When the world finally sees sense and appoints me President For Life, there are going to be some big changes around here. Obviously high on the list will be the introduction of paid knitting/crochet leave for all workers, and free access to yarn for the under-paid. But there'll also be some wildlife-friendly initiatives introduced within the first nanosecond or two of my iron-fisted forever-tenure. First of all, every garden will be mandated by law to include at least one wildlife pond. Continue Reading
A Tiny Love Story
Happy new year, my friends. In 2020, may your yarn never tangle and may nobody interrupt you when you're counting stitches. How's your new year going so far? Here at Twisted Towers, I've knitted a few rounds of sock, cleaned out the water-butt (yuckety-yuck), and taken the twinnage to the dentist. And a few days ago, something magical happened, involving this beauty:- Robyn-the-robin. Look, you can even see her tiny eyelashes! You'll know the basics already if you follow me on Continue Reading
Fun With Power Tools
Never, ever, in the history of everything, has a woman waited with such excitement for a mountain of well-rotted compost to be plonked on her doorstep. Oh hang on, perhaps I need to rewind this a teensy bit. Shall we knit/crochet a little whilst I explain? If it’s OK, I’ll finish sewing the buttons on to the Trip To Town cardigan that I’m making for my friend Alice. (Pattern by Drops here.) If you’re reading this, Alice, please pretend not to have noticed that last sentence, or the photo Continue Reading
France
Ah, home. Home is where the yarn is. Also, the third set of 4mm circular knitting needles, just in case a freak tidal wave washes away the other two sets. (We're 50 miles from the sea, but it's not a risk that I'm willing to take.) Home is also the last known location of the Stoic Spouse's secret chocolate stash, but he keeps moving it and I'm struggling to figure out its latest hiding place. I mention home because we've just returned there after a week's holiday in the champagne region Continue Reading
Juniper And Friends
Proof that the universe has a fine sense of humour: just as my yarnthusiasm returns, I damage my hand by over-eager wool-tugging between DPNs. Yeah thanks, universe - feel free to stop chuckling now. It's quite ouchy, but I've switched to knitting continental-style in order to give my right hand a break. I've been working on this new design for way too many weeks. When this thing is done, it'll be... I dunno, maybe twenty thousand stitches or so? But m-a-n-y times that number have gone Continue Reading
Here Be Dragons
Every time, EVERY TIME I go outdoors to take a yarn-related picture, some bit of the natural world shows up and diverts my attention. Hello, beautiful. This is M. Dragonfly, who was loitering in the reeds beside the pond, hoping to find a mate... M. Dragonfly WLTM a fellow Common Darter Dragonfly, GSOH and own pond preferred. Please no timewasters or damselflies. Yeeks, is this what this blog has become? A dating site for arthropods? Did you know that (giant) dragonflies were Continue Reading
Waterside
Please (cough) excuse this (cough, cough) ridiculous, hacking cough (cough), but I've had (c... you get the idea) a chest infection for the past week, and I sound like I got lost in a cigarette factory as it caught fire. There's quite a bit of water in this post, but I'll get to that in a minute. Here's the view from a small rowing boat, under a bridge in Oxford. The second-worst thing about this has been not being able to go running, and the worst thing has been not being able to do much Continue Reading
May
Despite appearances, this is still a knitting/crochet/running blog. But following your reactions to the last post, I thought that some of you might want to know that this happened with Robyn-the-robin. Repeatedly:- Hello, beautiful. She ate from my hand, too, but I didn't manage to get a picture of that. Sometimes one of the twinnage joins me on the bench waiting quietly for her to arrive, but Robyn is wary of my boys - she stares from the fence as though to say, "Look mate, I've got a Continue Reading
Robyn The Robin
Ever feel as though you're being watched? Well, do you?? I can't even set foot in the garden without Robyn the robin appearing, demanding food (aka demanding I do the weeding, so that she can follow me along the flowerbed, gathering grubs and beetles, and telling me about everything she thinks is wrong with the world). If I don't do what she wants, she flies alarmingly close to my head at a gazillion miles per hour to get my attention. I've been trying to placate her with mealworms Continue Reading
Springy
As seasons go - and man, do they go fast for those of us on the less popular side of 40 - spring has a lot to recommend it. The very best thing is that nature stops hiding its colourful light under a damp, grey, bushel, and comes out to frolic. Look at these beautiful snakeshead fritillaries! It's trickier than usual to be miserable when there's so much new life around, such as the bottle-fed lambs in the twinnage's friend's garden. Meet Alfie. Alfie is trouble. But Alfie Continue Reading