My Rainy Morning Blanket..... Ta-Dah

Hello Lovelies,
Eleven months ago , on a rainy May morning, I sat in the conservatory and started this colourful granny square blanket............



In THIS post I wrote about my plans for it to be a quick project and about how I was choosing the colours........



The plan was to make a colourful picnic blanket consisting of squares that contained distinct colour groups......


You can see I was being good and sewing in all my ends as I went.

Other projects distracted me including THIS blanket for middle son.

And by September I had changed my original plans and chosen to add a Denim blue border to my squares.......


I even took a few to Yarndale and enjoyed sitting on the grass outside hooking for a while.

By October almost all my squares had a blue border..........



And then they sat on top of my Welsh Dresser for a few months............



Finally, early this month , I started to join my squares. Sewing them together using THIS method.........



Once all my squares were joined I started on the border. My plan was a nice wide border to make this blanket a bit bigger, and to balance the size of the seven round squares. I was not sure exactly many rounds I planned to make ...... about ten colours and then an edge............



 Then, on Saturday evening I was talking to my Mum in Law about her Mum in Law.

My boys one remaining Great grandparent was going to turn 97 in a couple of days. Mum in law suggested I could give her a blanket and initially I said I didn't have one finished..........then I thought about it and decided I could quickly finish my Rainy Morning blanket on Sunday and wrap it up........so that's what I did..........

And here is my finished border.

I got up early on Sunday morning and  added the final Denim blue round of U.S. doubles and a round of U.S. singles to neaten. It's not the lovely wide border I had planned, but thankfully it looked O.K.

And so here are some hastily taken photos of my finished blanket.

Ta-Dah.........

Thank goodness I sewed in all the ends as I went along.

A closer look at the squares......I have lots of favourites...........

 The essential washing line shot :0)........

I do love it and I hope the oldest member of our family loves it too. I like to think all these happy colours will bring her joy.

It was lucky that the sun shone on Sunday morning as I  love to see the colours illuminated from behind like this.............

  

and I did remember to measure it before I wrapped it up. This blanket ended up 54 x 40 inches. I nice size to put over your lap.

In case you lovelies were wondering I used Stylecraft Special acrylic yarn. Double knitting weight and a 4mm hook.

For the blue border to all the squares I used Denim.

The squares themselves are made using these colours.......

Fondant , Aspen, Sherbert, Shrimp, 

Lemon, Saffron, Apricot, Spring Green

Meadow, Plum, Cloud Blue, Pomegranate,

Turquoise, Pale Rose, Candy floss, Lavender,

Raspberry, Bluebell and Lipstick

This project ended up quite different to my original plan, and took much  longer to finish than I thought it would. Now it's gone to a new home I'm happy that I made that quick decision to gift it to a lovely old lady.......

I will miss it a little, but I have the pleasure of giving , and I still get to share this project with you lovelies.I hope you like it too.
Jacquie x

Also This Week

Hello Lovelies,

I hope your weekend is going well. I'm just popping by today to share a few photos from the last seven days that I have not already shared. 

Last Sunday we enjoyed an Easter meal with family. I love to put fresh flowers on the table and these tulips were the least floppy bunch I've ever known.............

My nieces baked these Easter Bunny cakes.........soooooo cute .........

On Tuesday were were all back to work or school. After a day cooped up inside with no windows , I stopped the car on the way home to get a fresh air fix. The countryside is looking so beautifully green.........

The sun was in and out , with dramatic skies and rays of light...........



This young Horse Chestnut tree was looking healthy with it's new leaves.........

This field has recently been made into a windflower meadow. I only discovered it in the winter , so I'll be interested to see what appears as the year progresses.

At the moment there are not many flowers, but lots of promising signs.........

And bee activity.....hurray..........

On Thursday I took a proud picture of myself after a 45 minute run......

Gosh it was hard and I think I'm rushing things a bit as I felt pants later in the day.

In our back garden some stunning tulips are making me smile. I planted them in the autumn to mark where we buried Sparkle, our last rabbit...........

I didn't mention it at the time , but she was a dear little pet and I thought I would share this photo of her taken last summer , when she had the best time exploring the garden.............

Middle son, who's pet she was, took this lovely photo of her under the trampoline.

Yesterday I was back at the Church garden, this time with Mr BM . 

It's just so pretty at the moment I hope you don't mind a few more photos............

After our wander we popped to the park with the boys and one niece, how lovely it is to have light evenings to enjoy a game of basket ball and some Frisbee throwing.........

 I'm totally rubbish at basket ball and got hit in the face with the ball a couple of times...... at least I tried.

Ahhhh sewing, this is more my thing!

  Jane , I hope you don't mind me copying you and buying this pattern. Obviously it's a big step up the difficulty ladder from my last two garments HERE and HERE.

Who knows if I'll be able to complete it . The styling on the pattern is once again not the greatest but one look at THESE google  images and I knew I wanted to give it a try.
Most people seem to make this view...........

I LOVE THIS version and THIS version

 I'll be raiding my stash again to practice this dress.....I wearable muslin , I think it's called. 

Wish me luck.

Thank you so much for all your comments lately lovelies, I know I've said it before but I really do appreciate them.

Jacquie x

Exploring New Places :: Part 1

Hello Lovelies,

 right back in January, in my first post of 2014 in fact, I mentioned a calendar of local scenes I had bought after being being inspired by Louise at Ramblings of a Roachling. 

Louise bought a 2013 Calendar of her local area and each month did a walk around the area depicted. It seemed like a great way of getting to know places that are not far away , but that I had not visited before.

 I bought this calendar ..............

It had 12 ( well 13 actually) fairly local scenes and I wanted to use it to inspire me to get out of the usual routine of visiting the same old places.

I decided not to worry about doing the visits on the month they were depicted, but simply to aim to have visited all the places by the end of the year...........

In February the photo was of a street scene in the market town of Melton Mowbray..........

All that month I looked at this photo and felt less than inclined to make the effort to visit.

But now the days are warmer and the countryside is so pretty, a little day trip seemed much more appealing.

On Wednesday Mum and I headed off to explore. 

It's a good omen when you easily find a parking spot right outside a florist with bargain flowers, don't you think?

We ambled along and soon came to the Market square. Wednesday isn't the main market day but there were some stalls set up for business......... 

You lovelies know how much I like buildings with character and this row of shops had oodles of it, especially this one with a statue of a  Swan on a plinth ..........

I was intrigued and  searched the internet which threw up THIS interesting link to the origin of a well known phrase, one that we still use in Britain today.

This small market place looked happy and colourful in the sunshine.........

    

I do love to see an ice-cream van......always adds a cheery feel.

And here is my version of that scene from the calendar. It's almost identical............

In fact I think I prefer my version. The sky is not quite as nice, but I like the fact it has people in it. I do like to see a street scene with some life in it.

Melton Mowbray is famous for it's Pork Pies So it's not surprising that my calendar chose to include "Ye Olde Worldy Porkie Pieee Shoppeeeee"

O.K. that's not quite it's name :0).........

Here's the view a little further down the street. The impressive building in the foreground was once the corn exchange. It's now a shopping centre and sadly none of the original features remain, just this lovely facade..........

And here is the view in the opposite direction, looking back towards the market place.........

Mum and I explored the shops, it was nice to see some independent outlets as well as the chain stores. Of course we also had a look in the charity shops, but they did seem expensive compared to our usual market town.
 After a bite to eat mum headed back to the car, but I dashed off to find another view from my calendar.
This is November's image, taken in the park here..............

Not being familiar with the town I wasn't sure exactly where the park was, then I spotted this street sign.........

"Park Lane" turned out to be an interesting little place........especially when I saw fabric.........

Oh, I loved this cluster of buildings with an interesting courtyard.......and look at the sign-writing!.......

I thought it was lovely.......especially this bit.........

It's a tape measure....how perfect.

At the end of Park Lane I arrived at these impressive gates and wandered across the grass towards the trees........

Here's my version of the calendar photo........ quite different this time due to the season........

I wandered down this avenue and came to a strange sight.....lock gates in the ground............

Once again the internet cleared up this mystery ......it's to mark the course of a canal that once ran between these two rows of trees ( info found HERE) 

I do love a canal, so was a little disappointed that it had been filled in.

Happily there were rivers running through the park..........

And a large pond..........

The pavilion cafe was doing a good trade........

And there were pretty bridges to get from one side of the river to the other.............

I left the park and headed back to the car, passing more interesting old buildings........

Like this gorgeous old pub, which I've since learned dates back to the fourteenth century, and it gets it name "Anne of Cleaves" due to it being part of her divorce settlement from Henry VIII............

It was time to go and I just snapped this cute looking tea room as somewhere I would like visit another time.......

What did I come home with?........well, some Sausages from the Pork Pie Shoppe (they were really good ) and a fabric remnant from that shop on the way to the park.

But my favourite purchase was this sweet Viola hanging basket from the florists shop........... 

who could resist  these sweet and hardy , happy faced flowers...........

Melton Mowbray impressed me with it's wealth of history and cheerful, traffic free shopping.
 It was a great start to this little project and I'm really looking forward to exploring more new places this year.
Jacquie x