Our Cornish Holiday - May 2016 (Photo Heavy!)

Hello there everyone!

At the beginning of the month, I went on holiday with my family to East Cornwall. A few years ago we holidayed in West Cornwall but the weather wasn't the best, which did put us off going again! So we had a few holidays in our old favourite, the Isle of Wight, before we decided to try Cornwall again.

(I took over 400 photos and over 100 video clips, and I'm resisting sharing all of them with you! 😄 So this is just a selection of a few of my favourite images.)

This time we found a lodge to stay in on the East side, not far from the border of Devon. It was complete with some resident hens (one of which was extremely friendly and would come and knock her beak on the patio door, and would hop in if you weren't careful!)

The surrounding woods were full of birds and their beautiful songs filled the air all day, even after it had dropped dark in the evenings.

During our stay, we did a little sightseeing - for us this is usually finding some nice towns or villages to walk around and pop into their shops, rather than going to lots of tourist attractions. The first place we visited was Looe, a busy fishing port.

It was a beautiful day, and Looe was larger than we had thought, so that we didn't actually get to look around all of it before our car park ticket was expiring. We decided to try and get back to visit again further on in the week.

The next day was quite rainy, so we just did some food shopping and then went back to our lodge for a relaxing day in. My mum, sister and I all had our various crafts to get stuck into, and my mum also had a new jigsaw puzzle that she had brought with her to make a start on.

On the Tuesday, which turned out to be another hot day, my sister and I had a short walk in the woods around the lodge - there were lots of bluebells, and we were surrounded by loud birdsong - we wished that we were better at identifying birds by their song, as there were quite a few songs we didn't recognise so we weren't sure exactly which species of birds were singing their hearts out in the trees above us!

Later on we went to Fowey - I had recently seen this town featured on Countryfile, so it was nice to see it in person. It was a beautiful, historical harbour town, with some steep hills to descend from the car park! (and climb up again later!!)

We had lunch in a tearooms which is reputedly the oldest building in Fowey - it was built around 1430, during the reign of Henry VI! It was a lovely tearooms, complete with a resident black Labrador, Frank, who was so beautiful and well-behaved! He came and sat next to us while we tucked into our all-day breakfast, but never even tried to pinch any sausages or bacon! 😄 He just kept looking at us sorrowfully, but thankfully, as we read on a little card all about him, we weren't allowed to feed him anything at all (imagine how fat he'd get! 😉) so we tried not to feel too mean!!

Wednesday we woke up to lots of rain again, but we'd already decided to visit Polperro and hoped that the rain would die out as the day went on. Unfortunately it didn't stop raining until we came back to the car at the end of our visit, but it was interesting to see the fishing village that my mum remembered from a visit to Polperro about 40 years ago.

We followed the path next to the stream all the way down to the harbour...

The calling of the gulls filled the air during our entire visit - if it had been sunny, and maybe with the tide in, this little village would have been so beautiful! Hopefully we can visit again another year, and all being well, enjoy it with some lovely weather next time!

I loved this house on the edge of the harbour, called 'Studio Cottage', with its little ladder leading down into the harbour itself:

We walked down to the pebbly beach, and explored inside the cave - you can see from this photo just how rainy this day was! Thankfully we had brollies!!

Polperro is well-known for its smuggling history, and we thought we could see some evidence of the smuggling that used to go on, like steps hewn into the cliffs (but not seeming to lead anywhere...) And at the back of the cave in the photo above, it looked like there used to be a tunnel at the very back which has now been blocked off. I felt like I was one of the Famous Five! 😂

We walked back up to the car park, just as the day started to brighten up slightly. As spring was so late this year, everywhere we went (not just in Polperro) there were lots of trees full of blossoms! I thought this one looked very pretty with the stream in the background.

On Thursday, coming to the end of our holiday (all too soon for us!) we went for our return visit to Looe. This time we managed to get all the way through the town to the sandy beach at the far end. There were lots of rockpools which had me all reminiscent of childhood rockpooling! And we spotted this schooner (unfortunately only with furled sails) just off the shore, quite close to the beach.

On our way back to the car, again I couldn't resist another blossom photo, with the East Looe River in the background.

Then, Friday was the last day of our holiday, which also proved to be the sunniest and hottest! We had been keeping an eye on the weather forecasts for the week and wanted to re-visit Padstow on the best day. We visited Padstow on our first Cornish holiday, and loved it so much that we just had to go again this holiday. It certainly didn't disappoint!

We also bizarrely met some friends there, who live quite local to us at home - it was so weird that we happened to bump into each other on holiday!

And that's it! The end of our family holiday! We really enjoyed it - it went far too quickly, but as a friend said last week, that's how you know it was a good one!

My mum, sister and I all got loads of crafting done, of course, and we found a yarn warehouse not too far from where we were staying, so we often popped in there too, much to my dad's dismay! 😂

This is the blanket that I started the day we arrived on holiday, it took me exactly two weeks from start to finish and is throw-sized. The second photo is of the car-seat blanket and mandala I made to match. All three will be available to purchase from my Etsy shop very soon!

A photo posted by Felicity (@craftingwithfelicity) on May 21, 2016 at 10:36am PDT

A photo posted by Felicity (@craftingwithfelicity) on May 26, 2016 at 9:48am PDT

So, I hope you've enjoyed my re-cap post of our holiday, and hope I haven't bored you to death! My sister will be back next week with her next post! See you soon!!

TTFN! xx

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I love Cornwall!!!

Hey Everybody!!! Hope you're having a great Sunday! It's been so lovely to see some sun this afternoon here in the UK!

I'm so sorry this blog post is a couple of weeks late, we were having a lovely time down in beautiful Cornwall last week, so I thought I would leave my post until we got back again. We haven't really been to Cornwall very much, we went a couple of years ago to Perranporth, but then we've been visiting a few other places on the last few holidays. This year we decided to go again and try to visit a few places we haven't been to before. I do believe Cornwall is now one of my favourite places to go to now! It's sooo beautiful there, even though we did have some rainy days, we still had a really lovely relaxing holiday and I can't wait to go there again!!!

Anyway, today I thought I would show you the project I started on holiday. I'm really excited about it because I simply LOVE the colours in this one! I call it my 'Autumn Colours Cushion Cover', I know it's kind of the wrong time of year but I love these colours all year round to be honest.

This is the first photo I took of it on the Sunday morning as I was doing the first few rows.

A photo posted by Ellie-Jayne (@xxellie_jayne_craftsxx) on May 8, 2016 at 3:46am PDT

 
Then this was the first complete pattern repeat.

A photo posted by Ellie-Jayne (@xxellie_jayne_craftsxx) on May 9, 2016 at 2:50am PDT

 
And as of this afternoon, it is now three pattern repeats complete.

A photo posted by Ellie-Jayne (@xxellie_jayne_craftsxx) on May 22, 2016 at 10:41am PDT

 
Partway during the holiday I put it away to start another project, but this afternoon I suddenly felt like getting it back out and having another go at it and I am so pleased I did! It's been a lovely few hours, just hooking away and changing colours quite quickly. In fact, I'm going to go and do a few more now! ;oD

Speak to you all very soon my friends! Have a lovely week!

Much love,
Ellie Xoxoxoxo

First Custom Order Finished!

Hello everyone! Thank you so much for stopping by our blog today! Welcome to May the 1st!

In a way it feels like it's gone very quick since I last wrote my post two weeks ago, but I've actually been really ill last week with a flu-like virus that completely knocked me for six! I don't remember ever being that ill before. But I'm back now, and gradually feeling back to normal, just with a bad cough and easily feeling tired!

While I was ill I didn't feel like doing any crafting whatsoever, but this week I managed to find some of my cro-jo again! 😄 So I finished my first ever commissioned blanket for a lovely lady in America. I've spoken about it before but not shown you any pictures until now, I wanted to wait until it was complete before showing you, although if you follow me on Instagram you'll have seen its progress as I worked on it.

It's very similar to the large double-bed size blanket that I made for my parents Pearl Wedding Anniversary last September, on a slightly smaller scale but in the exact same colours as the original.

And here it is! 😊

A photo posted by Felicity (@craftingwithfelicity) on Apr 28, 2016 at 2:32am PDT

I'm very happy with how it's come out, I can't wait until my Etsy Shop opens in the next couple of weeks, because then I can list it for my customer and send it off to her in the USA!

This afternoon I'm busily working away on my next project, a crochet ripple blanket in the Lily Pond CAL colours, while watching the rugby! I've also been trying to find a nice sock knitting pattern - toe up magic loop - that I can have a go at. I'd like a pattern that's interesting and works well with self striping yarn, but that also has a really easy heel, as I always seem to struggle at the heel point. I'm wondering if I need to have a go at an afterthought heel?

What's your favourite go-go sock knitting pattern?

Anyway, that's all from me this afternoon! My sister Ellie will be back next Sunday as usual!

TTFN! xx