Well Hello There ....

Fantastic Menagerie Tarot

Wow.

So I think this needs a soundtrack, don't you ?

Something classy but a little unusual and unexpected, like me.




 
Yeah ... I swear it was just last week when I posted, not nearly 4 months ago ! My 2 year tenure as co-Chair (with my Good Twin) of TABI ended, I went to Witchfest for the first time in years to read tarot with my Eviller Twin, I had a temporary Christmas job which I loved, and a little sideline making tea cosies, and then I lost my blogging mojo. I'm not quite sure it's 100% back yet, so no empty promises, let's be spontaneous and uncommitted and see where the breeze blows us. 

Yes, I was a small child in the 70s, why do you ask ? It left me with a morbid fear - nay, phobia - of wide lapels, flared slacks, clompy ugly shoes and bowl haircuts done by my Mum. I can barely control the shudder.

This year looks like it might be mainly crochet - I have lots of cushions to make to replace the well-used manky ones currently on the sofas, and at least two blankeys - one of which will be a BAMCAL (Block-A-Month Crochet-A-Long) with the aforementioned Eviller Twin. As far as I am concerned, it will be impromptu, because I don't want to know her Plan.

So this is a 70s-influenced post for sure - free spiritedness, crochet, and our house.

'Afghan Reincarnation'

And guess what - even more 70s-type colors:

Cow Parsley Afghan Square

Square 24 from '99 Granny Squares to Crochet'

The 2 above were made using King Cole Value Chunky and Hayfield Bonus Chunky: with a 6mm hook, they were super-quick to do, and using Chunky meant the squares came out large enough for a 16'' cushion.

WIP Wednesday 137: Agony Without Ecstasy

Spiral Tarot

There has been an ongoing trend for retro, kitsch and vintage. Of course, when I say that, both you and I are imagining Laura Ashley, Cath Kidston, stressed white-painted Shaker-style furniture, handsewn quilts and copper-bottomed pans hanging from a wooden rail in our country kitchen next to bundles of home-grown dried herbs.

In actuality, what we are far more likely to get are some horrors from the Decade Without Taste ie. the Seventies. Oh the vileness of the avocado bathroom suite; the stunting of one's color sense and love of random gidgets that resulted from too much time spent trailing after one's parents in Habitat. And there are just no words for the plasticness and the nightmare wallpaper. It is simply amazing that we survived without bleaching our eyeballs, or poking them out: anything to reduce the aesthetic agony. I am permanently scarred. And I don't care how many times bell-bottoms and flares come back round, you will NEVER see me in them unless I have been drugged senseless and forcibly dressed.

So seeing as my DH poisoned me with mushrooms this weekend (the flaw in his plan being that he also ate them and was ill too) and sickness if not the actual mushrooms affecting one's perceptions of reality, I thought I would inflict upon you my own little hommage to the 70s:

I wish I could claim some mitigating irony. But sadly I could find none. Of course, you realize not only the colors but the crochet itself is retro-kitsch ? The only saving grace of these pieces of cushion covers is that they are leaving my house as soon as they are completed. 

Yes, the intended recipient is a relative of mine, why do you ask ?

Now, while I hang my macrame plant holder next to the lava lamp, I am absolutely positive you will find some soothing prettiness over at Tami's Amis ....