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
Outdoors
Yikes, I did NOT intend to go quiet on you for so long, but there's scarcely even been time to knit/crochet! What with the twinnage, and redeveloping the garden, and lots of new patients to assess at work, and a stonking big yarn-related writing commission, and marathon training, and... and... and... I'm sure you get the gist. Talking of marathon prep, it turns out that there's more to the training than just eating all the pasta, so I've been upping my running... and eating all the pasta. If Continue Reading
Friday News
Ahhh, it's Friday. I've been at work seeing patients, and then later I was at home, reading bedtime stories to the twinnage, and now, still home, I'm on the sofa with yarn, wine, and very little intention of moving. It's been gloriously warm and sunny here these past few days... ...which feels slightly surreal, because exactly one month ago today, I took this photo whilst I was out on a run:- Meanwhile, the Stoic Spouse has been perfecting his patisserie skills, and each weekend lately, Continue Reading
The Wandering Cowl: A Shiny New Knitting Pattern!
Would you like a new pattern? Yes? OK then, read on... Twice a year, I head up to Stylecraft's mill in Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire, with the other Blogstars. In between gossip, trips out, wine, and knitting, we get to see the new yarns that Stylecraft will launch over the coming months. (Did I mention the brutally tough, lonely, life of a knit-blogger?) Back in February when we last visited, the yarn that caught our attention the most was Linen Drape, the DK-weight linen-viscose blend that I Continue Reading
Knitting And Nature
So yeah, whilst I continue knitting small things for the crochet/knit garden of that ridiculous project, shall we go for a wander around outside? Yes it's possible to knit and walk. Trust me, I've done far more embarrassing things in public than knit. I realize that not everyone is this shameless, though: I was knitting in the pub with friends the other night - the rival knitting group wasn't there, so all was peaceful - and one of my friends said she just couldn't quite bring herself to knit Continue Reading
Outdoors Knows It’s Pretty
You’ve still got time (just!) to enter the Wool And The Gang yarn giveaway! Just head over here… Meanwhile, I’ve been all over the place – knitting a bit of this, crocheting a bit of that, drifting from room to room, bumping into members of the household whom I’d forgotten existed... “Great uncle Mortimer! Heavens, I haven’t seen you since the Great Tidying Up of ’96! How the very devil are you, ol’ bean? What’s that you say? Huh? Oh. What, that cupboard there? The one with the hefty lock on Continue Reading
Mad March Hares
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
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