For the love of succulents

I’ve always loved succulents. They’re exotic yet simple and easy to grow, which is a bonus considering I’m absolutely rubbish at keeping house plants alive.

Our holiday to South Africa in April only reinforced my love for these hardy little plants, as they were absolutely everywhere. These are the plants that were growing outside our room at a guest house in Montagu. The blooms were as big as my palm and the plant filled the whole border.

On Friday I took the boys for a picnic at Winterbourne House and Gardens. They have a fantastic collection of succulents and cacti in one of their greenhouses. The succulent occupying the space next to my kitchen sink was looking a bit leggy so I treated myself to three new plants from the Winterbourne shop.

After Saturday’s torrential downpours I finally made it down to the greenhouse this afternoon to pot them up. I used two cracked vintage teacups and an old Ikea glass vase – a slightly random collection of vessels but look quite good grouped together on a vintage plate.

My new little collection of succulents now has pride of place on our bureau, under our Moroccan plate from Fes and next to my amazing orchid which has kept going since July 2013. I must be doing something right!

African flower cushion – Ta Dah!

In a previous post, I showed off the lovely African flower hexagons I made while on holiday in South Africa. I decided that I needed to make something out of them as they were just too pretty to be put away in a drawer.

I only had small bits of yarn left so I set about making a few more hexagons and then joining them all together to make a cushion cover.

I started working a border of light pink but I wasn’t happy that the edges weren’t straight and my cushion would be lumpy. So my plan B was to undo the edging and crochet half-hexagons to fill in the spaces. It took me a while to figure this out as I couldn’t find instructions online and the half-hexagons on the shorter edges had to be slightly bigger than the ones on the longer edges, but I got there eventually and this was the result:

Now for the edging part 2! I did a round of double crochet in green and then another round of double crochet in yellow, followed by two rounds of treble crochet in gorgeous Stylecraft Special DK in Pomegranate.

We already had an olive green silk cushion that I’d made a few years ago and didn’t really love so I unpicked it and used one side as the backing for my crochet. I worked blanket stitch all the way round my silk with the Pomegranate yarn and a tapestry needle.

I then joined the crochet to the silk by slip stitching through both loops of crochet and the blanket stitching.

Et voila! The end result is a very pretty cushion which looks gorgeous on our sofa. I love the yellow, green and pink together, and it’s a lovely reminder of our holiday.

Crochet apples

2015 is running away with us and it is almost time for the school summer holidays!

I have a lot of friends who are teachers and they’re always moaning about the obscene quantity of chocolate they’re given by their pupils at the end of the academic year. So I thought maybe they would prefer a cute crochet apple to sit on their desk instead!

This one is made using another great free pattern from Drops and Patons DK Smoothie. It is £6 and can be bought through my Folksy shop.

Crochet kimono slippers

This weekend I finished another commission order for kimono slippers. After a bit of Pinterest research I settled on this fab free pattern from Drops.

I used Women’s Institute Soft and Smooth in Biscuit from Hobbycraft and Drops Lima in Cerise for the pink edging and tie.

These slippers were really quick to make and are soft yet sturdy.