Summer Mantelpiece

It's been decidedly un-summery weather here lately but it's the start of June so I decided it was time to decorate my Summer mantelpiece.

I know, that windmill looks ridiculously out of proportion but I couldn't resist it. I do love my windmills. I had to suspend it from the picture rail (picture rails are so useful) to get it to stay there.

Pride of place, as before, goes to my cross stitch sampler, Summer Blooms. I'm framing my samplers as I go along this year; next year I shall just have to swap them over.

What else is on the mantelpiece? Bits and bobs and lots of yellow. There was a lot of yellow on my Spring mantelpiece too; it's my favourite colour. 

I do like my craft tools to be pretty. Here we have my set of colourful Tunisian crochet hooks and my normal Clover Amour hooks. Each size is a different colour which makes it easy to grab the one you want and they are so comfortable to use. I'm currently using the pink one to crochet these squares ...

... and the orange and yellow ones have come in very handy for weaving samples on my new Fine Sett Tiny Weaver Looms from Hazel Rose Looms.

The knitted pot holding the crochet hooks is one of a set called 'Pretty Pots' (obviously), all knitted with one 100g ball of chunky yarn and various colours of DK for the linings. I've been writing the pattern up for nearly two weeks and I still haven't finished the first draft. Before being ill, I could probably have written it in a day or two. In my defence though, there are a lot of tables and drawing up tables makes my head hurt.

Back to the mantelpiece. Next to the crochet hooks are two of my very favourite things, both of which used to be my Mum's.

These little dishes were made by Jo Lester from Studio Pottery on the Isle of Wight and Mum bought them on one of our first holidays as a family back in the early 1960s. My earliest memory is of being carried up open steps into a little house amongst trees which I later found out would have been the caravan we stayed in. 

You can see my pushchair folded up, underneath the caravan.

Mum always had these dishes on display and there were such a familiar part of home as I was growing up.

Further along the mantelpiece there are some more recent ornaments, both associated with my daughter.

I bought the lambanana - and yes, that is a thing - when I went to stay with Rose in Liverpool when she was doing her Archivist training at the University there. It's a wonderful city. She made me the felt knitting cat too, although I did give her the kit, together with a very broad hint that I might like the finished thing! I collected the little white shells on holiday in Weymouth with my late Stepfather.

We've got to the other end of the mantelpiece now and yet more yellow things.

The china is some of my Mum and Dad's wedding china from the 1950s ... or it may be some that I've bought in recent years. I tend to pick up matching pieces whenever I see it. Again, this is closely tied up with memories of home as a child. Here it is being used at my seventh birthday party.

I'm the one on the right in the headband and I would appear to be singing 'Happy Birthday' to myself.

And last but not least we have my little yellow duck. He's not just a common or garden duck though but was once one of the stars of a Radio 4 programme called Invasion of the Yellow Ducks. This tells the story of how a container of toy ducks, washed off the deck of a ship during a storm helped to chart the movement of the oceans. As well as this programme in which my duck and his friends got to bob around for a bit in - I think - the sea off Southampton, this real life story also inspired a book by Donovan Hohn called Moby-Duck and several picture books including  Ducks Overboard! by Markus Motum. My duck is now living in quiet retirement, complete with knitted shawl.