I am not the house-wifey type....but

I don't know what it was - the sun maybe - but this weekend I managed to prove myself to be the perfect wife and mother. Now anyone who knows me will be aware that cooking and cleaning are not my forte. In fact, I will pretty much do anything to avoid both of these things, if I can. Luckily my husband is a great cook and likes to do it and well, the house just gets cleaned as and when it needs it.

But for whatever reason, this weekend I got the bug. It started with an early morning on Saturday. We are Formula 1 fans and the first race weekend of the season started at 5am Saturday morning and we were up and watching. That led to a morning in the garden raking leaves and sweeping up decking. Then the sewing machine came out (while my bread dough was rising!) and I finally made my granny square cushion. A blog on this will be along soon.

Washing was on the go and drying in the, by now, hot conservatory and the afternoon ended with freshly baked bread and dinner cooked for my hardworking husband, who had to finish off a job on Saturday. The evening was filled with glasses of wine and Mad Men on download.

Bring on Sunday... the early start didn't quite happen and the eventful Formula 1 race was watched via the recording at about 8.30am. But that was OK because as soon as it was over, my daughter and I headed to the shops and bought everything you could think of to have a mega-baking session. We managed to make some passable breakfast muffins, an ugly but yummy pineapple upside-down cake and some rather overdone choc chip cookies.

Then it was a full roast dinner with homemade Yorkshires for the four of us, plus my son's girlfriend. The evening passed with my folding washing ready for the school week and then settling down to a few rows of my ripple blanket and Top Gear.

As you might expect I was pretty much exhausted after all that. Bear in mind that my usual weekend is spent crocheting and listening to the radio...so I had an early night and watched Mary Beard on the BBC iPlayer and her fabulous lecture on the silencing of women - recommended.

So even the most undomesticated of us can really get some stuff done when we put our minds to it. Strangely, this motivation has continued into this morning and I got up at 5.30am and have managed to get most of my work out of the way before a trip to the orthodontist with my son. You know what? I might even walk into town to meet him...

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Love Heart pattern and magic circle tutorial

So - we all know it is Valentines day coming up and coincidently, I am teaching a crochet class this week. In that lovely harmonious way, I can marry up my class with my love of all things cute and help my beginners to make some pretty little crocheted love hearts. I have created a tutorial for them, with some photos included which I will post up here for all to see. The main focus of this is to teach the magic circle (the way I do it, anyway) - but it is also a great way to practise some basic stitches and create something really cute. The class is actually a freebee for a group of friends and is a great way for me to get back into teaching crochet as I haven't done any for a good six months (events conspired and all that...). There will be six ladies attending and I expect that more cups of tea will be drunk than love hearts made! Take a look at the tutorial and pattern here: Tiny Valentines Hearts (using a magic circle) Make a magic circle: Wrap the wool arou...

Have Sunday mornings ever looked so nice?

Woke up on Sunday morning, nice and early, to bright sunshine. Not a regular occurrence in the UK, so worth making the most of. Made myself a lovely cup of tea, served in my 750ml floral cup and got out my latest project: a cushion cover of odds and ends made into solid granny squares. I spent 2 hours soaking up the sun, making a huge number of little squares that will be joined together using the join-as-you-go method with red wool. As you can see from my "into the sun" shot - it was warm - beautifully warm. Blissful in fact. The whole family stayed in bed, while I appreciated our newly cleaned garden. So the blissful bit might have come from being alone. Sometimes you just need it...alone with nothing but your thoughts and a crochet hook. I thought I deserved a break after spending 4 hours on Saturday making the garden look like this. Oh my aching back!

Everyone loves bunting (and Summer)

Lilies were my Mum's favourite flower, but when I was a child I couldn't bear the stamens (the orange bits that stick out of the middle of the flower) - they gave me running eyes and the sneezes. They still do - but I buy them anyway just to remind me of her. Mum used to pinch out the stamens just for me - but then you lost the gorgeous smell. I have decided to grin and bear it...or should I say sniff and bear it? Lilies also remind me of Christmas...I am a southern hemisphere girl, remember. We would have the whole house adorned with these at Christmas time, stinking up the place but performing the perfect backdrop to the tinsel and pine Christmas tree. So this is my own little piece of a mid-summer Christmas - in June. As you can see, this is also my workspace. My own little corner of the living room where the sun peeks through in the late afternoon. Sometimes it is cluttered and somewhat unruly and at other times it is a tiny little piece of heaven. As y...

If Only I Could Crochet...

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