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
Back To The Yarn
There I was outdoors, photographing some crochet for this blog post, determined that Robyn-the-robin wasn't going to hijack another post, when guess who zoomed, screeching, past my head demanding food? I didn't manage to get any decent pictures of her this time (she can be standoffish on days when I've selfishly abandoned her to go to work) so here's an eight-second video from the other day. If you follow my Instagram, you'll have seen a similar clip already. Was that a shameless attempt to 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
Millionaire
That title is misleading. I'm not really a millionaire, although I did just find a bar of chocolate that I'd forgotten about so I am feeling pretty fortunate. (I sometimes hide chocolate away from the Twinnage, and the advantage/disadvantage of having a rubbish memory is that I then promptly forget it ever existed.) But the title of this post is because recently, my blog visit stats passed the million mark. Those visits can't all have been by my mum, surely? A million! That's quite a big number. Continue Reading
Winter Colours
There is knitting in this post I promise, but there's also lots of winter colour because if you're anything like me, you find the natural world and the landscape endlessly fascinating and inspiring. (And if you're not anything like me, then congratulations on being such a well-adjusted member of society.) Those eleventy hundred bulbs I planted in the autumn are beginning to reveal themselves and I can't resist showing you a few:- Judging by the green fronds poking up all over the Continue Reading
2018… Oops, I mean 2019
So here we are - another year. Another one. Couldn't we have stuck with the old one for just a smidge longer?* The wildlife pond has frozen over. There's nothing like replacing the calendar that hangs on your kitchen wall to bring on a reflective mood. When I was younger, I struggled with all sorts of "Another-year-and-I-STILL-haven't..." angsty thoughts at roughly 11.59pm every 31st December, no matter how much fun the NYE party. Now that I'm 46 (ouch) and various life stuff has taken Continue Reading
Many Things, Not All Of Them Yarny
Hello. So on the plus side, I've been designing new crocheted and knitted thingummies and I'm very excited about sharing the patterns with you super-soon. My yarny/designing mojo has well and truly come back and has plonked its ample rear here on the sofa beside me. But. Of the three ideas that I'm working on (a cardigan, a peg-bag, and a vest top), two use yarns that aren't yet available outside of a secret vault under Stylecraft HQ, and the third involves an unusual technique that I really Continue Reading
About A Chair
[whispers] It's done. Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time (an embarrassingly long time ago), there was a young psychologist who lived alone in a flat in Oxford. She loved her home very much and was happy there, but she didn't have much spare cash, so not being able to afford an antique overstuffed armchair on castors, she went instead to Ikea, where she bought a Poäng chair:- The chair served her well over the years, and was sat in without obvious complaint by a long succession of Continue Reading