A couple of finished projects

I can finally blog about a couple of projects I've been finishing off. The first is my nephew's birthday jumper, the Intrepid Pullover, finished and despatched a week early for his birthday. I liked the pattern, although I made the body a bit longer than specified as it seemed very short. I struggled with the instructions for the raglan neck decreases so invented my own in the end. Apparently he likes it (although I think the Lego went down better!).

The second was a dishcloth featuring Bartleby, the horse from the Archers (pattern is "Loopy the Apaloosa" which sounds a lot more exotic than Bartleby). This was for someone from the Archers Listeners group who was having a civil partnership. I'm pleased with the way the pattern worked out, although the instructions for making the tail were missing, it wasn't too hard to invent a tail! A lot easier than inventing a raglan neck shaping anyway...

That's all for now, I'm just getting caught up with blogging again.

Garden at the beginning of May 2012

I took today off work, as I had loads of flexi-time owing, but then didn't wake until 11am! I had had big plans for lots of sewing activity. But I did get time to take my garden at the beginning of the month photos.

After a month of non-stop rain (which started as soon as the hosepipe ban started!), it's looking very lush and green. The plants are so much bigger than last year so they're covering more of the soil up, so less of a problem with weeds this year.

Probably the major difference this time is our new bird feeding thingy.

We had a lot of problems with squirrels and pigeons taking all of the food. It wouldn't have been a problem if they'd left some for the little birds, but they gobbled the lot and seemed to have insatiable appetites, as well as apparently not having read the pigeon/squirrel instruction manuals which state that they don't eat mealworms/birdfood covered in chilli. Er, our pigeons and squirrels do!

The idea behind this thing is that you set the apertures so that smaller birds can get through, but not squirrels and pigeons. So far it's working very well - although we found a squirrel in it once, and had to reduce the aperture size. A very frustrated pigeon keeps walking round and round it, but it's made a protected space for the little birds to eat, and they've been feeding a lot since we got it.

 The rhubarb we planted last year has grown a lot, especially with all of the rain.We'll be having lots of rhubarb crumble soon.

A close up of the raised bed with lots of growth evident.

This is our cold frame, stuffed full of plants, many of which are waiting to go into the garden as they're cuttings I took last year. I've given a few away to friends already but there's still quite a lot left.

Seedlings growing on on one of the windowsills. These are tomatoes, cosmos and amaranthus.

 And two different kinds of lettuce on another windowsill.

Whizzzzz

I was catching up on some blog reading and read this post from Flossie Teacakes, which mentioned the new Village Haberdashery online shop. And it looks lovely. Not only stocking sewing supplies, but knitting too. And some lovely yarn at that, and flat rate shipping. I may have to indulge at some point.

Kind of reminded me of this sign - spotted on Staines High St outside our local haberdashery.

I have acquired a new toy. A Kenwood Chef. It's actually  my Mum's, and is about 20 years old (we think) but she wasn't using it any more, and I had been thinking about getting one, so the obvious thing was to take over hers! This was one of the reasons I took the car with me when I went to visit her before Easter.

This is an all-in-one sponge cake in progress - one of those easy ones where you just bung flour, sugar, eggs and marg. in a bowl and whizz it together, throw in oven and voila...

 a cake! The friends we had over for afternoon tea seemed to enjoy it.

 There were some leftover mushrooms from last week's veg box too, so I made a small quantity of soup and whizzed it in the blender attachment (remembering to put lid on so it doesn't go all over the walls).

Very tasty.
I've been busily knitting away on the nephew's Intrepid Jumper - it's in the round so hardly any sewing up to do, thank goodness. I've done the body up to the sleeves and have almost finished the second sleeve now. And amazingly I'm in good time for his birthday at the end of May. My other project is a secret at the moment, but I'll post about it once it's finished.

And these are two pictures I took last week on my way to a meeting in the City of London. They're the tulips at the end of Cheapside/ right by St Paul's Cathedral. I loved the colours, and the contrast with the fairly harsh City architecture alongside.

 I was also treated to a superb lunch in the restaurant at St Paul's, which I'd highly recommend.

The OH bought a copy of the BBC Pride & Prejudice on blu-ray this week and we've been enjoying watching it. Although I can recite chunks of the script from memory it was very different viewing - the colours are much more vivid and you can see more of the detail. It brought back fond memories - it was originally broadcast when I was 16 and I videoed all the episodes, and sat down to watch the first when I was "home alone" having been left to keep an eye on the house, the cats and my Gran whilst the rest of the family went on holiday. I'd never read it and didn't know the plot, ended up getting completely hooked and stayed up until 3am to finish watching it! Sadly, now being a middle-aged woman with job meant an all night viewing was no longer possible so it had to be watched over several evenings!

Garden at the beginning of April 2012

OK, I'm a teensy weensy bit late with Garden at the Beginning of April - it's 21st today! Oops. We had some friends over to see the garden last week, which meant I got less time to be online doing blogging things.

Things are brightening up a bit - the Aubrieta is flowering along the edge of the raised bed and more bulbs are in evidence.

 I'm very impressed with the purple variegated tulips I planted last year - they're called Blueberry Ripple.

And this is a Dicentra I got on special offer at Homebase - it soon made itself at home and started flowering like mad. I love the shape of the flowers.

I've made some little paper pots out of newspaper to plant seeds in - the idea is that they biodegrade when you plant them out in the ground so the roots aren't disturbed by transplantation. They're very easy to make.

 And the apple trees are full of blossom! I keep a record of what I do in the garden each weekend and looking back, a year ago it was 25°C - bit of a contrast with today, which was 11°C! I am also amused by the torrential downpours we've been having ever since the hosepipe ban started. The garden is looking very happy with it. I was looking less happy when I got soaked on the way to the station one morning.

I've been exploring some gardening resources online. I already used the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) website  - has some useful tips, but I'm not a member so there's a limit to what I can access. I've also joined the Gardeners' World website, which has a forum a bit like Ravelry and videos of how to do things (you have to watch adverts too). Incidentally, the OH has been buying me Gardeners' World magazine for a year now and it is SO MUCH better value than any of the British knitting magazines - for a start it costs less, and it actually has quite a bit of content, articles, how to do things.
And there is always just googling for things. I found this blog post helpful, good pictures of how to prick out Amaranthus seedlings as I wasn't sure if mine were big enough. How on earth did anyone learn to garden and/or knit before the internet?!