Hollyhocks

Nearly all the flowers in my garden this year are shorter than normal. I've had dwarf foxgloves, mini love-in-the-mist and pint sized lupins. Because of this, I was dubious that the little hollyhock plants I planted in the Spring would come to much. I needn't have worried.

The flowers are coming out in ones and twos rather than in a mass but still ... I'm pleased with them. I've got five all together, these two near the house and three more up the garden. They're all doubles and four of the five are pale pink with just one deep pink.

I'm hoping they'll self seed and be back next year.; I have no idea which type these are so we shall have to wait and see. I've always loved hollyhocks but this is the first year I've really managed to grow them. I'd like some single ones too and ore colours but you have to take what they have from the plant stall in the market which is the only place I can get to for plants. It's and excellent stall though and it's quite fun just seeing what's there.

My Mum always had a lovely display of hollyhocks; this photo is from about sixteen years ago.

You can just see her runner beans up at the back. There may only have been two of them in the house but she still had a full row of plants. She loved her fresh runner beans. I find that three or four plants on a wigwam of sticks gives me more than I need.

Inspired by the flowers in my garden I thought I'd have a look round the house for other hollyhock prettiness and found all sorts of treasures. This is one of my favourite cup and saucer sets. Isn't it lovely?

And I love this teapot, complete with cup, saucer and tea plate. I used this set for my tea the other day.

I have a whole cupboard full of pretty china and, every so often, I swap it round and choose a few sets to go on my kitchen dresser for everyday use.

Cottages with pretty gardens which nearly always featured hollyhocks were very popular themes in china and embroidery from the 1930s and are back in fashion again now. Or maybe they're not and I just think that because I like them so much. 

Over the years I've found various embroidered pictures in antique shops. This one hangs in my front room ...

... and I've written about this little one before. You can read about it here. It just took me ages to find the blog post I wanted to link to. This is what comes of being lazy labelling the posts when I write them. You should be able to click on any work in the word map at the side to find posts on that subject but I'd forgotten to list that particular post under 'embroidery'. Oh dear.

Anyway, if you read that old post, you'll learn that this particular embroidery came from a 'Good Needlework' magazine from November 1937.

I have lots and lots of old needlework magazines like this. Often, hollyhocks were combined with the ubiquitous crinoline lady as in this design from the 'Good Needlework Gift Book' of 1936.

This is an early catalogue of Weldon's embroidery transfers. Note the hollyhock tea cosy in pride of place on the cover.

I've shown you this lovely embroidered firescreen before too and, four years on, I still haven't managed to re-lace it and mount it properly.

I found a couple of other crinoline ladies to show you in my trawl round the house. This is actually a handkerchief sachet but I've put a piece of plastic canvas inside it and it's been propped up in  my kitchen for years (it could probably do with a wash).

Then there's this bag which I made from one of my many charity shop finds.  This is hung up in my craft room and holds my embroidery hoops.

Lorna Bateman is partial to embroidered flowers and crinoline ladies too. Her work is absolutely beautiful and I would recommend her book Embroidered Country Gardens.

As well as lots of detailed projects, she has instructions for embroidering all sorts of garden flowers and features so that you can design your own garden picture.

I have to admit that I haven't made anything from this wonderful book yet but I will - one day. That reminded me of these two tablecloth kits that I bought about thirty years ago when I found them very cheap.

I think they're both beautiful but - you've guessed - I haven't actually made either of them yet. I did make a start on one years ago ...

Mmm, quite a bit more to go I think.

The nearest I've come to knitting hollyhocks are these on the side wall of my Summer Cottage.

I have just published a pattern for some crochet flowers though. 

Crochet Bouquet

Having crocheted lots and lots of these flowers I thought I'd just try making mini versions and these turned out to be favourites.

I had fun choosing colours to match the threads on my old cotton reels. These are now sitting on my desk and they make me smile every time I see them.

Before I go, I just wanted to show you the woven blanket I finished the other week. This is the pin loom one I was working on with the help of my improvised Lego loom holder. I crocheted the squares together with a lacy join, added a simple crochet border and it's all done. It took less than a month to make from start to finish. That's a lot quicker than knitting or crocheting a blanket. 

Hexagons

It all started with an urge to do some paper piecing. Every so often I feel the need to sew little hexagons together and make something pretty like these cases that I use to hold mini cross stitch projects.

I particularly like working with these mini hexagons where each side measures about 2 cm. It's fairly mindless hand sewing and that appeals to me; I like the slow rhythm of it all. So, I cut out lots of paper hexagons (quickly, using my Sizzix machine) and lots of fabric hexagons to cover them (slowly, by hand). I don't have a die of the right size to cut the fabric hexagons on the machine but I quite enjoyed choosing the fabrics and drawing round a template.

I used a selection of thirties fabrics, all of which I pulled out of my scrap baskets. I wasn't counting but I ended up with well over a hundred hexagons. Here they are once I'd tacked them over their papers.

It will take me a while to sew them all together but I've made a start.

I'm thinking of perhaps making a drawstring bag with them, possibly with a plain band where the drawstring goes but I shall have to see how big a piece of fabric I end up with. At the moment I'm just enjoying seeing them come together.

This project reminded me of something else I started years ago, this time involving tiny woven hexagons.

When I first got my Penny Loom I made a bit of a start on a Grandmother's Flower Garden but didn't get very far. I decided it was time to bring it out again and look how it's grown in the last week or so.

These hexagons are even smaller than the fabric ones; each side is only about 1.5 cm. The fun thing about this project (or frustrating, depending on your mindset) is that I've decided to weave the whole thing with one shade of King Cole Bramble DK, namely Loganberry. This means I weave the colours as they come and can only put together the flowers when I have six hexagons in one colour. At one point I did nothing but weave shades of green and I still haven't got enough yet to surround each new flower.

Now I'm back to building flowers. I shall need twice as many for the next round, not to mention more greens.

That little bundle at the top left of the photo is the hexagons that are either mixed colours or a colour I don't want to use (basically, the light brown). Maybe when I'm finished I'll have enough of these to turn into a pincushion or something. I'm hoping my flower garden will eventually be big enough to cover a small round table I have.

Of course these hexagon looms come in different sizes so I was tempted to get out my bigger one too. Hexagons woven on this one come out at about 5.5 cm per side.

Having wanted single colour shapes with my flower garden I thought I'd see how the yarn wove up on the bigger loom. Before I knew where I was, I had a whole new project started.

This one is all about random colours. The plan is to weave twenty hexagons out of each of the twenty shades of Bramble - I'm nothing if not ambitious - and then sew them all together into a patchwork blanket. I've started with the shade called Cloudberry and this is what the first fifteen look like.

Aren't they gorgeous? I love the process of weaving and seeing how the colours develop. This is my favourite yarn for weaving - actually, it's one of my favourite yarns full stop. I've knitted and crocheted with it quite a bit but the colours do different things when you weave them, Will I actually weave 400 of these? I don't know but I shall enjoy trying.

I haven't forgotten my woven squares I showed you last time either. I'm crocheting them together at the rate of one row per day, using a lacy join. I've just got the last row to add today and then I shall work out a border for it. The shade I used for this one is Thistle. 

Is any one else as big a fan of this yarn as I am? And no, they haven't paid me to promote it, it's an honest opinion. I'm very pleased when they bring out new shades (as they have just done) as it shows it must be popular and isn't in danger of being discontinued. 

Before I go, I thought you might like to see one more new project. This one is also lots of little shapes but this time the shapes in question are circles.

Can you see what they are? A knitted version of the popular fabric Yo-Yos. These are fun to sew; you can buy special Yo-Yo Makers but they're really just circles of fabric gathered round the edges. There are some lovely designs out there for crochet yo-yos, either single, flat ones or doubled puffs that are a closer match to the originals.

I also found a pattern for Loom Knit Yo-Yos which looked just what I wanted but there was a problem. They start with a drawstring cast on which is easy on a loom but with needles? I think you might be able to do it with some variation of the provisional cast on but, as I've never mastered that, I can't say. Instead I decided to re-invent the wheel so to speak and worked out my own drawstring cast on. Needless to say, it took hours and I kept having to stop to make copious notes on what I was doing before I forgot it. The result though is perfect knitted yo-yos.

As you can see, I've only knitted half a dozen so far but I have lots of plans for using these. Please tell me I'm not the only one who thinks being able to knit yo-yos is exciting!