Making Good Use

Home From the Very Sunny and Not at all Cold Land of Fire and Ice

 
View from one of the three balconies our rented apartment had.  The church is the Hallgrimmskirkja - Iceland's Lutheran Cathedral.

Yup, Iceland's weather could not have been kinder to us during our stay - the skies were pretty much always blue with the sun shining and only the briefest of rain showers one evening.   We strolled around in short-sleeve T-shirts and ate al-fresco one lunchtime in sun that was almost too hot to sit in.

 
The sun finally setting briefly at about midnight.  The view is from the balcony at the front of the apartment which looked out towards the harbour and distant snow-covered mountains.

There was much sightseeing and wool shopping and eating of delicious vegetarian meals, amongst other things.  The daylight was 24 hours (quite strange I have to admit) and it all seemed to have passed by in a haze of happy memories.   Oh, and I even found a charity shop!!  I'm pretty tired today so will just post a few photos of our trip but be warned there will be many more photos to come.

 
One of the very traditional corrugated iron-clad houses.  These all seem to be painted in really vibrant colours with window and door frames painted in contrasting and / or clashing colours.  This beauty was just along the road from where we were staying.

Travel

 
P and I have been talking about revisiting Reykjavik ever since we first went there nine years ago.  And now, as a very last-minute decision, we've booked ourselves a four-day trip leaving on Sunday.  I can't wait.  We'll be there for the longest day - which should be pretty much almost 24-hour daylight that far north - how fabulous will that be? 

We're renting a self-catering apartment in the centre of Reykjavik (we went self-catering on a trip to Oslo a few years ago and it worked very well there) so that should make the question of what I can eat a bit easier (still being extremely careful with my dodgy gall bladder!) plus being very central will mean I don't have to walk too far ('cos my gammy hip is only getting worse these days - ah, the joys of ageing!!!!)  The apartment is pretty close to the beautiful Hallgrímskirkja and to all the shops and restaurants too.

I intend to do some serious Lopi Icelandic wool shopping whilst I'm there and P is very intent on getting his hands on the DVD of The Night Shift - an Icelandic comedy series recently shown on BBC4, and mighty funny it was too - plus the DVDs of the two follow-on series, providing, of course, that they have English-language subtitles.

I've started making a list of what to pack - mainly warm clothes, socks (haven't worn those in a while) and winter shoes topped off by a waterproof jacket (max. daytime temperature for Reykjavik seems to be 10 degrees on the BBC Weather website.)  I'll also be packing my swimming cossie as the outdoor swimming pools there are truly fabulous.  I'm looking forward to spending some considerable time in one of the 'hot pots' (a geothermally-heated outdoor jacuzzi-type of thing) and swimming in the balmy-warm waters of the geothermally-heated pool.   Bliss!!

An Early Birthday Present

 
Yes, a copy all of my own of this lovely book.  Mum ordered it for me for my birthday which is in a couple of weeks but said it would be fine if I wanted to open the parcel straight away - so I did!!

 
Here's the original of the knitted coat hanger covers I've been making.  I do love those stripy ones but don't have enough different colour wools in ye olde stash to make them.

 
Normally I don't like using knitting patterns / instructions - I prefer to make it up as I'm going along (which is pretty much my whole attitude to life as I hate being told what to do) - but this book is something else as it just gives you loads of really inspiring ideas and leaves you to adapt or change them to suit you, or the wool you have available.

 
Plus, the patterns in it are mainly small, easy to complete projects which are pretty, unusual and, in the main, highly useful.  Fabulous! 

 
Next up will be a few of these garter-stitch dishcloths, but with a navy cotton edging as that's the only coloured cotton I have knocking around.

The Craft du Jour

Gosh, covering coat hangers seems to be the real craft du jour at the moment.  Posy has also been inspired by Jane Brocket's book and Happy Loves Rosie has a great tutorial for making padded fabric covers for hangers.

 
I've just sewn up my second knitted cover and have cast on for a third.  I've still got loads of wooden hangers that I could cover and lots of bits and bobs of wool to knit them from too -  I'm also hatching ideas about using up some of my vintage buttons on them.  It's such a quick and easy thing to make - very satisfying -  and you end up with something useful.   My ideal knitting project, really.

Not Hanging Around

I'd never really thought about knitting a cover for wooden coat hangers until I saw the gorgeous pattern in The Gentle Art of Knitting, the lovely new knitting book by Jane Brocket (Mum's got a copy which I read voraciously whilst I was in Bristol and I've now put in a request to have a copy of my own for my birthday.)  Oddly enough, plain wooden coat hangers are something I have an awful lot of.  I've no idea where they ever came from (probably a long-ago jumble sale) or if they are actually just multiplying by themselves in the dark of the wardrobe - whatever, I have masses of them. 

They're very useful utilitarian objects but they do tend to leave a bit of a mark if I hang T-shirts or jersey tops from them, so it was a bit of a 'eureka' moment for me when I found this really simple garter stitch pattern for covering them.

 
Et voila!  One evening's knitting later and I've got a fine and dandy covered coat-hanger all gussied up with one of the lovely wooden buttons from Cowboys and Custard that I bought at last weeks Vintage and Handmade Textile Fair.  For this hanger I used lots of tiny lengths of what I suspect was originally tapestry wool but all those ends did make it a bit fiddly to sew together, so I'm now embarking on a second cover and am using regular DK wool (from a ball of yarn) as specified in the pattern.

 
And with the extra knitted padding, I can now hang anything I want from this hanger without worrying about having little wing-like protuberances sitting on my shoulders!

 

Could Anyone Make Use Of ....

.... the unused return portion of my rail ticket?  I'd bought a return ticket from Wickford to Bristol Temple Meads but P decided to drive down to Bristol and so I came back with him by road. 

 
The ticket is for off-peak travel (ie, not during rush-hours) and is valid until 25th June.  If anyone could make use of a single journey from Bristol to London Paddington (or, indeed, to Wickford in Essex) before the 25th - or if you know of anyone who'd like it, do leave a comment and I'll post it off to you.

Vintage and Handmade Textile Fair

As luck would have it, the date for the Vintage and Handmade Textile Fair this year fell very nicely with my visit to Bristol.  So yesterday Mum and I took ourselves off to Chipping Sodbury for a truly lovely day out.

 
The Fair was really busy in the morning and it was quite difficult to get near some of the stalls because of the crush of people.  Undeterred, both Mum and I managed to buy a few items nevertheless.  After a visit to the wonderful Hobbs House Bakery (where usually I buy an ultra-gooey slab of cake to take back to Essex - which, sadly, I can't eat any more - so this time I treated myself to a jar of Lavender Marmalade instead,) a rather tasty pub lunch (and the weather was so nice that we could sit outside in the beer garden to enjoy it,) we headed back into the Fair.  In the afternoon it was much quieter and we were able to have a really good perusal of everything.

 
I came away with four wooden Sylko reels to add to my stash, a Clothkits doorstop kit in a fantastic fuschia-pink cord fabric, some more of the fabulous wooden buttons from Michele at Cowboys and Custard, a pack of recycled-paper card blanks and envelopes from The Makery in Bath (I really want to check out their shop over there next time I'm visiting Mum,) and some rather fabbo bright-pink cotton lace.  (The piece of patchwork fabric came from another little fair that was being held in the Baptist Church Hall and which cost the enormous sum of 10p!)

 
 
And, five offcuts of vintage fabric from Donna Flower (I bought two of the floral Sanderson fabric) These were only £1.00 a piece and I was really delighted with them.  (Apologies the photo is the wrong way round, I can't seem to alter it!)

Mum had a sit down and I popped across the road to the amazing charity shop in the High Street.  It only sells women's clothes and they have a fabulous selection (there's another shop by the same charity futher up the High Street where they have the childrens' and mens' clothing, books, bric-a-brac etc.)  The shop is so neatly laid out and I found quite a few things to try on but none of them looked that good off the hanger and on me, so I contented myself with only buying a boxed bottle of Issey Miyake Le Feu body lotion for £1.00.  I don't know an awful lot about really upmarket toiletries but I think this will be a good bet for ebay. 

 
All in all, it was a really fantastic day out and both Mum and I had a wonderful time.

Cool Cat

 
It can't be much fun to be a long-haired cat on a really hot summer's day.  I mean, it's not as if Lily can take her fur coat off.  So the next best thing is to squeeze yourself on to a cool tiled windowsill and lie in front of the open window.  Oh, and look very cute while you're doing it.

Bargain Find of the Day Award Goes to:

 
My Mum for finding a brand-new sleeveless summer top in the local Salvation Army charity shop for £2.50 which had the original £55.00 price label still attached.   It's a very nice top but hardly worth £55.00, I wonder who decided to get rid of an item that had cost such a lot and which they had never worn.

 

 
I had to content myself with this box of vintage embroidery cottons - bought as much for the graphics on the lid as for the contents inside -  £1.40.

 

 
And two sewing patterns - both intended for re-sale on ebay - 20p each.

 
I also bought myself another M&S summer skirt - which means I now have a grand total of two summer skirts.  This one was £3.99 from British Heart Foundation and I really like the graphic rose print on it and the fact that it is 55% linen.  Plus I've got a black vest top at home that will just go perfectly with it.  Now we just need some summery weather in which to wear it.

I've linked this post to Apron Thrift Girl's  Thrift Share Monday and Me and My Shadow's Magpie Monday.

Dish Cloth Swap

A few weeks ago I signed up for a knitted dish cloth swap over at Down to Earth.  It was just my sort of swap as I do love a knitted dish cloth for doing the washing up with.  I was really lucky to have Jen from The Woollen Earth as my swap partner.  Jen lives in Nova Scotia and has an online speciality yarn store and also designs her own knitting patterns, a very talented lady.

 
Anyway, this morning a parcel arrived all the way from Canade and in it was the most deliciously soft 'Ecoknit' organic cotton dish cloth in a beautiful light-khaki tone (Jen says this is the natural cotton colour) plus a whole skein of this beautiful yarn for me to knit something with too.  Jen also inclued a family recipe for Coffee Bars - they sound very tasty - and a Nova Scotian made maple syrup candy (which was popped in my mouth before I even thought about including it in the photo, and exceedingly yummy it was too.)  Thank you so much for the parcel, Jen, I'm thrilled with it all.

I'll hold fire with showing you what I sent Jen as she's not received the parcel as yet.  I'm off to Bristol tomorrow for 10 days where highlights will include a certain young nephew's birthday, plus Mum and I are hoping to visit the Vintage and Handmade Textile Fair on 4th June too.