Sky

After taking the picture of the sky yesterday I decided to keep a record of the sky for this week.  Yesterday I took the picture at about 2 pm, today I took this one at about 4.45 pm.

August Bank Holiday

I don't usually bother going anywhere on a bank holiday, mainly because in the past Graham has worked on the bank holidays, so we never really got into the habit.  Another reason is that you can almost guarantee that the weather will be bad.  Here's a picture I took this morning...

Not very nice for being outside is it!!!

So, the Lowdham Horticultural Show was out, didn't fancy wandering around outdoors at all.  Nearby there is a place called Patchings Art Centre where they have shows and exhibitions.  At least we'd be indoors here and there was a teddy bear show on, not that I wanted any teddy bears but at least it was a trip out.  There were some beautiful handmade bears, mostly very expensive, and plenty of bear making supplies.  I bought a piece of leather that I will use for making doll shoes.  Also there was a lady of 87 named Ida, she had a stall of bears that she was selling to raise funds for animal welfare.  Here's a picture of part of her stall...

I did buy a bear from her even though I didn't really want one!

On the way home we stopped off at a show house just to see what they had on offer.  It is a small estate, build on land where there had been two beautiful Victorian houses.  It is so sad when they knock these lovely old houses down and cram in an estate of new houses.  Anyway, the only house that we could look at was the four bedroomed one.  It was very nice, downstairs a hallway with downstairs toilet, breakfast kitchen and dining room off.  There are French doors leading to a tiny garden.  First floor has a nice big lounge with full length opening windows, a master bedroom with en suite and a small dressing room area.  Second floor has two double bedrooms, one en suite, a single bedroom and a family bathroom.  The whole thing was beautifully done but none of the rooms was particularly big.  I still prefer the size of the rooms in my own house, I just need to smarten it up a bit.



Tunisian Crochet

I'm not doing a very good job at keeping up with this blog.  This is because I'm spending a lot of time making dolls clothes and talking about it here.  That doesn't mean that I'm not doing my other usual things.  The other day I decided to try Tunisian crochet ....

I love how this looks and feels, it is much softer than usual crochet and is more dense, no gaps at all, more like a knitted fabric.  When I bought the hook the lady at the shop said that they had workshops on this technique so will be going if I can.

The polytunnel has been a lot of fun, currently I'm clearing and resowing in there.  Next year I will make sure there is a screen over the doors to keep butterflies (or should that be butterflys?) out, but let in bees and hoverflies.  We have had quite a few caterpillars but not nearly as many as outdoor crops get.  There are a couple of things I wouldn't grow in there again, one is fennel, it didn't really develop the 'bulb' that I expected and got rather tall and woody.  Also, because of the failure with the dwarf French beans, I put in some climbing French beans and they've got much too big.  But overall I love the polytunnel.

The 'Riots'

I just have to comment on the so called 'Riots' that occurred in England last week.  I say 'Riots' instead of riots because they weren't riots.  They were criminal acts that were committed.

In some of our neighbourhoods and on our streets in general certain elements commit these acts on a small scale every day.  It just so happened that they all got together this time and rampaged together.  Near where I live shop windows, bus shelters and telephone boxes are regularly smashed.  This is in a so called 'decent' neighbourhood.  Our church has the rubbish bins regularly set alight.  The church is in a middle class neighbourhood.  I'm regularly woken up in the early hours of the morning by drunken yobs, who also commit acts of vandalism, like nick car aerials, smash bottles and spew up on the pavement.  All this goes on in an area that is not deprived inner city.

At least we don't get youths congregating outside our houses hurling abuse and worse at residents as they do in some areas but the church car park is frequently used at night by a certain element selling 'stuff' and by 'stuff' I'll leave that to your imagination.

So, what happened?  Lack of discipline and self restraint is what happened.  Certain people these days do not fear the consequences of their actions.  Certain parents will not take responsibility for the actions of their children.

Does anyone know of a country where decent, law abiding, responsible people live?  I want to live there too.

Hobbies & Clutter - You've Heard It All Before!!!

I've been doing quite a bit of housework this week - for a change!  I'm down to putting the clutter away.  For me the clutter is stuff I've left out when I've moved on to my next project, books I haven't moved, newspapers and magazines I've been reading and stuff that never seems to have a home.  I'm in the process of moving it all out of my dining room, where I have put it after tidying other rooms, into the hall, ready for taking upstairs to my 'storage areas'. 

I have two big boxes of books in my wardrobe so there really isn't anymore room for more books in there, then there is a shelf that has recently bought books.  I have got rid of a load of books to the charity shop but I read a lot and often have to re-read my favourites when I can't find a decent book in the shops.  I have a lot of favourites.  I don't use the library anymore since books became affordable.  I think I read every book that interested me from my small local library.

Then there is my knitting yarn.  I've recently taken up hand knitting and crochet so there's a lot of yarns, needles, hooks and patterns all over the place.  Luckily this all fits into one storage box so that will be easy to put away.

The worst things to put away are all those 'bits' that I seem to have hanging about.  A candlestick, ornaments, doilies - that sort of thing.  I used to think I had quite a minimal style but over the years I've accumulated a lot of things and I can't seem to get myself to throw them out or pass them on to the charity shop.

What I'd like to do is be really ruthless and just get rid of it all, especially a lot of my craft stuff, books, jigsaw puzzles (that I don't do but Graham does), extra furniture that doesn't fit anywhere.

Every so often I get obsessed with this clutter.  Maybe I will hire a skip and bung it all in there.  What a relief that would be.

Catch Up

I was away in the Isle of Wight last week.  We had fabulous weather and the hotel was very nice, the food was good and the staff friendly and helpful.  The only criticism I have of the hotel was that the pillows were horrible, one was so heavy I could hardly lift it.  I hate using pillows that other people have used and these looked like something from about 50 years ago - horrible.  I tried to find a shop that sold cheap pillows but had no luck.

We bought a day ticket so that we could use the railways for a day and visited the steam railway as well as their electric railway.  The carriages on the steam railway were the ones that had separate compartments and plush seats and were original (but spotlessly clean), some dated back to 1912 on the train we used and they do have some that date back to 1864.  The electric trains were ex London underground trains.

The most disappointing trip we had was to Alum Bay, it was over commercialised and horrible.

Shanklin Chine was well worth a visit, I could just imagine the Victorians strolling around.

I have got some pictures but haven't downloaded them yet.

Since I got home I've been crocheting.  A tea cosy and fingerless gloves are supposed to be at the top of my agenda but I bought a crochet magazine that offered some free downloads on their website.  One pattern was for a doll cardigan and I'm part way through making it.  It is so complicated that I had to type out the instructions in a simplified way so that I could follow them and I've only done six rows of it - a bit of a challenge for me as I only know the basic stitches.  I did finish the tea cosy though.

My polytunnel is doing well.  There were a few tiny caterpillars on the broccoli but they were easy to get rid of, not like the infestation we usually get on brassicas outside.  The cauliflowers are doing well, I should be able to have one with our Sunday dinner tomorrow.  Also the beetroot are doing much better than they did outside last year and we had some with salad the other day.  Peas and Broadbeans are almost ready.  Oh and we had carrots the other day too.  Still cropping the cut-and-come-again lettuce leaves, I thought these had white fly but there is no sign of it now, I think they had white fly at the garden centre when we bought them and had been dealt with.

The outside strawberries are over now and it looks as though the fox used them as bed while we were away, note to self: rig up a barrier so the fox can't get onto the raised bed.

I only have a few potatoes plants this year but the ones I've dug up have been lovely, really easy to scrape.  I like to scrape new potatoes if possible.

My tomatoes are slow again, even though they are in the polytunnel.  I'm trying a beef tomato plant this year but so far nothing has set.  We could do with some decent sunshine I think, things would be much further on if it hadn't been so dull recently.

Gloves

I've really taken to this crochet lark!  In the early 1970s I did do a bit of crochet.  The first thing I made was a crochet doily in fine cotton.  This was in 1970 and I lived in Cyprus at the time.  My landlady lived in the house at the back of ours and her mother did the most gorgeous fine crochet.  She showed me how to crochet.  Then I made myself a waistcoat and a tank top.  I wish I lived there now, I would have appreciated living in Cyprus now that I'm older and wiser.  I was just thinking the other day, it's a pity I didn't have the same attitude I have now, my life would have been so different.  I suppose many of us think this.  Anyway, back to what I've been doing.  In my search for the style of fingerless glove pattern I wanted, I came across Ravelry.  You have to join but it is worth it and it is free.  There is so much inspiration and some free stuff.  There was a pattern that was just what I had in mind when I decided to try the gloves.  I have altered it slightly to suit the yarn I had and to make them more lacy....

They have a better thumb area than the previous ones I'd made.

I also made another tea cosy...

Because of this knitting and crochet I've been doing I had to buy yarn, of course.  There is a knitting shop not far from where I live.  I used to visit this shop with a friend in the 1980s and it was fabulous, the shop was crammed with the most wonderful yarn.  Then in the 1990s knitting went out of fashion and the shop declined.  I remember going one time and it looked as though they would be closing down, there was a very small choice of yarn left.  I visited there the other day and it has improved a lot and the name has changed so I assume it has been taken over by a different owner.....

Isn't it nice that shops are using paper carrier bags again.

This is what I bought, red, pink and black yarn...

Right, who wants to swap a pair of these....

for a fat quarter of fabric?  Here's my email address if you want to have a swap 

SWAP CLOSED