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Visit to Scotney Castle in Kent

Scotney-CastleScotney Castle is a National Trust property in Kent, which I recently went to visit with my husband. As we became members of the National Trust last year we’ve been trying to visit places whenever we can and this one was a little gem. Scotney Castle is made up of a country house, moated castle and wooded gardens.

First we took a tour around the house. This was carved over the main entrance.door-sign

One of the decorative ceilings.
ceiling-design

I loved the colours of these bottles.
bottles

We then wandered down to the old castle, which is now half in ruin although you can still walk inside part of the building.
wall-plants
castle1

castle2

castle3

castle4

The old castle was built in 1387 by Roger D. Ashburnham and was lived in for the next 450 years by three different families. In 1836 the new house was built by the Hussey family and the old castle was deliberately ruined to create a picturesque folly in the grounds.

The grounds and gardens were lovely, and so peaceful (if a little on the chilly side)…

garden1

flowers1

…with an old boat house in the moat…
boat-house

…a beautiful pheasant, that ran off as soon as I took the photo (camera shy)…
pheasant

…and a brilliant cat and fish feature in the fountain by the house.
fountain

 

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Lino printing

lino-cutting1Over the past couple of weeks I have been experimenting with lino printing. I dabbled with this at college on my art foundation course (which feels like a lifetime ago) and remember it being quite fun to do.

I’m always taking photos of flowers and plants, so this seemed like a natural place to start. These are a few photos I took during the summer:berries

flower

flowers2

flowers3

leaves1

I wanted to keep the design simple but interesting. I really like 50’s textile designs and the outline style of the images in ‘The Secret Garden’ book by Johanna Basford.

secret-garden-book

I started by doodling some simple flowers in my sketchbook before drawing up a design approx 10cm square.flower-doodles
flower-doodles2

I drew the final design onto tracing paper, then traced this onto the piece of lino (remembering that the finished design would be in reverse). I bought a selection of lino cutters and set to work cutting around the design. Its very easy to slip and cut through a bit of lino that you wanted to keep but thankfully this didn’t happen too often. I also made myself a small wooden cutting frame that mean’t I was guaranteed to keep my hand BEHIND the lino cutter!

lino-cutting2

lino-cutting3

Using a black, water-based, block printing ink and rubber rollers this is one of my first prints…

lino-print1

…which I then added a few hand-painted colours to…

lino-print-colour1

As I remembered, this was a lot of fun to do 🙂

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Crochet bobble blanket

crochet-bobble-blanket2As we live in an older property, it can get a bit chilly in the winter months (in fact anytime from Autumn to Spring really). So the big project for 2014 was to make a large winter woolly blanket for our bed to keep the cold at bay.

I’d seen this bobble stitch, which I really liked, and decided to use this to create a pattern. We have a king size bed and I wanted the blanket to hang over the edges, so having measured the bed I decided to make 36 squares measuring approx 35cm x 34cm each (ok, almost square…) in a 6×6 layout.

I wanted to use the same pattern stitch for each square and use several different colours. Making individual squares definitely made the project more manageable as opposed to creating one large piece (especially with a kitten trying to ‘help’!).

This is the yarn I used, which are all aran yarns with 75% acrylic and 25% wool:

  • Hayfield Bonus Aran – 0822 Blue Slate (dark grey) 2 x 400g balls
  • Hayfield Bonus Aran – 821 Spruce (green) 1 x 400g ball
  • Hayfield Bonus Aran Tweed – 781 Flock (pale blue)  1 x 400g ball
  • Hayfield Bonus Aran Tweed – 744 Bamburgh Blue (turquoise) 1 x 400g ball
  • Wendy Aran – 705 Albatross (light grey) 1 x 400g ball
  • Wendy Aran – 463 Grape (purple) 1 x 400g ball
  • Woolcraft Aran – 825 Kingfisher tweed (teal) 1 x 400g ball
  • Woolcraft Aran – 837 Pesto (lime) 1 x 400g ball
  • Woolcraft Aran – 491 Starling (cream) 1 x 400g ball

Each 400g ball made up four squares.

This is the stitch pattern I used for each piece:

bobble-blanket-pattern

The chain row is a multiple of 4 plus 3 (I used 44 ch plus 3 ch).
On the first row the ch 3 and the first tr are in the same stitch, so this will give you an extra stitch (for me this was 48st)

Beginning row – Ch 47 (or any multiple of 4 + 3)
Row 1 – tr in 4th ch from hook, tr to end, ch1, turn (48st)
Row 2 – 2 dc, [1 bobble, 3 dc] repeat until last 3 stitches, 1 bobble, 2 dc.
Row 3 –  ch 3 (counts as first tr), tr in next st to end, ch 1, turn.
Row 4 – 4 dc, [1 bobble, 3 dc] repeat to end, 1 dc in last stitch.
Row 5 – ch 3 (counts as first tr), tr in next st to end, ch 1, turn.

Repeat rows 2-5 x 8 times (this will give you 9 rows with four bobbles and 8 rows with three bobbles), fasten off.crochet-bobble-blanket1

Once I had completed 36 squares I joined them together using a dc stitch in a contrasting cream colour.crochet-bobble-blanket-corner

To finish off I created a simple border. I made this up as I went along but if I recall correctly I did one row of dc and one row of tr in cream, one row of dc in light grey and finally a row of htr in dark grey.crochet-bobble-blanket3

And this is the finished item. It is sooo warm, just need some cold weather now! #readyforwinter

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Writing bureau restoration

bureau-before2

I was given this writing bureau to restore, as it had a few scratches and was looking a bit sorry for itself. At first I simply cleaned and polished it to remove the scratches and lined the drawers. It was a perfect addition to the lounge, giving me a writing desk and storage for my wool.

So, having lived with it for a while now I wondered what it would look like painted. I had been reading an Annie Sloane book on painting furniture and also reading about decoupage on furniture, and I thought I would try to mix the two.

Rather than purchase chalk paint I used one of the home made chalk paint recipes that I’ve used previously on my catalogue drawers to paint the outside. I then used wallpaper to cover the drawers (luckily the height of the three drawers was exactly the width of a roll of wallpaper!). I cut the wallpaper into three pieces and glued them into position. To seal the drawers and to protect them from general wear and tear I coated them with two layers of Mod Podge.

bureau-after2

I replaced the drawer handles with these antique-looking ones. I was still able to use the existing holes from the original handles.

bureau-open-after

I painted the inside with an off-white egg shell paint, recovered the leather using a black leatherette and added the wallpaper to the back of the desk.