packing for a spot of beavering...

tomorrow, myself and Miss Ethel are leaving the shed for a visit with my adopted auntie. Miss Ethel is particularly tres delighted as she has not left the shed for a spin since last September. i am packing up lots of vintage fabrics and lace, where upon arriving at my adopted auntie's lovely old grey cottage by a babbling brook, we will spend many quality hours beavering away together making apron wraps. we are being most disciplined and will not spend our time chin wagging as we are apt to do, only to find several hours later we have achieved nothing for our time spent together other than putting the world to rights.

my adopted auntie has done a cracking job at rustling up some more lovely high hope flags to hang in the shop window. we have been most happy with how well they have sold and i in turn have been most happy with the results of cutting up all the leftovers she kindly saved for me.

little itty bitty high hope strings, all doing rather a lovely job of making it look like Spring has Sprung in my studio. which of course it has not and i do believe as tomorrow is the first of June it is likely to not Spring at all this year and now i am just hoping Summer does us the pleasure of his company before we go 'a little spare' in these parts.

the itty bitty strings are to travel the seas with me to England in three weeks time. along with the large high hope flags, they are destined to bring a certain dottie angelness to a lovely cottage by the sea. if indeed you are thinking you may like to visit this cottage by the sea and spend some quality time learning the way i 'patch and a piece' secondhand fabrics together then it would be lovely to have you join us. we still have a few places left, so if you are sitting on the fence pondering if this is something you may like to do then please do get in contact with either myself or Angela so we may help you get down off your fence and pack up your vintage stash and head to Suffolk in July. did i mention before that Our #1 will also be joining us, yes indeedy she will be my right hand man (or girl as the case maybe) and i am thinking, i could not ask for a better assistant, yes grand stuff indeed

she has packed a suitcase, just in case she is tempted to stay a while with her adopted auntie ~ Tif

a bit of 'lo and beholdness' in the shed...

do you recall a certain lovely thrift store blanket?

no need to fret about your recall skills, nor mutter under your breathe

"blimey Tif, i can hardly recall what i had for dinner last night, let alone your thrifty finds"

for i have provided an image to help, i know its friday and the week has been long so i do not wish you to have to mutter under your breathe because of me.

actually i can recall what i had for dinner last night, a rare occurrence indeed. not 'having dinner', the recalling it bit. it was a meal of orange with a hint of green. it was completely home cooked and surprisingly appealing looking, therefore worthy of recall in my mind.

however it is not about my culinary delights today, no sirree! it is all about Mille and her crocheting kindness.

upon finding my lovely thrift store blanket, then gifting it to another i continued about my life.

then one day Mille appeared, she told me how the blanket had inspired her to make one for herself and as she had trouble finding a pattern for it, very cleverly (i am thinking) worked it out from my blanket! this had me very delighted and even more so when she wrote up her 'something pretty' pattern and was happy to share it with us. thank you so kindly Mille for inspiring me to pick up Mr Hook again and others i am quite sure.

i am totally in love with Mille's use of colours, this is so often where i trip up but not today, for today i am riding high, higher than i have ever ridden in my short history of crochet riding...

for you see, thanks to the brilliant Mille, a small miracle came to pass last night in Mossy Shed.

as i sat, pondering her pattern with Mr Hook in hand and a ball of gray (see what i mean about colour), i established two rounds of petals and instead of doing as i was told and finishing up with a round of granny square to complete the one petaled square, a little voice whispered in my ear.

that little voice tempted me to do another round of petals, it questioned if indeed i could perhaps go another round or two after that. it was daring me to aim for a circle of crocheted goodness. i made a silent promise to Mille i would come back to her squares after i had ventured off with my little voice

never in my short span of crocheting career (do i have one) have i managed a circle of muchness. but i was feeling reckless, i was in my new snug, cozy, crafty hangout upstairs tucked out of the way of my clan, i was feeling anything was possible at that moment in time. the world of crocheting was my oyster.

and so it would appear the crocheting circle gods were in line, for row after row of petals and hour after hour of me sitting there listening to the early morning show on Radio 2 had me believing that miracles do happen. as i stood to go to bed, a little achy and creaky, well past my due date of hitting the sack, i laid my crocheted circle offering down and right there and then, a chorus of angels appeared, (singing quietly cause it was late) and glory shone down on me.

a crocheted circle of 'lo and beholdness' had been born and not an ounce of 'colour iffyness' about it.

she is wishing you a bit of 'lo and beholdness' yourselves this weekend ~ Tif

a two parter...

yes dearest readers, such is the extent of our 'positively beaming' in the shed these days, i must indeed break down our new/old carpet moment into a two parter. for those that have rambled alongside of me for many a year will know this here home we like to call Mossy Shed was a sad and neglected little place upon arrival of us, three years ago.

the first year we did a brilliant job at ripping out this, tearing out that and slowly but surely breathing life back into the old girl, but then as is often the way with massive remodeling sort of jobs you run out of steam and you run out of doe... leaving a nest 90% done and 10% still to go.

earlier in the year i noted to my man i felt the need to move on to another nest, for my nomadic creative soul needed new pastures green. he looked at me in horror and then voiced since when had i ever been a nomad, i who never ever leaves my nest. i pointed out it was not my actual body which felt the need to move on, but my creative spirit which obviously comes from nomadic descent and therefore requires this continuous 'to the point of obsessive' need to shuffle things around.

he then wisely pointed out we loved our shed. to which i agreed whole heartily, but then i also pointed out that certain areas of her, i did not. he then wisely pointed out it is far more savvy a move to finish up the forgotten 10% then to actually move to another forgotten soul of a home requiring 100% attention.

gosh, well right there and then was the conversation we needed to have, to pull up our knee socks. well actually my man did not, for he does not possess such things, however he does have those kind of almost calf length socks leftover from his days of wearing businessy business attire. so he pulled those up really high and they did a good job at stretching up to his knees. i did not have my knee socks on but an old pair of woolly tights, darned in the toes and lacking in elastic around the waist, thus being held up by having my undervest nicely tucked in tightly. so i pulled those up so they were also nice and properly high up, with no baggy crotch thing going on and we set to work...

the cans of white paint came out and the wonderfulness of my friend Maggi happened! after 3 years of living with a 'can't work with you as much as i try' 30 year old green carpet, this past monday, 2 men and 12 hours later we had ourselves a beige secondhand granny carpet resplendent in the shed. truth be told it had to be patched and pieced in places a carpet should not be, but we did not care, no sirree! for anything was better than what we had on the stairs, landing and three bedrooms before our lovely granny carpet came to stay.

"i have three shades of beige in my bedroom" exclaimed Our #4 at 8pm on monday after the fellows had left. it appeared he seemed genuinely delighted with his good fortune

"it reminds me of something a granny would knit" said Our #3

"do you think so! really?" i excitedly hoped so

"why yes, if you look at the self pattern in it, it looks like one of those sweaters they knit" he continued "i thought you would be happy to hear that" with a twinkle in his eye

and i was dearest readers, i was.

for in an ideal world i would have wood flooring throughout my shed, but this was never going to be and therefore the next best thing was a secondhand granny chic carpet kindly gifted to us by a friend.

today sees me 'a shuffling and a shifting' the bedrooms back together whilst hammering in nails and hanging pictures, and tomorrow the white paint comes out again to finish up the rest of the dark wood. for it is hard to remember but when we moved here everything in this shed was dark. the walls, the doors, the wood trim and the ceilings... little by little with a 'slight hiccup' in between of two years, we are back on the road to finishing up Mossy Shed and making her feel not 90% loved but 100%, just as she deserves.

she has an urge to crochet for the first time in yonks ~ Tif

footynote: just in case you may be wondering, 'cos that is perfectly okay to do, some of the best folks i know wonder often. the board at the bottom of our stairs is a 'pesky little olive' gate. thus allowing the furry feline friend to live happily upstairs without interruption from a pesky doggie... knocked together by my man and myself, no less :)