Ridgeway Cottage anyhow

This pumpkin was inspired by Heart Handmade UK . Claire has been posting the most beautifully decorated pumpkins all week and barely a scary face in sight. Poison ivy, homegrown Jack be Little Pumpkins and corn on the cob, pumpkin soup recipe, conker characters, crochet pumpkin and miniature book of spells - our Halloween center piece. This was one of my first attempts crochet toys three years ago. Happy Halloween I would love it if you could leave a comment. Please give it a go, I'm working on making it easier

Discovering Shopping Lives , a blog which simply concerns itself with found shopping lists, has had quite a profound effect on me. It was possibly intensified by a chat with my sprightly neighbour (age 76) and her quaintly old fashioned view of life. She talked of going into town to get out of the house and how meeting or visiting friends takes up a good part of  the day. She lives alone in the house she was brought up in which was bought as a new build by her father in the 1930s. Just like the author of Shopping Lives I wonder about the lives of the writers of shopping lists and can't help but think that many must belong to ladies who were raised in a different era. My Grandmother would not dream of going shopping without a list and one of her collection of shopping bags. Then today in a charity shop I discovered a little thing that I felt was so poignant and representative of these ladies of the past that I had to buy it for the princely sum of 1p. It's no secret that I ha...

For some reason (possibly my love of pumpkins and autumn delights), my children love Halloween and every year, our house is transformed into Halloween Land. All things spooky take over for about a week, which is usually around the half term holidays and a great deal of Halloween themed crafting, making and doing occurs. I like it, it's a lot of fun so here's what we've been up to today. Lime jelly pumpkin with edible red glitter Conker characters Mod Podge sequin pumpkins Pumpkin soup with spooky swirled cream ghosts  Call back again this week for more scary shenanigans. Thank you for dropping by and it has been very lovely to have your here :)

It would not be autumn without the colour rust. At the end of the garden, shaded by an over hanging tree and camouflaged by ivy is our old corrugated iron garage. I walk past it every day and barely notice it's spectrum of peeling rust coloured paint. It is ancient, slightly decrepit and most definitely unique. But I do love it in all its flakey, distressed rust coloured glory. Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

It's been a day of firsts. I have been feeling a little bit under the weather and after being sick this morning I did not want to sit in the car for hours. So my husband and children have gone to visit my family without me. This did make me so sad but as there was nothing I could do about it, I thought I would just do my best to enjoy having time completely to myself. I have never been alone in the house over night. People have been away and I've been away but I have never had the whole place to myself for the whole night. I've finally got to grips with instagram and how the liking and the following and the whole thing works. I even got my first ever like which was so exciting. I'm guessing it's pretty addictive. Who should I follow? Where do I find people who love the same things as me? I think I still need a bit of help. And for the first time ever, an ironing board has been the object of my desire. I don't think that it even crossed my mind that ironing...

This morning I have had a cooking disaster. I was thinking about my blog school homework and how wonderful it would be to blog about a delicious recipe each week so I tried to make a healthy Halloween style recipe. I do already know that replacing baking powder with bicarbonate of soda in a recipe will only end in tears but that did not put me off giving it another go. It was my husband after all who when making my birthday cake a couple of years ago, discovered just how revolting the finished product tastes. I was so excited and had my new skull and pumpkin silicon muffin mold but I did not have any self raising flour or baking powder. Please let this be a lesson to myself .... Do not ever, never ever use b icarbon ate of soda in stead of baking po wder ev er , ever, ever ag ain. I even made some little mini ones with olives as eyes and extra cheese. They look delicious but sadly they are completely disgusting. I have wasted my time, ingredients and morning and now have no...

Amongst the chaos and the roller coaster ride of every day life, there are simple things that make me smile. My head always seems to be such a whirl of information, spilling out in all directions like a tangled web of confusion. The simple things in life give me to time to focus and clear my head of complications, contradictions and complexities. It allows me a moment to just stop and appreciate how amazing simplicity can be. I did get a copy of a vintage  Penguin publication of Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh and the classic design is perfection. It arrived wrapped in brown paper and everything about this book makes me happy. There's the imprint of someone's hand written notes on the cover and I love that I can't really read what it says or will never know who wrote them or when. This book has a secret history, that will remain forever hidden and I may even add to that mystery, if in the future this book is passed on to someone else. This reprint is from 1953 and...

I am passionate about education and I love to learn and inspire and support learning. It's my day job but it's also the way I live my life. Learning new skills and finding out more about blogging is such  a delight for me. This week the weather has turned truly autumnal and not only the mornings but the whole days have been filled with swirling mists. This is mushroom weather and with that dampness in the air which clings to the delicate spider webs like diamonds and looks stunning. I am unable to walk past a web without admiring nature's perfect crafters. Imagine being able to produce your own yarn and spin your own house / food trap. I left for work early especially to take photos of these treasures of fog and drizzle for fear that the sun will be out again by my next day off. I could not  bear to miss the opportunity to study the intricacies and uniqueness of each web. The collage above has been made using a few of the new apps I have learnt about thanks to blog...

There are so many things that I would like to spend time doing that I often think I don't really have time to go to work. I have asked, on several occasions whether I can become a stay at home mum but this occupation is not conducive to our current life style, beside I like my financial independence and I did have to do years of studying and hard work for my career. The grass is always greener but there is no harm in dreaming. One thing I would like to do is to work harder at my blog, mostly because it's something that I enjoy and secondly because I am a bit of a wannabe writer / full time crafter. Pip Lincolne is someone I would love to be, if she ever felt like a life swap and as part of her blog school, this post is my over due and late homework. The task was to list your favourite blogs in a post which for me was just too numerous to even start to think about. Instead I am listing my favourite blogs by women that I would like to swap lives with in order to discover whe...

 I'm getting the hang of this growing flowers business now. For years I have watched Gardener's World and wondered just how these gardeners manage their succession of flowers. Their gardens always look spectacular all year round. The amount of time this must take. The planning, the planting and the reviewing of successes and failures has always been completely perplexing. When I say, I'm getting it, I actually mean that I have flowers to pick for a large chunk of the year which is not quite the same as a stunning garden / allotment but flowers make me happy so I'm pleased. As the sunflowers fade at the allotment, my dahlia collection is glorious in my garden (albeit a touch bedraggled today) but I am waiting for the chrysanthemums. I love how they take just seem to take forever. I have lots of chrysanthemums all over the place that I have grown from cuttings and they all have tiny little buds. November isn't really known for it's abundance of garden flowers ...

As I enter my third day with my foot up on the settee, I reflect on what I have learnt whilst having all this time imposed on me to reflect and rest. The first thing is that I am totally rubbish at sitting still. I am up and down and up and down, just getting this, wanting to just quickly do that... I know that I am not sitting still because it takes a lot of organising and comfort making to sit on a settee with your foot and ice pack resting on a pile of cushion. (Fortunately ice becomes less effective after 48 hours which I am pleased about because it is such a faff).  My second observation will come as no surprise to my husband (he did tell me last night to just sit and watch TV and stop doing lots of other things.) I do overload myself with things to do. I am sitting on the settee, but I have two crochet projects with me, the laptop, a book, wires and electronic devices all over the place. I am writing this blog, intermittently crocheting, popping into the kitchen to do ...

 When one has suffered depression, unhelpful thoughts are rather like an over stuffed cupboard, ready to spill all over the floor at any given moment. For most people, an injured foot is just an inconvenience which can easily be resolved by some rest and ice, but for me it's another battle against the ghosts and difficulties that linger, casting shadows over my attempts to be upbeat and dismissive about a simple accident. So as I sit here with my ice pack on my swollen and bruised foot, with my tear stained face in a fog of doom and gloom, I am wondering to myself, "What would Audrey do?" . After all, if I am to be sitting around all day with my foot on pillows, I should really consider trying to make the most of my time. Moreover as my life today is not going to be a thrilling whirl of society events (I'm not even going to make it to the WI AGM tonight), then I shall look to elegant inspirational figures such as Audrey Hepburn, visit all my favourite blogs and explo...

There were so many brilliant textile artists, it will take me a while to research all my favourites but here are a few. Click on any of the photos for more information.  This is a spot of embroidered graffiti by Sarah Greaves. Very lovely and incredibly delicate embroidery by Diem Chau A stunning chandelier by Sue Walton as part of the deliciously bizarre Jabberwocky   collaboration. Barbara Jeremiah's floral bowl Wafer Thin: A Study on the role of Fat is an amazing embroidery project by Caren Garfen -totally incredible detail and a fabulous documentation of the diet and the extremes that some will go to to become stick thin. I would love it if you could leave a comment. Please give it a go, I'm working on making it easier

  Follow my blog with Bloglovin As if I didn't spend enough time already, visiting other people's fabulous blogs and scrolling through beautiful things on Pinterest, I have now discovered bloglovin. I have lots of new favourite blogs and especially like those with a crochet flavour. Crochet concupiscence - There are sections on crochet art, 1970s crochet design, crochet news from around the world and crochet saved my life. I could be lost in this blog for sometime. I would love it if you could leave a comment. Please give it a go, I'm working on making it easier

I enjoyed the knitting and stitching show at my beloved Ally Pally in North London, my old home town, so much that I would not even know where to start. My head is still spinning with all the inspiration and ideas that got crammed in there yesterday, that I do in fact have a headache from an overload of beautiful things. The place was packed with people, wonderful stuff and knitting and stitching. So as I am struggling to put my hundreds of thoughts on my day out in order, here are some photos and my five favourite things about the show.  No. 1 Going by myself - sitting on the train by myself, walking at my own pace, eating when I wanted, seeing what I liked and pleasing myself (you appreciate this luxury if you have children)  No. 2 Meeting the Jane Brocket, the amazing lady who inspired me to write a blog and follow the gentle arts of domesticity. Both the wonderfully personable Jane, her beautiful books and words and the crafting have helped me so much in recover...