I love how nature goes stark staring bonkers right around this time of year. To be fair, I'd go bonkers too at the first sign of spring if I'd spent the winter shivering in the garden, surviving on a dwindling supply of berries, bugs, and birdseed. But right now, you can't move for nature frisking, flirting, squabbling, and, ahem, doing what comes naturally. I'll save the best for last. If you think the trade in homes for people is brutal, then you should see the avian property market. A Continue Reading
Archives for March 2016
Let Them Eat Cake. (And Chocolate).
Chocolaty felicitations to those amongst you of an Eastery inclination. And even if Easter isn't your thing, I hope you have some cocoa solids handy anyway. Because, well, chocolate. Given the ongoing grey/damp outside, I've been creating colour in the indoor flowerbeds. This. Project. Is. Going. To. Be. Finished. Very. Soon. Or. I. Will. Scream. The plants/foliage are aggressively crocheted, and then I'm embroidering on the flowers. But never mind that, it's Easter. Despite the fact that Continue Reading
Easter. Chocolate. Home-Brew.
Typical. You put out a blog post about how cold and grey it is, and barely have the pixels dried on the screen (my understanding of technological hardware may be imperfect) when the sun leaps out from behind a cloud, yelling "TA-DA!" and makes everything springlike. That said, by the time you read this, it's due to be dull and damp again. This blog post is brought to you courtesy of the Stoic Spouse's homebrew (which is actually rather tasty), so don't be surprised if the final few paragraphs Continue Reading
Knitted Butterflies
So it's been cold and grey and damp in a way that suggests the arrival of spring. This cold-and-grey is definitely different from winter cold-and-grey because this is cold-and-grey-WITH-DAFFODILS.* Here's what happens when you try and photograph daffodils at dusk in the pouring rain after an exceptionally tricky day at work. (Don't try this at home, folks: as you can see, it's liable to end with wobbly edges.) So in the absence of spring sunshine, we have to make our own colour. Fortunately, Continue Reading
Family Stuff
So I tidied my study. Can you tell that this is going to be an edge-of-your-seat blog post, a white knuckle ride of dastardly deeds and derring-do? Well if you'd seen the state of the room beforehand, you might feel that you weren't too far awry in that opinion. (There was going to be knitting in this post, too, but quirky study stuff took over, so the knitted pretties are reserved for next time. Please do stick around, my fine fibrous friends.) Anyway, would you like to take a look around, Continue Reading
Knit, And The World Knits With You (Sometimes)
Imagine the following scenario, yarn-lovers. You're out for the evening, and you arrive at the venue a little before the friend whom you've arranged to meet. So you order a glass of rioja, and look around for somewhere to sit. The bar area is crowded, and there are no tables free. You recognize a vague acquaintance, but you don't really know them well enough to table-crash, so you smile/wave to them and move on. Eventually you find a low shelf thingy at the back of the room, so you settle Continue Reading
Designing For Knitters
I love designing. Sometimes (rarely) it goes spookily well from the start (like here), but more often, a succession of try-outs staggers back-and-forth like a drunk person with only the haziest sense of direction, heading ever-so slowly in the direction of a decent outcome, but occasionally just belching loudly before falling off a cliff. I love the combination of creativity and problem-solving and maths that's involved in making some new knitted or crocheted item. I love the transition from Continue Reading
Begonias And Barn Owls.
Sometimes, I think that barn owls must have been designed by a six-year-old. (There is crochet coming later in this post, but I just need to get the barn owls off my chest, so to speak.) Don't get me wrong: they're beautiful and magnificent birds of prey, but they do have some odd design elements. I'm writing this because I saw one up-close at dusk the other day. It flew alongside my car for a moment, just as I topped the Berkshire Downs ready to descend into Oxfordshire. There I was, Continue Reading