Oh I do Like to be Beside The Sea...

It’s been a long week of being Mummy and so I’ve been putting off writing this post despite how much I longed to share it with someone! However, flicking through our snaps from the weekend suddenly gave me the energy to do it, so, here’s what we’ve been up to…

Last weekend our family and some friends all packed our buckets and spades, flip-flops and beach towels and headed to the coast for a mini holiday (er, two days, yes but I was definitely counting this as a holiday and since I had told my toddler that it was then, well, that’s what it was!). I had been having little pangs of longing for the sea and luckily this co-incided with our trip that had been planned months before. Even more lucky (does that make sense??) was the weather!! It was gloriously warm and stupidly sunny, we couldn’t have gotten better weather if we’d put in an order for it.

We were so blessed by some friends who had allowed us the use of their seaside home, and were so in awe when we got there as it was truly a beautiful place to have a house. You can see by the view from the lounge that one could very easily turn up for a weekend and never go home:

The instant we arrived Little H found his bucket and spade and clung to them for around an hour hovering by the back door like a puppy begging to go for a walk. He kept asking ‘Can we go to the beach now?’ ‘When can we make sand castles?’ It must have seemed like a lifetime waiting for the others to arrive. Imagine his disappointment when we decided to have lunch before we set out! He handled it well, I was a little bit proud :)

After hauling a crazy amount of things from our boot into the house we found our rooms and settled in. Little H was delighted to find this on his bed;

AS WAS I! Oh, what a beautiful, hand knit cotton blanket! Yes, this place was already becoming my dream home! Little H specifically requested that he used it to sleep under and I heartily promised he could- I couldn’t think of anything better than seeing my little one snug underneath something so precious (except, of course, if said thing had been made by me but that’s for another day).

It was aptly seaside themed with little boats, ice creams and beach huts dotted all over and a super cute knitted bunting all around the edge. I was particularly struck by the use of beading in the sand and on the ice creams and immediately started to wonder if I could use this technique for anything I was making in crochet?? It seems difficult to me, have any of you tried it?

After lunch we headed to the beach, through the garden….

Across the bridge and through the gate. Doesn’t this open gate just look so enchanting? So inviting? It’s almost as if you are entering another world, a calm hazy world of relaxation- ahhhh.

Onto this, a quiet sandy space. We played. We sat. we ran. We laughed.

Some got wet.

It was great!

After wearing ourselves out we returned home for a HUGE supper of fajitas and burritos followed by trifle and bed!

The next morning was an early start, I woke at 5am and couldn’t get back to sleep. Little H followed at 5.30 and despite my best efforts, no, he was not tired and would not be, not even pretend. We got up and (tried) to tiptoe around the house. We enjoyed a cup of tea and a homemade frangipane tart whilst admiring the morning view. However, to keep a 2 year old quiet is a very hard task and so, at 6am, we headed to the beach….in our pajamas!

I happily sat and rippled in the cool light of dawn whilst Little H ran wild on a beach that was all his very own. He made sandcastles (oh, sorry, sand spaceships..) and looked for stones and just ran for the sake of it.

The rest of the morning was a bit of a blurr, but that’s ok because we had nothing to do but be. The boys played in the garden whilst the BBQ heated for lunch which we ate in the garden and soaked up the sunshine. We spent the afternoon packing up and pottering, pausing for tea and cakes in the late afternoon, again, enjoyed in the garden- How very English we are!

Coming home was sad but nice at the same time. We crashed into bed with that fuzzy feeling you get from being at the beach- the salty sleepy state of your mind and eyes- your entire being is ready for the night. Little H was sad about the blanket, he made a point to tell me that he wished he was sleeping under it again and asked if next time we went he would be able to use it again. I reassured him that he could and he fell asleep almost instantly. Its strange that it should have impacted him so much, who would have thought it? It may even have impressed him more than me? Although, for very different reasons!

So there, that was our holiday. Did you do anything nice with your weekend? It’s raining now so I hope you did. I’ll leave you with a few inspiring (although a little odd) things I found on our weekend away:

A very retro bathroom tile, held strange appeal to me...I want a shoal!

Clumps of hole-y clay dotted over the sand. Beautiful but very fragile, they washed away far too quickly.

Beautiful sea-worn wood.

Oh, and some more of the blanket!  :)

Bless you and thank you for stopping by,

Hayley

x

B.E.A.utiful

Today we made it our business to fully enjoy all of this good English sunshine we are having and so we threw ourselves into the quiet, delicate beauty that is Kew Gardens. I absolutely love being at Kew, every time I go there is something new to see. I always come home feeling a little bit sad, as if I’ve left behind a great friend that I seldom see, but at the same time I am comforted in having the opportunity to meet again. It is my happy place, I could easily waste my whole life there I think and still not count a day as wasted.

Not long after arriving we set up camp (a blanket) and enjoyed a long and lazy lunch. Little H spent most of this time under a nearby tree, talking to the bugs, whilst Little A spent most of his showing off his standing-whilst-carrying-something skills and chasing after a ball (a bit like having a dog I realise as I write…hmmm). He took two steps in a row for the first time before tripping over the picnic blanket and I realised that next time we visit I would have two little boys running around…wow! I mainly enjoyed the opportunity to sit and savour a simple lunch and a good coffee with my toes dug into the grass under the shade of a big ol’ beautiful tree. Its’ such a simple pleasure but one I rarely indulge in as life just moves too fast on the outside of those garden walls. I must make more effort to slow it down.

We visited the Palm House (The Spaceship according to Little H) and saw enormous trees, huge Hibiscus blooms and flowers that looked like dinosaurs!

I thought that such exotic surroundings would make a good backdrop to some nice photos of the boys and for this reason I packed my real camera. However, Little H seems to have developed a ‘Chandler’ camera face whereby he says ‘cheese’ whilst squinting one eye and the corresponding side of his mouth, with his head tilted slightly to one side. How do I correct this?? I didn’t get one good photo! see...

We witnessed some good wildlife; a squirrel emptying a bin and gathering food that was good to eat (sorry no photo of this one), and a swan nesting in a flower pot!!

A huge surprise was finding this:

I told you this was my happy place! And now me thinks you might like it as yours too? It took quite a lot of strength to NOT HUG THE TREE! Little H on the other hand didn’t hold back, he spent ages trying to comfy himself up against this one. Clearly it looked like it would make a good place to relax, despite how awkward he made it look.

My favourite of the trees was this one. I loved how it was pieced together from different crochet shapes that allowed the tree to show through rather than it being completely cloaked in a tree-shaped jumper.

These upper branches were particularly beautiful, so delicate considering the fact that they were wrapped around a tree. It sounds goofy but you could see it was lovingly made and dressed and it made it kind of special. I just wish there had been more information on who had made it so that you could gather a bit of it’s story, but I guess that’s the nature of yarn bombing.

We finished our day with some delicious ice cream (mine was cherry) with strawberries and blueberries; YUM! We headed back to the car with heavy legs, achy feet but happy hearts and smiley eyes; it was a goooood day.

As I type I feel that slightly drunken, fuzzy feeling you get when you’ve given yourself entirely to the enjoyment of a place; the sun, the air, the barefoot walks in squishy grass, the visual overload of a rainbow of flowers, the staggering variety of textures to be found in nature. It’s completely exhausting. It’s completely exhilarating. As I said, it’s my happy place.

Well, thanks for stopping by, I hope you’ve been doing equally great things in the sunshine. If you haven’t, remember to take just 30 minutes out to enjoy just one simple pleasure outdoors, it’ll be worth it.

See you soon!

xx

P.S. Erm...here's some more of the good stuff coz I thought you might just like it. Enjoy.

Meditative Crochet

Gosh, where have two weeks gone?! I’ve been very busy here making the most of the sunshine and playing in the garden with the little ones, I hope you have been equally as frivolous with the sunshine and longer, lighter evenings? I have been working on some things that Iv’e been itching to share but I’ll have to wait so in the mean time…

You may remember a few weeks ago I shared that I was darning the ends of a blanket whilst wrapped around a poorly little person. Well, finally, it is finished! Here’s the story…

It seems that blanket making is something I have become very fond of; the process is so therapeutic and each row ends with the satisfaction of knowing that you are one stripe closer to throwing yourself into yarn-y hugs with your one of a kind creation. However, after hours of counting 4, 2, 2, 4 in my head whilst hooking the Raspberry Ripple I was craving something simpler that I could really lose myself in, that I could just pick up and hook without the need to think let alone count. This craving happened to coincide with a guilty feeling I had about my littlest not having the handmade blanket that his older brother received when he was born (I’m strange, I admit, but you know this already) and so I set about making him one, even though he is nearly one now!!!

I gathered appropriately boyish colours as despite how much I try and hold onto every moment, he will not be a baby forever and so it couldn’t be a baby blanket but a boy’s blanket. It was a very simple task; chose a colour at random and stitch a row in either dc, htr or tr crochet. To avoid repetition I made only one rule; do not hook one of each colour in succession but before exhausting the range, go back and repeat a previous colour in a thinner row before inserting the last colour. Do you get it? So instead of going orange, meadow, cream, red, bottle green, blue, which would be all of the colours simply repeat (for example) the meadow between bottle green and blue. As im not very good at following the rules I did stick to it most of the time and it worked well I think (you can be the judge).

I wanted a simple border and found the grey yarn in my stash whilst digging around for something else. It was a great bit of luck as I absolutely love the colour contrast, I think it adds to the boyish look I was hoping to achieve. The green picot point edging was a last minute addition (yeah, I was just making things up as I went along) and although it took me all four edges to decide whether I liked it, I think it was the right choice and it gave me a chance to experiment as it was something I’d never done before.

All in all I think it was a success: I got a simple project to lose myself in, Baby got a blanket and I learnt something new :)

BUT….It’s highlighted how much there is still to learn, how the simple things aren’t always as easy as they look. I have still to master the edging, I feel that this is the hardest part of making a blanket because there is no strict right way to do it. Can you see how it forms waves at the edge? This is because there are too many stitches worked into the ends of the rows. Must work on this!

Look at this corner, tut tut! Admittedly I wasn’t following any kind of pattern and made each corner up as I came to it but at the time it seemed simple. The corner pulls up at the edge which means there are not enough stitches to turn it flat. As I write this I’m wondering if blocking will help??....i have never tried that either!

That being said, I love it and I don’t think my little one (or Buzz Lightyear) minds when he’s snuggled up in it that there are a few bumps and curves. It just adds to its charm. 

Thanks for stopping by and I hope to see you again soon. This time it will be sooner that a fortnight I promise!

xx