Out of the house...

Today was the first day that I left the house since the tonsillectomy. I was getting increasingly cooped up and by this weekend I was a little stir-crazy. I love being in the house, don't get me wrong, and especially in the cold months I tend to go into a state of semi-hibernation (if and when I can), but not being able to leave the house is a different thing entirely, and I can't actually remember the last time I've spent a whole week and a bit in the house without leaving it and connecting with the outside world. 

So it was particularly precious to me that today was a fair day, cold and crisp and sunny, and since frosty means that going to the allotment for weeding and digging is pretty much pointless we decided to go to the Kilnwick Percy Buddhist centre instead. We are not Buddhists, but the centre is lovely and peacful. It's located in a stately home, Kilnwick Percy Hall, which is very old (it appears in the Doomsday book, which I find geekily exciting). I have no idea how exactly it became a Buddhist centre, but the Hall has had a long and varied history. You can read more about Kilnwick Percy Hall here and about the Hall and the Buddhist centre there here if you are interested. 

In any case, it's a beautiful place. There are extensive grounds, that you can walk, a lake with a plank walk around it, and an old Norman church which isn't used anymore. It's mainly boarded up, but you can peek inside through one of the doors. It's all quite gothic with the old gravestones leaning at odd angles, and sad too when you start reading the inscriptions on the stones. 

We didn't go around the church today, but we walked through the grounds and down to the lake and then went into the little cafe at the Hall, which bears the grand name 'World Peace Cafe'. It's a cozy little place with a big wood burning stove and just 5 or 6 tables. They serve tea and coffee and home-made cakes and scones, and they have soup and some small luncheon things. There is a box of bricks and jenga for kids to play with. 

Coming back home we lit the fire and spent the late afternoon cozy and together. 

And to top it all - looking out of the window now I can see it's snowing! :) 

FO - The Garter Yoke Cardigan

Two FO Fridays in a row! This hasn't happened in a long time!

The Garter Yoke cardi is finally finished. The buttons arrived this week, were sewn on, and I've even already worn the cardi. :)

This cardi has been soooo long in the making. Seriously, there were moments when I thought I'd never finish it, lol. It's not that I didn't enjoy knitting it, and the pattern is great, but those sleeves really got to me. With that DK yarn it just seemed to take ages, you know?

That said, I'm really happy with how it's turned out. I ordered these buttons for it because I thought it might be nice to go for some yellow ones to complement the yellow flecks in the yarn. The alternative was wood, but I wanted something a bit more eye-popping than that. I was going to order some normal round ones when I spotted these elongated ones. I wasn't sure it was going to work but seeing it all together now I think it does!

I can already tell that this cardi is going to get a lot of wear this winter because it has long sleeves (hurrah for not giving up on those) that are going to keep me warm, but with the dk yarn it's not heavy and bulky but instead drapes really nicely and will fit under my slim-line coat.

So there you go the Garter Yoke cardi is finally finished - tadah! ;)

Shared with:

A Year of Projects

Allotmenting - a flurry of seed packets...

Look what arrived - the first lot of the many vegetable and cut-flower seeds I ordered for the allotment! 

It actually looks quite pretty, doesn't it? The individual packets are all cut-flower seeds and the big box contains vegetable seeds. This is what was in it:

Not bad, isn't it? I costed it up. It was quite a bit cheaper to go for a pack than to buy the seeds individually, and I think I'll try to grow all of them this year. 

This lot came from Sow Seeds. I've ordered quite a few vegetable and flower seeds from Vegetable Seeds and some additional seed potatos, onions and garlic from Suttons. Can't wait to get planting! 

WIP Wednesday - Ink Flare

I'm still recovering from my tonsillectomy on Friday, so things have been pretty slow around here. I think I had wildly unrealistic expectations for my recovery time... It really amazes me how groggy I still feel, five days on from the op. Part of it, I suspect, is that sleep is so interrupted, because one of the few things that really help with the pain is drinking lots of cold water. Well, when you sleep you are obviously not drinking, and when you are not drinking your throat really dries up and, well, OUCH! 

But enough of me whinging. I'm feeling a little better today, so I've decided to tackle the disaster zone that the house has become over the past few days, and I've also had a chance to take a few pictures of Ink Flare as she looks right now. 

The body is done, and so is sleeve #1. I'm about 1/3rd into sleeve #2 right now. I've not done as much knitting as I thought I would over the past week because even knitting often seemed to energetic, lol, but there has been some progress and considering how quickly this project is knitting up I think it might be possible to complete it over the coming week or so. 

As for reading, I've been indulging in a bit of pop lit. I have another book I want to start, but with my head so fuzzy I didn't quite feel up to it. So I've been reading Deborah Harkness's All Souls trilogy (A Discovery of Witches, Shadow of Night, The Book of Life). I'm currently on book three.

I'd heard a lot of good things about this trilogy, and it certainly makes quite good sick-bed reading, but honestly? I'm not entirely sold on these books. I enjoy the historical aspect of them, and the detective work of historical research, which feed into my own interest in history and own compulsion to research absolutely everything. It also helps that the author is a historian and academic, and therefore knows what she is talking about in that area. 

What I haven't particularly been able to get behind is the main romance. Since it's pretty much at the centre of the book this is obviously a bit of a problem... It's not only that the trope (a vampire / witch love story) is kind of exhausted, but that I find the main characters individually, and their relationship with each other, a bit annoying and tiresome. The rhetoric is so over-romantic at the same time labouring the point of how hard they have to work at making it work, how independent they really are, how much they adore each other, blablabla. It's hard to explain but even while it's trying to present a realistic portrayal of a new relationship it seems like a wish-fulfillment fantasy of the author, with the heroine an independent modern woman who wins the (flawed) dark, brooding male hero, and while everyone is initially skeptical and hostile towards her she manages to win them all round because she is so amazing... Sorry, I'm exaggerating, but, well, I'm just not feeling it, you know? I always get the sense that I'm being  told how to feel, how amazing these characters are, how amazing this relationship is, while what I'm seeing is something quite different. I'm not only unconvinced because I just can't feel it but also more than a little put off by how simplistic it all seems, and by the unhealthy obsessive and stifling nature of the dynamic of the relationship. I don't know, it's probably just me - it's not the first time I seem to be swimming against the tide of the general popularity of a book. :/

Shared with:

A Year of Projects

Yarn Along

Keep Calm, Craft On

A belated Christmas present...

On Friday I had a tonsillectomy. Not a big procedure, I am told, but fairly unpleasant anyway, so I've been feeling rather sore and groggy. I'm at home, and D is looking after the boys, and I'm taking it easy for a while, until I've got the general anesthetic out of my system and the swelling in my throat has gone down a bit. The consultant advised to take 2 weeks off after the op but I'm really hoping that I won't need quite that long - there is a lot to do this time of year and the start of term is just round the corner...

Anyway, as things are this gives me a chance to show you a belated Christmas present. D actually started this before Christmas and he showed me a photograph of the 'plank of wood' he'd got me on Christmas eve, but with us being in Germany this time round it really didn't seem sensible to carry a 2 m long piece of wood there and back. When we got back here I had some time to admire the beautiful plank of hardwood that D had managed to get the local joiner to plane for him before he whisked it off to the shed to drill holes and make pegs.#

Here is how it looked when he brought it back inside:

Yes, D made me my very own peg loom! Isn't it awesome? It's far longer than any of the peg looms that you can buy, so it will be just the right width to make a big rug for the living room. There are three rows of pegs - two in the same size but with different spacing, and one row with smaller pegs and spacing. D was going a bit crazy by the end with cutting and sanding all those little pegs, lol, but it's done now and I'm so in love with it! 

Boy #1 immediately commandeered the loom to make little coasters - one for grandma for her birthday, and one for us. The process is ever so easy, and he had a lot of fun. 

Not bad for an hour's work, right? I think it might be quite useful to put hot pots or pans on when they are brought to the table... 

Now it's up to me to make all those rugs I've been promising D over the years. He's announced that by this time next year he's expecting rugs in every room of the house! ;)      Although that's perhaps a bit over-ambitious this should be a lot quicker than my braided rug, which I've been working on for a couple of years now (!)  - I'll show you some pictures of it if I remember... 

Fridays are for FOs!

Yes, yes, they are!

It's been so long since I've been able to show off any finished projects on a Friday, and I'm so very happy with this project.

The Scheepjes Mystery Blanket has been finished for a little while now, but I never seem to get round to photographing it because either I'm at work, or it's in use, or it's too dark and dreary to get good light...

But anyway, here it is, in all its glory:

And another one for good measure... 

And from above... 

And if you haven't had enough now, here are some detail shots... 

I added the squares together with a single crochet stitch, which works quite well I think, because it adds a little raised frame around each of the squares but it is simple enough not to draw attention away from the individual squares. After some contemplation I added a plain single crochet border. I was going to make it wider, but D convinced me that it was good as it was and I was pretty sick of border crocheting by that point, so who was I to argue? ;)

Again, I deliberated for a while but in the end decided on a simple border because i didn't want anything too busy that would compete with the crochet squares. I really like how it's turned out and it's definitely been a success with the family, boys and cats and all - it's almost constantly in use, in particular as boy #1 seems to have kidnapped my granny square blanket for his own personal use in his room. Yesterday when I snuck up there before I went to bed he was all snuggled up in it. Much as I'd like the blanket back to keep in the living room I just don't have the heart to take it when he clearly likes it that much. Maybe I'll have to make another one...

I'm still waiting for the buttons for the Garter Yoke cardi to arrive, so I'll have to leave that FO for another post... 

Shared with:

A Year of Projects

Yarn Along Wednesday

With all the Christmas business this is my first Wednesday update in a while. I do have things to show for though, both WIPs and FOs. I won't dwell on the latter here, as I'm planning a more extensive FO Friday 'reveal'. ;)

In addition to my usual A Year of Projects update and Keep Calm, Craft On, I'm also joining in with Ginny for Yarn Along this week and I thought I'd for once do the reading-and-knitting update that Yarn Along really is about. I actually read a lot, but I rarely remember to blog about it. 

This Christmas I got a little book of poems on motherhood from my brother in law. It's Carolyn Jess-Cooke's BOOM!, and I'd been hankering after this book for a while now so I'm thrilled to finally get my hands on it. The poems are lovely - in turn funny and touching and always so very recognisable in the emotions that they express. Truly beautiful. 

I'm also dipping in and out of sixteenbynine, which is the pilot issue of a new journal on television. It's interesting, but not having read much of it yet, right now I'm probably most in love with the cover design, which I desperately covet as a poster to put in my office! ;)  

As for knitting, with various projects close to completion I've embarked on another Ink Flare. I fancied making another one ever since I knitted one with my unruly purple wool last summer, and I had this perfect green hand-dyed mohair yarn from Fleece Artist lying around here. I'm making this one in the round to avoid all that sewing and on 6 mm needles this knits up so fast. After knitting both Tea Leaves and the Garter Yoke cardi on 4.5 mm needles I'd forgotten how quickly a project can grow on big needles. I've already completed the body and have just started the first sleeve.  Judging from prior performance with sleeve knitting this will probably be the point where progress slows right down, but it's a lovely yarn to work with and I really REALLY want to wear this jumper soon, so I'm hoping this will keep my motivated. The knitted fabric is loose and airy, which is what I'd intended, and the colour variations give it some texture and I'm so looking forward to seeing it finished!

As for my other projects, the Scheepjes Mystery blanket is truly finished now. Here is a little peak before the bigger post:

The Garter Yoke cardi is also finished, at least the knitting part. I've ordered some buttons for it that will hopefully arrive soon. 

There is some progress on my never-ending sock, but not enough to warrant a photoshoot. Who wants to see the same sock every week anyway if there isn't any vast difference?!

Allotmenting...

... or rather, thinking about allotmenting.

It's come to the point in winter, just past Christmas and with the boys back at school, where my thoughts turn to the upcoming allotment season. I've been perusing seed catalogues and websites and deciding on what to plant this coming spring.

There are a few things that worked well, that I want to extend:

1) cut flowers

I so loved the luxury of having cut flowers in the house all summer long. It was easy and fun and the bunches of flowers made me smile every time I passed them. Definitely worth it. 

Last summer I grew Cosmos and Dahlias and some Sunflowers. They were great, but this year I'm planning to extend my range a bit. I'm thinking of adding some Cornflowers and Sweetpeas for sure, but possibly also some Larkspur, Calendula, Anethum, Antirrhinum, and Verbena. 

2) Vegetables

There were some definite successes and fails. Our beans were spectacular. In fact, we had so many beans we still have bags and  bags of frozen ones to get through. So runner beans and bush beans are a definite!

On the other hand, our sweetcorn and our carrots (despite what you see in the basket - they were inedible) were nothing short of pitiful. I don't think we ate a single cob of corn or carrot, lol. That said, I'm probably going to try again. After a few years of persistent failure to grow sweetcorn I seem to have developed a slightly unhealthy and misplaced fixation on successfully growing corn. I'm determined that this year we'll eat corn on the cob, grown in our own allotment!

I also want to increase our berry produce. Last summer we made some delicious blackcurrant jam and our strawberries were amazing! This year we'll devote even more space to strawberries, and I'm planning on planting a few more raspberry plants and possibly also another blackcurrant bush.

Other than that I'm planning on planting potatoes again (also not a raging success last summer), as well as pumpkins and courgettes, some cucumbers, brassicas, peas and mangetout, parsnip and onions, definitely onions. We were so unlucky with those because when we planted them we didn't have netting yet and they were all eaten before they even had a chance to establish. 

So there you go, my plans are made! :) 

I'm kind of enjoying this period - when you can't actually plant yet (all I'm planning on doing this winter is weed and dig in muck), but have to prepare for the growing season.

In case you are based in the UK and interested in such matters, I'm getting most of my cut flower seeds Sow Seeds - not the cheapest, alas, but they have a pretty extensive selection of cut flower varieties and give information about how long flowers last when cut, etc. All very useful. :) 

Most of my vegetable seeds and some additional cut flowers seeds will be purchased from Vegetable Seeds, which is great, especially if you have an allotment and purchase lots of vegetable seeds. The prices are reasonable and at the moment they have a 50% sale on, so all their seed packets are under £1! I really wish they had a better flower selection so I could order everything from them, but their vegetable selection is superb. I'm adding the link to their website:

Vegetable Seeds

VegetableSeeds.net offers fantastic value for the highest quality vegetable seeds in the UK. Over 400 varieties with next day shipping and free P&P on all UK orders over £15.00.

A Merry Sockmas

It was cold out there this past week. Even the cats were looking for novel ways of keeping themselves warm...

Seriously, though, what is it with cats and boxes? 

Personally, I prefer some warm wolly handknits to keep me warm in this weather. Good thing then, that we had a rather sock-tastic Christmas this year. Godi, the lovely aunt of my dad's partner, came to see us while we were in Germany, and she came with some rather lovely gifts. Just look at these!! 

Those were for D. There are two pairs missing, because he'd already started wearing them, so one pair was on his feet (and he wasn't available for photographs when I took these) and one was in the wash already). I got four pairs too. Three pairs here:

And one pair on my feet already! :) 

I'm still quite speechless int the face of such generosity! She'd said that she might knit some when she came to visit us in September, but eight (!!) pairs of socks?! 

Some of the wool came from us. I gave her 2 sets of Natural Dye Studio sock yarn (the ones on my feet and the blueish-green yarn) and 1 large ball of blue self-patterning sock yarn (one of D's pairs, but I'm not sure which one), but she must have then gone out to get more yarn. I'll have to get a nice parcel of something together for her as a thank you. 

Here we go round the mulberry bush...

... on a cold and frosty morning.

One of the first sights that  greeted us when we returned home after the holidays was this:

Yes, apparently our shed at the allotment decided that it needed a lie-down. :/

A couple of days ago D and I enjoyed the rare treat of a day without the boys. Much as I love them and as much fun as they are to be around, these occasional 'grandma days', as they are known around here, are cherished too, because they don't happen very often and they give us the opportunity of doing some of the things that we don't often have time for. I tend to go into my office and paint or craft, and D is invariably drawn to the shed. He is currently working on a peg loom for me (my Christmas present!), so that was on the agenda for this particular grandma day.

Before we could get round to any of that, though, we had to wrap up warm and take a trip to the allotment to prop our shed up. It had fallen over completely, thereby flattening the fence behind it and snapping one of the fence poles. Not good. If it hadn't been for the holidays we probably would have a letter of complaint in the post already, because, let me tell you,  the allotment committee doesn't mess around! 

It was quite hard work getting the shed upright again, which makes me wonder how it fell over in the first place. It's so heavy! I can only guess that the open front (D hasn't quite finished it yet) acted as a kind of sail and the wind caught in it and pulled it over. For now we've stored a few patio slabs in it so hopefully the added weight will mean that it's secure for now, at least until D can get some more reclaimed wood to finish the front and side off. We set ourselves the task of, if at all possible, only using reclaimed materials at the allotment, because isn't that make-do attitude part of the allotment appeal? That is also the reason for the rather crazy looking bi-fold shower door that the shed has - we had it in one of our outbuildings. ;)  I'm quite liking the odd look of it all and I'm hoping to paint it with the boys next summer...

After we'd fixed things up a bit I had a little walk around the allotments. I always like it there, but with the hard frost we had it has a truly magical feel to it.