at the back of my neighbours garden and it borders on my side fence outside my greenhouse.  Last week, the changing leaves looked spectacular against the brightest of blue October sky.

Today they are giving me a jewel-like carpet to look at instead and for some reason I don't have the heart to go and sweep them up.

So I think I'll leave them be.