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
Soon
We're starting to see the odd teaser for Season Three (autumn) of 2019. It's surprisingly cool here this morning, and I'm wearing an actual jumper. Confession: I bought rather than knitted it, and one of the twinnage would like me to make him one, but I'm puzzled by what the stitch might be. Here's the front (left) and reverse (right). Any thoughts please, wise yarn-lovers? I'd love to oblige him by making one, especially as I fear we're reaching the end of the Mum-is-cool years, and fast 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
Summer
It's a controversial opinion, but I think long hot summer days are the best. When you've spent 99% of your life shivering into your knitwear, it's a marvellous luxury to be able to go outdoors - or even indoors - in short sleeves. And then there's the joy of pulling off your cardigan to reveal the wanton nakedness of only a single layer of stocking-stitched merino beneath. Look who's been busy laying eggs in the pond! The problem - in my case - is that it's too tempting to spend every 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
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