Thursday, 26 May 2016

Spring/Summer Holiday


I've been feeling very run down lately, constantly tired and headachey, stuck in the endless cycle of travel, work, travel, sleep, travel, work.... But finally, finally(!) I am on holiday!!! A lovely long holiday that will include a jaunt to Rome as well as some me time. Today is my first day off and it felt so decadent turning off my alarm and knowing I could go back to sleep and just stay in bed as long as I needed. I did eventually manage to drag myself out of bed as the sun is shining and the birds singing- not a day to be missed. I had a wander around the garden inspecting all of the plants and flowers, and trying to name as many as I could. Dad and I have been planting lots of different Bee attracting flowers (we are on a Bee mission!) so I don't know the names of everything. The above montage has Aquilegia in the top right, and a Clematis in the bottom left but I'm not sure about the other two- Violas maybe in the top left?


I know these ones! The top left is a pretty little Strawberry flower- which is part of my section of garden. I have a big pot with a smaller pot inside it, making a tier with Strawberries all around and had to replace the plants in the top section this Spring as the previous ones were killed off by the frost. We also have Lily of the Valley which is self planted and pops up every year (top right and bottom left) and a lovely scented Rose which we bought many years ago from a proper rose garden centre.


Dad bought the lovely yellow Marigolds above (top left and bottom right)- always a risk as the Slugs go mad for them, but they have the most amazing texture where the petals all crinkle and smoosh together. The bright orange flower is a bit of a mutant. I don't know the name of this one, but it has almost two daisy-type flowers that have joined together. This is the second round of flowers for this plant and the first flower heads were exactly the same- I wonder if it is meant to do that? The bottom left flower, with the little spider photobombing, is a Clematis and has the largest flower heads I've ever seen, they are like dinner plates!


I have been cracking on with my triangle blanket, which now has finished edges on the two sides. I feel like this blanket is taking me ages but it probably isn't in comparison to some of my others if I looked back to when I started. It is more like a patchwork blanket really as it is made up of so many tiny little pieces. Each triangle has to be made separately, joining it to other triangles and darning in the ends as you go, so there is a lot of stopping and starting. Then, once you have built up a collection of solid hexagons and multicoloured ones they all have to be joined on, with the initial joining around the centre solid square, then the 'arms' or 'spokes' around that joined separately and all of those ends darned in. If you follow me. I suppose it is better than leaving all of those ends until the end, can you imagine??!


It has just occurred to me that you could make this blanket look completely different with a more planned out colour plan. If you look at the block colour shapes you can see how it would be easily translated into a 3D looking cuboid shape. If you had three colours per shape, you could really emphasise this and make lots of block shapes together- especially if your three colours were different shades of the same colour. Hmm, an interesting thought!


I am really enjoying it though. It is a great on-the-go project as you can take all of these little pieces with you and then settle down in the evenings and crochet them all together- very handy. I've got a little way to go in the length I reckon and then I've got to start thinking of something spectacular for the border. I've been pondering on how to make triangles in it- might have to have a play.


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