Never say...

Never say I'm not good to you. Here be lolcats, noms and balls of yarn. How much time can you waste in one day?

Gardening.

I have been gardening. No, not down the allotment! Gardening in the garden. Yes I have a garden...well, I have a space downstairs with the trailer tent parked on slabs and a playhut and the recycling. And green stuff. Grass, weeds, trees, that sort of thing. I used to like the idea of having a garden. Somewhere to sit out and read and burn sausages and such. Trouble is they're so terribly hard work. You have to do things like cut the grass and plant pretty things. Vegetables are easy...you plant them, feed them, weed them a bit then eat them. They don't have to look pretty or the colours match or keep them a certain length.

Anyhow, the grass/jungle was knee high so I got the strimmer out and started hacking my way to the greenhouse. The greenhouse is pretty tidy actually because I cleaned it out at Easter in time for the baby vegetable plants to go out there. Currently I have sweetcorn, six varieties of tomatoes, basil, courgettes and pumpkins growing in there. Nice and organised. It's only a little greenhouse but it was worth every penny my OH spent on it ten years ago. (It was my 40th birthday present.)

I only got half the lawn cut. It's not huge but it undulates around lots of things which have to be moved. The grass is so high I had to strim first, then mow to chop it up. If I can get my act together to cut it again in a few days it will come under control very easily but the problem is cutting grass (a) bores me to tears and (b) hurts my back. Hubby do it? Err, no. Hubby missed out on getting any traditional man genes such as the ones for gardening, DIY or doing the BBQ. In the eleven years we've had this house I do not recall him ever cutting the grass.

Anyway after I did half the lawn I started stripping out weeds from the beds. Most of these are feral geraniums which are trying to take over the entire world so I had to dig them out. I've decided that if my strengths lie in growing vegetables I might as well grow them here as well. I'm going to make a second herb garden, (got herb beds on the allotment) with a few more aromatics and non culinary herbs. There is a bronze fennel there already, survivor of ten years of sporadic weeding. I have potatoes in pots so have planted a mint barrel, chives, borage, oregano and thyme. I've also put in a small strawberry patch and some heartsease.

I've also got four lavender bushes to plant. I've got three apple trees, a pear tree, climbing roses, white lilac and several clematis on the walls. What else? I'm feeling a bit skinflint at present so it's got to be something I can either take cuttings from allotment plants or have in the seed box. Hmm. Two types of lemon balm, garlic chives, coriander, dill and some basic salad leaves? Climbing beans? I know...a blackcurrent bush. I have a self seeded one growing great guns in entirely the wrong place in the allotment. Princess would like that...And a few aggressive flowers. Nasturtiums, Californian Poppies, Poached Egg Plant and Calendulas.

Any other suggestions? Got to be a bit cottagey/food/herbal sort of thing.

Shellshocked.

Well that's it over. Joiner and Sidekick have gone.Three days of unexpected "Woott????" and it's all done. Two walls and a ceiling replastered (all in seperate rooms), the kitchen refloored, an alcove shelved and best of all my walk in cupboard has been floored (you could barely walk on the floor before), the pipes boxed in and shelved from top to bottom. It's not a big cupboard, about 6ft x 4ft, but I just got an extra 30+feet of shelf space added in, I calculate. Finally somewhere to put all the big bulky kitchen things, like the jam pans and box of spare lightbulbs. You know, the sort of thing that they never show you how to store in makeover programs? Cake tins, the liquidizer, 40 empty jamjars? Kitty litter?

I love storage. Especially the kind with doors you can shut.

Plus I got him to do all sorts of tiddly little other jobs while here, like repairing the window sash and cutting down some bookcase supports. Annoying things that you can't do very sucessfully yourself and keep avoiding.

Anyway it's finished and it was worth it. It's nice not to have holes in the walls any more. Large areas of drying plaster are much cosier!

Busy....

Busy....

Allotment.

Selling my Mum's house.

Allotment.

Easter holidays.

Allotment.

Camping.

Unexpected arrival of joiner to do last round of home improvements. (Very unexpected. I phoned to book him for next week. He and his sidekick were here within an hour. It must have been a quiet day.)

Dead tumble drier. (Not good when combined with post-camping laundry.)Repair chap is coming with new piece tomorrow though.

Leaking central heating on return from camping. Fortunately now fixed.

And all the usual domestic dross. Plus next week I get to clear up the chaos the joiners have left behind.

Must try to go to allotment this weekend. Here's a picture though of how it was looking a couple of weeks back. Not so very bad for the time of year...




Normal service will resume as soon as possible.

Herding Cats.

I stole this straight from Zippiknits' blog...I thought it deserved a wider UK audience. Thanks, Lella!



You will notice that there's a lot of very similar looking white Persians and black 'n whites in there, but still...hilarious!

Tired...

I'm tired at the moment. Very tired. I had a great time at SkipNorth but it was non-stop action, three nights of unfamiliar beds, lots of talking and though the food was fine it wasn't quite what I'd be eating at home and my innards, it seems, are getting fussier with age. At least though I didn't have to drive there and back...thanks, Natalie!

But in short I ended up at the start of last week dead tired, bunged up and with some sort of low grade opportunistic bug that made me feel a bit wabbit. No, scratch that. Very wabbit. Add to that seven loads of laundry (how can three people generate seven loads of laundry in four days???), the general backlog of housework and the sense of anticlimax that always comes after a fun trip away and...well, not a good week at all.

I am still tired. I even went back to bed a couple of times in the morning after I'd seen the kids off to school but then the clocks changed at the weekend, didn't they, and I ended up having to get up at what my body thought was 5.30am on Sunday in order to get the kids organised and off to swimming club. Bah.

And it's been bright and sunny, but with arctic gale winds ie it looks like a nice day for the allotment, but it's bloody cold and downright miserable when you get up there.

Whine....

I am off to B&Q to buy some potting compost. At the very least I can do the non-strenuous task of starting off the tomato seeds, I suppose!

Mr Greenjeans Pt1.

I came back from Skipnorth determined to knit more than socks and scarves for myself by next year. Everyone else seemed to be sporting fabulous knitted sweaters, jackets, cardigans and shawls, and what did I take? Socks, socks, socks. Really, I was not worthy..

I had a think about it on the way there actually, and came to the conclusion that while a lace shawl was going to be a given at some point in the near future, I seemed not to be wearing sweaters any more (too many hot flushes!!) so there was no point in knitting them at the moment. I'm too short and fat for most knitted jackets (the awful Bettna experience taught me that!) so basically, it was cardigans or nothing. Then something dawned on me. I do wear cardigans. All The Time. I wear a cardigan over a thin black cashmere sweater when it's cold, and over a black t-shirt when it's warmer. I wear cardigans out, in fact. So why am I not knitting them by the dozen? Why have I never knitted a cardigan for myself, ever??

Tell you why. It's the twinset image. Only old ladies wear cardies. But...perhaps that's because they're practical garments when you're in the Hot Flush stage? Oh.......

Lightbulb moment.

So when I was shopping at SkipNorth I was thinking "Cardigan?" And one of the things I bought was this....

This is Aracunia Nature Multi, 100% wool aran weight in sort of peacock colours. I bought it at Coldspring Mill at a bargain £3.99 a skein. There are 220m per skein so plenty for a cardi.

So I have firmly turned my eyes from the UFO pile and cast on for Mr Greenjeans from Knitty, Fall 2007.

1245 Ravelry Users can't be wrong!