Pink & red

 Pink and red blooms in a hanging basket - they look very striking against the blue tiled wall.

A red phone-box behind a bed of pink and red flowers - looking comically as if it's trying to hide behind a tree!

A single red rose and fallen petal.

Gorgeous vibrant pink blooms along the river.

Hope you've had a lovely weekend.

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After the storm

My goodness me, what a storm we had here across London and the South East last night! Did you all get woken up too?

I certainly did, at about 4am, by the huge claps of thunder and flashes of lightning. I've really never heard anything like it before! If I hadn't been so sleepy and droopy from the sticky humidity we have here at the moment I might have had the presence of mind to get my camera and try and capture the fork lightning.

Well, I don't know about you, but I didn't manage to get back to sleep after the storm passed over us last night, so was up bright and early for work at 6am.

This was the sky as I headed out this morning - very dark and glowery!

On my usual walk from King's Cross to the office this morning, I cut through one of London's numerous garden squares, and saw these lovely blooms, still with drops of rain from the last shower (which I did also get caught in!).

These are soooo beautiful and I just love the pinks - the paler pink at the edges of the petals in the flowers above, the darker sort of hot pink at the centre of the flower, and the gorgeous hot pink of this rose below:

Another thing I am a bit in love with at the moment is candle light. I go through phases with candles - I do love them, but tend to forget to light them, especially in summer when it's so light in the evening.

However, I had a reason to light candles on Sunday night. Over the weekend, I bought two little yoghurt pots, both packaged in little glass containers, with plasticy lids. I confess, I bought them thinking "hmmmm, I'm sure there is some use for those cute little glass jars..."

So on Sunday night, having eaten both yoghurts, I got out my craft wire, stash of buttons and scissors and made these:

Very simple and quick to make, I just threaded buttons along the wire, quite close together, until I had enough buttons to go around the circumference of the top of each jar. I then wrapped the excess wire around the jar top, winding it up and down around the buttons to hold the whole thing in place. I think I would like to try this again with brightly coloured buttons!

In knitting news: I am sooo close now to finishing off the Kim Hargreaves linen top I have been working on. But somehow, in this sticky heat, I just can't work up the enthusiasm to work the final few inches of the second sleeve! Ugh, well soon I will finish it. At the moment all I seem to want to do is sit and work on my granny stripe blanket - its easy and my heat addled brain does not have to think about it!

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Too hot to hook?!

Well, it nearly is! Those of you in the UK will know that we're in the middle of a heatwave, the like of which has not been seen on these shores since 2006 (according to BBC weather anyway!).

Well, I am very close to finishing my hexagon blanket - I'm at the stage where all I need to do is sew the last few motifs in place and fasten off the edges. 

As those of you who make blankets will know, this stage basically involves sitting underneath your giant woolly creation for several hours while you work on it. 

Not the most attractive proposition in 32 degree heat! So I have been forced to temporarily abandon the hexagon blanket in favour of smaller projects.

One smaller project I've been working on is a knitted cushion cover. I'm trying to design a cabled cover myself from scratch. I also plan to make some moss stitch covers. Here's the result of the swatching process:

Next time I hope I can tell you about an exciting new project.

In the meantime, stay cool, and happy hooking!

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Pottering

Since last week I have been pottering a bit. Most of my pottering happens at the weekend - I don't really have time to potter during the week!

I've been collecting....

 

..adding some new tea cups to my collection...someday I will actually use these to serve afternoon tea to someone!

Admiring the lavender....

....in the garden and enjoying the sunny weather.

Daydreaming....

 

...and wishing I had more time to get out and do things. I caught a glimpse of the most amazing fallow field with hundreds and hundreds of poppies growing in it from the train on the way to work this morning. Sadly this field is a little too far from my house to make it easy for me to go and photograph any time soon! I had to content myself with snapping a couple of poppies in the field around the corner from our house. Sadly that field has nothing like the profusion of colour I saw this morning.

Knitting....

...still working on the Kim Hargreaves jumper, in between bursts of granny squares for my pastel throw. Also having lots of ideas for other projects - sometimes it's torture - so many ideas buzzing around my head but not even time to realise even a quarter of them any time soon!

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Christina cardigan - in progress

After a brief period of indecision last weekend about whether to push on with summer knits or give in to temptation and knit a snuggly textured cowl which I had an idea for, I choose to push on with the summer knits, and now I'm glad I did!

So I thought I would share with you my progress on the Christina cardigan from Kim Hargreaves' 2011 summer book Whisper. Its coming along pretty well: I now have the back and both front completed and am about half way through the first sleeve. I hope to have it finished in a week or so.

I have made this using Rowan Wool Cotton in shade Frozen, which is a lovely grey-lilac shade - I'm not sure how well that comes through on the pictures. I havent' changed the needle size recommended - wool cotton is quite a stretchy yarn, and I think it will be fine once blocked and washed. I'm making a size extra-small, as usual. Small always comes out way too big for me.

I can't wait to have this finished and wear it - I'm sure it will look lovely with a little lace trimmed camisole, or perhaps a pale coloured chiffon blouse I have - maybe with a little sparkly brooch. More pictures when it's finished!