An Award and A Balloon

Two postings in one day?  "Good gracious" I can hear you all say.  Checking up on comments received lately (I do love to receive your comments) I noticed that Jaclyn of ''My Hook on Life' has nominated me for an award.  How amazing is that?  I am deeply honoured and undeserving of the award since I don't usually post very often here (I do have two other blogs - see right side panel, and I run my village Garden Club Blog - here)   Thank you so very much Jaclyn.

So, in order to justify this award I have to tell you seven things about myself:-

1 I have two other blogs : http://www.perfect-pelargoniums.com/ and http://camera-capers.blogspot.co.uk/
2 I am Show Secretary of my Village Gardening Club
3 I run the Gardening Club Blog (see above)
4 I am a bit of a technophobic and love all things computer.
5 In September I am going to Ireland to meet my sister from Australia there.
6 If you have looked at my Pelargonium Blog you will see that I love the Pelargonium family of plants
7 I got back into crochet through Ali here.  I in turn got my friend in California 'hooked' on crochet, and she   encouraged her friend to take up her hook again.

Now to nominate up to 15 favourite blogs for the award.
Ali at Macscrochet.blogspot
Kirsty at Handmade by Kirsty
Jacquie at http://bunnymummy-jacquie.blogspot.co.uk/
http://yarnroundhook.blogspot.co.uk/
SJ Scott at http://coalescentcrochet.blogspot.co.uk/

I will leave a note on each of their blogs telling of the award.

Now for the balloon.   When I got up this morning I could not help but see a huge balloon low in the sky over the property opposite.  I grabbed my camera for a shot:

When I came out from the shower I noticed the balloon was down on the Village Green so I quickly put on :some clothes,grabbed the camera again and ran up to the green.  This is what I saw

Looking inside from the basket end

Looking inside from the top

Folding away

An exciting few minutes before breakfast!

The Silent Pool

On Tuesday my neighbour John suggested a photographic trip to The Silent Pool - a well known beauty spot at the foot of Newlands Corner.  It was a very hot day, but quite cool by the lake.  Some say that the ghost of a maiden can be seen at midnight - she was a woodcutters daughter who was abducted by King John.  She was forced into the deep water and was drowned.

We took a walk up the hill

View from half way

The trains, a Day by the Sea, and a small confession

Summer may have arrived here in the UK.   Hooray!   Everyone is so fed up with the dreary dull, cold and wet days we have had this year.  The coldest and wettest on record it seems.

So, as Saturday was to be a warm and sunny day, Brian and I decided we had had enough sitting around and took to the roads!   We decided that we would drive down to Bognor Regis for the day.  On our way down we always call at the garden centre at Pulborough for a coffee.  We were pleasantly surprised that the garden centre has had a makeover, including the restaurant, and it is now very swish.   There is a small model railway there which runs around the perimeter of the garden centre at the weekends.  When we arrived the enthusiasts were just firing up the engines ready for their first customers.   I asked if I could take some photographs and the engineers very kindly invited me into the yard and the 'shed'.

Oh - I bought  a couple of plants - a white French Lavender and a scented pelargonium "Geranium Fizz".

When we arrived in Bognor Regis I made for the shoreline and walked along taking photographs as I went.

  

Oh, I do love the seaside and it was wonderful to walk along the pebbly beach dodging the waves.  Thnere was hardly anyone else on the beach.  They all seemed to be in the town.  I know where I would rather be!

 Now for the confession.  I had to undo my crochet bag!!!  For some reason it just did not seem right to me, so rather than carry on making it worse I decided that I would start again.  This time I have taking my time and making quite sure I make a note of every single increase I make.    I have been making squares to keep up with GaD.

New project and a mail delivery

I have made a start on the bag I purchased the yarn for last week when I went into town.  It is made 'in the round' and I have to mark the first stitch I make in each round.  I have done this before and always just used a contrasting piece of another yarn.  However, this was not working on the cotton yarn I am using for the bag, and I kept finding the piece of marker yarn on the floor, or on my lap.  In other words, not where it was supposed to be!   A search on line came up with these marker pins and this morning they arrived in the post.

Those sharp-eyed amongst you will spot that there are only 19 in the above photo - I have used one already on the bag:-

I am loving working on this bag - although at the moment it does not much look like one.

Today I picked Broad Beans from the garden and blanched them for the freezer.   Have not got a great crop this year and the plants have chocolate rust on them so they don't look good either.  But it does not affect the beans snug in their soft downy pods.  I must remember to put the plants into the garden waste bag for collection and not put them in my compost bin.

More soon.

Pastel coloured granny squares update and a Garden visit

I am getting along well with the pastel coloured granny squares blanket for the  Granny a Day project.   Still yet to tally up all the squares that I have done, but must be pretty much on target now.   I am really really pleased with the way this is turning out - I love the join as you go method.  Thank you Ali (http://macscrochet.blogspot.co.uk/) for this.

Today I went into town on my own!  Being both retired now Brian and I tend to go out together, but he was taking a neighbour to hospital this morning so I seized the chance for a visit On My Own to the fabric and yarn store.   I have a project in mind - a simple crochet bag to keep my crochet in whilst I am working on it. At the moment I am using two plastic bags.  You will appreciate the scowls I get when I rustle the bags to get yarn out!

I had a cousin to stay for a few days last week (baby Cody's granny) and we went to visit Borde Hill Gardens in West Sussex.  It was a lovely day  - one of the very rare warm and sunny days we have had this year.  The rose garden was the rosiest and most scented I have ever been in. We could have stayed there all day.  I can't scentyblog the wonderful scent from the roses, but here are a few photo's.

Having dragged ourselves away from the roses, we came across The Italian Garden

Pastel Coloured Granny Squares and joining

Gosh, another blog from Crochet Capers I can hear you all saying!!   Well life is a lot easier now the shows are over and I am not getting so many memberships in the post.   Plus, the awful weather means I cannot be out in the garden so much.

Here are the pastel coloured crochet granny squares I have been making (I must make a note to total them - I am sure I need to catch up for GaD).  So that I can get them all more or less individual, I have all the balls of yarn in a bag.  As I make up the middles I place the ball of yarn I have used into a second bag. For the next row I take random colours from the second bag and place that into the first bag as I have used that colour.  Same procedure for the third row. This way, they should all be more or less different.I should have more or less individual squares.

Here are the squares with their final row of greeny turquoise joined.  This is my very first attempt at joining as I go and I followed Ali's method which you can find here. You can see I stopped when I found I had to use the joining method twice for one square. I will tackle that this evening and let you know how I got on. So far it really is very easy and I am impressed at the way it is working out.

I would love to know what you think.

xx

A new Granny a Day project

The blue and white baby blanket was very gratefully received and I received a lovely note from Cody's mum.  His gran (my cousin) was staying here last week after visiting her first grandchild and she was very impressed with the blanket.

Having finished Cody's granny square blanket I have decided to just make a few more blankets with the granny a day squares.   Searching through my stash I sorted out nine colours and am using eight of them to make bright multi coloured squares.  The ninth colour is a bright turquoise and will be used the edge each square.  I want to master the "join as you go" method, which I have never used before, and will be following the method used by Ali here.

This blog would have been posted over the weekend. But when my cousin and I visited Borde Hill Gardens on Thursday, I left my camera behind in the shop!  It was such a relief that it  had been found when I rang to enquire.   So, this morning Brian and I had to drive over to Borde Hill Gardens to re-claim my camera.   We had a lovely lunch out and were back home later than we expected after calling at a Garden Centre for a few more fish for our pond - but that's another story!

I have not been around much in June - despite all my good intentions.  June is always difficult for me.  We came back from our Mediterranean cruise and the first weekend I attended the Pelargonium Show at the Farnborough Fuchsia & Geranium Club I belong to. I did enter afew of my plants and did not expect to do well, but was pleased and surprised to receive a second and a couple of thirds. (I have to confess that one of the thirds only had three plants in the class).   It has not been a good growing year. I know, all exhibitors, like farmers, say the same very year, but this has been exceptionally bad.

The following weekend was the National Show of the Pelargonium & Geranium Society held at a garden centre at Hinckley, Leicestershire.  I had to be there by 10 am to Steward, so left home at 7 am and arrived at 9.30 just in time for a quick cup of coffee before judging started.  

Now June is over, I am hoping life can get back to more or less normal.