The Queen in wool

 

Goodness, I love this time of year. The Jubilee has made it especially nice, with bunting all over the place and a surfeit of cake. The town did of course celebrate by producing a knitted Jubilee scene, complete with the Queen done very nicely in stocking stitch, a range of teapots and some really good knitted cakes, all displayed in the window of the secondhand bookshop.

Elsewhere I came across this brilliant post box topper, honestly, in a league of its own. I see no-one has tried to tackle a corgi though, which is a bit disappointing.

The garden is all abundance and this is the time of year when the clover in the lawn flowers, which the bees love. My new neighbour has new pigeons and when I'm out there I can hear them cooing to each other, which is lovely. 

I have almost no news, which is not a bad thing. I'm working a lot, also not a bad thing, but hopefully I'll be able to take the odd bit of time off in the summer holidays. The eldest two are taking their A-levels and GCSEs at the moment. I feel I have coped with it quite well so far.

In between working I am clearing a property and it is really making me think long and hard about Stuff. At the end of the long day, I come home and declutter here a bit too. 

The Sort-It Centres are busy with people unloading mountains of stuff into the huge skips. I've found it all a bit sickening to be honest, although I am far from blameless. I do try to avoid buying too much, especially new and cheap things that won't last, but there could definitely be improvement. I am definitely resolving to do better and to try and reduce what I have. I may even get Marie Kondo down off of the shelf.

I have been trying to get rid of a piano, which is quite a feat. It turns out there are literally dozens of pianos on Ebay for 99p, buyer collects. It turns out no-one wants them any more. Some of them are lovely, all walnut burr and a high shine. I am looking at my own enormous old piano in a different light I can tell you. I have been quoted £225 to have the other one removed and recycled. If only I had played the cello instead.

How are things in your corner of the world? Good I hope. CJ xx

Blogtober 2021 :: Day 21

 

Sorry for missing a Blogtober day, yesterday rather got away from me somehow. And thank you for your viewing recommendations, I shall check them out. 

Knitting is back out in this house now that the weather has turned a bit nippy. I'm knitting a scarf, slowly. Every single year, I get a sudden affinity with yarn around this time. Garden away, wool out. The youngest has his alpaca blanket on the bed tonight, which is made with dark grey Drops Lima with the odd narrow stripe of colour. It's nice and heavy so it squashes him down a bit, which is no bad thing.

The eldest is off on a camping trip soon. I have been annoyingly flapping around him giving him all the advice and checking his stuff. Only one jumper??? You will need a spoon. Wash your hands before you eat anything. And when you touch anything. Don't leave the charger on overnight. Or get it wet. Or charge it when it gets wet. Or eat anything that's been hanging around in the warmth. Or drink old water. Do not set the tent on fire. Your clothes may shrink if you put them in a dryer. And on and on. I actually ran out of advice earlier which is practically unheard of. I literally couldn't think of a single thing I hadn't already said. So I said some of the earlier things again, which is fine because I'm not sure he was listening properly the first time around. I have plenty of time to run through them all again before he goes in fact.

Plastered

Photos from a visit to Wells, England's smallest city. Spring was in the air, blossom, bird song, people already wearing shorts, you know how it is. I have to be prised out of my coat at the end of May. I'd love to be one of those people who can swan around in a t-shirt in April without a care in the world, but try as I might it just isn't me. I am not a hardy soul.

Some of you had questions about the news items from last time. The fatberg was sent to a plant to be converted into electricity. Apparently you can also turn them into biodiesel. The duckling thing works like this (I think). Fertilised birds' eggs don't start developing until momma bird starts incubating them. So she can lay an egg and go out for the day, leaving it all cold and alone in its nest. Then next day she might lay another one, and off she goes again. And on and on until she has all the eggs ready. Then she sits down and stays on the nest and they warm up and off they go.

So the fertile supermarket egg waits happily in its box until a boy with an incubator comes along and pops it in to warm. Then he keeps it constantly warm and turns it five times a day and in a month or so, bingo, duckling. So no need to worry that you're going to crack an egg and a duckling will drop out into your cake mixture.

The Easter hols have started in fine style. The littlest boy fell off of his scooter and took (another) chunk out of his leg. He is fundamentally opposed to plasters, so I persuaded him that the thing I had was a dressing and not a plaster at all. It is some sort of new-fangled thing, which I stuck on without properly reading the instructions first. It is oddly sticky over its entire surface, which doesn't bode well if it needs to be peeled off. And it's the peeling off part that he's fundamentally opposed to. And he's also slightly allergic to some plasters. So I am rather wishing I hadn't slapped it on now. I can't see it ending well.

The day was a whirlwind of bikes and scooters and boys and food preparation and laundry and dog walking and I am sat here thinking, blimey, that was only day 1. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but somehow it always seems a bit daunting at the beginning. And then at the end I'm always wishing it would go on for longer.

I am working up to a craft project - one of those nice noticeboard things. I'll let you know how it goes. I tried some crochet the other day. You will remember the ball of wool that was sitting on the shelf. Well, I decided it would look nice as a scarf in one of those lovely ripple patterns. I wrote down the instructions and off I went.

Sigh. It is obviously not supposed to look like this. I have zero patience for fiddly things that go wrong, so it has all been wound back up and I am sulking. Everyone else makes it look so easy.

Hope all is well with you. Any good plans?

Does my dog look good in this?

Autumn is here, so I have new knitting on the go. I've thrown caution to the winds and bought some actual wool. It's soft as a cloud, so we will see whether I'm okay wearing it. I'm usually not, but I think I might be lucky this time. I bought it online and when it turned up it look more sort of mauve that I imagined. It's called Madre Perla, which sounds far better than mauve, but I'm wondering if I should have gone for something with a bit more oomph such as Amoroso which is a riskier deep red. I have been reading about Decision Fatigue and debating whether I did my online shopping at the wrong end of the day. Apparently Barack Obama wore a 'uniform' every day, so he didn't have to waste any of his decisions on clothing. I think I shall implement the same thing here. There are so many miniscule decisions to make every single day, I get quite grumpy by the end of it. Or maybe I'm just innately grumpy. Yes, that's probably it.

Anyway, knitting, on the go. A scarf, of course, as that is all I can manage late at night when I have my knitting window. That or a blanket. It's sat on one of my new napkins, which I bought to replace the ones that Bertie has chewed. An ebay find, and I like them so much that I've decided not to use them in case he chews them as well. I am doing the same thing with my new tea towels, which are safely tucked away in a drawer.

I also have new cushions. I know it sounds as though I have been on a mad spending spree, but the dog has done his worst and everything has gone all tatty. The cushions lived on top of the piano for a few days, out of reach, but I finally plucked up the courage to put them on the sofa. The littlest boy said to me yesterday, 'The new cushions really suit Bert.' I have decided that henceforth that is how I shall make all of my soft furnishing decisions. No looking at complex questions such as examination of eco-credentials or washability or where things were made, I shall simply ask, 'Will the dog look good on this?'

Rendered in wool

We are filling our days with all the boy summer stuff, you know the kind of thing, anything involving sticks, ball games, dogs, trees and rivers. I am keeping a lazy eye on proceedings and reading and writing in the odd moments when my input isn't required.

I have lost the ability to make proper food and we are surviving on salad, picnics and pasta thrown together at the speed of light when it's too late to do real cooking. There are baked goods though, blueberry muffins, banana bars, cherry crumble and orange chocolate chip ricotta cookies. Now I've written it all down it doesn't sound like a particularly good balance I have to admit. Must try harder. But oh, it's so hard to find things that everyone likes. At the moment I've gone off food a bit, and I'd be quite happy having overnight oats (my breakfast of choice) every evening. I do sometimes, if I make a non-vegetarian thing.

In other news, the littlest boy and I found that our town has been rendered in wool. There's a fantastic display in a shop window, apologies for the slightly iffy photos, I used my little camera and there were lots of reflections, but you get the idea. He read out the sign: Created by the Knit and Natter Group, and told me I should join as I like to knit and natter. I do!

Look at the allotments. The cauliflowers!

It's brilliant, all the details really make it. And there's often lots of red, white and blue bunting about the town, for one thing or another, which makes it look quite pretty. They really did do a fantastic job of it all.

I am aiming for some more deck chair time tomorrow, ostensibly supervising stuff but really reading. I finished a book I enjoyed the other day, Burnt Paper Sky by Gilly MacMillan, set in my home town, and I can't settle to a new one at all. I must have started four and put them all down. Too twee, too agressive, too light, too dark. I feel like Goldilocks.

There's something about these perfect summer days that are demanding the perfect book to go along with them. Anyone reading anything good? I have a quite a pile here to choose from, but nothing is leaping out at me. Of course I really ought to be reading something useful, about SEO or marketing or something. You know I'm always blithering on about having no time, and here I am wasting it on dubious fiction. But, oh, it's summer. And not just summer, a perfect summer, like in the magazines. Well, if I half close my eyes and look from a distance. Hope you're all enjoying it too. CJ xx

A Beatrix blanket

Inspired by Alicia and Beatrix Potter and a basket full of odd balls of wool, I knitted a little blanket, just right for throwing round my shoulders on a chilly winter's day when I'm working at home and it's not quite warm enough. But of course I am completely out of sync with the world and I have finished it now, during a heatwave. Undeterred, I am showing you anyway, because otherwise I'll forget or I won't get around to it.

In fact now I think about it, I have two quilts here that I've never posted about. One very similar to a previous quilt, but one gigantic purple beast that I really ought to photograph, just to document its birth and existence if nothing else. I'll get to it. I had an idea that I would take it somewhere really photogenic and do some amazing shots of it, a la Ashley at Film in the Fridge who drapes her beautiful quilts over vintage barns and old wooden fences and blossomy trees and makes it all look utterly delightful. But of course I never got around to it. I shall make it a summer project, and add it to a list somewhere, of which there are far too many, with hours worths of ghastly things on them. I am ignoring them in the hopes that they will go away and I'm spending longer than I should reading.

I'm feeling a little glazed actually. Maybe because I'm slacking. I think I do best somehow when I'm at full stretch. Otherwise I go all dreamy and vacant and before I know it the day has flown by and all I have to show for it is a pile of washing up and a small adventure. On today's small adventure we found a wonderful village duck pond with a duck house in the shape of a palace no less. I shall photograph that next time, it was excellent.

In the meantime, all the photos I have are knitting ones, so I apologise to those of you who are feeling the heat. It seems to be a problem in lots of places this year. Fires in the US and Sweden as well as heatwaves in Europe, Africa and North America. Maybe I should call it the Heatwave Blanket. Hopefully when I am shivering at my desk (well, dining table, you will recall I don't have an actual desk) in February, I will think back to these hot days and call up a little of their warmth. That's a thing I think, if you're really hot and you think about ice, it cools you down, and vice versa.

Anyway, blanket.

I remember The Tailor of Gloucester well from when I was little, I loved the story of the cat being sent to buy a twist of cherry-coloured silk, and the mice helping the tailor to finish the mayor's waistcoat while he lay ill, leaving just one buttonhole unfinished. There's something so evocative about the books of childhood isn't there? Maybe the imagination is so much more vibrant then, I don't know, but when I see the books now the memories are strong.

The blanket is a very basic thing, just lots of stocking stitch with a garter stitch border, and just the perfect size for one slightly chilly person. I don't get on well with fancy knitting, although I'd love to create something lacy and holey and pretty. The trouble is I knit late at night when I'm tired, with very little brainpower left. Alicia crocheted hers, which I love. The texture of double crochet is wonderful. But I am somehow more of a knitter. And I worry about how much yarn you need for a crocheted thing. I read something the Yarn Harlot wrote about the amount of yarn eaten up by crochet once, which terrified me. I know where I am with knitting.

Anyway, there it is, one Beatrix blanket, sitting nicely folded on the shelf, waiting happily while we enjoy these long hot summer days. Anything on your needles?

A little light yarn bombing

Discovered this yarn bombing in deepest Pembrokeshire while looking for a chippy, you know how it is. I managed to snap a few quick pictures before I had to run to keep up. I always seem to be taking really quick photos then hurrying along, trying not to get left behind.

The hare is particularly lovely isn't he. And the Queen's Guards, I like them a lot. We have a saying in this house when someone's in our way which comes from a silly little video of a hapless tourist getting in the way of the real Queen's Guards. He's milling around outside Buckingham Palace as the Guards approach. His wife says to him, "They're coming through Derek, mind. Mind. MIND." Derek doesn't grasp it at all and barely moves. The Queen's Guards come marching through him and he goes flying. When we first discovered it the boys re-enacted it quite a bit in the living room until some people were on the floor in pain. So now we just try to do the words. "Coming through Derek, MIND," whenever we need to get past each other.

September is truly here. It's been a weekend of mud and showers. On Saturday the middle boy actually lost a trainer in thick mud. He went to a fishing competition and was trying to get some water out of the lake apparently. The mud sucked his trainer off and by the time he got someone to help him the mud had closed over the trainer and it was lost forever.

Today was all football boots and wellies and the dog galloping through wet grass until he looked like a drowned rat. I took him for a final walk as the sun set. It was lovely to get out for a moment's peace and quiet and feel the wind blowing in my hair. Although to be fair it had been blowing in my hair most of the day, but combined with the peace and quiet it felt different somehow. Lights were coming on in people's houses and it all looked cosy and Sundayish. Bertie had a gallop with a friend and has been a nice puppy ever since. As opposed to earlier when he was less nice and stealing the washing, chewing the house and generally moving from one naughty thing to the next.

When I got home the other half was on the phone. Some lovely person had found the middle boy's missing trainer from deep in the mud and it will be returned to us. A result no? I rescued the other one from the bin and crossed New Trainers off the to-do list. Happy.