Just Pottering

 A lot of this summer was spent pottering about the house and garden. 

'Pottering' means occupying oneself in a desultory, but pleasant, way.  My time spent tending the pots at our front door was certainly pleasant.  But desultory or purposeless?  Certainly not!

When this concrete Ikea plant pot failed to survive the winter frosts, I salvaged the pieces, glued them back together and created a mosaic over its cracked surface.

Covering the pot with tile squares was gently therapeutic, whilst messing about with grout is equally rewarding once the job is complete.  

Using outdoor adhesive and grout meant my pot could sit decoratively at the front door all season.  This year, however, I shall bring it inside before winter so the frost can't wreak any more damage. 

An old green wheelbarrow was mouldering away in an unseen corner of our garden.  It had worked hard during building work to our house over a decade ago and no longer functioned, its suspension shot.  I decided to make it into a garden planter.  

Amazingly, the Hammerite paint I bought could be applied directly to rust so my husband, Geoff, removed the worst of it with a wire brush, then I got to work with my paint pot.

Transformed from rusty green to glossy blue, my wheelbarrow makeover was ready to plant.  I got Geoff to bash some drainage holes into the rusty unpainted base, lined it with garden membrane then added drainage stones and compost.  

The tiny geranium plug plants I bought mail order from Marshalls last April, and nurtured indoors, were sturdy and ready to plant out by mid July when my paint project was complete. 

I crammed all 40 plants into the barrow to create a real show.

Here's the wheelbarrow planter in late July and again in September - and it's still blooming as I write in early November!

.....

In June, my daughter Maddy and I engaged in a little more pottering at a nearby paint-your-own pottery studio.  Impressed with the sample pieces featuring crystal glaze at  The Bee Crafty Studio, Maddy opted to use it to create this pretty pink jug whilst I crystal glazed a spoon rest to match my cooker splash-back.

We pottered off to The Bee Crafty Studio again in August to celebrate my sister-in-law's birthday.

While she and my niece made gorgeous, and highly individual, plant pots, I chose to paint a fragrance diffuser for use with scented oils and wax melts.  The magical crystal glaze (which you can see on the right) contains small pieces of glass frit which burst into colour during the firing process.

 So much fun to see what the finished piece looks like when it comes out of the kiln.

It was only whilst pottering around at home during the summer holidays that I opened up the Sculpd Pottery Kit my daughter, Eilidh, had thoughtfully given me for my birthday.  

The kit contained air-dry clay, tools, paints and simple-to-follow instructions - everything needed to make several plant pots or pinch pots.  As I'd got my hands messy with clay, I didn't take any photos 'til I'd fashioned this wonky wee pot for one of my many  plant babies.

Some things are best shared - there was lots of clay in the kit so my husband, Geoff, and my daughter, Maddy, also had a go.  Though we made our pots when Maddy was home in June, we didn't paint them 'til she was home again for a visit last week.

I opted for turquoise paint again and fortuitously found the tester pot for the kitchen wall to decorate the outside.  Inside is white displaying the paint supplied in the Sculpd Kit.  We had a tube of blue acrylic paint in the house so Geoff and Maddy chose to use that along with the Sculptd white.

Feeling my pot was still a bit plain, I spatter painted it with gold leaf we also had at hand using an old toothbrush.

Our pots are as individual as we are.

Pots...

Pottery...

Pottering... 

I think I'll redefine 'just pottering' as 'partaking in potentially productive pastimes'.

A Mosaic Table Top Gift

 It's not the first time I've  presented my sister-in-law with a handmade gift.

Over our 30+ years of friendship, I've knitted her a cosy hat (modelled here by my husband), a shawl to swathe herself in and some not quite matching fingerless mitts.  

I've even made her a lampshade which I presented with the bulb attachment and a bottle of her favourite tipple so she could easily upcycle it into a lamp. 

But a milestone birthday demands a special gift - so I decided to make her a table.  At our age we should be taking it easy, putting our feet up and enjoying our elevenses at leisure, or sipping an early evening aperitif in the garden in the fading sunlight.  A wee table on which to place one's favourite mug and book, or wine glass and nibbles, sounded like just the kind of gift I wanted to give.

When I say 'make a table', I most definitely lack the carpentry skills to start from scratch so I approached my mosaic tutor, Ann, to see if a suitable base might have happened to have come into her possession thanks to the diligent car boot foraging skills of her partner, Will.  

Indeed there were many tables on offer which oozed makeover potential.

But all of them were wooden and only suitable therefor for indoor use.  I could really see Frances enjoying an outdoor table on which to rest a cocktail adorned with a tiny umbrella or a pretty bone china cup of steaming hot coffee.  I'd just have to wait for the perfect base.  

As it happened, I didn't have to wait long.  A spot of spring cleaning at Ann's  studio unearthed two cast iron tables hidden under a multitude of other treasure.  I had my pick, then Will cut a base on which I could create a mosaic table-top for the birthday girl.

Ah - the joy of planning the design - laying out pretty pieces and moving them around again and again.  Especially enjoyable when you can work outside in the late summer sun.

Delightful though it was to spend endless hours in this way, I was up against the clock.  I'd only one session at Ann's studio before the big day so had to finalise my design and glue it into place.  The other tasks required to finish the project could be completed by me at home.

The concentric glass cabochons, interspersed with millefiori, I finally settled on bear little resemblance to my original ideas - apart from the rainbow colour scheme.  

A cheerful and timeless design classic!

To my dismay, I knocked one of the purple gems off the board as I was removing it from the car only to watch helplessly as it disappeared into the inaccessible seatbelt hole to my cries of 'no, no, no'!!  I had no identical replacement at home and no time to visit the mosaic studio again.

The glass gem I found in my bead box is not an exact match but I rather like its mismatched appearance.  After I'd attached the beautiful millefiori to the spaces in between the glass nuggets it was time to grout.  Full PPE was required!

Uncovering all the detail is part of the joy of grouting.  I always refer to a photo on my phone of the mosaic prior to covering it with grout so I can remind myself where all the beautiful beads actually are.

Then you can never polish it too much.  Glass sparkles so gratifyingly within a mosaic.

Whilst the grout hardened, I was able to crack on with painting.  The cleaned cast iron table base benefited from a new coating and I chose a hammered effect black paint that complimented its aged appearance.  Here's a bit of before and after the painting process.  The shiny bit is new!

With the paint dry and the grout hard, the final job was to glue the two pieces together.

They are NEVER coming apart!

I can't wait to visit my sister-in-law on a decent day and enjoy a drink in her garden, toasting her entry into a new decade in style!

A Collection of Cowls

I don't think I'd ever worn a cowl until my friend Caroline gave me this one for my birthday a few years ago.  Caroline always chooses beautiful and  thoughtful gifts and this bears the name of Orkney designer, Kirsteen Stewart, and is 100% lambswool.  I wear it around the house when I'm chilly - it keeps me surprisingly cosy without adding another layer of clothing.

Mixter Maxter Twist Scarf by Kirsteen Stewart

So what is a cowl?  One definition is a large loose hood like that worn by monks.  The root of the word is the Latin 'cucullus' meaning hood.  Cowls can also cover chimneys to increase draft and cover the gap between the bonnet of a car and its windshield - but let's just concern ourselves here with knitted neckwear!  

Knitters tend to think of cowls as quick projects using relatively small amounts of wool to create tubes that keep your neck cosy.  When I saw how cool knitwear designer Isabell Kraemer looked modelling her own cowl pattern, I just had to make it.

The design is called Copenhagen Calling.  Back in October 2018, I was about to enjoy a mini-break in Copenhagen, so it seemed entirely appropriate to use some treasured Hedgehog Fibres and Ripplescrafts yarn and make this lovely design.  I even got to try on a grey and turquoise version of this cowl on Baa!'s stall at the 2018 Perth Yarn Festival.  This only galvanised my desire to knit it.

You could choose how many stitches to cast on and my version is more of an infinity scarf than a cowl.  I made it too long and found it too bulky.  Consequently, after popping it on for this photo, I never wore it.

And in June 2019 I recognised I was never going to wear it so I ripped it out!

Which freed up the beautiful wool to become something else.

Cowl patterns kept creeping into my life and in the lockdown summer of 2020, I spotted the Arabella Cowl by Rowan Yarns.

Again, the jury is out whether this is an infinity scarf or a cowl.  I enjoyed selecting colours from my stash of precious leftovers, including the purply-pink I'd freed up a year earlier.  Knitting outside in the sun is always a pleasure, especially if the project isn't so big to be too hot on your lap!  A cowl like this meets that brief.

I wore the Arabella Cowl twisted twice around my neck but, if I'm honest, it's a bit short for this and too long (for my liking) to be worn without doubling it up.  Too much like a mahoosive woolly necklace.  Not yet the cowl of my dreams.

During the stay-at-home summer of 2020 I purchased some pretty mini-skeins to support the Flower Power Fund.  A one woman initiative, Dr Sarah Holmes' Flower Power Fund raises funds for Marie Curie by teaming up with UK indie yarn dyers once a month to produce a limited edition colourway based on a flower of their choice.  Last year Sarah's yarn sales and raffles raised over £25,000 for Marie Curie hospices!

I was smitten when Leona-Jane at Rusty Ferret dyed up these beauties for the Flower Power Fund based on her favourite blooms, sweet williams.  They're beautifully vibrant and I chose to knit the merino minis whilst holding a strand of Rico mohair silk as I like the cosy texture this creates.

When I tried to purchase more of the icy mohair, though, I learned that the colour had been discontinued.  After a short cry, I found this pretty pink Lang Mohair Luxe at Emily Foulds online shop and held the Flower Power yarn with this instead.

Over the winter, I chose to knit the SOS Cowl by Edinburgh designer and tutor, Maddie Harvey, which she designed specifically for mini skeins.  It's a free pattern which combines multiple colours with a simple lace repeat when you sign up for her newsletter.

How generous!

The resulting cowl is really toasty and I'm going to wear on the golf course.  I need to be warm but don't require the extra bulk of a scarf.  My beginner attempts to hit the ball need no additional encumbrance!  

This cowl is definitely a keeper.

As soon as I opened my advent calendar from Henny Penny Makes I knew I was going to knit each tiny yarn package into the Simple Scrappy Advent Cowl, the pattern included in the box.

For twenty four days in December last year I uncovered a new woolly bundle and incorporated it into my cowl.  Erin of Henny Penny Makes creates the most beautiful colours. 

It's a simple stocking stitch design but I love it.  I'd some misgivings about the highlighter green on day 9 but only a flash is usually visible which makes all the other colours sing.  I wear this cowl a lot as it appears to go with almost everything I wear!

Another cowl for the collection!

Just a week after finishing the advent cowl, I opened my Cookston Crafts Hogmanay Treat Box.  I already had the The Fireside Chat Cowl by Zanete Hussain in my pattern library and the wonderful warm tones of the Hogmanay colourway dyed by Claire of Cookston Crafts was perfect.  I teamed it up with a gorgeous rust coloured skein dyed by La Bien Aimee in collaboration with Mondim I'd won in a giveaway two years earlier.

This Cookston Crafts Treat Box included a Jane Keenan candle and shortbread by Bakeology 

This cowl was ideal knitting as we locked down again in January 2021.  The online course I attended last October run by Maddie Harvey on how to cable without a cable needle came in really handy for this design as I put my new skill into practice.  

I couldn't help but notice how colour coordinated my reading and knitting had become!

Reading Shuggie Bain for pleasure and David Walliams for school!

What drew me to this pattern is the way this cowl showcases two completely different yarns.  The textured and stocking stitch sections are knitted at the same time then seamed with a twist which creates a double thickness of woolly warmth.

So what have I learned from knitting all these cowls? 

• I've realised that I like a short tube which doesn't hug the neck too tightly.  
• Using yarn which will drape nicely has made me more likely to wear the finished item.  
• Colour, colour colour!  I will always choose to keep cosy with colour coordinated accessories.  

I'm sure there will be more cowls in my creative future but I may be more thoughtful over my pattern choice to ensure I make neckwear that I will love.

Neeps! A celebration of the Doric dialect

Fit's a neep?  You might well ask.  In my part of North East Scotland, those born and bred here speak a particular dialect known as Doric.  I am not native to Aberdeenshire, hailing originally from Ayr on the other side of the country, but my husband was born and brought up a few miles from where we live now.  Even after spending the last 37 years together, he can still surprise me by using Doric words I've never heard uttered before.  Skittery hippit vratch being one such phrase describing an unruly (young cow) with questionable hygiene in its hind quarters!  How could I not know that?

When I spied this request on Facebook to contribute to Kate Wilson's degree show piece by crafting something incorporating Doric heritage, I knew at once just what I wanted to make.  Drawing on my family's delight in story telling, and their lapse into Doric when they're all together, I focused on a tale told my father-in-law, Bill, involving his Dad, a German prisoner of war called Walter and some turnips (or neeps in Doric).

Bill was brought up on a farm in Banffshire during World War II.  Walter, who was billeted nearby, was assigned to help out with farm labour over the many months of war.  Bill's dad never moderated his native dialect for Walter and one day Bill heard his dad telling Walter to pu' neeps in twa rows.  Bill was sure Walter, who spoke Polish, would be bamboozled with this instruction but, a while later, found that the turnips had indeed been pulled up and laid out in two neat rows.  Doric, it would appear, is a universal language, if you're around Doric speakers long enough that is!

So I began my contribution to Kate's project by crocheting  my first neep following a free pattern I found on the Hobbycraft  website for a spring wreath.  To be honest, the pattern is for a radish and it turned out a bit big so I located some finer fibres in my yarn stash and used a smaller hook to create a rather daintier turnip lookalike.

Kate, the student who'd requested the textile samples for her final year art project, provided clear specifications whilst encouraging her contributor's personal creativity.  3D elements, such as my wee neeps, could be included so I needed a flat panel on which to display them.

When I was a student I had a penchant for knitting picture jumpers.  I didn't know the technique was called intarsia or even how to do it properly.  As a nod to my own student days, I decide to knit an intarsia background for my panel.  That required creating a pattern for my pastoral scene - time to crack out the coloured pencils and graph paper.

Never throwing away any wool from past projects has its advantages.  I used mostly Scottish yarns (as that is what I like to knit with nowadays) including Shetland's Jamieson and Smith for the peaty brown earth, Balnahard natural dyed yarn from Colonsay for land and hills and hand dyed sky blues from Assynt-based Ripples Crafts.  Further embroidery embellishment included a flock of  fluffy sheep, a post and wire fence and some additional green shrubbery, all in wool and threads I've already used in my own personal crafting life.   

Finally I stitched on the Doric words which inspired me in the first place in a giant sunny circle attached using tiny appliqué stitches.

Once I'd attached the neeps, in two neat rows of course, my piece was ready to post to Kate in Dundee in time for the 24th March deadline. 

Then it was up to Kate, an Art and Philosophy graduand at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, to weave her magic - quite literally.  

Unveiled online on Friday 11th June at the 2021 Graduate Showcase, her artwork is entitled "Wyvin' Wyes" (or Weaving Ways) and is described by Kate herself as 'a beautiful big lampshade'!

Here's Kate with 'Wyvin' Wyes'

The craft contributions received from me, and many others throughout Aberdeenshire, have been intricately woven by Kate into a veritable sound and light show.  Recordings of Doric voices place the dialect at the heart of her creation.  It celebrates Doric now, as well as in the past, and nods to the future evolution of language. 

To learn more, Aberdeen's Press and Journal newspaper published an online article all about Kate's work here.

I'm so pleased to have been part of this project and I'm fair tricket for Kate - and that means I'm just delighted!