Two dogs, fifteen sticks and a viaduct

Hello lovely people!

I thought you might like a little catch up on life down here in Devonland. I've been doodling away making things out of string for the last few days, but I've only just finished them tonight and it's not really light enough to take pictures tonight so I will do a Marvellous Crocheted String Item Reveal tomorrow. Hold onto your hats everyone it's going to be explosive! Or slightly scratchy. For now though let's look at pretty pictures of pretty things.

First case in point:

This is the bridge over the river in the middle of my little town. It has three weirs which are sometimes too tall for the water to flow over (you can see the water is pretty low here) and sometimes so deep that you can't see there are weirs, the water just rushes over in one big roaring almost-waterfall. The river is really responsive to rain, I think it's something to do with being so close to Dartmoor. When we moved here eighteen months ago it was the winter with all of the storms that battered the southwest and this river was totally mental. It nearly broke its banks. We were staying in our caravan on Dartmoor for the first couple of months during the mayhem and it nearly blew over. We had to park it behind a massive lorry-sized motorhome so we had a bit of a wind break. Mind you our caravan was eighties-tastic and a bit leaky before being pummelled by about four billion inches of rain and gale winds so the fact that it didn't totally disintegrate is actually testament to the very fine (questionable) craftmanship of the aptly named Craftman caravan. Anyhoo, the purpose of this photo is to show you the beginning of a very fine walk that meanders out from the town centre to a couple of miles out of town to a huuuuuge viaduct. It's along an old canal that goes all the way from Tavistock to Morwellham Quay - a big old tin/arsenic mine on the river, incidentally where they filmed a lot of Edwardian Farm. You can go and have a look about nowadays, they do a lot of living history stuff - and my fave bit, the train into the mine (we took the dog one day and he was utterly freaked out, kept wanting to sit on my lap)

                             

So there's about half a mile of fairly boring going-past-playing-fields walking before it all starts getting rather pretty as you can see above...

And best of all, there's nowhere for my sheep-chasing labradoodle to bugger off chasing sheep! Just up and down the path, and that's fine. So he can come off the lead! Yaaaaay! You can see him here with his bestest buddy Ralph. Just as a side note, I love proper, sensible human names for animals. It just makes the animal seem so much cuter. Like calling a baby Dave. Incidentally, in the course of my job as a baby nurse I once looked after a baby called Dave. No really, it was hilarious. Try saying 'I'm just giving Dave his bottle' with a straight face. See? 

Ah yes, the old 'it's my stick, give it back' game. They both had zero interest in the stick until I threw it, and then they would both grab an end, run about with it looking faintly ridiculous like they were pulling an invisible chariot, then Ralph would win (being decidedly less camp than Mungo) and Mungo would look at Ralph, look and the stick, then look at me as if he was asking me to get the stick back for him. Hahahaha! No. Treat it as a life lessons Mungo.

I love sunny days filtered through trees. Reminds me of finishing exams when I was a teenager and being able to read the new Harry Potter books guilt free. I miss new Harry Potter books, I know what happens in all of them now. Some might say slightly too well. Perhaps this is why I could have done better in my exams...hmm...

The Tamar Valley looking particularly lovely. Would you believe this is only a mile out of town? It feels like being transported into an Enid Blyton novel. I almost expected to come across a group of kids solving a murder via the medium of having twenty eight picnics a day or a questionably racist live golliwog jumping into a tree after some pesky fairies.

The viaduct! Isn't it prreeeetttttyyyyyy?!?! It feels so huge in real life. Also kind of sad. This railway line was closed in the seventies by the evil man who closed all the district lines. It just seems like so much design and engineering and building that is just being left to quietly sit unused for decades and decades. Now some of the old railway is used as a footpath - and it is lovely, the deep cuttings feel almost like caves - but you can't get onto the viaduct. It's understandable as it is very high with low walls but can you imagine the view? This whole area used to be alive with heavy industry. Kind of strange to think of it now as it looks so unspoilt, but it used to be very much spoilt! There's the canal and railway and mines and hydroelectric plants and tunnels and aquaducts. It really must have kept the engineers quite busy. You can see bits around that hint at all this effort sometimes, like the random pits excavated by the canal for the slate, or the big bridges that just go to feilds now. I saw this wheel as well, which I wonder was used on the canal boats at some point - maybe in a winch?

Now, I don't want to overdo the comparing-everything-to-stuff-in-books thing, but this really reminds me of Moria in Lord of the Rings. You know, the forgotten, hidden industry thing. Sort of romantic, partially a bit creepy. No dead orcs here though! Yay!

Back along the path...

And some rather lovely cow parsley. I think cow parsley is a very underused flower. As I walked past it I thought it would look lovely in a bridal bouquet, or perhaps a hippy hair piece.

Thanks for popping by! I really enjoy sharing these little snippets with you. To be fair I don't share the late-night Morrisons dash for nappies or the state of my back garden, but you know, it's so much more fun to muse about the happy, sunny crafty-Devony bits. I'm looking forward to sharing my stringy adventures with you already :)

xx

Lemon meringue pie yummyness

Hello! We've been having a busy kind of time in the tangerine household recently. Not busy in the sense of actually having to get anything that counts as a Real Life Achievement done, but more that we've been moving furniture around so we can de-artex our sitting room, having birthdays, father's days and getting-the-chores-done days, looking after the neighbour's dog, that kind of thing. And then I saw that I hadn't been back here for five whole days! Bad blog owner! Before I went on maternity leave I worked a lot of shifts and overtime and although I was looking forward to having the break (with a newborn!ha!) I just couldn't imagine how I was going to fill all those empty days and weeks and months stretching ahead. Now I can't remember how I fitted work in - playing with the baby, walking the dog, feeding the baby, cooking food, changing the baby, seeing a friend for a cup of tea, keeping the house vaguely tidy, getting food to the house, going to bounce and rhyme with baby, doing the washing et cetera takes up so much of my time! I did worry that I would get 1950's housewife syndrome being at home all the time but it's actually been genuinely really really nice. Strangely nice seeing as most of what I do seems to be childcare or housework. It sounds odd but I've quite enjoyed making meal plans and making food from scratch and having the time and inclination to bake. And babies do this weird thing to your brain, where any time you can do something productive when they're asleep feels like a real treat: so I now quite enjoy popping the radio on and getting stuck into the mountains of washing up all that cooking creates when baby's napping. So so 

weird. 

Baby girl turning into THE HULK!!! Or having hand-prints done for father's day.

I think that because us ladies have historically had a bit of a fight on our hands to actually being able to work and do things outside of the home and because all ladies are still rather expected to have babies and LOVE EVERY SINGLE SECOND OF IT OR ELSE it can feel a bit ... embarrassing almost I suppose, to admit that you do have enjoyment and fulfillment in the simple things. That's not to say that having babies and doing housework is the only way to happiness and achievement and contentment as a lady, far from it (!) but more that it's not often that you have the opportunity to step off the merry-go-round of studying/working/shifts/general busyness to breathe in deeply and just enjoy the moment for what it is. I really hope that when I go back to work that I can keep that sense of pleasure in the simple things.

Hold the phone, this blog post was meant to be about lemon meringue pie! What happened?!? 

Pie.

Ta dah! Now, I hadn't ever made this before, but my other half requested this for his birthday cake after he saw Mary Berry make in on the televisual machine. Well, challenge accepted! Turns out, it's a Massive Faff and creates a truly biblical amount of washing up. Honestly, I haven't even started tackling it yet. It's just so enormous. I think it's because it has three separate elements: the meringue, the lemon custard stuff and the base. However - and it is a bit however - it tastes as epic as the pile of washing up. If I do say so myself, it is almost impossibly nice. I would highly, highly recommend it, but probably best done when you fancy a bit of a kitchen pootle on a lazy Sunday afternoon (or have a dishwasher)

Mary Berry uses a biscuit base in this recipe which makes it pleasingly cheesecakey with the added benefit of not having to make pastry. I had a bit of a drama because I was a numpty and used a handheld food blender to whip the egg whites which did horrible things and they ended up all split and gross looking. However, three fresh egg whites and a recently found hand whisk later and my husband had cheerfully created a very respectable bowl of 'cloud-like' egg whites (seems like a very subjective description for egg whites. Are we talking cumulonimbus clouds? Sirrus clouds cartoon clouds? Endless variations!) Mary makes some very pretty swirls in hers but mine didn't really hold the swirls so it all looked a bit plonked. Luckily my husband isn't the type to notice these things.

Just put ice cream over the bits that look like vomit and voila!

I'm counting this one as a success! On a lemon meringuey note, my brother in law makes a lemon meringue cake. That's right. CAKE. HOW?!? All I know is that if you really could cook happiness, it would taste like that. Om nom nom. I just really love food. I don't get those people who forget to eat. How does that even happen? Surely it is evolutionary unfavorable? I think so. It makes me feel better about eating all the pies anyway. Ha!

I've nearly finished making some container baskets out of that coloured string I showed you last week. I'm going to try and write my very first pattern for you! Eeeeeee!

Happy father's day to you all

xxxxx

Six things I really love about my local yarn shop

I am lucky enough to live in a little market town in Devon that has a thriving craft scene (is the word 'scene' appropriate for craft? I was thinking like music but it sounds odd somehow, like people are wandering about rapping over their knitting.) We have quite a few fab shops for patchworking, sewing, knitting/crochet, furniture upcycling (the list goes on!) as well as a covered market where local people sell their own crafty bit and bobs. It has been my plan ever since I moved down and found this oasis of handmadeness to join in and start selling some of my makes. It could have potentially been anticipated that working lots of overtime and doing up a very eighties house would have slowed those plans somewhat, and I've not actually managed to get my finger out and do it yet, but soon I will! I think the main problem is perhaps that I'm just  bit greedy and want everything I make... So eight months ago a little yarn shop opened right near to my house called Yarns of Tavistock (it's on my way home, and when I saw it for the first time I nearly hyperventilated. NEW WOOL SHOP!!!!) I went straight inside to have a mosey as it was the opening day and would be rude not to! Also, they had free biscuits. Now it's part of my route into town to go and have a little drool through the window. So I thought it would be nice to share what I love about it - but also about local yarn shops in general. I don't want to sound like an annoying right-on guardian reader (which I may or may not be) but living somewhere which has so many independent shops has been a total revelation. It's great. I mean the people here ran McDonalds out of town. That shows some serious willpower as well as loyalty to the independent shop cause.

So to business:

Brilliant Things About Independent Yarn Shops

1. Lush local yarns

It may surprise you how many wool producers there are local to you. I know living on the doorstep of sheep-farming Dartmoor probably helps the local wool supply somewhat, but even when I lived in Southampton (somewhat less of a rural idyll) the local yarn-eries still had a couple of lovely local yarns. There is something wonderful about giving a yarny present to someone and being able to tell them 'oh yes, I made it myself. Out of local wool'. You feel like something out of a Thomas Hardy novel. And just look how pretty it is! This one is by Tavistock Tastes and Textures (their folksy shop is here) They do hand dyed locally spun Jacob's wool. My mother-in-law made about 3 hats out of 2 of these balls and oh my gosh they are so warm and soft. And the lady who makes all the wool is lovely.

2. They have courses and workshops (where real people actually teach you things!)

Fleece ready for the spinning workshop. Just look at that colour! I want to put my face in it.

Because some Unnamed Internet Companies who it may be suspected perhaps Do Not Pay As Much Tax As They Strictly Should also have fewer overheads due to not having to run an actual shop, internet prices tend to be a bit cheaper. Which means that shops have had to cut their margins somewhat and are selling less wool into the bargain. Double bad news. However, the silver lining is that most local yarn shops have diversified and  now run workshops. Yay for workshops! Learning new crafts, taking home something you've made yourself, meeting like minded people, making cool stuff. Such a good idea. And no trawling Youtube for videos to try and make sense of weird stitches! Yarns of Tavistock do absolutely loads of stuff - drop spinning, spinning wheel spinning, wet felting, needle felting, sock knitting, crochet squares/flowers/cardigans, beginner's crochet, soft toy making, paper making silk fusion.. and that's just June. I feel exhausted just thinking about it. But in a good way.

3. Local crafters sell their makes there

Just seen Jeremy Clarkson naked.

My local shop has a big old wall of shelves where local crafters can display their makes to sell. Sue (the lady who owns the shop) changes them every month so it's nice to go and have a little mosey and see what's new - brilliant for birthday presents and a bit of inspiration, and so lovely seeing talented people have a space to display and sell their bits. Nice being able to support two local crafters at once too. One day I will sell something there!

cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute!

Toadstool are so underrated! I could make a ladybird to sit on them. Or a fairy!

4. You can actually touch and feel and sqidge the yarn before you buy it. And it's presented in baskets.

YARN IN BASKETS!! Best. Thing. Ever.

There is something about wool in baskets. It is just the perfect centre of the yarn/basketry Venn diagram. It makes me want to put on a long skirt and carry the yarn through buttercup sprinkled fields to market. Sigh. Perhaps that's just me, but you have to admit it is super pretty. I have a basket in my living room for just this purpose, like yarn Feng Shui. I really do think that being able to see wool in real life is so much better than on a screen. It just looks and feels different so much of the time. Also, if you're lucky there might be examples of the yarn knitted/crocheted up so you can see it as it would be in your project. I have a really hard time imagining what wool will look like made up, especially if it's variegated, so I find this really useful.

5. If you buy wool there you're supporting someone who really loves craft to sell you craft things.

(Another picture of yarn in a basket just because)

No faceless warehouses. No websites trying to get you to click through to buy stuff you don't need. No sitting looking at a screen for ages. No postage charges. Instead, have a good old natter with the owner, get some advice on the best yarn for your project and some tips on that bit of the pattern you're stuck on. My local yarn shop lady Sue is amazing. She's only been crocheting/knitting for a year or so and she is AMAZING. Like, professional standard. She's already adapting knitting patterns to crochet, making socks, running workshops. I've been crocheting 8 years longer than her and she is SO GOOD. She teaches me something every time I see her. I bow down to her greatness. Where I dip my toe into a bit of blogging, and consider trying to sell a couple of bits but never really get round to doing it she just jumps into running a crafty shop with a cheery get-on-with-it attitude. I take my hat off to her.

6. The local knit-and-natter or yak-and-yarn happens there. And there's tea!

Socializing with crafty people is just the best. And it's a designated time for you to do your craft. And you can pick up bits you need while you do it. And there's tea. Getting into the whole crafting community. What's not to like? Yarns of Tavistock have theirs as a drop-in type arrangement over two and a half hours which is great when you have a baby who is generally whingey/sleeping/breastfeeding/vomiting whenever you're trying to leave the house to do anything. She can't stop me for that long! mwahahahaha!

I think when talking about crochet or knitting or yarn crafts in general we're all good at chatting about lovely yarns, or great patterns or inspiration but shy away from talking about where we get our yarn. I'm not sure why, because I love going to get yarn and I see a lot of other crafters who also obviously enjoy the whole finding-yarn process. Well, I'm coming out and proud and saying: if you try to buy local food or fairtrade clothes or support local causes, go and support your local independent yarn shop. So in conclusion I love my local yarn shop and so should you! They really are brilliant little places and deserve as much support as you can give them.

I want all of them please.

Yarns of Tavistock facebook page

Summery mulled wine (and embarrassing cake)

Hello there happy campers!

I had a mini epiphany a couple of nights ago. We were drinking a (donated!) bottle of very nice red wine which was really very lovely, especially being the first red wine I've had since before getting knocked up (I'm an extremely cheap date now). However, it was slightly... how could you explain it... hits the back of the throat somewhat?.. rather astringent?.. Drier than a fifty year old prune tumbled dried and left to watch an Open University documentary on physics? In essence, it tasted like fresh sloes ie. very dry indeed. But the funny thing is that it was genuinely a very nice wine despite making you do funny faces when you drank any. You could tell it was a super lovely wine just trying to get out. So after a little animated discussion with husband (I am a very cheap date) where we agreed that it was like a sloe gin in wine form, we decided this wine would be amazing mulled. After all, it's June! We hadn't had mulled wine in AGES! We MISSED mulled wine.We NEEDED mulled wine. So we made mulled wine! Yaaay!

You can tell it's good wine: just look at that cork. It's an actual cork. With writing on it. Fancy.

And you know what? It was amazing! Even the next day rewarmed and a bit more sober (soberer?) it was so nice. I think it's the great untapped summer drink, for those cooler summer evenings where you need a jumper but you have bare legs and still feel a bit chilly. It's all warm and spicy and orangey and yummy. I think that you could have quite a lot of fun trying different summery flavours for mulled wine - like a grown up punch (generally punch just reminds me of uni parties and drinking neat gin which had been shown some orange juice. Blerugh. But mulled wine punch? This I can get on board with!) The mulled wine we made was fairly traditional: it had orange, lemon, spices and a cheeky slurp of homemade sloe gin, but imagine a really dry red with a little spiced rum, perhaps some pineapple or grapefruit juice... it's basically warm sangria!

All those lovely spices. I'm a big fan of spices. I put practically half a jar of spice in a single apple crumble. My other half is very spice-conservative though, he's all about subtle hints whereas I prefer the smash-on-the-head-with-a-mallet approach to flavours. Well, everything really. When I was young, about ten or so, I was making this big old fruit cake and asked my sister whether I should put mixed herbs or mixed spices in it. She said herbs (naturally! who wouldn't given an opportunity like that?!), so I duly put herbs in then accidentally grilled it (didn't really get how the oven worked). Strangely, it was actually quite nice as I'd used that weird baking spread stuff which melted out of the mixture then sort of fried it, so it ended up tasting a bit like savory pancakes. Embarrassingly, I made the same mistake with a layered lemon drizzle cake the other day that I accidentally grilled (new baby, new oven, I'm taking no responsibility) I realized about halfway through the cooking time, so I flipped it over to finish cooking (it was raw on the bottom) and quite literally drowned it in butter icing, because nothing tastes bad when it's covered in butter and sugar. Well, people ate it and no-one got food poisoning so I'm counting that as success! Yay!

Cake or death?!

So we come to the important bit: how to make the mulled wine of your dreams?

Tall billy can, open flame, lots of wine: what could possibly go wrong?

Here is our recipe: I would encourage you to make your own swapping bits out and having a little experiment. If you do, report back and I'll see if I can combine results to make the Best Summer Mulled Wine Ever Made Ever. It's a tough job, but you know, I'll make that sacrifice.

Ingredients:

One bottle of dry red wine

An orange

A lemon

Two star anise

Six (or so) cloves

A cinnamon stick

Pinch allspice, dried ginger and nutmeg

A good slug of sloe gin 

You could go all out and get some mulled wine spice bags if you're feeling keen, or substitute the spices with others if you don't have any. Think of this as a the chuck everything in casserole kind of recipe rather than an accurate baking type affair. Best kind of recipies in my opinion. 

Anyway, back to the recipe. Cut the lemon into quarters and push the cloves into the skin. Slice the orange into thickish slices. Now pour the wine into a big saucepan (billycan not necessary, not quite sure what that was all about tbh) and add all the ingredients together. Put onto a low heat and warm slowly, making sure it doesn't boil otherwise you'll burn off all the alcohol (although if you were trying to cut down on alcohol, making mulled wine with 10 minutes of rolling boil would make a treaty drink without the bad bits! Genius!) Once it's all nicely warmed through, strain out the orange, cinnamon stick et cetera and you're all ready to go outside in the last of the sunlight with your nice warm mulled wine and some olives and chat about holidays. Sigh.

Thank you wine.

Pretty colours from outside that I want to make into happy yarny projects

Spring really has most definitely sprung down here in Devon, and the lovely weather is really threatening summer. The bees, dragonflies, sparrows and tourists are all buzzing and frolicking in the sunshine giving happy, busy action to a stage made up of thousands of freshly budding trees and flowers. The colours cheerfully wafting about have been really quite something, and as I have been pootling about my business walking the dog, or taking the baby to see her little baby friends I've been taking a few pictures thinking 'one day I'll make a lovely blanket in those colours...'. I thought you might like to see some of them... 

Purple rhododendrons and an oak tree - I love the idea of using lots of lovely shades of green from dark moss to that nearly-yellow green where the sunlight hits the leaves with a bold contrasting purple. Perhaps in a granny blanket with a flowery motif...mmmmm....

                                                          

The trunk of a paperbark cherry tree. I love that deep lustrous red with the slashes of grey-silver-orange. Don't you think this would make fab legwarmers?

The mossy embankment of an old railway cutting now used as a footpath. If you look closely you can see water dripping from the moss. I love the earthy, rocky tones where the moss has come away and the bright highlights of the long grass in the foreground...

My husband's kilt at a family wedding. A rather summery colour combination isn't it? As you may have noticed, I love bright colour but I definitely wouldn't have put red, orange, blue and yellow with black and white, but it really works! Those ancient Scots knew a thing or two. I think I might make baby girl a little blanket with the Ogilvie colours :)

This was super embarrassing when I took it - I was happily snapping away then realised the owner of the house was watching me taking pictures of her garden wall. Nooooooo! She was very lovely about it though. I wouldn't have thought to put pale mint green with a pastel orange but it looks rather nice with the light purple-grey of the stone and the grass green leafy highlights. Thinking I may have to rethink my aversion to pastels - the trick seems to be to pop in bright highlights..

That said, you can't beat out and proud brights sometimes. :) 

Another subtle colour combination on a spruce pine - again, a cheeky flash of brick red lifts those lovely muted mushroom and pale reddy brown tones.

Red and purple grass seeds. It was windy when I took this and they were blowing about looking green one minute, purple the next, yellow the next.

                                         

Now I generally really hate peachy pink. But look at this! I think the gentle waves of the petals make it look lovely. Perhaps you could get the same effect with a properly soft mercinised cotton that drapes really well?

And finally this Japanese maple in my garden. I think this is just the perfect palate of red, yellows and oranges from the deepest almost burnt-brown to flame yellow. I think it would make a great cosy fireside throw or chunky oversized wraparound cardigan.

What inspires you at this time of year?

Happy weekend everyone!

xx

The battle of the curtain ties

Just before we start can I share something very exciting?

MY POTATOES HAVE MADE LEAVES!!

Yaaaaaaaaaaay!

Ok, now I have that out of my system, back to the business of the day: curtain ties! If you remember, last time I had made two different types of curtain tie and was going to test them out to see what they looked like in real life use. We had the long, complicated pretty version I had dreamed up, and the short, simple practical one that was my husband's idea.  I finished off both with prettifying touches:  the shorter one got a red and pink rolled rose with a padded edge:

And the longer one got two daisies and a ladybird. I made a ladybird for a crocheted necklace a little while ago and now I'm a bit addicted - everything seems to look better with a ladybird.

Ladybird! Eeeeee!

So are you ready for the big reveal? Here we go!

First we have the short and sweet rose and loop curtain tie:

Now, this one went up first and I thought 'you know what, that's a good length, the rose contrasts nicely with the green and yellow of the curtains and it's not too fussy, easy to swipe round the curtain with one hand while you have the baby in the other. Damn it, my husband was right' (on second thoughts direct translation of thoughts onto page seems like a risky business)

Then I put the other tie in place aaannnndddd:

Not too shabby eh? I have to be honest, I know it's not so practical and streamlined and better in every way generally like the other one, but I think I prefer this one. Being honest, I've never really ever been a practical, streamlined kind of girl. And this one has a ladybird on it! Aren't the curtains lovely? My favourite (and only, mwhahaha!) sister made them for my baby girl a couple of months ago (pre-birth), but due to having a seriously epic amount of work to do on the house/nursery and the baby coming a very inconvenient 3 weeks early they have only just gone up. Which is a shame because they are glorious.

Anyhoo, what do you think of the ties? I'd love any opinions/advice/curtain tie experience you may have!

I did become quite enamoured with the rolled rose. I used the pattern from Crochet Bouquet by Suzann Thompson.  It is the most dog eared, used crochet book anyone has ever had. I bought it about a hundred years ago when I was just learning to crochet, when I had the bright idea that I would work through each flower and thereby learn how to do all of the crochet skills in the world. In general it was actually not such a bad plan as I did learn a lot quickly, but it was perhaps slightly optimistic - some of the intermediate level flowers became evil nemesis flowers of doom as I just couldn't work out what I was meant to be doing. The rolled rose was one of these, and I hadn't tried to make it for years as I just remembered it as being all a bit difficult, but I'm so glad I remade it! It's not that difficult really, it just helps when you've made a few things from a pattern. It starts life as a rainbow shape, then you go around the outside edge with padding, stretch out the padded edge, roll the whole thing up then sew it together into the leaves at the bottom. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

I quite like the teardrop shape, I think it works quite well for the purpose of being a curtain tie :)

Don't get me wrong I do quite like this one. I say it's practical and streamlined but it's all relative isn't it? I mean, a starkly minimalist house is not going to have curtains, let alone a curtain tie with a rose on it.  Let's keep this in perspective people.

Note to self: this does not look like the Tate Modern.

I think the main issue with the long one is the combination of many, many leaves peppered along the length of the tie and the need to tie it for it to actually perform as a curtain tie. I made it long enough so that it could  be tied into a bow, but it looked a bit fussy...

But when I did a simple half hitch it was all a bit long and swingy:

See? It looks a bit straggly. But then I had a genius idea: how about combining the better design of the short one with the daisies/nicer wool/ladybirds of the second?!?!  GENIUS!! So I did a bit of squidgelling about to see what it could look like and I came up with this....

I think we could have a winner! Pretty and functional and quicker to make and IT HAS A LADYBIRD!!

I'm now getting stuck into making the hybrid curtain tie. The Romeo and Juliet curtain tie if you will. This whole venture is turning out to be quite a bit of fun! I think husband might be regretting asking me now though (he was going to do a simple loop out of parachute cord!)

Enjoy the fine weather everyone! I'll be back soon to show you the final results and also show you the questionable grilled lemon drizzle cake I made earlier this morning. No, it's not meant to be grilled.

Byeee!