September. The season is on the swing, towards autumn here in the UK, but towards spring if you’re in the southern hemisphere. There’s a hint of chill early in the day, regardless of whether or not the later hours become warm.
The logs are stacked beside the fireplace and the kindling bucket is full. It’s so tantalisingly nearly time to light a fire. There are blackberries to be gathered from the hedgerows for crumble-making:-
As the temperature falls, it’s spider season, and those of us with an – ahem – aversion to the hairy little critters must go to extreme measures to survive the month. Fortunately my father-in-law, the Gregarious Grandfather, is visiting, so I can use his fancy camera device that’s for studying the inside of engines to examine my wellies for interlopers.
I assumed I’d be writing some dull caption like ‘All seems OK here’ to that photo, but…. then we saw the actual live freakin’ wriggly mega-spider on the screen! Let’s just gloss over what ensued, and instead talk about crochet. Yes?
Right, crochet. Well now that the twinnage are a’school, I have a wee smidgeon of time in which to write up the pattern for the crochet house bag. And… it’s very nearly done, but the charts will take a wee while longer to conjure. But it’s coming, and it’ll be free of charge forever.
Meanwhile, I’ve been starting to add flowers, shrubs and vegetables to the house-related, nearly-finished, mega-project. The one I’ve been drip-feeding you with glimpses of for months. I’m sorry, I don’t do quick, simple projects. This is the nature of the beast.
It’s been two steps forward, one step back, as some attempts at vegetation just don’t work. For example, this attempt at a bush does rather resemble a slime mould:-
But the biggest triumph of the day has been the cauliflowers in the vegetable patch. Because I was inspired by the veg patch in the Jan Messent book I found in a second-hand shop:-
I had an urge to make a row of cauliflowers. As you do.
Fortunately, we happened to be visiting my parents, the Twisted Seniors (newly re-located from Herefordshire to Oxfordshire) today. And they had a cauliflower in the fridge so I could compare shades of yarn and scratch my chin thoughtfully.
…And in the end decide to just go for it. I wanted to catch the lumpy-bumpy nature of an ordinary cauli (much as Mother Twisted wanted me to perfectly represent one of those fractal-like fancy Romanesco specimens). So I chained in cream-coloured yarn for a while, then wrapped the chain into a ball whilst sewing it in place. The green outer leaves were made by making a 4-chain loop around the cauliflower stem, from which I made 5-chain loops that became leaves which I sewed tight against the white ball of cauliflower.
Can you tell the difference from the real thing?
So far, I’ve sewn a row of them into the garden:-
Now, what next? (Can you perhaps understand why this is taking a while?)
I thought your first bush resembled a cabbage patch, full of ripe little beauties waiting to be picked;-)…Great progress though, I’m enjoying it.
Oh this is like the illustrations of Mr. McGregor’s garden in Peter Rabbit!!! of course, nobody’s real garden ever looks that good except for a few weeks in early spring. These are adorable.
Love the caulis!
Oh so intriguing! Can’t wait to see the finished project.
Cheers for the linky Ms Twisted it made my day :). Got to say, that is a rather fetching slime mould you have crocheted there. I would have said more like lichen and have been a little more generous with you there. You could have added some longish white strands of yarn to make it look more moss like. Your mother wanted you to crochet a fractal?! Is she Irish Ms Twisted? I hear they are enamored of that kind of free crochet thing. Much like free love from the 60’s, it is a most spirited idea but usually ends up with everyone contracting some kind of nasty infection and never doing it again…just sayin’…
I need to make a friend a veggie patch and a scarecrow. I will be using your tutorial to make the cauliflowers thus saving me the time of having to Google them and wade through the recipes for Paleo cauliflower pizza base, how to grow cauliflowers in May and cauliflower hummus that predate the upper echelons of Googles searches on a regular basis when one is searching for actual content.
Tiny cabbages. You NEED tiny cabbages now. They would be small balls of green with more chain around the outside…not so hard but necessary in an English veggie garden methinks :). Loving this customised way of approaching crochet. That’s the great thing about hookers. They tend to think out of the box to get what they want ;).
That is the cutest cauliflower I have ever seen!
Oh so adorable, many hours spent and the end piece will be magnificent. Check out my blog tomorrow, I’m posting a crochet frog bag. Its not an original I’ve seen them on Pinterest, so I made my own.
Such a work of art you are creating – each tiny crochet piece just another drop of paint to the canvas – or cauli in the garden if you will. It really doesn’t matter how long it takes, we’ll keep happily waiting and salivating just a tiny bit……
Those cauliflowers are adorable! All of these gardening bits are reminding me of a book I had when I was a kid, The Knitted Farmyard (which was apparently re-printed recently). I spent hours just looking through that book but I never made a thing from it. Your mysterious project of mystery keeps making me wish I still had the book, but I think it got damaged when a garage at a previous house flooded.
What other veg are you making? Perhaps a basket of freshly-picked radishes and carrots? Near a little crocheted trowel? I may be getting carried away here…
Fabulous. Just fabulous. Your talent is astounding. N.
Not sure if you have seen this post or not but I just found it on my hunt for more crochet vege and think it looks almost exactly what you are after.
http://www.morehousefarm.com/Knitting/with/Leftover/Yarn/140411041/
Let’s not leave out broccoli …… or kale ……. you could do a lovely purple/green there …….. and how about wee bitty bugs attacking the cauliflower ……. mere specs of black landing here and there …….. not spiders, in case you gasped!
Very cute.
Loving those cauliflowers ?
The detail is just so perfect, it made me smile this morning and that’s even without my morning cuppa yet. I’ve shared the post with our new following over on the ‘Olann and’ Facebook Page and I can’t wait to see it when it’s finished.
I’m speechless,as always! You made me love cauliflower with this post! 😀 LOL
Truly a work of art in progress. The cauliflowers are impressive. In fact, so is the whole garden scape.
Just found your blog and am in love with your work! I am looking forward to developing my skills and making detailed work. So beautiful.
I was always a fan of your crazy big projects like the rainbow afghan (when I got hooked to your blog) but I have changed my mind. My new favourite is actually the cauliflower. Sorry to say that. Actually I am not sorry at all 🙂 And I know what we’ll have for dinner tonight.
Those cauliflowers are so cute they almost make me want to try crocheting again. Almost.
you know, I might even be a teency weency little bit sad when you do the big reveal, I love these candid ‘what am I making’ shots, and the cauliflowers looks ADORABLE! ho ho sorry you had to find a spider, but at least your caution paid off i guess 🙂 jenny xx
Like the many other comments before mine – I, too, really love those baby cauliflowers. Almost as much as your wellies! …xlnt idea with that camera too. You just don’t know where those hairy legs can be hiding.
Hi, I’m new to the blog and really enjoying it 🙂 Had to comment re spiderless wellies though, a trick my MIL showed me … turn one welly upside down and tuck it into the top of the other, so the foot sticks out of the top. Eh voila, no room for Mr (or Ms) Spider to get in. Or use an old skirt hanger to clip the tops together 🙂
Welcome! First, thank you for your kind words. And A BIG thank you for the welly tip. (But are you sure that the sneaky little sneakers wouldn’t sneak in through any tiny gaps?) I shall go and try your MIL’s trick right now.
And I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog. 🙂
Oh my- these are adorable! I haven’t been reading blogs a lot lately (dhame on me), so this project of yours is totally new to me. Enough motivation to read regularly again!