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
Rhubarb!
All right, all right, you lot. I can see how titling a post 'Finished Object' might have given the teeniest impression that I'd finally finished that project. Sorry. But your comments have also nudged me to get on with final push towards completion, so thank you. Though when I do weave in the last end, I'll be posting under a considerably more hysterical title than 'Finished Object'. Look out for a post titled OMG, OMG, IT'S DONE, IT'S DONE, IT'S DONE! SQUEEEEE!!!!!!!! Unless the finished job Continue Reading
Back In The Crochet Garden
Dear blog, I've neglected your regular silliness business, what with all those giveaways and other stuff. So I thought it was high time to drop in on a project that's been slowly (very slowly) progressing in the background whilst I've been on here chattering about other things. Yes, if you've been reading here a'while: you'll know the one. The over-ambitious furniture-related one that began with a house, and which is now slowly (oh-so-slowly) acquiring a garden. It's so close to the Continue Reading
In The Yarn Garden
Evenin'. I've been busy in the garden. Not the real garden, you understand, where overgrown shrubs fight vicious battles for legroom, and where convolvulus sneaks across the lawn when it thinks nobody's looking, although if we're talking about the real garden, I'm quite partial to this quiet corner:- No, I'm talking about the garden of the crochet house-related project. It's going to be detailed, with paths and a pond, and lots of flowers and general garden stuff, but you have to begin Continue Reading
Knitted flowers, crocheted flowers
Work on the blog header continues. Now that the header itself is finished, I'm crocheting/knitting some foliage and flowers to go round the edge. Progress is slow:- I am particularly keen on these rosebuds. It's amazing what you can achieve at 3am when you're too preoccupied to sleep! All the flowers are from this book. 'Tis the only book on the subject I could find locally, but I do like the fact that it's bicraftual, rather than focusing on solely knitting or solely Continue Reading