Recent wooly wonders

It’s been a while since I dedicated a blog post to  a wool related craft, and I’m doing so as I’ve really enjoyed creating with wool recently.  As you know I’ve joined a local crochet group who meet weekly on a Friday afternoon in the pub, and I go along as often as I’m able to.

As part of the village community we are dressing a tree with crochet wonderment, most of which I’ve not seen yet. Our ethos was to “throw colour at the tree” and I’ve already left some colourful, whirly garlands ready for the occasion.

Rather foolishly, and without a solid plan, I volunteered to crochet a pig garland I’m sure thinking how hard can it be! (Spoiler: it’s totally doable).  And the reason why I’m crocheting pigs to decorate a tree in the orchard of the local Hall, is because pigs used to roam freely in orchards, which is why apple sauce is served with pork. So it seemed right to recreate that in crochet.

Or mostly crochet!

I couldn’t work out how to easily crochet the ears so dug out my knitting needles, and voila! I’m really pleased with how they look, and i think everything with googly eyes is a winner.

So enamoured was I by crocheting in front of the TV, I decided to wind some skeins for a crochet project.

The plainer mustard and the multicoloured skeins I dyed myself at a workshop in Nottingham, the next is one of Vicki Brown’s make 100 skeins from 2023, and the final one is the top-up skein I bought recently at the Newark Wool Show.

It wasn’t all plain sailing, in fact a lot of those neatly wound balls were a tangled jumbled mess which needed a lot of untangling. Quite a mindful activity, but something that took several attempts to resolve completely before I started to crochet.

But start I did, and it’s looking great - the main body is completed in one piece up to the arm holes and so I’m guessing when to stop and change colour so that I can replicate the colour bands across the sleeves. Or wondering if there’s another way to make it look like I had a plan all along!

But first I need to finish the last few pigs.

I’m so glad they worked, and actually look like pigs!

Post Comment Love 6 - 8 November

Hello there, welcome to this week’s #PoCoLo - a relaxed, friendly linky which I co-host with Suzanne, where you can link any blog post published in the last week. We know you’ll find some great posts to read, and maybe some new-to-you blogs too, so do pop over and visit some of the posts linked, comment and share some of that love.

Please don’t link up posts which are older as they may be removed, and if you see older posts are linked then please don’t feel that it’s necessary to comment on those. If you were here last week it was great to have you along, if you’re new here we’re pleased you’ve joined us.

We had a great trip to Porto, and got lucky with the weather with temperatures reaching 25 degrees on a couple of days. It was so nice to wander around - and up and down all the cobbled streets - in a t-shirt, though the temperatures dropped quickly when the sun had set, but that was an hour later than at home so it felt like a bonus hour.

It’s been chilly now we’re home though, and the heating is fully on so it was soon nice and toasty. Of course now I have many more photos to edit, and I already had a lot anyway - but it was good to get away, but also good to come home.

Have a good week.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

My garden in October

Unusually I don’t have many garden pictures this month, partly because we’ve been out and about a fair bit and partly because the weather hasn’t always been fine. But there was at least one gardening session this year as we prepped the garden for winter - and the rhubarb photo below proves that. It’s the last stem from the rhubarb crown that I planted earlier in the year after rediscovering it growing in the garage.

I’m looking forward to it coming back next year, as we’ll be able to pick the stems and enjoy them - which will be the first time since we moved here that we’ll be able to. I’m hoping it will be as tasty as I’m anticipating.

Another reason for their being fewer photos this month is that we needed to make full use of our time in the garden - and there’s nothing like an incoming storm prediction to focus the mind. Or in our case to make sure we could get our garden furniture way in an organised fashion, which we did and I’m so grateful for as there’s still room to move about the garage as we need to.

Both of our olive trees have had a successful year - they’ve clearly enjoyed the sun and have repaid their happiness with actual olives. Even the older tree in the smaller pot that we brought with us from London. I joked in my October post that MOH might actually be making olive oil at some point sooner than we perhaps thought, but who knows?

The forecast storm did arrive on one of the weekends we were away, and I was so pleased we got what we needed to into the garage before that. Our tall umbrella blew over, which was fine and the rosemary pot next to the old olive tree also blew over. I know right, how windy was it?

I didn’t realise until afterwards that it had left a ‘heart shaped’ gravel deposit on the grass - you could’t have done that if you tried. But it’s kinda cute isn’t it?

Our garden has been top of my thoughts this month though, and that’s probably another reason why there’s few pictures. After the multiple heatwaves from this summer it’s been clear to me that we really need to get as many things out of pots and planted into the ground as we can. And I can’t do that right now as we just don’t have the beds that we need, and if I plant the plants where I can then they’ll be in the wrong spot and I’ll want to move them again - and I’m not sure if that’s any better than staying in their pot!

Towards the end of the month we had a garden designer visit us and our garden for an exploratory introductory chat. I’m keen to get help on my ideas, how to improve them and ideas for the areas I’m struggling with, plus a plan on how to make it all happen - so exciting times.

Ahead of their visit I finally got around to capturing my thoughts into an (almost) cohesive list - I even surprised myself.

I’m sure I’ll be sharing more on all of this at some point, but for now I’m off to contemplate my next steps, though I think I know already what they’ll be!