Moments

The reason why Niqi was having lunch with me today fades into insignificance. Do you find ever that prosaic necessities lead to decisions that turn out just to be the means to an end which eclipses the decisions wholly?

Anyway, regardless of why she came, we had a serendipitous hour of sitting in bright October sunshine eating spicy pumpkin and butternut squash salad with me under Nanny McPhee and Niqi under her latest fairy-tale blanket, Lemony Snicket.

Some days are better than others!

Adventures with Nanny McPhee: camping in the rain

Nanny McPhee was meant to be the grab and go blanket for Strawberry Adventures, so here she is on her first camping trip.

We bought a new tent this year- one that will be easily packed into our rucksacks and happily carried up a mountain. So here is our Vango Mirage 300 on her test run. She may well become Welly Melly in my mind, given the amount of rain and wind that she contentedly withstood without so much as a flap on Friday night.  We were snug as bugs in a Nanny McPhee.

The door is as round as a hobbit hole, and we were just as cosy and content as could be for our brief overnight dash to the coast and back. It's really something for us to be at the stage with our boys where we can grab a tent and just go.  It was  a Very Good Night, despite the weather. Very Famous Five/Secret Seven- and indeed we all fell asleep to PC's reading of their latest Blyton adventure.

First thing Saturday morning: exploring the rocks and caves of Ballintoy Harbour, deserted and misty. The torrential rain thankfully held off until we got back to the car!

I think this week we'll be abandoning the competition and going straight for a Strawberries and Cream Giveaway! There will be answers to the cryptic photos too. Stay dry!

Fretwork at dawn

I think I'm becoming obsessed with views from my windows, Jane! This is 4am yesterday morning... I could not sleep. Not a wink. Mattman had gone off to BB camp for the weekend. You can't see it here, but the leaves on the ends of those branches were translucent. It was a very magical wander round the house.

 You can just see the kettle boiling for some camomile tea.

 And here came a new day. And yes, he was fine. Home now, suitably dirty, exhausted, and fine.

So Nanny McPhee and I are blowing you a kiss from sunny Belfast, not as exciting as sunny Derry; good night and sleep well!

A Happy McPhee Easter weekend

There has been much God activity in the house, as would be only right and proper. But please let me just show you McPhee!  All her squares are joined up, and I am now sewing in lots of ends and starting to work the edging.

Prince Charming facilitated the final stages with breakfast in bed and photo shoot.

McPhee might just as well be called the Polyfilla Blanket, so great has been the need for improvising blocks and joins!

This was the final chunk, joining the penultimate square to the last custom-sized trio, referred to affectionately as the shamrock set.

And here for those of you who like the Strawberry Scale of |Measurement are those for whom I really must tear myself away and hide eggs...

Have a super rest of your Easter weekend. I would highly recommend a Lenten blanket project for the quiet perusal of important things. Especially if it happens to be the coldest Lent in many years!

A Feast in Lent

We live in East Antrim. This means that we seem to avoid the worst excesses of harsh winter weather. We are close to the sea, and our snow melts quickly; we are not too high, so we have not been cut off; we have thankfully hitherto been spared all power cuts; everything we need is within plodding distance.

We've just been watching the News and it's a bleak world out there for our farmers, and our elderly (my parents remain housebound on the top of their hill), and our businesses. So I hesitate to tell you what I am thinking increasingly this week, on my journey to Easter.

What doesn't quite manage to loosen its grip is a glimmer of joy, unashamed and unabashed, that has been growing here. It's the experience of letting go within the momentum of a great and sure hope. It's all the Feasts that we've been thinking about this year. Feasting like gluttons, devouring. Gobbling up all these good things that we can learn now in Lent and beyond.

I can't remember the last time I have enjoyed anything as much as the puzzle piecing of McPhee. I love it. I absolutely adore it with a passion. It's wholly tasteless, and will mean nothing to anyone who looks at it, unless they're us, but it fills me with chuckling delight. I thought about that yesterday in church. All that joy at seeing Jesus arrive in Jerusalem; joy that would sour. I thought how it would be to welcome Jesus everyday into here, and not have it sour. To feast wholly on Him, and fast from all that would interrupt the gluttony. To enjoy and savour and live, live, live!

Making tracks

We're having the most lovely nearly snowed in weekend. I think Jo was genuinely disappointed that we didn't lose power. He spent the whole of Friday evening putting candles in candlesticks in every room. And yes. We did have a very firm fire safety talk!

I spent last night putting Prince Charming's Christmas present to good use, making tracks around McPhee. You really can't beat Attic 24 for tutorials. I must put some coffee money in her kitty soon. 

I'm mostly using the Wise Craft link for joining with granny rows. Though it looks very different from the joining that Queen Niqi and Heather Boss do, so I should investigate the latter.

 

It has very quickly taken on a blanket feel. I only have the three out of the four inner rectangle rows joined, but it sits cosily and heavily on the lap, and is the perfect accompaniment to a nearly snowed in weekend!

 

You could all be seeing it in the flesh yarn sooner than you might have imagined, should this stormy weather not subside...

 



Dear Lyndelou

Dear Lyndelou,

You're on. I pick up the gauntlet thrown into my comment box! But you will win! I think you should call in here on your way past for your Easter Sunday afternoon stroll, with your completed blanket in hand. We can sit under our respective results and share the huge chunk of Easter Egg. The winner can take the rest of the chocolate home!

Mags McPheedy x

Ongoing adventures with Nanny McPhee

I never got around to showing you our snowy Mother's Day picnic. Suffice to say that I had packed everyone's coats and hats and gloves, except mine. Happily, Jo is a hardy soul and lent me his eight-year old's coat/forty-four year old's cape.

The (blanket you need after a marathon ripple is) Nanny McPhee has all its squares, I think, and these have all been blocked. Now to the joining stage. This is a completely new experience for me, so today I spent some time reading thereon, and steeled myself for the arranging process. There were six photos, but I have decided to inflict you with one only. The comic-reading sun is there for scale. While I want this to be a (significantly quicker than the ripple) blanket for outdoors and adventures as well as cosy home trysts*, I did also want it to be big enough to give some degree of coverage!

So this is it- I think! The squares on the sheet will be the inner rectangle, and they will have maybe two rows of border, and then the same again with the outer squares. For the joining and the borders I am going to go on using up the stash balls of wool that I have been using hitherto. The plan is to do the same for the gaps that will, hopefully, fill up with granny rows.

Lots of grannies for one Nanny. I'm thinking of adopting the pseudonym Mags McPheedy. I should also say that all constructive criticism on the arrangement will be most welcome...

*I've just discovered, pleasingly, that a tryst is not just an appointed meeting, especially a secret one for lovers. It can also be an appointed place of meeting. Time: Easter Day, just after big family lunch. Place: under the Nanny McPhee Lenten blanket with a cup of tea and a huge chunk of Easter Egg.

Things

It's been a quiet week in Strawberry Land, probably because I have succombed to lurgy and my throat is too sore to shout. Mattman got back from his trip safe, sound and happy last week and is still full of tales and excitement.

 Jo finally got to go to football club as an unashamed bribe to keep up his music.

Prince Charming continues to be patient and charming and has not uttered one word of protest when I have woken him in the middle of the night for painkillers and orange juice. I think I may have milked this cold quite well enough now.

And all the squares of Nanny McPhee seem suddenly and wonderfully to be completed. Next week will see the journey into joining, but for now it's a little daily ceremony of pinning and steaming.

Bon weekend, fine bloggistes. I trust you have your Guinness in, or at least some stew on the go, for Sunday x

A blanket pause in Lent

My goodness, I have no idea how I managed to get this circular triptych of photos to group, but it suitably reflects the jagged arrangement of how Lenten thoughts are falling for me this week! Bear with me. This could be obscure! Maybe you should go read someone else instead?

Brave choice... Do you know the Nanny McPhee movies? If so, you remember the point near the start of each one where you get the voices all whispering: The person you need is Nanny McPhee? Well, right now and for the rest of Lent, the blanket I need is Nanny McPhee. I am hoping to blog about this more clearly later in the week! The point for today, however, is that I appear to be crocheting granny squares for Lent.

And they are becoming increasingly bright and sunny as the weather here finally follows the same pattern. It's a slow little process of making small things (Ooooh, look at the little smaaaaall things- another favourite McPhee line) that will hopefully come together into a colourful big thing that bursts into the outdoors and revels in air and adventure. Like the yellow, yellow, yellow scarf that Queen Niqi generously gave me today. Hope. It's all about hope, I think. Small steps building hope. In Lent.

Before Christmas I realised that the suns were showing enough interest in spiritual things to be doing proper devotions, but felt wholly inadequate for the task. I discussed this with some Christian friends, and dragged out a book that the strawberries had bought at last summer's Bible Club. Now we're about half-way through and instead of me reading it to them, they are reading the story and looking up the Bible verse continuations for themselves. I am very encouraged by this. God is speaking to them and drawing them to him and I just watch and learn. Small steps building hope in Strawberry land this Lent x