My Crafty Dad!

Hello peeps,

I know I've been away for ages.  I've been rather busy settling into the new job and taking a lovely 2-week holiday in Cornwall and Devon (which I will post about soon).

This post, however, is dedicated to my Dad.  Long have I been in awe of his arts and crafts talents (see the Christmas post of the table centre piece), so I decided to show you all some of his amazing origami work.  Dad has always been a great artist, but since retiring about 6 years ago, he has not only taught himself how to play the piano, but has also mastered the art of creating some beautiful origami pieces.  I think most of the pics speak for themselves:

Little worm

Flower

Flower

Family of ducks

Swans on a pond

Pegasus

Parrots

Parrots - close up

Flower

Flower - side view

Hanging floral decoration

Dinosaur

Alien

Round of applause for my talented Dad!

A New Era

I've been at my new job for 2 weeks now and I'm loving it.  The work is interesting, the office environment is pleasant and dynamic.  I'm so relieved to know for sure that I've made the best move for me - getting away from a few unprofessional people and moving to wonderful job with great people and with more money.

However, I did have a wonderful send off from some wonderful friends and colleagues and was astounded and very touched by the number of gifts and cards I received.

I got some vouchers for John Lewis and Amazon; a beautiful watch (thank you, Paula, for choosing it - wonderful choice!)

 a filofax (I've always wanted one)

a mug (very apt, considering I'm always baking cupcakes)

 

some manicure and pedicure goodies

some buttons for my crafting, in a sweet little jar

and from my fabulous boss, a beautiful cake stand.  I've always wanted one of these but have not been able to justify the cost of buying one myself.  But GG got me a beautiful hand-crafted and designer one and I love it (I really don't think the pictures do it justice!)

And here are all the presents piled up before I unpacked them all:

I'm such a lucky girl to have so many lovely people around me who think so highly of me - thank you all so much!!!!

Sadly, I haven't been so lucky on the crafting front!  The blue lace top I was working on wasn't working out, so I had to pull it back - the sizing just seemed to be all wrong.  I'm probably not going to work on that one again for a while as I've lost the enthusiasm for that particular project.

I've also been making some jam - the consistency of my blueberry one is a bit too runny, but I think the strawberry and blackcurrant one has turned out much better.  It's always annoying when these things don't turn out the way you hoped.  If anyone has a good tried and tested recipe for blueberry jam, I'd love to hear it as I've never found a really good one that has worked for me.

I've been pretty quiet on the jewellery making front recently, so have booked myself into a leather and bead wrap bracelet making class in October.  I've been wanting to do this class for a while but it gets booked up so quickly, but I managed to get place in time.  I did make a very quick and simple necklace yesterday

I saw a lady on the bus the other day wearing a simple but effectively lovely silver pearl-like necklace so decided to make one for myself.

Hope your crafting is going better than mine!  Let's hope I have more crafting success to post about next time!

Weird weather

I just don't know where I am with all this weird weather.  I spend ages looking from my wardrobe to the window trying to decide the best thing to wear - will it rain, will the sun stay out, will it get warmer?  I've given up relying on the Met Office or the weather man (who boldly stated on Saturday lunchtime, "Well, it's a rather pleasant day out there...."  Me and HP turned to the window in baffled bemusement as we watched the rain tip it down!  I got it wrong yesterday and was too hot and today I'm sitting here with the fan heater on *sigh*.

Still, this rain has done wonders for HP's garden and we had some of his lovely homegrown produce last night for dinner.

I've always been dreadful at gardening, so I'm most impressed with HP's green fingers.  We've owned our own house for over a year, so this is the first time he's been able to properly grow his own produce.  I've also discovered he has a talent for DIY, which is always a bonus for a wife!

I've been throwing myself in to my knitting quite a bit too.  I've only been knitting for a couple of years and a lot of what I've learned has been self-taught (thank you YouTube!), so I'm not the fastest knitter in the world and it takes me months to finish a project.  So, I'm now starting to see the drawback of having a crafting blog; I just can't show many projects very often!

I'm working on a simple lace top right now.   It's a simple 4-row pattern.  Initially I managed to make some mistakes and had to restart a few times before I got it right.  That doesn't bother me too much as I enjoy the process, although it's always nice to finish a garment too!

The pattern is from July's issue of Knit Today.  I have to say it's my favourite knitting magazine as I always find so much in there that I want to make.  I'm going to have to knit much faster to achieve them all though!

I've only got 7 days left in my job too - yay!  Now, if the sun would just come out......

New job!

Hooray!!  I have finally got another job.  It's a climb up the ladder, a much higher salary and more prospects of career advancement!  I only have another 2 weeks left at this place and overall I will be pleased to leave.  I will miss working for my wonderful boss (GG, you are totally awesome!) and will miss some of my lovely friends, but I will stay in touch with all of them.  I will also miss my friend's lovely dog, Gizzy, who sometimes comes to visit us in the office.

Here is Gizzy with a sneaky biscuit in his mouth!

I start my new job on 22 August, so wish me luck.

Well, I got my hopes up the other week with the promise of a summer, but it seems to have been a cruel hoax and now we're back to rather grey days, with the occasional burst of sunshine.   Cue, comfort food:

Some homemade bread

Yummy strawberry cake

I rarely put strawberries on the icing - lovely though theylook, the juices leak into the cake

Some of HP's home grown produce

One rainy lunchtime, I sneaked to one of Cambridge's few wool shops and bought a new pattern.  I really like the King Cole Riot yarn and thought another project with this was in order:

I'm going to make the long-sleeved cardigan but with the yarn shown in the waistcoat picture.  I love the mix of purples and browns and greys.  If only I could knit faster!  Or if only I could knit all the time!

When I wasn't knitting, I was reading a wonderful book called "The Girl with Glass Feet".  Rarely do I find a book that I'm so moved by, although I spend a lot of my spare time reading, so I highly recommend this book by Ali Shaw.

I meant to take some pics of my current knitting project, but forgot!  More on that next time.

Choccie and jewellery

While HP was happily destroying redoing our kitchen, I thought I would stay completely out of the way, so I confined myself to my craft room.  This gave me the perfect opportunity to make some jewellery, which I must confess I haven't done for yonks!  I've been more in to my knitting recently.

I wanted to make a little something for a lovely colleague whose birthday was on 7 July.  She's been very supportive over the recent troubles at work, so I wanted to let her know she was appreciated, so she got a silver memory wire bracelet.

She loved it, so I was most pleased!  She wears a few silver bangles, so I thought this would compliment them nicely.

Well, then I got on to a bit of a roll and made a couple more bracelets.

Had a few shells I wanted to do something with

Didn't have enough shell discs to make a full bracelet so had to put on a logo!

Then moved on to a couple of necklaces. 

Sadly the photos don't really do the colours justice.  There's a lot of shimmering going on there!

As HP has been working so hard, I thought he deserved a little treat so I got him some choccy as I was passing Thornton yesterday. 

 Speaking of chocolate, I realised that I didn't post any pics of the amazing stuff I got from Brussels.  Well, most of it didn't last long enough to get a photo taken, but I did manage to hold off long enough to take this beauty:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever - or about 10 minutes in this case!

The funky box the chocs came i

With all this refurbishment going on at home, it does mean the place is somewhat untidy and messy, so some serious housework is called for this weekend.  I really want to make up a top I've finished knitting in Sirdar Firefly (which I'm hoping won't be too small for me!) and do some work on a simple lace top I'm knitting.  We'll have to see how much time I'm left with after I'm done with the Cillit Bang and Mr Sheen.  We're  hopefully having some friends over for dinner next weekend so I do want the place to look nice.  I'm doing venison for the main course but need to sort out the starter and dessert.  Add to the 'To do list' - look for recipe inspiration.