A Box of Crochet Vegetables

This has, without a doubt, been one of my favourite crochet projects ever. After two quite repetitive, long term crochet projects - the blanket and the cardigan - I really enjoyed the variety of colour and pattern these vegetables offered, and the fact that you could start and finish one in an evening or two.

I enjoyed every part of it: choosing the patterns, deciding which shade or colour yarn would work best, the crocheting, watching the vegetable take shape when stuffed, adding the leaves. 

And then, as each one was finished, arranging one of my creations with the real thing and taking a photo. So much fun. (Also - visits to our local greengrocer and our consumption vegetables increased too, both of which are good things.)

I made these for the Year R* class in the school I work in. I've always wanted to crochet some food but Bella and Angus are too old for toys like play food now, so there seemed little point. But after a chat with my teacher friends, I realised I could find a good reason to crochet a radish and use up some of my huge bag of cotton yarn scraps. Win-win. These vegetables now live in the Home Corner, where they will no doubt be soon be covered in snot, paint and grubby fingerprints, as they rightly should be, but the cotton yarn and acrylic stuffing should make them easy to clean. 

I made eight in total, enough to fill a box but not too many. I could've gone on and on - pumpkins, courgettes, corn-on-the-cob - but restrained myself. I tried to stick to vegetables that the children would be familiar with and recognise immediately, like carrots, onions, potatoes and tomatoes, whereas the radish and beetroot just pleased me immensely with all their frilly leaves. 

For about a week after I finished them I arranged them on the shelf in the dining room and just enjoyed looking at them every day. They are so tactile and wonderful to handle, and I love the colours. I will definitely make some more for myself, just to have around the house, to use as decoration.

I don't think there always needs to be a reason to crochet something like this. When I think how much pleasure I got from working on this, how much fun it was just to play with the colours and textures, I think that's reason enough.

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The patterns are all from a brilliant American e-book I found on Amazon called Crochet Food. 35 Crochet Patterns of Fruits and Vegetables.

All yarn is cotton DK - mercerised and unmercerised- in various brands I've collected over the years, crocheted on a 3mm hook.

I did amend a few patterns in places, adding or removing rows or changing colours to make the vegetable more like what we'd see in a British supermarket.


* Year R, or "Reception", is the first year in the British school system. Children start the September after their fourth birthday. It is more similar to what other countries might call Kindergarten than the kind of education that starts when they enter Year One. 

Bella's Bedroom - decorating progress

before

Over Easter we decorated Bella's bedroom. I haven't really shared much of the progress of that room here so far, and I thought that you might like to see how it's progressing.  I know that, like Angus's, it was only done a couple of years ago, but it was time for a change. Decorating decisions that we made in a hurry two years ago before we'd even moved in had not lasted well, and the furniture layout was not working. Bella is growing so fast. She wanted less pretty pastels and something a little simpler and more grown up, and we had fun planning her room together. You can see what her room liked like before here.

before

After emptying her room, we painted all the walls white, and touched up some of the woodwork. I like white at the moment, it's so easy, fresh and clean. 

Bella's bedroom is very small - it really is a box room. I wanted to try and make it feel as spacious as possible, so we did this in two ways. The first thing we did was have a huge, huge sort out of all her books and toys, and filled bag after bag for the charity shop. Once this was done, and the rest of the decorating finished, we gave her floorboards a light sand and painted them white. Her bedroom carpet - like Angus's - was here when we moved in and really in a dreadful state so I was more than happy to rip it up.

I have to say that one of the few pleasant surprises this house has given us is the state of the floorboards upstairs. My dad did a little remedial work for us but generally they were in very good condition. I am hoping that the white floor bounces a little more light around while the lines of the boards might create an illusion of space. 

The other thing I painted was Bella's bed, in exactly the same colour as Angus's, simply because I had half a tin left over.

The wall behind her bed still needs to be wallpapered with this paper.

Bella's so excited because she chose the wallpaper all on her own and we gave her complete ownership of that decision. (Luckily we liked it and it wasn't prohibitively expensive, otherwise there would have been some negotiation!) She had it in her head for months that she wanted a white background with a pattern of stars. Then a little shelf needs to go up on the wall, just to the left of the bed, to hold her book and glass of water.

So this is where we are so far.

It's very bare, of course, because it's not finished, but it won't be long now. Finally, I promised her we could choose a couple of prints for her walls together, since I did buy some for Angus's room, so I'm excited to see what she chooses. It occurs to me that she has good taste, this girl of mine, and I'm actually quite excited to see what decisions and choices she makes as she grows up. (Feel free to remind me of this when she's fourteen and deep into some all-black phase, or something equally awful...)

The Cookery Calendar Challenge

Hello! Once again I'm joining in with Penny's Cookery Calendar Challenge, in which I make an effort to use some of my less-thumbed cookery books and hopefully find a few gems of recipes along the way which will become firm family favourites.  

My chosen book for April was Stephane Reynaud's 365 Good Reasons To Sit Down To Eat, a whopping great door-stop of a book. You could probably murder someone with it if you wanted to. I remember that I bought it on impulse it in the after-Christmas sales for something stupid like £5, purely because I liked the look of it. It contains 365 recipes for meals - snacks, lunches, dinners, desserts, even drinks - that work around what is available during the months and seasons of the year. That's so French, isn't it? So elegant and sensible, buying fresh at a market, cooking with what's in season and on offer at the time, rather than buying strawberries in December then feeling guilty because of the air miles and moaning because they're overpriced and have no flavour (which of course I would never do....) The recipes are brief and to the point, relying on a certain amount of basic cookery knowledge from the reader, but easy to follow and accessible. It has lots of photos - although not always on the same page as the recipe - and a ribbon bookmark so two ticks for those. The downside to this book for me is the sheer size of it, the enormous breadth and depth of those recipes. I feel exhausted even flicking through it. Where do you start? 

Well, I started with April, but I didn't fancy any of those recipes (I can't remember why now) so chose a wintry slow-cooked pork dish which was actually perfect on Sunday when it was cold and rainy. The recipe called for pork belly but I couldn't get that so just used a normal pork joint, a leg I think. 

You simmer it in water for an hour and half so it's nice and tender then carve it and put in in an oven dish. Then you make a sauce from a little stock, ketchup, soy sauce and loads of crushed garlic. You pour this over the pork and put it back in the oven for 20 minutes while the veg cook. I kept this very simple - remember we are aiming for crowd-pleasers with highly critical children here! - and just did boiled potatoes and carrots, which was actually perfect. The sauce is incredibly good, but very strong in flavour, and so the simply cooked vegetables worked well. Four clean plates, two pleasantly surprised adults and no moaning from the kids so we'll call that a win.

Next was a summery lunch dish, a simple tomato and mozzarella tart. 

Spot the crocheted tomato... :-)

This couldn't have been easier; one sheet of ready rolled puff pastry spread with pesto then topped with sliced tomatoes and a ball of mozzarella, torn and scattered over the top. Basil would've worked here but I didn't have any. So far so easy, but the best thing in this recipe was the tip to sprinkle the uncooked pastry generously with semolina, to soak up the liquid that comes out of the tomatoes and preventing a soggy bottom. 

This worked a treat and the tart was gorgeous, crispy and light. Well, it tasted light, but we all know that puff pastry isn't exactly healthy. But it was such a nice lunch for a weekend, taking about four minutes to assemble and twenty to cook. Definitely, definitely something we'll cook again.

I think I've misjudged this book. It's got some pretty random recipes in it which I'll never cook, like pike quennelles, and calve's liver with raspberry vinegar, but mainly it's good, seasonal, family cooking.

May's choice is Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros. I will report back.

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The crocheted vegetables - a few of you wondered why. Well, I am making them for the Reception Year home corner in the school I work in. I have always wanted to crochet some fruit and vegetables but felt that Bella and Angus were much too old now for play food, so there didn't really seem any point. But the pleasure I've had crocheting these makes me realise that there doesn't have to be a point, that so often it's just about the pleasure in making something. Anyway, I've fallen in love with them and don't really want to hand them over. But I will, and I've got enough cotton yarn left to make myself a set too.

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One last thing - I was delighted when Jo asked me to take part in her weekly Hygge series and answer a few questions for her blog. You can read it here.

Friday Happies

Making me happy on this chilly April Friday night:

:: A return to routine, to school, work, exercise and even - I never thought I'd say this - after school activities like swimming lessons. Our Easter holidays were a mixed bag and the normalising of our life is a good thing. My work is very busy, but I do really like my colleagues, and it has been lovely to catch up with friends and meet for coffee and things like that. A bit of everyday normal. 

:: 50p bunches of eucalyptus from the florist that are still going strong a week later.

:: Handmade curtain tie backs for the dining room. Such a small change but what a difference. Instead of curtains hanging either side of the patio doors - always right in the way when I've got my hands full with a basket of washing, always covered in the kids muddy footprints as they kick their shoes off on the mat there - I moved them all over to one side and gathered them up with this tie back made from string and wooden beads. It lets much more light into the room too. Little things.

:: Free courgette plants from a colleague. Can I just plant it in a pot or should it go in the ground? It's been hardened off.

:: Unbelievably beautiful biscuits from my friend Abigail. Almost too good to eat. 

:: Crocheting vegetables. Seriously, I cannot remember when I last enjoyed a crochet project so much. Lots of variety and changes in colour, nothing takes more than a couple of evenings to make - it's so much fun, and a welcome change after the long term more repetitive projects like the cardigan and blanket I recently finished. 

:: Styling and arranging these crochet vegetables into little scenes for no good reason other than it makes me smile.

:: An unexpected and utterly delightful gift which came all the way from Australia, from my blogging friend Susan, who  is a very skilled and accomplished quilter, as you can tell from this table runner.

 

I dream of one day being able to sew something as perfect as this. The colours and pattern are lovely, and I especially love the batik-style fabric the piece is backed with. Thank you Susan.

:: This sloe gin and tonic, which I've just finished. Also, it's a bank holiday weekend! I keep forgetting, it seems so soon after the Easter holidays. We don't have anything special planned. 

How about you, what are you doing for this three day weekend?

One last thing that has made me very happy - your lovely comments about my cardigan. Thank you. As always you are much too kind. Happy weekend folks. 

Roses and Bluebells

Like many people, I do not enjoy having my photograph taken, not one bit. But so that you could see what this cardigan looks like on - and so that I am not completely absent from our family's photographic history - I asked John to take some photos of me at the weekend. We were in the most picturesque place, and the bluebells were at there absolute bluest (and is it me or are they especially good this year?) so it seemed as good an opportunity as any.

This is my Rose Cardigan which was very kindly sent to me in a kit by the excellent Wool and the Gang. I'm a big fan of their products (crochet patterns that you actually want to wear! In lovely colours!) so it was no hardship working away on this project. The kit contains everything you need; pattern, yarn, hook, darning needle - even a label, which is a nice touch. It's the second item of clothing I've crocheted myself (after my poncho) and a very easy project indeed. No increases or decreases, just a lot of rows of treble stitch and a lot of beautiful soft cotton. 

It's quite heavy and has a very nice drape and movement to it. It is long, possibly because my tension was quite loose. Luckily, as I'm almost 6 foot tall, this isn't an issue, but smaller folk may find they need to decrease the initial starter chain which dictates the length of the garment, or go down a hook size.

I went ever so slightly off-pattern at the end, and decided to shorten the length of the sleeves by turning them up a couple of rows and tacking them in place with matching cotton thread.

Sewing it up was straightforward, you just whip-stitch up each side and under each arm, and then I blocked it.

Also - foam blocking mats! I have never used these before and they are a revelation! I used to block everything on a couple of towels laid over a carpet but since we hardly have any carpeted floors now, I decided to buy some those interlocking mats. I think that technically the ones I bought are play mats for children, but they were a lot cheaper than those marketed as "crafting mats" and seem to do the same job. I bought two packs of these and they worked a treat.

Last of all, let me rave a little about the colour. I love this soft shade of pink. I think it might be called blush, although the yarn is called "Nude Pink". It goes so well with black, navy and grey (basically my wardrobe colours) and is very flattering. I would love to make a cotton bed throw version of this cardigan, all soothing cotton and calm pattern, something for the summer. Trouble is I'd need about 50 balls of the yarn so that would be quite an expensive throw.

Anyway, there we have it, one Rose Cardigan. I've got the bug now and am thinking about making my first crocheted sweater. There's no stopping me!