Jen Arnall-Culliford Knitwear

Garden Delights: Part 2

I have greatly enjoyed the tulip season over on Jane Brocket's wonderful blog, and while my tulips really can't compare, we have a few still providing pleasure in the back garden.

I think that these were Black Parrot Tulips, also purchased at Avon Bulbs some years ago. Despite the tulip's notoriety for not flowering well after the first year, these have been great for around 4 years now. They look so unlikely when the buds start to open - the colour takes a few weeks to really develop. But they are worth the wait!

It is my Gran's 89th birthday today, and while she won't read my blog, I would still like to wish her a very happy birthday! She was a very talented knitter, needleworker, cook, gardener and teacher in her time, and a real inspiration. Hope you have a lovely day Gran!

Garden Delights: Part 1

I'm putting together my first technical post, but the diagrams and bits are taking a while, so as the weather is so glorious, I thought I would share some garden delights instead. I worked as a gardener for 3 years before I switched careers to knitting, and I feel as though I have forgotten most of what I once knew. So here is the first of three delightful plants from my garden. The other two plants will follow over the weekend.

This is a Foxtail Lily (Eremurus himalaicus), which bursts forth every spring like some sort of Triffid. You feel as if you can watch it growing in the early stages of its emergence. We bought the tuberous roots from Avon Bulbs some years back, and they have been unstoppable ever since.

There are still lots of flowers to come yet... And the buds are just as attractive as the flowers themselves.

But the most delightful thing about these lilies is their height! This flower spike stands taller than Jim already (6ft), and it hasn't finished growing yet. They are truly stunning. If you want to plant some of your own, you need a site that gets lots of sun in the summer and isn't over-crowded, as the tubers need to bake, in order to get good flowers the following spring. And they need planting in autumn for flowering the following year.

I hope the weather holds over the weekend so that we can do some more vegetable seed sowing.

A trio of quilts

Over the Easter break I have been doing quite a bit of sewing. There has been knitting too, but much more interesting progress on my sewing projects. The knitting has mostly been on a jumper for Jim, which I will share when it is complete.

Lots of our friends and family are expecting new additions this year, so I thought it would be nice to make some cot quilts to give as presents. And then my good friend Jeni moved into a new cottage, so I decided to make a quilt for her too. I trawled through my ever increasing fabric stash (I blame you, Millie Moon!), and unearthed a set of 7 lovely Tilda fat quarters.

I started work on Jeni's quilt by cutting all 7 pieces of fabric into 2.5" strips. Then I joined the strips into 17 pairs, to make the quilt wider. The remaining strips were put to one side.

The strips were then joined to make a large rectangle, and together with a piece of white fabric the same size, cut at a 45 degree angle.

I then removed alternate pieces of plain and pieced fabric (they will make another quilt at a later date) and joined the diagonal pieces together to make a rectangle again. I had a bit of a learning curve here about joining diagonal pieces - I shan't make the same mistake again!

Once borders had been added the top was finished and ready for quilting. Having paid a visit to Mélanie over Easter, and received a great lesson in quilting techniques, I decided to try my hand at free-motion quilting rather than sticking with my normal minimalist straight lines. INstead of starting with the large quilt, the leftover strips were put to use as a pair of simple coin quilts for impending new arrivals. These were the perfect size to try out the new technique.

Although running out of thread near the end of the first one was a frustrating experience, free-motion quilting turns out to be very straight-forward. I was reminded of doodling in the back of my exercise book during tedious A-Level chemistry lessons many years ago!

So here they are, a trio of quilts, all ready to send off to their respective new homes.

The two cot quilts.

The diagonal quilt for Jeni.

I have a feeling that I may have been well and truly bitten by the quilting bug, so you can expect to see more quilts appearing here over the next few months. Oh, and there will be some knitting too. I will have exciting news to share before too long...

A flock of birthday birds

I'm not sure how it happened... but I seem to be in the midst of a flock of birds. There were bird cards, and many bird related presents. I wasn't particularly aware of talking about birds and how much I like them, but it must have seeped out somewhere along the line.

There was this beautiful wire owl (my favourite type of bird). Jim gave this to me, and it came from Mel Day's new shop on Catherine Hill in Frome. He has such a charmingly crooked face. It was love at first sight.

Then there was a gorgeous Moda Layer Cake (It's a Hoot range), from my parents in law, as well as a very pretty hanging bird from Jude, and a stunning hummingbird shawl pin from my Mum.

I tried the shawl pin out on my Bridgewater shawl today, and I can't wait to wear it out and about. Skein Queen stocks them, as well as some other fantastic designs.

I had an amazing day yesterday, it was fun from start to finish. Thank you all for your kind words and encouragement. I hope that you will continue to enjoy the blog.

I'm off to chirp, chirp whilst doing a bit of knitting, I think.

A great birthday present

I have toyed with getting my own blog for some time now, and last night I finally caved in. I consider this to be a great birthday present to myself.

There's no specific birthday cake to celebrate the day, but instead here are some rather yummy Simnel muffins that I will be bringing to knitting group this evening. You can find a similar recipe here: Simnel Muffins

I have a few posts up my sleeve as I spent most of my Easter holiday making things, so I need to take lots of pictures and get used to the idea of blogging. If there is anything in particular that you would like me to blog about, then do leave me a comment and let me know. I'm new to this, so do share!