A Very English Garden

We're popping back to this year's Chelsea Flower Show for today's post to take a look at another of the artisan gardens, sponsored by The Claims Guys and simply titled A Very English Garden, as as the board said it was "designed to stand the test of time" and to be "simply a beautiful garden" and I think it manages that.

The detail in the stonework entrance, and the overall impression is stunning. It's reminiscent of a grand English country garden and hard to believe that this was only constructed for the show.  It also tricks you into believing it's a much larger space than it is, and just the entrance to a much grander garden.

The garden celebrates craftmanship and tradition and draws its inspiration from the Arts and Crafts movement, and it does remind me of our first visit to Coleton Fishacre in Devon back in 2013, and my blog post is an old one and one that I moved over from my previous site, so the photos are tiny.

I think this garden works, not only because it's pretty, but also because of its symmetry.

The planting was, as you'd expect from a garden at Chelsea, fantastic and full of pinks and purples and something that is easily replicated in our own gardens.  I think that's one of the best things of the show, the planting is often attainable, but attractive too.

There's roses and columbines - or granny's bonnets - and while the latter can be treated as weeds in my garden, they're still pretty and allowed until they take over!

I think the garden set out what it intended, and is a simply beautiful garden.  I'm not the only one to think so as the garden was awarded silver-gilt by the judges and voted the best artisan garden in the people's choice vote, what do you think?

A crochet update

I've mentioned a couple of times here that my "Spring" crochet blanket is complete - named by one of the comments in a much earlier blog post for its spring-like colours, and the name just stuck - but other than a glimpse I hadn't shown any photos.  So today I am, I also said previously that it doesn't match the bedding currently on the bed, and you can see it doesn't, but I don't really mind.  It goes with the colour scheme of the room, and more importantly it is finished, ends sewn in and everything.

And I'm rather proud of it.  This is my first crochet project, and given that I taught myself last autumn, and the blanket includes my very first granny square ever - it's a pale yellow one - I'm pleased with how it turned out.  

I quickly got bored of plain granny squares though in the thirst to learn more and experiment with this new-to-me craft and so the idea of the 'pattern' was born.  I decided to try different squares to test myself, some I liked and enjoyed making and others I didn't; some I adapted part-way through, especially if I found the pattern too dull, or if I went wrong (more likely!)

And so it grew, but I was keen to move onto the many other projects I had lined up, so to add variation I decided that I needed one larger square in all of the wools I was using which would help it grow quicker, and give the patchwork look I was after.  And I reverted to plain granny squares to get it done. With enough squares completed and a layout decided - remember I used the bed and photographed it so I didn't forget - I started to join it together, first adding a round of white around each square to give some uniformity, joining with the granny square stitch.  

I learnt many stitches, the composition of squares which I know will help in future projects and that variegated yarn works so much better in crochet than it does in knitting somehow.  I've always liked the variegated wool, but not so much when knitted, now my love is rekindled, although it might be on hold for a bit as I've already several projects that I have the wool for, including the Kalevala which was the blanket that started this journey (and is still not started).

So, with the Spring blanket complete, what next?

Well apart from the two other projects on the go, one is a square a week in muted colours that I'm behind on in the number of weeks and the other is a lunchtime project that lives in my desk.  I rarely get to do this, that I should do more of it really, I decided I needed to start another of the projects I already have planned.

I wasn't sure which but then I remembered I'd already done some of the groundwork for the Vintage Sweetheart blanket by Cherry Heart which was serialised in Crochet Now.  The original colour-way of the blanket is great, but not very me.  I'm much more of a bright colour person and so I decided to ramp it up a bit with my own colours.  They're not too far away from the original, but they do have a bit more of a pop.

As well as creating my own colour chart - as I'm bound to forget at some point which colour is what - I've also listed which squares are in which section, so I can take a slightly different approach to making it.  I'm starting with the Granny Jean square and last night made four of them for three separate sections.  I'll need to work out how to label them so I don't get them muddled up and right now the simplest thing I can think of is to put each section’s squares into a separate bag.  Simple is good!

They're quite bright though aren't they?  And I'm already pleased with them.  These are a variation on the granny square, but use the V stitch instead of the more traditional approach.  MOH noticed the new project last night, asked what it was and then enquiries if I was expecting a cold winter, what with it being another blanket. 

It’s for another room I told him, but I hadn’t worked out which. Not that I shared that last bit, of course. However this morning as I was photographing the new squares, I think I found its new home:

What do you think?!

Cushion crazy

This week I'm sharing more from the Yorkshire interiors shop of loveliness.  Our cushion detecting radar must have brought us here as we keep saying we need to buy cushions for all three of our grey sofas.  The easy, and more traditional way of doing this would be to choose two or three designs and stock up.  But I'm not always a fan of the easy route, sometimes that's a good thing and at others it just means more shopping than either of us are used to...

There was certainly plenty of choice here and while many were lovely, and there was the pom pom edging that I've been banging on about for most of the year, many were a bit too pastel and soft for what I was after.  The hare did seriously test me though, isn't it lovely?

It wasn't all just animals though, there were florals and multi-coloured bobbles. These were getting to more of what I had in mind, something full of colour that could be switched between our main living room and our conservatory, but even so we moved on.

The fish cushions were admired, and they're quite obviously related to some of the cushions I've already shared.

And then, upstairs in one of the many rooms, we found our cushion.

Yeap, the orange stag was ours and is now proudly living on our conservatory sofa. I suspect it's quite lonely out there as while we find the right cushions for the main sofa, we've requisitioned the black and white geometric patterned cushions (these ones which have already been promoted from the futon).  But putting these together give you an idea of the bold approach we're aiming for in the conservatory, the living room might be slightly more sedate, but who knows...