Weaving with willow...

If you follow me on Twitter, you will have the heads up on the most fabulous of days I had on Tuesday when I found myself in deepest, darkest Cambridgeshire learning the art of weaving willow.

When Celia tweeted about a skills swap she had done with Debbie of Salix Arts, I found myself, along with Mrs Dottycookie and Mrs Silverpebble, getting enthusiastic about it to the point where a workshop was arranged especially for us.

We were blessed with a crisp sunny day and soon were completely immersed in the task to hand. There was barely a whisper, which is very unusual for when bloggers meet!

Debbie is a fantastic teacher and we were quickly on the way to creating with this wonderful natural material. I knew I wanted to make a plant support for the garden so having been given a quick tutorial, things began to take shape.

I'm not sure if you can tell from the photo above, but there are a couple of different weaves happening there - the middle section being a fence weave. I loved working with the continuous amount of willow that you just added to as and when necessary to create a flowing design.

I think it is possible that my favourite part of my structure is this knot that secured all the ends together. Isn't it beautiful?

I love the natural ends of the willow so much, I couldn't bear to chop them off.

So here is my ta-dah! I'm not entirely sure I will want to cover it with foliage next year and so I'm thinking I might just have it as a focal point somewhere in the garden.


Oh! And there was cake!

Thank you so much, ladies, for yet another superb crafty, bloggy day xx

Welcome...

wel·come/ˈwelkəm/

Noun:	An instance or manner of greeting someone: "we received a warm welcome".
Exclamation:	Used to greet someone in a glad or friendly way.
Verb:	Greet (someone arriving) in a glad, polite, or friendly way: "welcome guests in their own language".
Adjective:	(of a guest or new arrival) Gladly received.
Synonyms:	noun.  reception - greeting verb.  greet - receive - salute - hail - meet adjective.  acceptable - pleasant - pleasing - desirable

As usual, I'm late to the party in posting about momentous occasions. However, I just wanted to say for the record that it was an absolute pleasure to welcome these ladies into my home on Saturday and to see them all sat around my kitchen table felt so, so right. It was a very welcome day after such a January full of greyness.

These magenta anemones have been a very welcome addition to my kitchen as a precursor to spring too. Lit up from a stray ray of sunshine that fell on my table, it was the first time I have felt inclined to use my camera this year.

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.

Craft and cake…

…is a regular feature at my house on a Tuesday evening. I just realised that I have never blogged about it!  Probably because the ladies who come don’t blog and don’t know that I blog either.  For ages I had been asked to set up a craft club and so I made it my resolution for the new year and five months later, it is still going strong.  Personally, I think it is the cake that keeps them coming!  My promise to my ladies was that for their commitment, I would bake every week.

Yesterday, we had an extra-curricular workshop, hence the early morning baking.  Following the on from the fun I had at Kristina’s with Ms Silverpebble herself, I knew my ladies would love it too.

The concentration around the table was a living thing! And four hours later, there were five very happy bunnies all proudly wearing their own creations.

 

 

This was the table as I lured them away from it with the cake I had made.  A fabulously creative mess!  And here they all are, scoffing the cake to get back to the task in hand! I have never known such a short cake break

 

 

Emma has such a wonderful selection of goodies to choose from, the hardest part is picking out what to incorporate into your design.  I just couldn’t resist this beautiful button.

 

 

I also spotted two of Emma’s tiny, tiny silver clay flowers which I snaffled to add in too.

 

 

I spent most of the afternoon crafting a choker with it, offset from the centre, and I love it!  I know I will be wearing it throughout the summer.

 

 

Emma – thank you so much for such a fun afternoon!

 

Kew in April #2…

Kristina and I made our monthly visit to Kew yesterday.  We were hoping for lots of blossom but other than this pompom-like pink stunner, we seemed to have either missed it time wise or walk wise.

 

 

Looking back over my post from April last year, there is a noticeable difference in the blooms this year.  They are much earlier, which is surprising as we had a long, cold winter.

 

 

The rhododendrons were in full bloom and my favourite was this unusual pale lemon one.  I always tend to think of rhododendrons being pink or mauve.  These were  a whole month earlier than last year.

 

 

We also stumbled across this beautiful pale lemon magnolia, still in all its glory while its cousins were dropping all their petals.

 

 

My absolute favourites though, were the tulips.  We didn’t see them like this before, that’s for sure.

 

 

Whether they are parrot tulips in an urn with happy-faced violets underneath…

 

 

…or striking lily-flowered tulips (I’m guessing that this is the type they are because the lily-flowered ones love to open out in the sun), underplanted with white forget-me-nots…

 

 

… or peony-like ones, perfect against the blue forget-me-nots…

 

 

…or stately single tulips with wallflowers…

 

 

… I cannot get enough of them.  Love tulips.

 

 

My gallery…

I can’t believe it was way back in January that I started playing around with the layout of my photo from my swap with Mary.

I finally bought all the frames (nothing fancy, just Ribba from Ikea, but in an assortment of sizes) and then had a lesson in photo mounting from a friend.  It was just the sort of job that I love – plenty of required precision.  I knew that keeping my old square from my college days was a good idea.

 

I also love a bit of kit and the mount cutter was very satisfying to use.

 

 

 

 

 

I have to confess to being stupidly pleased with how they all turned out!

 

 

And, I am just LOVING them altogether on the wall in the living room.  I LOVE the eclectic subject matter.  I LOVE the simplicity of the frame with the white mount. 

Most of all, I LOVE that they travelled a long way to grace my wall and complete my room.

 

 

Not magnolia...

This month's visit to Kew rounded off a whole year of visiting regularly and so we have come the full circle.

I've always been fascinated as to why the ubiquitous, builders choice of paint colour, magnolia, has the most boring of reputations, when in real life magnolia's are anything but boring.

The ones at Kew (and there are many) are dramatic and majestic. Whether it is the tree itself simply because it is huge and therefore very old, like the one above, which coupled with a glorious blue sky only adds to its impact, or the individual flowers below, which are like works of art.

As we strolled along, we suddenly noticed a swathe of lilac colour in the distance and immediately headed over.

The tiniest of flowers, naturalised in the grass...

The membership that I took out will most definitely be renewed and I'm looking forward already to seeing what this year has to offer. Thank you Kristina and Nancy for another wonderful day.

February at Kew…

After some debate by email that continued late into Tuesday evening, Kristina and I decided to brave the weather forecast and go to Kew yesterday.

I am so glad we did.  I think that the month of February is one that always seems grey, yet is filled with the promise of new growth and spring.

Kew didn’t disappoint and the early spring bulbs were just the antidote to the rain and drizzle.

 

 

 

I think I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

 

We thought these snowdrops looked stunning set amongst this wonderful almost black grass.