January in Pictures: Rainbows, Sketches, and a Seaside Sunset

One month of 2017 finished already! How did that happen??

My January was rather busy. I've been juggling DIY and deadlines, doing my best to fit everything into my days and working around all the mess and general chaos created by DIY projects. We've been getting a lot done, but there's still lots to do!

I've begun to settle into my new home, but I have to admit that I'm missing being able to easily pop into London for the day. I've been pining a little for the big museums and places like Liberty...

... but I've been loving being able to take daily walks along the beach and seafront, especially at sunset. Aren't those colours just heavenly?

Here on my blog I looked back at 2016, blogging about last year's crafty projects and Nice Days Out (including a very special trip to Bamburgh), as well as a wonderful walk I took with my dad.

I've also made a start on editing more Nice Day Out photos ready for future blog posts, including photos from the two highly enjoyable photowalks I went on last year. This is one of the photos I took at Chiswick Park station during the first photowalk - I can't stop noticing these kinds of details now!

For my New Year's Resolution, I resolved to read more books and joined the local library to help me do so. I'll be blogging about how I'm getting on sometime soon. Spoiler alert: not having a television or home broadband (because one's in a box and the other hasn't been connected yet) definitely helps you find more time to read!

I've also decided to try and do more sketching and to not be afraid to a) sketch in public and b) show you guys some of my sketches instead of just my finished designs. It feels a bit weird sharing my messy sketches, but I'm going to do it anyway.

This month (apart from secret sketches for things I can't show you yet) I sketched lots of spring flowers as inspiration for some new projects...

... and I did some sketching at the British Museum, too. It was lovely having a busy day in London at the end of the month but I also really enjoyed taking a bit of time out to find a quiet corner* of the Museum and focus on some sketches. The end result might not be perfect, but the process - my goodness, what an absolute pleasure it is to just take the time to draw things.

(*Well, I thought it was a quiet corner - I was in an almost-empty gallery to start with, then a tour of the gallery began and at one point the whole tour group were standing around the same cabinet I was sketching in front of! Eek! It was nice listening to the tour guide as I sketched, though, and I can only hope everyone was paying more attention to her words and the contents of the cabinet than to my scribblings!).

So much of January was dark and grey, I was craving bright colour. I started two new Instagram hashtags for colour lovers and got crafty with a rainbow of felt. I've also been cheering things up by using some of the novelty pencils I bought as a kid, including this fine fellow. All the serious business professionals are using troll pencils these days, dontcha know. 

That felt rainbow became a felt rainbow wreath tutorial, kickstarting the Year of Wreaths I'm designing for The Village Haberdashery. I also started a series of fruity tutorials here on my blog - I'll be posting a new one every week or so this month.

I can't wait to show you February's wreath! I delivered it by hand, since I was in London for the day. I managed to (coincidentally) time my visit for the opening day of The Village Haberdashery's new, much bigger shop. It's such a gorgeous, colourful space - I mean, just check out their yarn wall!

Blimey, that blog post was over almost as quickly as January was. Here's hoping February doesn't fly by quite so fast...

I'm lauralupinhoward on Instagram - click here to visit my page and follow me. You'll also find me on Facebook and Twitter.

December in Pictures: Frosty Leaves, Festive Fun & a New Home

It was rather quiet on my blog this December because I was a) busy getting ready to move, then b) moving house, and then c) doing lots of DIY in my new flat... but I also got up to some fun stuff and shared pictures! Wanna see?

I started the month in true Instagrammer / blogger style, by almost missing my train because I'd stopped to take photos of some frosty leaves. Totally worth it.

I got some gorgeous post from one of my (then) blog sponsors, in thanks for hosting their ad. How sweet is that? The adorable bunny brooch is by illustrator Emma Evans. 

I spent most of the start of December packing ready to move house, and ticking lots of other things off my "stuff that needs to get done before I can move" checklist. That bunny brooch got packed within hours of me taking that photo!

Of course, I couldn't resist squeezing in a couple more local Nice Days Out before moving away from the South-East. I spent a busy day in London, doing some Christmas shopping and oohing over all the festive loveliness (the lights, the shop windows and all the sparkly things for sale).

This is the swoonworthy flower stall in one of Harrods' food halls. It was such fun picking out delicious gifts for friends and family, umming and ahhing over all the loveliness.

 
I can never resist popping into the haberdashery department when I'm in Liberty. Not least because they're still selling my book! So thrilling.

My second last-Nice-Day-Out-before-I-move-away was a trip to Windsor. They had a gorgeous Christmas tree this year - a gift from the German town where Queen Victoria's husband Albert was born. Victoria and Albert popularised the idea of Christmas trees in Britain, and apparently Albert had his first tree at Windsor shipped in from his home town!

Windsor Castle is always a wonderful place to visit, but especially so at Christmas. It's quieter in the off-season, and the Castle is decorated with wreaths and garlands and Christmas trees, including a huge tree in the main hall.

 

I had a marvelous bit of luck, as it turned out that the only day I could manage to get away to Windsor for the day was not only wonderfully sunny (yay!) but it was also part of a special festive weekend of events at the Castle (hurrah!). There were choirs singing carols, ornament-making workshops, and a very funny "pop-up Panto". So much fun!

I also really enjoyed Fashioning a Reign, an exhibition of some of the Queen's outfits. Some of the embroidery and beading was quite incredible.

Back at home, I wrapped all my Christmas gifts super early so I could leave them at my parents house (to save carting them back and forth as I moved house then headed "home" for a family Christmas). Isn't the gift wrap gorgeous? It's not technically Christmas wrap, but who cares!

I totally dropped the ball on Christmas cards this year (I didn't send a single one! and I love sending Christmas cards!) but at least I managed this.

Before my unplanned blogging break I finished blogging about my trip to Leeds (so much great architecture!) and my day in Oxford with Polly. This is one of my favourite photos from that Oxford trip: a quiet corner of All Souls College.

 
I also blogged about the felt Christmas baubles tutorial I'd designed for the Village Haberdashery's blog. It feels a teeny bit pointless linking to a Christmas tutorial in January, but maybe you could bookmark it (or Pin it!) and make some felt baubles for Christmas 2017?

Then in the middle of December I moved to the seaside! Into my very own flat!

I'm really happy to be living in the South-West again (I love it here and had missed it a lot), and it's very exciting having my own place.

I shared this photo a few days after moving in: I might not have had a cooker or a fridge yet (or much proper furniture!) but I did have all the important stuff, like piles of colourful handmade blankets.

Seriously though, it has been such a joy finally using these blankets in my new home.

There's my Happy Rainbow Blanket (which I still need to take "finished" photos of!), a Giant Granny Square blanket (the first and only thing I have ever crocheted), my Sky Blanket, and my Random Squares blanket (which includes squares I knitted as a teenager). Each of these blankets contain so much meaning and so many memories, and they're all so wonderfully colourful. I love them.

It's also been really nice rediscovering some of the things I've had in storage for the past few years. I missed these plates rather a lot - isn't the pattern lush?

After a couple of busy weeks of moving boxes and doing DIY it was time to head to my parents house for Christmas. These are a choir of singing trees from the Christmas at Kew light trail I visited with my mum back in November; the trees lit up as they "sang". Delightful!

We had a lovely quiet Christmas - just how we like it. We watched lots of films and some Christmas telly and ate far too much food.

These are the excellent gifts I got for Christmas: the Ghostbusters remake on DVD (which I made my family watch immediately; such a great film!) and a Chocolate Orange (yum!).  

Aaaand that's it for another month!

I'm lauralupinhoward on Instagram - click here to visit my page and follow me. You'll also find me on Facebook and Twitter.

July in Pictures: Lots of Flowers, Infinite Pumpkins, a Giant Ice Cream and a Very Long Walk

July was pretty busy! Let's take a look at what I got up to...

At the start of the month I went to Windsor and walked all the way along the Long Walk and back. It was a rather long way (and, I'm not gonna lie, I kinda regretted the decision two thirds of the way along) but 100% worth it for this fabulous view back to the Castle.

I wrote some letters and cards to my friends and penpals and shared a pic of some of the lovely snail mail I'd recently received (is there anything nicer than getting a bit of happy mail?). 

I went to London for the day and came back with treats: a gorgeous mini tray from Liberty (in my all time fave Liberty print) and a book from Daunt Books. I was supposed to be sticking to a tight budget in July (and mostly succeeded!) but couldn't resist these lovelies, both of which I've had my eye on for simply ages.

In the evenings, I was working on a couple of personal projects including a tiny scarf for a polar bear! The bear is one of Alicia Paulson's charming felt ornament patterns. I've been slooooowly making these since buying a bundle of her kits a few years ago (too many projects, too little time!) and have re-started them in the hope that I will actually have some finished in time for Christmas this year.

Those super skinny knitting needles belonged to my late grandmother. It's always quite moving using her old tools to make stuff - I actually wrote about this a couple of years ago.

I also started something new: an embroidery project inspired by the late great website The Toast. I have a friend who loved the site, so I decided to stitch her something inspired by one of its unofficial mottoes. I had so much fun stitching this and posted lots of in-progress pics... I'll be blogging about it in more detail soon :)

In the middle of the month I went to see the incredible Yayoi Kusama exhibition at the Victoria Miro gallery. The mirror rooms were particularly amazing. You only got about 30 seconds in each room but it was totally worth it (and I was lucky to visit when the exhibition was quiet - I heard people were queuing for over two hours in the final week!).

This piece is called "All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins". "Chandelier of Grief" was also amazing.  

Later that week I went on a photo-taking-tour of London with Kate and friends. We visited lots of Art Deco stations on the Piccadilly Line oohing over architectural details, taking lots and lots of photos, and generally having a lovely, happy, nerdy day out.

This is my favourite station of the day, the gorgeous seven-sided ticket hall at Hounslow West. The staff were most perplexed by us all showing up with our cameras, so it's clearly a hidden gem

Back at home, the garden was looking lovely in the sunshine. How amazing are these hydrangeas?? Like the hydrangeas, I wilt a little in the heat and neither of us was especially happy in the mini heatwave we had in late July. I spent a lot of time in the shadiest place I could find and ate a lot of ice cream!

The new issue of Mollie Makes came out, which was exciting because it includes three projects designed by me (yay!). Click here to read more about my makes for this issue.

I spent a lot of July working on felt flower patterns for my shop. I will, of course, be blogging about the patterns when they're ready for sale... in the meantime there's lots of felt to cut out and sew, photographs to take and edit, instructions to type up and proofread, templates to draw and label, etc etc etc.

Cutting out lots of flower pieces means a big pile of colourful felt scraps! I love the sculptural look of these.

In between working on my new patterns, I took a day off and went to Cookham to visit the Stanley Spencer Gallery (click here to see a snippet from my train journey through the countryside!).

I spent a very relaxing couple of hours exploring the village (expect a blog post as soon as I've got my photos edited!) and discovered that (contrary to my previous belief) you CAN have too much ice cream when I accidentally ordered the world's largest Mr Whippy (oops). I tried to finish it but, sadly, it defeated me.

At the end of long days of crafty work you might think the last thing I'd want to do is more crafting, but you'd be wrong. In the last week of July I kept myself entertained in the evenings by adding some more stitches to my ongoing "using up my scrappy leftover bits of embroidery thread" cross stitch project...

... and sewing together some of the white squares for my mini patchwork squares blanket. I've got lots more squares to knit (then sew together) - I must remember to buy some more white yarn!

I finished the month working on more flowers. These are just some of the samples I'm stitching for my new patterns. I want to make my tutorials as useful as possible so I'm including lots of variations and project ideas along with the basic pattern... which means lots of pieces to cut and sew.

I'm really pleased with how these patterns are coming together, I can't wait until they're finished so I can do the big reveal and finally get them listed in my shop (and get started on the other ideas I've got in my sketchbook!).

Knitting, sewing, cross stitch... art, walks, architecture... flowers, nice post and tasty ice cream. All in all, July turned out to be a pretty good month :)

I'll share another Instagram round-up next month. I'm lauralupinhoward on Instagram - click here to visit my page and follow me.

Knitting, Travelling, Photographing, Mending and Spring Cleaning!

Yesterday I went to my local knitting shop (hurrah for local knitting shops) and bought the final ball of yarn for my happy rainbow blanket.

It's "grass green", one of the new colours Stylecraft introduced last year. I'd been looking everywhere for a nice bright, zingy green to add to my rainbow of colours so I was thrilled when Stylecraft added this to their range. Doesn't it look great with the other bright colours?

Things have been a little quiet here on the crafty front as I've been taking lots of trips and spending my evenings before planning lots of sightseeing and after putting my feet up and editing lots of photos.

I've got lots of photos to share from my trips to Leeds and York - and I'll blog about them sometime soon, I promise! I've also visited Bath (beautiful as always) and the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare (breezy!).

Our sweet kitty has been furious with me for being away so often, but he seems to have forgiven me now and is back to sleeping on my bed at night and getting into my business whenever possible.

Here's a snap of him from a few weeks back when he was "helping" me take some photos:

He also kindly kept me company on the sofa while I did some mending this weekend (he snoozed at one end of the sofa while I sat and stitched at the other: excellent teamwork!).

I've been meaning to mend this duvet cover for sooooo long, it's great to have the task finally ticked off my To Do list. I can't remember ever having sewn a patch on something before, and the hole I was mending was actually several small holes and one large tear... so I'd convinced myself that this was going to be a v tricky task and thus had been putting it off.

It turns out it wasn't actually tricky at all, hurrah, and I'm delighted with the finished result. I used scraps of my favourite Liberty print for the patches because why not have pretty patches, right?

Also on my To Do list at the moment: lots of spring cleaning! I'm doing lots of actual physical cleaning and tidying, but also sorting things like my digital files and my Etsy shop. 

To help me spring clean my shop, I've reduced the price of some listings that are due to expire in the next few days. All these pieces are now just £1 each (plus postage). Quick, go grab a bargain and treat yourself or a friend to a felt-y something...

Interesting Signs, Cute Kitties & Gorgeous Yarn

Blogging is a funny thing. Sometimes you write a blog post that you think will be really popular and it passes largely unnoticed and doesn't attract a single comment. Then other times you write about something you think "hmm, this is a bit of a weird thing to be writing a whole blog post about" and it turns out lots of other people love that weird thing too!

I am delighted that thanks to the magic of the internet we can all be door-loving weirdos together :)

Here are a couple of non-door-related snaps I took on the same London walk:

A lovely old street sign with a backdrop of gorgeous blue sky (I am so looking forward to the arrival of spring so we can see more of those!)...

 

... and a rather battered sign of a different kind:

I also took a trip this week to Unravel, the festival of knitting held annually at Farnham Maltings. I'll be blogging about it properly once I've had a chance to edit my photos but to sum up: wow, there was so much beautiful yarn! This loveliness was from The Little Grey Sheep:

Back at home, my tidying, sorting, organising and decluttering continues. While tidying I found this adorable hot water bottle cover from my childhood. How cute are those kittens?? Oh my goodness.

There's no way I'm going to throw this away but it's not really useable as a hot water bottle cover anymore... so I'm thinking about turning it into a cushion cover. I'll have to make a custom cushion insert for it, of course, but that can't be too complicated, right??

I probably shouldn't be adding another crafty project to my To Do list as I have so many of them already, but never mind!

This weekend I am finally getting "sew missing button back on coat" ticked off the list, and next up is "patch holes in duvet cover" which has been on the list for aaaaaages. I've decided to use a scrap of Liberty fabric to make the patches, because if you're going to do mending it might as well look pretty.

P.S. This is the pencil I'm currently using to write my To Do lists, etc. I have a whole bunch of fun pencils like this left over from my childhood, it really makes me smile using them and they brighten up even the most boring admin!