love happy

The minute we booked our holiday in January this year, I knew that I simply had to bomb something of the yarn-happy and cheery kind in Barcelona. I felt a strong sense of compulsion to do this in a foreign city, leave a little graffiti of the yarn variety behind to say "Penny was here" without damaging or offending a beautiful place!   Because we decided to only take hand luggage and to challenge ourselves with travelling lightly, I could only squeeze a couple of leftover balls from previous projects into my bag and one crochet hook which I was prepared to loose if flight security decided it needed to be removed. I chose this yellow rowan tweedy yarn and some left over greeny coloured Noro sock yarn because I wasn't taking a pattern with me and thought I'd be able to make up a flower and leaves type posy for bombing in a square somewhere. On coming back from the Picasso museum (which is free from 3pm onwards on the first Sunday of the month and definitely well worth a...

We are back from our very busy, but beautiful, hot and happy holiday in Barcelona and up the coast on the Costa Brava to Tossa de Mar.       There is so much to say and yet I cannot find the words to describe our 8 day trip away. I think I am still spinning from the beauty, the hot sunshine and the joy of opening my mind again to travelling. We loved; the architecture of Catalonia, the people, the language, the food, the Mediterranean blues and greens of the sea, the rough sand and sea glass, the tapas, the sangria, the hot, balmy evenings, the siestas, the mountains and quiet early mornings.  Also included in this love was slowing doooooowwwwwwnnnn as a family, catching up with each others dreams and thoughts about what we saw and what we could see in the future, re-uniting as ourselves, finding time to read again and feel the sun on our skins. Eating beautiful food that tastes so full of flavour and promise, playing games and giggling over some ...

Before I pack my bag (yes, we are travelling lightly, one bag of hand luggage each for 8 nights) to go to abroad, I simply needed to crochet something and you may well have guessed that that something was 5 bunting flags  for Lucy and her woolly bunting idea for the first year of Yarndale this year. I loved rummaging in my stash of left over style craft and other DK yarns last night and included in this pile of yarn was a big ball of white style craft that I have never used. I guess I bought it thinking that I would make one of those very stylish granny square blankets bordered by white yarn one day, but just never got round to it and facing my "fear" of white yarn! When I say fear it's not that severe, I just can't stand the stuff, white yarn gives me the heeby jeeby's, I have no idea why? Anyway, I decided to face my fear and include white in my bunting and to be honest I think the fear factor has come down to about 98% now :O) How  about you? Do you like the w...

  Hello there!   It's time for my weekly moments of happies and I can promise you that quite a few happies happened this week but boy have I been busy and super stressed at work trying to do my job and then tie up 101 ends before going on annual leave. As a consequence I haven't been very snap happy with my camera so I only have a few bits to log here today.   The first gorgeous surprise was from my darling friend Bronwen who lives in Australia, she sent a lovely parcel with pressies for me and Alice and to my utter delight I received these pretty buttons. I love the colours Bron, thank you so much. Alice is at that age where she can control the urge to open a present before her birthday, so we have safely stored them away until her special day. ?   ? When I was taking a quick snap of these with my phone a flash of an idea went through my cluttered brain about a button collective type swap. I think I might just muster up the energy to talk more about his when we get...

Hello again Do any of you remember when I purchased the above yarn {posted here }? It has 15% blue faced Leicester sheep's wool in it and was hand dyed by the seller. Well, it simply had to become another shawl now didn't it! My very first lacy shawl I knitted not particularly perfectly can be found here . I chose to make the Holden Shawlette which you can download for free on Ravelry. I wanted to crank up my lace knitting skills another notch and build on my confidence with lace knitting. I can honestly say that I loved knitting this in the last 10 days despite the heat. It also came down to the beach with me for the odd row or two when I felt inspired. Here it is unblocked last night... all curly and not very pretty, sorry the photo's are out of focus, I am getting my eye sight re-tested on Thursday! And here it is all blocked and a lot prettier I think. Gosh, what a difference blocking makes with overnight drying in this Summer heat. I must say that I am a little bit pl...

How glorious the sunshine and blue skies have been this week. I kept reminding myself about what a horrid Winter we have had and tried to bask in the beauty of real Summer of 30+ degrees. I have one more week at work then hip hip hooray 2 weeks off when we will be going to Barcelona and up the coast to  Tossa de mar . I can't wait!  So, how has your past week been? Mine seems to have developed into a funny little pattern of it's own, working then getting home to cycle down to the seaside for a dip and cool off and lie down and relax on the beach followed by alfresco eating and sitting outside with my little family and our bunny until the sunsets. It was almost like being on holiday :o) Here are some of my little happy moments from this week.... Never being just satisfied with soaking up the sun, I always set myself a little challenge of finding pretty pebbles and shells that are in my immediate reach and making pretty collages with all the patterns, textures and shapes. I can ...

Are you all buzzed out with this hot weather and vitamin D overload yet? Na-ah not me, nope not one iota. I am loving cycling down to the seaside after a hot days work and dipping my hot head into the cool waters of the south coast, the water has been like a mill pond over the last couple of days and I am like a lemming to the sea, can't help it. The best bit is that the water has been crystal clear and you can spot your painted toe nails in amongst the jewels of muted pebbles through the water. When I came home last night after my netball session I couldn't resist a bit of spray painting, especially when there is one last bit in the can begging to be used! The "victim" of my spray painting jaunt was this... Yep, that poor impala was destined to turn a shade or two brighter than what it originally started out as. As you can see this carved impala has angles and obvious carved bits all over, I was hoping that this would make it a bit more interesting when I spray paint...