Fresh and Gentle Days

Hello Lovelies, 

this morning I'm baking a cake so I thought I'd write a post whilst it's in the oven. I do love a bit of Saturday morning baking. I'm trying THIS recipe and hopefully I'll have a nice picture of a finished cake to add to the end of this post. It smells good at the moment so I'm feeling optimistic.

 

I'm sorry it's been a while since the last time I was here. My evenings have been rather taken up with the Autumn inspired blanket I've started. It's the first blanket project I've made this year and I'm feeling optimistic about this too. 

The title of this post was inspired by a comment from Suzie ( at ambling along Suzie) over on Instagram. I think it perfectly describes the weather November has brought us over the past couple of weeks. 

It's way too mild for this time of year really, but so wonderful to enjoy the fabulous shades of autumn without a lot of cold, wet, gloom and wind.

 

Here I was out with mum on Monday afternoon. We often set off with no real plan and see where we end up :0)

When we come across a view mum fancies painting we stop and she sits in the car and gets to work whilst I go for a walk.

 I can see why she was inspired by this honey coloured squat little church.

And thankfully there were plenty of footpaths for me to explore.

And if I come back before mum is finished I get sent away to explore a bit more. This time I found mushrooms 😊

I love mum's watercolour painting of the autumnal scene. 

We also stopped off at a couple of pretty villages on the way home. Everywhere was looking so nice.

 

I couldn't resist a low angle shot of these lovely fallen leaves here.

Autumn has been so inspiring to me this year. Here is the start of my blanket, made using the colours I'm seeing everywhere at the moment.

 It's just three round granny squares made in solid colours and I'm joining as I go.

I'm balancing time spent sitting with my hook with time spent outside locally. The days are short but consequently the sky is often dramatic by mid afternoon.

and especially at sunset. I could see the autumn shades in this sky too.

so here's where I'm currently up to with my blanket, especially for you my lovely blog readers :0)

Looking down on it you can see it's a bit of a homage to my love of patchwork! Middle son's girlfriend introduced me to a website called Stitch Fiddle which allows you to plan out this sort of project.

 I've worked through lots of variations of designs. I've plumped for a sort of Irish Chain (I think). 

I'm sure the quilters amongst you will know a better description. For whilst I love patchwork and quilting it's not something I have much experience of doing.

So far I'm feeling hopeful that this crochet version will turn out well and I'm really enjoying working to a plan as it stops all that procrastination I suffer with when working with random shades.

Oh, almost forgot....here's the Farmhouse apple and fruit cake ( I used mixed fruit instead of sultanas) fresh out of the oven. Mine only took and hour to cook, so something to bare in mind if you decide to give this a go.

 

Hopefully I'll be back with a review of how it tastes very soon :0)

I hope you are all keeping well and enjoying Saturday. Thank you so much for all the kind comments on my recent posts.

Jacquie x