My Garden

Yes, I realise it isn't much too look at. It's rundown and overgrown and my husband hates it. Me and the cat love it though. I didn't get a picture of him, but I'm sure he thinks he is a leopard prowling around in the Serengeti, with all the long grass.

I love sitting on the little bench next to the shed. Now the weather is getting a bit better again I want to start making the most of being able to sit outside in the evenings and weekends. I want to start appreciating little pleasures like that more, now my life should hopefully be a bit less hectic (for the time being).

Here is the oldest resident of the house and garden. It's a pear tree that has been here since I was a child and came to visit my grandparents when they lived here, but I'm not sure how long it has been here. It does seem fairly ancient. It's still good at producing pears though, maybe this year I'll get round to making some pear cider.... 

At least I managed to get a few good photos before it turned cloudy......

Easter.... yay.... *collapses with exhaustion*

Well, for saying that I have had 4 days off work for Easter, I can honestly say I feel worse than I did before we finished. I just feel so drained. I've been to church 3 times to sing in the choir (and managed to break my voice singing the descant for the final hymn), I went out to the pub with a few friends on Friday and felt dreadful all day on Saturday even though I didn't drink that much (well, 3 pints of cider, but I never felt anything more than tipsy all night....) and I've posted a few items on the Folksy shop to get it started.

Apart from a bit of housework that's all I've done. I haven't even got to sit in the garden because the weather has been a bit too chilly even though the sunshine is lovely.

And I'm exhausted. And I have a sore throat. And I have to go and supervise a rehearsal later.

At the moment I'm just holding on to the fact this time in 6 weeks, I will A) hopefully still be in bed, and B) I will no longer be directing a play.

Book Review - 100 Lace Flowers to Crochet

I'm going through a bit of a phase of buying new crochet books at the moment. I've mastered most of the patterns in the crochet flower and motif books I already have so I was looking for something new.

I've just ordered 75 Birds & Butterflies to Knit & Crochet and it is expected to arrive on Friday.

I also have 100 Lace Flowers To Crochet which I got last week. Quite a few of the patterns are similar to patterns I have seen on the internet, but this is helpful for me, since it demonstrates how patterns can be modified, even slightly, to create a totally different effect.

The sheer number of different flower patterns in this book fascinates and overwhelmes me all at once. I'm being really good and I'm actually starting at the beginning and working through each pattern because I know that the patterns I really want to try, like the tulip, which is a 3D flower and is ever to pretty, would be too difficult for me to do straight away. I'm still relatively new to crochet, having only started it around a year ago, so there are some patterns in all of my books that I haven't done yet because I'm not experienced enough with the more complicated stitches.

Overall, this is a really comprehensive collection of flowers, quite a few of which I haven't seen anything quite like before. The book encourages you to experiment and to use your flowers in different projects, such as layering a number of different flowers to make a corsage. It also includes a number of leaves that I haven't come across before, and it demonstrates different ways of crocheting leaves, as well as all the flower patterns.

I think it's going to take a while for me to work my way through this one....

Brrrr....

I'm cold.

However, I do have a small cat curled up on my lap and a glass of wine, so life isn't all bad. 

I have to say, I like winter. I like the warm, gusty feel of the heating being on everywhere, it makes me kind of Christmassy (Yeah, I know it's September....). I like wrapping myself up in layers of clothes and scarves and gloves and woolly hats. I like putting on my 'granny' cardigans and huddling round a mug of tea to keep warm. 

I don't like standing in the cold waiting for a bus that's 25 minutes late. I don't like the fact that, now it's getting darker in the evenings and it's now colder, people seem to lose any ability to drive safety and arrive at places on time. For goodness sake, it isn't snowing (yet). I really don't like getting up out of my warm bed in the mornings and having he world assault me with icy temperatures so I have to scurry into the bathroom to get dressed huffing and puffing and rubbing my arms to keep warm. 

How does everyone else feel about the imminent coming of the dark times? Although, I did hear that here in the UK, we are due to get some more summery(ish) weather next week, so this must just be the pretend winter.

Hell's Reality Show

I have recently been introduced to Hell’s Kitchen. The husband and I been working our way through one of the old American series on Netflix, and I have become addicted to the dreadful thing. Now we are watching this years series.

What boggles me is how on earth so many of the so-called ‘trained chefs’ are so incompetently awful at cooking. I mean, these people are all professional chefs who earn a living from cooking food for others, and yet in one of the episodes, one of the hopefuls continuously burned fish, another continuously turned out raw pork. Then we have the joys of seeing them leave hair in the food, dropping lamb on the floor and serving 'medium well done' steak swimming in a sea of its own juice. Dear Lord...

I’m not a cook, in fact I absolutely loathe cooking with a passion (I think it’s partly a confidence issue) but even I can cook when I have to (or when I graciously decide to cook something when the husband isn’t well and it’s either that or fish and chips....). I’ve been told I make a very nice pan fried salmon.

So, if I can cook when I have to (generally around once or twice a year if I can get away with it) then why can’t professionals who are supposed to cook 40+ meals every night??

This programme makes me even angrier than Don't Tell the Bride and The Apprentice.

Foooood!!

The other evening I arrived home from a long, difficult day at work to find my husband skipping around the kitchen in chef's whites and an apron clearly pretending to be Gordon Ramsay....

He calls cooking 'therapy'. I call it torture. Which is why I never do any cooking if I can help it.

Yes, I am an incredibly lucky person in that I have a husband who can produce this (on a complete whim due to the fact that he'd gone and bought himself a new cookery book):

Spicy tomato soup and crusty bread. And that was just the starter.

This was the main course:

Shepherds pie!

We were meant to have sticky toffee pudding for pudding, but we were both too full to eat after all that so they will be for another day.

Checklist

So, list of big scary things to do in 2013:

Move into my own house - check 
Get married - check 
Decorate an entire house - check
Start a business - check 
Be in a play - check (twice in fact...) 
Get a pet - watch this space. I already have two cats but I'm hoping to get a dog at some point over the next year or so....

In other news, I ordered my very first set of business cards today :)

About Merryflowers

I am a self taught crocheteer of jewellery and accessories, including necklaces, brooches, earrings, bookmarks and keyrings. All of my items are unique and are handmade using wool and crochet cotton. I do not use glue for any of my items, and all of my multi-piece items are sewn together by hand.

The story of how this blog and my online shop came about is that I have always wanted to have my own business, be my own boss and earn money using a skill all of my own. I've dabbled with a lot of things to try and start this off - writing poetry and stories, origami, painting, drawing, crocheting, reading tarot cards. My very first 'business' was my origami jewellery when I was about 14.... it failed because I couldn't really get away with colouring in my own paper with colouring pencils, and kind of because I wasn't very good at it.

I started crocheting about a year ago and found that I really enjoyed messing about with a hook and wool, although I had no interest in crocheting big things like cardigans and shawls. I don't have the attention span for it. So I started thinking, what if I could crochet tiny things instead? I started looking at patterns for small spirals and flowers and bows and other small crochetable objects (is that a new word - crochetable?) that I could then turn into brooches and necklaces. 

I have since learnt how to create amigurumi (small 3D animals and objects), which has opened up a whole new niche for me as I can now create little keyrings and crochet ornaments. I am constantly improving my crocheting skills and learning new things that I can use in my own unique designs. 


For more information on any of the items in my shop and for queries on commissions, please email me on merryjxx [!at] yahoo.co.uk