27 April: Holiday!

We've just got back from a lovely week in Suffolk. The weather was mostly kind, and we got out and about every day.

There was an interesting castle at Framlingham -


- with Tudor chimneys purely to impress the neighbours. Inside the walls the buildings were very un-castle-like -

I actually managed to overcome my fear of height combined with open space, and walked all the way round the top of the walls.

A visit to Southwold is always required. This is the pier -

- and it's compulsory to photograph the beach huts -

We went a couple of times to the RSPB reserve at Minsmere, though all the birds avoided my lens. The power station at Sizewell couldn't escape, though.

And on Dunwich Heath I was very lucky to switch the camera onto full zoom and snap this deer before it melted away as its 2 companions had just done -


We visited the Natural Dye Studio, and I was very restrained in my purchases. There may be socks....

We had lots of good walks in wonderful countryside; we browsed round fine old towns, and lunched in pubs mostly called the King's Head.

Amazingly, although we ate every bun, cake, shortbread, and loaf that we could, the scales tell me I've put on precisely 1 pound in the week.

13 April: Squid and socks*

Recently knitted this little creature -


I also have patterns for 2 octopuses/octopi, and a cuttlefish.

And socks continue to emerge from the TV knitting basket, even though not much TV is being watched -


These are slightly subversive ones for DH. When worn with shoes and long trousers, only the grey bits will show. He wouldn't think of wearing them any other way, of course.

* Not a recipe currently popular?

8 April: Not the string bag

Finally finished the felted bag that's been in progress for what seems like ages.

After felting in the washing machine, of course the pattern lost its definition - and all the time and effort that went into drawing up the design, and then working it! (In real it's more blurred than in the photo - a nice reversal of my usual photography.)

Then it took ages thinking how to make a suitable strap, and what sort of closure to do. I'd previously made a similar felted bag, from millspun yarn, for which I wove an inkle strap, and used a braid tie for a closure - and didn't like them; the strap not chunky enough, and the closure inefficient and fiddly.

Eventually I knitted and felted a strap, and sewed in a zip. I made a tag for the zip from a boxwood acorn off a blind I took down from a window in a house 30 or so years ago - the little hoard of odds and ends does come in useful sometimes!

Here's the new bag with the older one -

4 April: Spring is here

Yes, the birds have competition from the builders making plenty of noise at the crack of dawn.

Yes, the surplus crumbs have been shaken out of the keyboard, the dirt on the windows has been noticed, the DM boots have been returned to the wardrobe and the DM sandals brushed off.

Yes, the garden's been checked over, and bare patches of earth have had plants crammed into them. There are primulas, white -


purple -


and traditional -


DH's favourite fritillaries are flowering -


and the hellebores are still providing food for the newly emerging bumble bees -

And the Mother's Day lilies are budding in the freshly painted kitchen -

1 April: No joke

Our local council (Sedgef***d Borough) has at long last started a collection scheme for recycling plastic and cardboard, as well as paper, glass and cans. Hooray.

The first collection was today. Everything must be on the kerb by 7 a.m. They collected about 3.15 p.m. By then the wind which whips down off the Pennines was blowing briskly along the street, already merrily scattering the beer cans from one well-filled green box.

As the issued container for plastic and card is made of woven plastic fabric, it seemed probable that it would blow away when empty, the same as the green boxes and the wheelie bins. So when I heard the collecting vehicle outside, I watched in order to dash out and retrieve the various containers before they headed for Hartlepool.

The materials have to be tipped from their tidily packed containers into small bins on the side of the vehicle. This row of bins is then raised into the air and swung over the body of the vehicle, whereupon the carefully washed, sorted, and separated materials are dropped into different compartments - or in this case released into the wind and the wild, accompanied by cries of "Wahay!" from the men who watched as plastic bags, sheets of paper and yogurt pots swirled away up the street.

No doubt we shall be getting an increased demand for council tax to deal with the litter problem.

29 March: Happy Birthday!

Will they still need you, will they still feed you....?

Well, there's a cake waiting in the kitchen.

26 March: Reserve supplies

Just in case there's a need to do some dyeing, or to make a whole jumper in the same yarn, there are a few skeins of BFL in reserve -

These 11 skeins together weigh about 850 gms, or a couple of ounces under 2 lbs in old money.

Not that there's a shortage of other stuff in the stash. And plenty of fibre waiting to be spun.

21 March: Where I'm from

This has been going round; it has so many possibilities, and I have been playing with it for a while - this is one of my versions. I believe the original was by George Ella Lyons - thank you.

I am from tablecloths, Mansion polish and hoovering.
I am from the small front room with its carpet square, and inadequate coal fire.

I am from the clipped hedge, thrift and honesty, the unwrapped crumpled silk of a hollyhock bud.

I am from caravan holidays and library books, from James and Maude, Harry and Mary Ann, William and Agnes.

I am from distance, intelligence, and not getting involved.
From 'not in front of the children', 'what do you want to do that for?', and 'what will the neighbours think?'

I am from absence from church, school prayers, right and wrong without sin.

I am from Hampshire, midland inns, Scottish mills, London and Derry, treacle tart and tea.

From the horse my grandmother rode in Brixton, the family Music Hall acts, the war-time bomb in the London street, my mother's frost-bitten thigh.

I am from neat albums and loose photos, jumbled in boxes and memories, faces once loved and familiar, but now unknown. Which of them gave me the green eyes and the love of making things?

18 March: Back in the knitting bag

Well, that was a nasty little interruption.

Back with the knitting, a Moebius scarf (yes, knitted with a complete twist in it, producing a one-sided fabric) is finished -

And a pair of yoga socks has been started. They will have no toes and no heel, to avoid slipping but at the same time keep feet warm -

And a piece of stranded knitting is under way, intended to become a felted bag -

All my handspun yarn, of course. The scarf yarn is Yarn Yard superwash BFL, spun fractally (fibre halved, then halved, then halved, etc), the other yarns, apart from the natural black Shetland, dyed at home.

17 March: Laid low

All activities temporarily suspended, owing to a bad back.

And I was only trying to measure my feet, preparatory to casting on a sock as per Cat Bordhi's book, and my back started hurting. So I've spent much of yesterday and all morning today lying in bed, and have only tottered out now because of boredom (the Ibuprofen have taken effect).

And there's so much to do - a finished Mobius scarf to photograph, the tax office to ring, that sock to cast on....

At least I don't have to drag myself to the doctor's for a sick note!

11 March: Country Park

This morning was so pleasant and sunny that I was tempted to go out.

On each side of the road, hawthorn hedges are spattered with green as the first leaves open. A patch of grotty scrub amazed me, as it does every year, with a burst of blackthorn blossom.

A local country park is being "developed" - new gravel paths, nicely graded for wheelchair friendliness, red bins for the dog crap, new shrubs and trees planted (some in places where they have cut down trees and bushes to enable this), and all the follies are being renovated. In fact one or two look as if they've been newly built. A huge posh new Visitor Centre and car park are still under construction - I parked in a clearing in the trees.

This statue of Neptune now stands at the corner of the long lake -

Across the broader lake you can make out the temple on top of its little hill -

And looking back through the trees the Hall, now a hotel and conference centre, appears -

And, yes, beside the lake, beneath the trees -

9 March: Slow digestive transit?

Forget those expensive (and probably fattening) yogurts - an hour's exercise works wonders!

DH went and bought some new running shoes yesterday. I called his bluff this morning.

When we got home, the skylark was singing - the first time I've heard it this year.

Tomorrow I may be unable to get downstairs. Ah well, I've always said that if a thing's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.

7 March: Clanger?

The amusement of the past day or two has been knitting a Clanger.

But not a pink one - a purple one. I used the pattern by Mr and Mrs Oliver Postgate, but the result was not quite like the TV characters.


OK, it's purple, and it's wearing a striped pullover instead of felt armour plates, but the legs don't look right, and the nose points straight up, while the ones I remember on TV were at least able to look at each other.

Mine doesn't stand unaided, either. In the picture above, the wall is holding it up , and in the picture below, lying on the sofa, it looks more like a flying pig than a Clanger.


I didn't wire the ears, and I improvised I-cord fingers and some hair. The eyes should have been "shiny shoe buttons", but I just used a couple of buttons from the box.

Oh well, at least it's individual.

4 March: Spending money wisely?

The radio news this morning mentioned that the Government is going to issue advice to everyone on how to manage their finances.

But a Mr. C. Dickens gave all the financial advice anyone needs in 1850, via the character of Mr Micawber in his book David Copperfield -

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.

29 February: Leap/spring

It's blowing a gale again today, but the last couple of days have had a hint of spring about them. Visiting a friend, I walked past the pond at the dli museum. (Durham Light Infantry, no longer in existence)


The tiny daffodils are out in the garden, and leaves starting to open on the philadelphus, and the day lilies are shooting out of the ground. Primulas are out, and the birds in the garden are now sometimes in pairs.

And there's another freshly-dyed skein of sock yarn , intended for DH, but it's come out a really good blue, and I quite fancy it myself. But of course, blue is not a colour I wear , and there are skeins of Violet, Blackcurrant, and Roaring Tiger still waiting in the stash.....

26 February: Funny how time slips away

Nearly a week since the last offering! Not that very much has been going on here; a bit of spinning and knitting of course, a little gardening, some light shopping. Hey, I'm retired, remember!

The latest knitting project to be finished -


Wrist warmers, based on a pattern by Sandi Rosner; all I changed was the stitch, the needle size, gauge, and finish. They might be good for using on the bike, if I ever get out on it again.

Have you ever thought how difficult it is to photograph mitts on your own hands?

Several books have kept me interested recently - Labyrinth and Sepulchre by Kate Mosse, Missing by Susan Lewis, and Company of Liars by Karen Maitland. The current one is Dry Store Room No 1 by Richard Fortey. Perhaps they are the reason I haven't been here much.

20 February: The frozen North

It's been chilly here for several days. The sun has melted the overnight frost in the places it reaches, but in the shade everything is frozen solid.

After yesterday's freezing fog the garden plants were encrusted -


And as I drove into Durham mid-morning the car told me that it was still -2 degrees C. The trees and hedges were simply breathtakingly beautiful. My little camera doesn't do it justice, but this was the view across the field from our front garden -

18 February: Surprise! more knitting

Wool-o-phobes look away now!

DH is now wearing more hand-knitted socks - here's a pair of dark brown ones that I call Choc Block Socks:


The felted bag came out so well that I used some more of the itchy yarn to make another, larger one. The smaller one nests inside it when not in use.

And on Ravelry I spotted a snail knitted by this blogger, and made a similar item -


You will note the realism of the beady eyes, and of the button-off shell.

14 February: Oh, really?

The flower and plant stall in Durham had some interesting items on sale yesterday.

As well as MASCARI and CORDELINES, there were PALM'S, CROCESS, and my particular favourite, CYCLEMEN.

Ah, Marco Pantani and Miguel Indurain!

12 February: Plenty of fibre

Happy Birthday to DD, and for yesterday to DDIL!

Greens the other day, now it's fibre - you can't say blogging isn't good for the digestive system.

Some BFL has been the subject of experiment with food dyes - the stuff used for cake icing - and came out like this -


I recently met another blogger who was de-stashing and had some sock yarns from her. Some of that yarn has become these socks -

Some handspun yarn which irritates my skin has been used to make a felted project bag -


And I made that nautilus. Mottled purple seemed a likely colour, and by chance I had just bought some buttons which made good eyes.

I don't really do cute, but this is dangerously close.

7 February: 36 words and 4 pictures

The sun broke through for a while, and brightened leaves that are out early.


Some plants have flower buds -

And some flowers are open -

But best of all was seeing the leaves shine in the sun.

3 February: It's Shaun the Sheep!

There's been quite a lot of activity this week designed to divert my thoughts from the minor surgery I had on Wednesday afternoon.

There's been a cyst on my scalp for a long time, but it recently became infected. The nice GP used to be a surgeon, so he was keen to keep his hand in by removing the offending excrescence. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

So on Wednesday afternoon I spent half an hour having one of life's more unpleasant experiences, and when I'd recovered from feeling faint (the nurse even offered me a cup of tea - I must have looked pretty awful!), I put my hat on and came home to lie low, moaning gently, for a few days.

There followed attempts to keep my mind off the 4 stitches in my head. (They are bright blue - is that so that the nurse can find them again, or did the doctor do what I usually do, and just use whatever colour comes to hand?)

Last time I was in Newcastle, I spotted a pack containing yarn and instructions to knit a Shaun the Sheep, so of course I bought it. Just the right sort of dead fiddly thing to concentrate on at a time like this, and here he is -


- posing on the TV, along with DH's plush Totoro, star of Studio-Ghibli's animations.

And browsing on the Internet I found a pattern for a knitted nautilus, so I might have a go at that. Wonder what colour it ought to be?

30 January: Greens

Yesterday's occupation was dyeing some fibre and sock yarn, trying to get a good green colour.


Green is always a rather awkward colour to get right; you know, of course, that blue and yellow mixed make green, but yellows vary and so do blues. And then there's the added problem that the colour of the dye liquid isn't always quite the same as the colour the wool takes, and then again it's wet when you're doing it, and it changes a bit when it dries.

All this is waffle to explain why none of these is quite what I was after!

The best one turns out to be the bright one on the right of the picture, which horrified me when I first saw it. It's got some jade dye in it, which is very strong - only needs a small dab (that's the technical term).

The fibre was done in the microwave, but the sock yarn went in a pan on the stove. The skein seemed to be tied properly in two places, but when it was being rinsed, I realised that the ties had come loose, and the whole skein was falling apart. What fun, trying to get that tangle sorted out. I'm going to try and wind it into a ball now, so excuse any cursing you may hear.

27 January: While the gales rage

This week I have been knitting mostly neckwarmers.

(And listening to audio books. Alan Bennett and Wilkie Collins.)

The last scarf I finished was quite a nice article, but totally boring to knit. So I have been experimenting with different ways of using knitting to keep necks warm. Here's one version, in undyed handspun merino, incredibly soft and warm -


And this version uses up some oddments of BFL with some undyed white Shetland in a rather attractive mixture -

Both items were very quick to make, used far less yarn than a long scarf, and will both be excellent at keeping the draughts out.

Which will be good if the gales we've had this week continue. On the top of a hill, we catch most of the wind coming over the Pennines, and for several days now it's been howling round the houses, with trees and bushes bending at 45 degree angles, and something up in the roof has been rattling. Nothing seems to have fallen off, though, and the most violent gusts have abated now. The borders look a bit tidier - some of the leaves have been blown away. I wonder where they have ended up.

Our 3 snowdrops are out, as is a primula and an auricula, there are big buds on the hellebores, new leaves on the clematis and lots of shoots from various bulbs. Any day now I'll be able to bore you with more snaps of the plants in the garden.

23 January: Not quite an SBB*

Through the murk that has recently passed as daylight, I have seen a new visitor to the hanging peanut feeder (it's the feeder that hangs, not each individual peanut).

Peanuts have never been a real hit with our local birds, largely being ignored in favour of the pet shop's special mix containing some sort of dried up dead caterpillar or worm thing. (You may be able to tell that insects are not my specialist field of knowledge.) One summer a peanut feeder hanging from a pole on the lawn was popular with fledgling starlings, who were most entertaining, and even with a pair of magpies and one of their youngsters.

So it was with some surprise that I saw a few times this small unfamiliar bird clinging to the mesh and pecking away. But what was it? Not a blue or coal tit, not a finch, wren, robin, or dunnock, and definitely not a blackbird. The robin darts to a hanging seed feeder, snatches a morsel, and dashes for cover. The dunnocks, supposedly ground-feeders, have seen this, and have eventually copied, though they are not at ease with the procedure, and generally knock some bits to the ground and eat them there. This creature hangs there for perhaps as much as five minutes, alternately pecking then checking all round, pecking and checking.

Smaller than a dunnock, with a beak finer than a finch, paleish in colour, with some streaks on the sides and underneath, it had a definite greeny-yellow cast to its feathers, and a suggestion of a yellowish eye-stripe. Who lives in a plumage like this?

Might it be a chiff-chaff - only they aren't streaky, and shouldn't be here in winter. Perhaps a siskin? But the picture in the bird ID book in the kitchen shows a boldly marked bird with strong black and yellow, and goes on about black legs. Well you can't see the legs when it's on the far side of the feeder, nor its back and wings. And this body isn't splashy, it's subtle, and more hinting.

Oh, hang on, that picture is, of course, of the male bird in his breeding plumage - half the birds of any variety are not going to be male, are they? In the summer, there's juveniles as well - they can be really difficult to identify too. But the illustrations are always the male, in breeding plumage. The background may show a small female and/or juveniles, or they get a mention in the caption - "female duller" or "juveniles without..". But if you go to a large and expensive reference book (in the room we like to call the study), on page 1565 of Volume 2 you find a decent picture of a female siskin. And the text confirms that, though mainly birds of conifer woods, they also like birch and alder (plenty of them around here), and may visit gardens to eat peanuts.

Result!



*small brown bird

21 January: L-Urchin-g

Over the weekend, I ran out of knitting projects!!!

The fancy socks were finished last week, and the other 2 projects on the needles, a scarf that seemed endless, and an experimental hat, were both cast off on Saturday, and will be photographed soon.

So I picked up a pattern found through Ravelry - one of the many - and assembled needles and balls of wool. I swatched to get the right gauge, then cast on. On Sunday I picked it up again, looked at the pattern, and discovered that I couldn't make head or tail of the instructions. Clearly it involved short rows, with stitches left at each end of the piece of work to make the shaping, but the instructions as written didn't make sense to me.

So I worked out on a sheet of squared paper how it must be shaped, then I altered the shaping slightly, and made it. The original is called Urchin hat, so I reckon my version is L-Urchin-g.




Excuse the self-portrait style of photo, but the only way to get enough light in the right place this morning (it's snowing) was to use the bathroom mirror.

Even though it doesn't suit me, I was inordinately delighted with this hat, until DH remarked that it reminded him of someone out of Last of the Summer Wine.....