News embargo lifted

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The post you have all been waiting for !!! The news embargo on what I have been crocheting for the last few weeks, has been lifted. I knew you would be excited.

First design

I think a bit of background info is in order before I give more details.

A few weeks ago, Cees’ son-in-law posted some pictures of a stunning crocheted armband on Cees’ daughter’s Facebook timeline.

 I was asked by her, if I could make something like that and I foolishly said yes, maybe, possibly or something like that – I really can’t remember - but it was definitely a rash comment. Anyway, before I knew it, two tonnes of beads and a thousand kilometres of crochet cotton had been delivered to my house. If that is not throwing down the gauntlet I don’t know what is.

Birthday shock

So I set to, no pattern, just photos and a lot of guess work. My first attempt was a simple one, to get used to crocheting with beads and to see just how many of these beads you need for a bracelet and to see how it was all done. Hence the first one is rather subdued - besides I didn’t think my little wrist would cope with too much more. But I knew that for Cees’ daughter this was not going to satisfy her. So when she was staying with us, the two of us set to, designing something a bit more like the photos. A weekend’s worth of work and I came up with a first design – not bad for a first attempt, but a number of design flaws and boy was it heavy!

I just can't stop.. a little extra for the birthday girl

I have been busily making bracelets since then. The reason for no mention on my blog is that I know that Cees’ daughter follows the blog and I didn’t want to spoil her birthday surprise or should I say shock. Now this is more like it. Colourful and creative, still a couple of flaws, but I am getting there.

But then I got carried away and here is a poppy style bracelet - how many arms does one person have?

This is more my style

I have made myself a less loud bracelet and received a few very favourable comments when it had its first outing to a guitar concert last week.

So onwards and upwards, the sky is the limit - is this a new career move in the making?

Vézelay and crochet

The narthex at Veselay

So what has been going on these last couple of weeks? - I hear you say. Cees had his birthday and then his daughter came the following weekend to celebrate it all over again, so I seem to have been rather occupied.

For Cees’ birthday this year we went to Vézelay. It is a fair run from here, but well worth the trip. We set off early Sunday morning and arrived just before the morning mass. All the services in the church are fully sung by the monks and nuns of the two orders that are resident in Vézelay. It was really something special. The nuns voices were absolutely perfect and the whole services chanted in Gregorian style, was a very special experience. This is what the building had been built for and I am so glad we had arrived on time. Having experienced a service like that and comparing it to the sung parts of the service in the Taizé Sunday morning services, I can well imagine why some of the older members of that community greave the passing of fully sung services everyday.

After the mass was over we spent some time looking in detail at the church. The columns and carvings are quite spectacular and I was amazed at how light the church was. Sadly the choir/apse was closed off for restoration and so there was no access to the crypt, I asked at the information desk and it was due to re-open the following week - pity Cees’ birthday was not a little later! We will go back again, but as it is rather a trek, it probably won’t be this summer.

Strange heads to find on a church!

After a wander around the charming little town, which included visiting a small chapel just outside the fortified ramparts and of course a wonderful lunch, we slowly headed home, satisfied with a lovely day out.

Relaxing in the shade of the cherry tree

When Cees’ daughter and son-in-law arrived it was getting too hot to do anything, so we spent most of that week-end under the shade of our cherry tree where I managed to snap a family photo of us all, even Fifi stayed still long enough to be in the shot!

So there we sat, crocheting away for a couple of days. Cees’ daughter managed to master the basics of crochet and she made a very sweet little flower – well impressed, more about what I was making in another blog – that’ll keep you all on tenterhooks!

How cute is that?

Our weekend ended with a visit to our new found “favourite” restaurant La Terrasse. Sadly they didn’t live up to previous experiences, my poulet à la crème was good and the salad starters were excellent, but the duck breast has a seriously overpowering sauce on it and the steak was rather tough - let’s hope it was just a glitch and that they will go back to their previous excellent rating.

It remains hot here, but not oven temperatures, at least we can get on our bikes and get out and about, including a ride into Cormatin to check out the snack restaurant at the campsite, very good value and the chips were excellent. We may well be visiting them again!

Prickly Pineapples

I have been trying to make myself a light shawl for summer evenings ever since last year. My ideal was to use pineapples (a special crochet stitch/pattern that looks like a pineapple or the “eye” on a peacock’s tail) to stretch along the length of a straight shawl, but could I find a pattern for pineapples in a straight line ? All the patterns I could find in books and on the net were all for pineapples in a circle. So I set about trying to draw out my own pattern and even to crochet small pieces to see if I could figure it out. I soon got bored. - so gone was the idea of my lovely shawl.

This spring we treated ourselves to a new sofa and I felt it looked rather plain so I decided to crochet a nice little antimacassar for the back and some arm covers, but what pattern

to use? I stumbled upon an archived version of a site called “Vintage Crochet” which had been taken down a few years ago and although the archive is not complete, many of the chair backs were still available and what did I find? A pattern for straight pineapples ! It looked so pretty as an antimacassar I decided to use that pattern and here are the results, now all I had to do was up the hook size and use wool instead of cotton thread and my long awaited shawl would materialise.

Well the pineapples are proving more tricky than I thought in wool, maybe it is because it is summer and I am not concentrating as much, but whatever it is, I seem to have to keep undoing and re-doing bits of this shawl and the other day I just put it away so that I could chill out for a bit. During my

cooling off period we had some Dutch guests in one of our gîtes and after chatting with them one day I discovered that she was very interested in patchwork, we chatted out this and that, about my crochet and she showed me pictures of her work (amazing I must say) and that was that. A couple of hours later, to my surprise she arrived at our table in the garden with a little pouch. She said she always brought something to keep her hands busy on holiday and this was for me ! It was exactly the right size for my crochet hooks, so I dashed upstairs, put my hooks in it and started back on my shawl. Do you know what? I haven’t made a mistake on this shawl since – thanks Gon for getting me going again !

Baby Booties

We do our supermarket shopping on a Tuesday and then we go on to have lunch in Cluny town centre. The place we have eaten for the last year and a bit, when our favourite Cass' Crout' shut down because the owner retired, is La Petite Auberge run by a relatively young husband and wife team who have managed to come up with a different plat du jour every Tuesday we have been there except on about 3 occasions. Not being too observant, it took us sometime to notice that the usually very slim wife was getting fatter and fatter around the middle and then some more time to figure out she might, just might, be expecting. When the restaurant was shut on a Tuesday a couple of weeks ago with a notice saying it was closed “due to exceptional circumstances” and would reopen in a couple of days, it was not too difficult, even for us, to figure out that a baby had arrived.

We were treated to a visit of mother and child the following Tuesday and given a glass of Crémant to wet the baby’s head.

Well I couldn’t resist it I just had to make some booties, never having had kids of my own so no chance of grandchildren, this was my opportunity!

So here they are the lovely pink booties taken from this website Mon petit Violon crochet and kit designs. So thanks Vita for sharing your pattern, let’s hope they fit.

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The Wedding

I just can’t miss a royal event, they really know how to put on a show. So as The Wedding approached, I definitely had to find a way to see it and not just a couple of dubbed clips on the news, no I wanted to see the whole thing.

To my amazement, France 2 was dedicating a full day to The Event, so a little piece of England was going to be filtering its way into Cormatin on Friday.

But just watching The Wedding on TV on your own (no, Cees was not going to watch) didn’t seem all that exciting and when I bumped into an Australian family that were in their maison sécondaire in Chazelle for the Easter week, my day was made. I’d supply the crément and cucumber sandwiches and they would supply the Pims jelly. We were all set.

In the lead up to The Big Day, I saw this video clip which inspired my Australian knitting friend. It was sadly too late for the Archbishop, but a couple of corgis would be fine.

So there we were Friday morning and late into the afternoon, all the female members of the Commonwealth present in Chazelle on that day, complete with a couple of corgis, sipping our crément and cheering on the happy couple.

Congratulations to William and Kate !

La Tuilerie Website

Snowed In.

Last Saturday when we were at the market in Cluny, Cees commented that he would like one of those Peruvian hat things that seem to be all the rage this year to keep his ears warm in the freezing weather. So I bought some wool and when we were snowed in at the beginning of the week, I set about making one. Not happy with my first creation (too fitted, no silly pointy bit at the back, where are the tassels?) I found a different pattern and managed to make a suitably plonkerish version of the “real thing”. And doesn’t he look lovely in it? Thus confirming him, I think, as a dedicated follower of fashion.

And everyone, who knows me, knows what a fashion addict I am too, so when I received my copy of “The Weekly Stitch” (an email newsletter from Lion Brand about crochet and knitting) a couple of weeks ago and they said:

“The Cowl: A Winter Favorite
We have been watching the cowl take off on the runways as this season’s favorite accessory. They are versatile, practical and fashionable.”

I knew I had to make one, but first I had to look up what a cowl was. Wikipedia says:

“The cowl (from the Latin, cuculla meaning "hood and rope") is a hood worn by members of religious orders. ….. Developed in the Middle Ages, they became the formal garment for those in monastic life. They were worn to give warmth to people who often spent long hours in unheated and drafty churches.”

Ummm, interesting sounds more like something I should be selling to those chaps up on Taizé’s hill rather than a fashion accessory. On to the Lion Brand site itself and things were much clearer a cowl is a

“face-framing neck warmer”

oh I see, a scarf with no end, why didn’t Wiki say that? So I download a couple of patterns and away I went. Cowl no. 1 was almost completed when we were snowed in, in Paris. I say almost, not because of a lack of time, but because of a lack of yarn. At the end of my last ball of yarn, I was short by 9 stitches! Some serious thinking had to be done. This week snowed in again and I had an inspired thought as to how to finish the cowl with not enough yarn and finished it off, I also had time for cowl no. 2 which went much smoother because there was in fact enough wool and as I had done the pattern before I didn’t have to keep looking at the instructions with every new row.



So here are photos of the lovely Mrs Nixon modelling these wonderful creations which are now winging their way to England as a Christmas presents.

With already 13 snow days under our belts this winter when we normally would have had less than 5 and we should not have even been snowed in even once, it looks like it’s going to be a long crochet season this year.

La Tuilerie Website

Mothers' Day

It was Mothers; Day in the UK on Sunday, so I popped over on the train to see my Mum. Cards for Mothers’ Day have always been made not bought in our family, so my meagre artist skills have to come into play every year. For the last couple of years (since I became a crochet addict), I have used my craft skills to make a present rather than buy one, after all how many boxes of chocolates does one need in a life-time? OK I wouldn’t mind getting lots of chocolates and my Mum’s petite figure could survive many extra boxes, but like it or not Mum got another crocheted gift this year. A few weeks ago I found a pattern for a miniature potted plant on the internet, on the Lion Brand website and so I set to, making my own version of this little plant. I am rather proud of the results I must say and Mum liked it as well - at least she said she did. In any case, we had a lovely few days together in London. On the train I always keep an eye out of the window as I near Mâcon to see all the landmarks that tell me I’m nearly home, I can often spot Cortevaix but the first clear landmark is the water tower in Ameugny, after that are the tents in Taizé and then the towers of Cluny Abbey and when I see the beautiful imposing castle at Berzé le Châtel I know I am almost at Mâcon Loché station. Getting off the train came as a freezing shock to me after the warmth of London! On the way home, driving through Cluny, we decided to have dinner at one of our favourite restaurants Loup Garou, but they were on a week’s holiday so we shivered our way up past the Abbey and ended up at the Brasserie du Nord for a nice meal. All in all a satisfactory end to very nice few days away.

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