I thought this was going to be a craft blog....

When I started this was going to be a craft blog. It seems to be turning into a garden blog. Who knew?

I have made progress with my knitting however. I finished knitting the yoke on the summer top now, I just have to do the edges and make it up. OK, so maybe that will be ready for next summer ;-) And the baby cardi - is all knitted. Just to make up and buy the buttons. Buying buttons was a job for my lunch break today but I was landed with an unexpected one o'clock meeting, so that never happened. Don't you just hate those?

Of course its intended recipient is now six months old, but there is another baby boy who is much younger and another two babies on the way amongst my circle, so I'm sure it will fit one of them! If not maybe I will have to start up an Etsy store. A small one - one item at a time? Hey ho...

Just when I thought I was getting somewhere

So the hostas grew some new leaves, perforated as they may be. Then I split one and moved a bit to a shady spot I had made. It is now just little bits of stalk.

And despite my saying that I could not grow dahlias (even in pots) I had to just have one more try. They were a bargain from the garden centre (72p each!) as it was very late but they looked good healthy tubers so I thought what the heck...

They grew away well and had a couple of inches growth before - dun dun dun - the slugs got them. So I thought - Aha! They haven't eaten the lilies - I will put the dahlia pots (they were small pots) on top of the lily pots (and they are lily pots). The lilies haven't a sign of a nibble. They were doing so well and had more than one shoot each and some small leaves then I came to water them the next day and they were mown to the level of the compost. Aaaargh!!!!!!




So they are being nursed by my mum and have some tiny shoots emerging now. I think flowers this year will be out of the question, but maybe next year. I am thinking that it might even be worth the expense of nematodes next year. Do they work on snails too?




Anyway. Aside from my dahlia/slug trauma there have been some successes in my garden this year.




[Note: Did you notice the dead insect on the lily? I didn't til I posted the picture. I know it's dead because I just found it stuck to the stigma this evening!]

Too busy? Too lazy?

Guess where I was yesterday? Here's a little clue....

Too hard? Here's another....

Still too hard? Maybe the toadstools will give it away?

Well, just in case you weren't quite sure I was at Fusion. The Girlguiding UK Centenary Celebration with around 20,000 other Guiders, Brownies, Guides and Senior Section members. Here is a view of the crowd for the finale...

The flickr photostream pics are more impressive - I am clearly too short to get a good view! Like several feet too short. Check it out HERE


Forgot to mention - I am at the top right by the blue stripy marquee on the Flickr photo - not that you can see me!!

I will post something I have finished soon...

I have just been visiting my dad and have come back to find a very lush garden! I think it must have rained quite a bit whilst I was away and it has certainly rained since I got back. It has been windy too - all the floppy plants have got a bit of a lean.

The iris are open in the pond as well as the ragged robin. The dierama is looking much better - I think it suffered with the late frosts and was very brown but it has green leaves now. The oriental poppies are opening all over the place and even the hostas have some whole leaves. I did just have to pluck a few snails and stamp on them whilst I was out, though, they were eating stuff!

Hopefully we will have some fine weather so I can take pictures this weekend.

Completed project!

So much for getting time to blog! Well, it was sunny and the garden was more appealing. Not today however - it's p*****g down. I am so glad I am not at work so that I can enjoy this beautiful day.

I did finally make my last year's knitting wearable over the weekend. I found the shirring elastic I bought and the cardigan at the same time. I knit Sirdar 9118, although I didn't use Sirdar Click as it has a high wool content and I'm an itchy kind of girl when it comes to wool (I knit up some Sirdar Highlander once and came out in a rash whilst I was knitting - it is still almost finished in the bag). I also wanted a darker colour and I searched high and low before I found any chunky that wasn't pastel or neutral. I couldn't even get school jumper grey which I was pretty amazed at. I was obviously ahead of my time because this year there were LOTS of good colours. I digress. Anyway, the tension was good and it looked beautiful, except that the neckline was really wide and it dropped off my shoulders - I actually couldn't wear it at all if it wasn't fastened up.

So I have run a couple of lines of shirring elastic around the yoke and now it seems I could even wear it unfastened. I do find that the underarm is a bit on the tight side - there are only four rows for the shaping before it is picked up for the yoke and I think that's a bit on the mean side. It probably adds to the falling off the shoulders too. But it is wearable and looks pretty tidy.

I just found out I am short of places to take photos with a clear background. Radiators, bad light, cracks in the plaster, stuff... I did find somewhere eventually but it has taken ages to get a picture of any use and now they are uploaded to my PC I can see that I did not fasten the top button properly. Grrr. I also think I need to stand on a box to model anything any longer!

I am loving the new sirdar flirt, by the way. I just snuck a look when I was locating the other pattern to link just now. This is the one for me. I might treat myself when I get one of my projects finished. I really can't start anything else until then.


Finally - I promised up to date pictures of my Hosta......


It's in a sorry state. Yesterday I was picking rhubarb (who'd have guessed) and I lined up the snails and stamped on them. They are all the way along the patio in a gooey line up. I do try not to use slug pellets but sometimes I just can't help myself. The hostas in the pots are doing a little better but the last two years I have tried to grow dahlias in pots and lost them to the snails within two nights so even that isn't bound to work. I'll keep at it for now.

Gappage

There's more hefty gappage in my entries. My hope is that after Friday I will have time for me! No more working into the evening because I can't get quiet time at work, no more meetings for Guides (apart from actual Guide meetings), no unexpected weekend theft by friends and relations. It all sounds too perfect - and highly unlikely.

I did manage to buy some cheapish fabric to have a go at that Newlook pattern. The man on the market was quite snotty when I said I wanted cheap cotton for a trial run. Apparently there is no cheap cotton. It's expensive. Period. I didn't mean I wanted it free for goodness sake - just so long as it was less than £8/yd. I only said anything at all because the print I had my eye on was some slippy synthetic when I got close enough to examine it. I figured it would be a bit tricky for a first attempt, especially when I haven't put in a zip for at least twenty years. Crikey, can I be that old?

On another subject entirely I will try to post up to date pictures of my hosta Patriot to give you all a good laugh. I don't want to deceive you with images of perfect leaves any longer than I have to!!!

That is theft of weekends, not any other kind. It sounded a bit odd!

No crafting. Or blogging

It's not a good start having gaps that like that in my blog entries! But I have been rather busy - a couple of days away for work and Guide camp (and all the preparation that entails) . And Guiding keeps me pretty busy at the moment.

I can't seem to keep a space tidy for crafting, or even an untidy space. Stuff just creeps in there like piles of paper, stuff waiting to be shredded, a mountain of ironing..... And rather than tidy up I go out into the garden.

I was pretty busy hacking, dividing, mowing, edging and finally dropping the waterlily back in the pond! I didn't take photos but here are last years pictures of what is starting to come up...




OK, so I'm a bit previous with the hosta leaf, but they are trying! Despite the best efforts of the neighbourhood slugs and snails. Fingers crossed patriot will live up to its rep for slug resistance. There's a first time for everything.

I've also been picking rhubarb. Lots of rhubarb. I just froze 6lb and I have at least that again already. I gave some away too. There's a limit to how much one woman can eat! I will be jamming and chutneying when I get the chance but I'm in need of more jars! Oh well, there's still some space in the freezer.

Note to self...

Must remember to tag posts!

It's raining

Well, I went away for a couple of days. The weather has been glorious - the tulips have all opened whilst I was away and the newly replanted pond stuff is all perking up nicely. Unfortunately it is now tipping it down! I've not had chance to do the tour and see what's coming up properly, nor take any pictures, and I'm away again tomorrow.

Hopefully when I get back it will have stopped raining. Everything will look fabulous and all that will need doing is the mowing! Oh, and plopping the lily back in the pond. It is still lurking by the wall waiting for a helping hand to lower it into the water. Aquatic compost is sooooo heavy..

What the heck

I decided not to knit just now. It's a bit late and I wanted to share what's lurking in my projects to do.

Newlook 6808. It says it's easy. Only I haven't actually made anything for myself since I was about thirteen. Oh, I tell a lie, I think I made a T-shirt during my A-levels.

Anyhow, I have seen a lovely blue and white cotton print in one of the local fabric shops, I am just a little scared of spending £10 on fabric to make a mess at my first attempt. I need a visit to the pound a yard shop to get fabric for a muslin, I think, particularly because I will probably need to alter the pattern. I am a little short in the body and full in the bust.

I thought I would try making my own tops as I find that bought blouses pull around my tummy as the waist is too low and then if they are this kind of shape they either pull up at the front or the girls are on show! Not terribly flattering. And shirts too as the buttons pull and gape.

I bought this pattern because it is like a blouse I own already which I love (and fits). So I think I will start with view B - the easy one - and maybe embellish it later if I think it needs a little something. What do you think?

WIP 2 - Baby Gifts

Well I did mention them earlier. Baby knits are always nice to do as they are so much dinkier than grown up sized sweaters. So I may in fact finish this before my green summer top. I don't think it will fit because he was somewhat larger than "first size" at birth and I refer to my earlier post re: tension....

But I had a single ball of yarn left and no other babies on the horizon so I stuck with it. There is only the buttonhole band to do and making up. It's kind of muddled up and modified from the pattern. I could only find one plain(ish) raglan sleeved cardigan pattern in my pattern mountain - I truly detest setting in sleeves - and it had a hood and a weird fairisle twisted stitch pattern across. Plus it was a reject pattern as my mum acquired a lot some years ago and it had no yarn quantities printed on it. So that, the second size, and the single ball of wool led me towards the contrast band. I really like it.

To add to the weirdness I picked up the stitches for the neckband before the buttonhole band was done. That's why it is on a needle in the photos. An overly complicated way of spreading out the loose ends. I hate sewng in loose ends and all the loose ends were on one side of the cardigan and there were oodles of them as you can see! Next time I put stripes in the ribbing it will be for a sweater - problem solved. One final photo with the loose ends hidden from view (well almost).

Well, I suppose I should actually do some knitting now....

WIP 1

So here is my most likely to finish WIP. Sirdar 9150. Love the colours of the printed pattern – not. All that yellow and orange… I didn’t use Juicy as I could only find it in orange (or is it mango?) in my local wool shops, so I used Calypso. Although the pattern states it as a suitable yarn the quantities are only given for Juicy (which is dead helpful) so I got my maths head out of secure storage, found out the yardage for the respective yarns and calculated that I needed 5 balls. We are nearing completion and I haven’t started the fifth ball yet so if anyone has any ideas for 50g cotton dk feel free to let me know! I have been too slow to return it to the shop. Also I knit pretty tight and I had to use bigger needles than the pattern stated so it will be a miracle if it turns out methinks. And if I manage to shift a couple of pounds it will be too big – that would be sad.

I know I should take the photos against a white background in perfect, perfect land but I like the contract with the blue rug and I vacuumed especially ;-) I like green. It is yet to be seen how excessive my use of green is when all put in one online space. Maybe it will make me control the green yarn freak in me. But it goes with the leaf motif in the yoke so well…..




The yoke there is actually the last piece and I think I only need to do a couple more patterns to finish it then I have the dreaded making up to do. I hate that bit. It’s also when you find that it doesn’t fit/is a bizarre shape/the neck hole is too small to fit your head through and all those other things that go wrong with knitting.

I would have finished it a while ago but had to wait to get decent light to do the photos because I’ve been wanting to blog it for ages. And I had to squeeze a holiday and a family visit in between. While I was waiting for some daylight I started another project too, but I’ll save that for later. That’s quite long enough for one post.

No blackbird

My blackbird made herself very scarce yesterday after all. Maybe the hacking and chopping of pond debris by two mad women had something to do with it!

I was too tired after that to do anything too energetic but I did manage to make a pie with the first rhubarb of the season from my garden. Much anticipated and almost a failure but nothing a good helping of custard can't cure. I'm just off to sneak another piece. The best thing about living on my own is I don't have to share the pie.

Today

OK. So I have a post all ready to go, but I thought I'd post this instead.

I spent today in the garden. I can't stay inside making things when it is so beautiful and sunny, so I have been busy dividing the pond plants. They were taking over and I also discovered that there were two orfe in the pond last week. I though the cats and herons had got them all except for the last goldish that I discovered frozen to the top of the pond this winter. (When I say frozen to the top it was literally on top of the ice, in the snow, frozen solid to the surface. Poor thing). So I have been very busy and now I feel pretty virtuous if I do say so myself. The excess plant stuff and stinky mud is abandoned all over the garden and I have to tidy up tomorrow, but we'll gloss over that.

Last year's photo obviously!

But what I wanted to say was that we had a blackbird busy building a nest. She was very bold and hopped all around us whilst we were working. She was taking the moss from the pond planter baskets, although only the really muddy bits, and kept flying into THE TREE with beak fulls and her beak had a big muddy stripe across. We watched her for ages whilst we ate our lunch and I did try to get pictures. I went in the house for my camera because she was so close that even my camera would have been adequate, but she decided that she had enough moss and went off to collect mud in the opposite corner of the garden instead. Grrr. Maybe she'll be back again tomorrow.

Where to start?

An entire blank page is pretty daunting!! See, I’ve been following a few blogs lately. Quietly. On the sidelines. I know its not the done thing, but I can’t think of anything to say that doesn’t sound banal or gushing – so I don’t. And with the stitches on the other needle, so to speak, I’m not sure I would be upset if people read my rambling and never let on. So I don’t feel guilty. So there!

Anyway, I got thinking that I read all these blogs for inspiration to make things. Except I don’t make anything. My head is full of things I could make but I can’t seem to start anything and when I do it never gets finished. I only manage to complete baby gifts and sometimes they don’t end up with the intended recipient!! So here is an incentive to finish and share…….

So what can I share? I took pictures of some WIP. My skills with the camera are somewhat lacking and the light has been bad non-existent ‘til the last couple of weeks. And as I say, I only have WIP so I will have to eek it out or you will have nothing to look forward to ;-)