Emma Lamb daisy potholder

I managed to squeeze in finishing a very small crochet project over the weekend – the daisy potholder, from Emma Lamb’s Crochet Home again.

Have I mentioned how much I like that book? This is the second thing I have made from, and probably won’t be the last. One of the best things about it is that there are charts as well as just written patterns. So many crochet books provide only the written instructions, and I find a chart so much easier, so it’s great to have them.

This potholder was very quick and easy to make and could be done in a day. I used DK weight yarn rather than the 4 ply specified in the pattern, so my potholder feels very nice and thick, very substantial – a match for any hot pot!

Because I’ve substituted the yarn on this project I had to reduce the number of rounds so that the potholder wouldn’t be too big, and wouldn’t start curling in on itself from the edges. Basically I omitted the rounds where the count of trebles stays the same – so I increased the number of treble stitches in every round in the first part of the pattern, rather than just in every other round as specified. As you can see the finished potholder is still a decent size. Details of the yarn I used are on my Ravelry page.

A little bit of retro

I thought I’d blog about something a bit different today (well it’s different for me anyway). I love retro things for the home, and have a few cheap and cheerful things I’ve bought on the high street recently which I thought I’d share, for those of you who also like a bit of retro in your life!

Not having had my own home for very long, my collection of kitchenalia and general household items is still pretty small. So, I’m always on the look out for nice secondhand or new pieces that fill a utility gap and will also look pretty in my kitchen or dining room for a while to come.

Recently while browsing in John Lewis, I spotted these from Emma Bridgewater, and kinda fell in love with them. You have to admit they are beautiful. However at the time, I was feeling thrifty and couldn’t push the buyer’s guilt down far enough inside to allow me to purchase them. Then, a few weeks later, I spotted these from George home – a whole set for just a fraction of the cost! Given my love of duck egg, combined with the price, I just snapped them up. The tea spoons are certainly making tea breaks a lot more fun already.

My other recent vintage style purchase was this pink cake stand, also spotted at George Home. It’s too pretty to hide away in the cupboard just because I don’t happen to have a freshly baked cake to hand, so I’ve had it out on the dresser displaying biscuits.

I love vintage style glass ware, and have an actual vintage cake stand make from clear pressed glass. While the George home version has much thinner glass than the vintage kind, which I think tend to be made from pressed glass (I guess it’s true that they don’t make ’em like they used to), this version is so pretty with it’s pink colouring (not something I’ve seen when surfing eBay for vintage glass cake stands) and again such good value for money that it was too good to pass up.

Do you share my love of vintage and retro style homewares? Where do you go to pick up your finds?

That’s all from me for today, hope you have a lovely Thursday!