...sunlight and hedgehogs

Now that the nights are getting longer the sun has been coming up just as we're starting our working day. One morning last week there was a deep coral-peach sunrise, which lit up the factory chimney behind next door's garden wall, like a rose-tinged Lowry painting minus the bustling throng of matchstick figures. I hurried downstairs as quickly as my stiff morning joints would allow, grabbed my cameraphone and raced back up to get a picture from the back bedroom window. I still missed the best of it, and couldn't zoom in as close as I wanted to either, but managed to capture the final fading moments before daylight arrived.

I hate the lack of light in winter - travelling to and from work in darkness and being stuck indoors all day really gets me down. Weekends are never long enough at the best of times - when daylight is in such short supply it adds insult to injury how little time I have to be out in it. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's Seasonal Affective Disorder but I always feel happier once we pass the Winter Solstice and I know the days are getting longer again. So roll on December 21st! In the meantime my one consolation is the gorgeous sunrises and sunsets I'm more frequently witness to. My route to work takes me up a big hill, with quite a panoramic view at the top, and I'm often tempted to pull over to get a photo of the sky before heading indoors for the day. So watch this space...

Last weekend we had a couple of walks at the park, where the leaves are starting to fall and the berries are ripening.. 

On the second day I found a near-perfect horse chestnut fruit, it's spiny yellow/green flesh gently splitting to reveal the conker perfectly nestled within. 

It's rare to find the whole fruit when children are usually so quick to harvest them. Photographed against a white background I think it has a real sculptural presence.

In other prickly news, a few nights ago the XXSCat dog alerted us to the fact that there was something unusual in the back garden, discovered during one of her routine patrols of the perimeter fence. A hedgehog, doing its best to masquerade as an old scrubbing brush, had attracted her attention and was cornered behind some flowerpots near the hedge. We have seen hedgehogs in the garden before, so I'm guessing it's quite a good habitat for them - semi-shaded and sheltered, with lots of slugs, snails, worms and insects to feed on and plenty of overgrown ivy and dead leaves to burrow in. As previously mentioned, I'm not a 'slash and burn' style gardener - I prefer to give nature plenty of free rein.The only problem (from a hedgehog point of view) is that last year we had to fill all the gaps that weren't fenced with chicken wire to stop the XXSCat dog escaping when we first got her, which slightly limits the scope for free range hedgehog foraging. We decided that the safest thing to do for this one was to relocate it at the back of the garden in the undergrowth on the other side of the chicken wire barrier where the XXSCat dog couldn't disturb it further, but where there were hedgehog-sized gaps to permit re-entry if desired. So I had a really brief but very special opportunity to meet a hedgehog up close and personal for a portrait photo. What a dear little face, straight out of Beatrix Potter!

...birthday flowers and soggy dogs

It was my birthday earlier this week. I'm feeling very lucky because I won this beautiful Wivenhoe plate, made by potter Pru Green, in an eBay auction which my lovely husband encouraged me to bid on for my birthday (I normally maintain a strict, self-imposed, £5 limit to keep my magpie impulses under control). I just love it - especially the detail in the flower heads and the pretty blue floral vase (it's like owning two pieces of Pru Green pottery for the price of one). It will be going on the wall in my kitchen where I can see it every single day.

The colours are a little more vivid in real life. 

The flowers on the plate look more like daisies, but their floaty petals and intricate centres remind me of the gorgeous lilac coloured flowers I photographed earlier this year and have been ever so slightly obsessed with ever since. I searched the internet and discovered that they are traditional cottage garden plants, called 'Scabiosa caucasica' - commonly known as 'pincushion flowers'.

Another of my birthday presents was a clever little collection of clip-on lenses for my cameraphone. I used the macro lens to take photos of the pincushion flower seed-head I picked (hoping to grow some plants from seed in my own garden next year). They are top and bottom right in the photo-collage below. To the naked eye/standard cameraphone lens the seed-head is just a non-descript beige cluster about the size of my finger tip. But up close, it is quite stunning - intricate, delicate, and tinged with pale green and purple just like the flower it came from. The photos I took are a little blurry - even tiny tremors are magnified and I couldn't hold the camera still enough to get a really pin-sharp picture - but they have a lovely ethereal quality, I think.

Here are some more:

Aren't they miraculous?

This morning's walk was through the woods that surround the park. It was raining, but we stayed quite dry beneath the branches of the trees while the XXSCat dog tried in vain to keep up with the squirrels. The last leg of the walk took us past the lake, which has patches of very dense duckweed growing around the edges (in the foreground of the picture below). To an inquisitive XXSCat dog the duckweed layer appeared to offer the perfect vantage point from which to inspect the water. I stopped her jumping 'onto' it once, but when I turned around again she had decided to disobey me and was doggy-paddling at the edge of the lake with very startled expression on her face! She is quite a fastidious little XXSCat dog, and would never knowingly choose to jump in a lake. I hope she will eventually forgive me for being helpless with laughter all the way back to the car! 

It was a very comical end to a rather nice autumnal stroll, with lots of stops for photos along the way.

This afternoon I will be doing more sifting and sorting - it is becoming a Herculean endeavour as the weeks progress, but my labours will be worth it in the end.  

...life laundry

We went and ordered the carpets last weekend. They will be fitted in three stages over three weekends, starting at the end of October. The gap between ordering and fitting is time we have given ourselves to sift/sort/streamline our belongings, so that the task of emptying rooms for the carpet-fitters will be a little less challenging. I'm glad we're doing it this way (quite gradually). It takes the pressure off and makes it feel less overwhelming. The fact that I'm not missing any of the stuff that's been discarded (so far), and am enjoying the spaces that have been opening up on shelves and in drawers, is making it easier to keep going.

The weekend before last we went through boxes of paperwork - bills, bank statements, and other "important stuff". The stack of "things to file" got filed, the utility bills dating back 10 years and the warranties for electrical goods we no longer possess got shredded and burned along with a whole pile of other out of date documents. Husband reorganised his "man-drawer", untangling a virtual snake's nest of cables and leads with acronyms for names (USB, HDMI, SCART) while I straightened out my sewing drawer. (What stereotypical gender roles we do seem to have - eat your hearts out Theresa and Philip May!) We got rid of the last remaining video-tapes, and had a trip down memory lane with an old mix-tape cassette from the 90s. This survived the cull because we still have a functioning cassette player in the house. You can't beat a bit of Bryan Adams or Alanis Morrisette every now and then.

Last weekend I dug a bit deeper and went through all my old folders from training courses I've been on, and threw away everything except essays, learning journals and a few of the more interesting articles I'd printed off. Then did the same with two big box-files of work-related paper-work, notes, and information accumulated in a former job role. All good stuff, but (let's face it) I haven't referenced it in years. I kept some bits and pieces, but decided that anything really relevant has long since been assimilated into working knowledge and practice and the rest I no longer need. We gave away several board games we haven't played in years and husband bit the bullet and sent a stack of old Xbox games to the charity shop.


Yesterday I went through several folders full of knitting patterns I cut out and saved from magazines in the 80s and 90s! This was quite hard because they had an almost archive-like quality - really captured the styles and shapes of a bygone era (albeit an era when crazy bright colours, boxy oversized shapes and shoulder-pads were all the rage). I did keep a few old favourites and a few "classic" examples, but rationalised that as I still have my knitting book collection (which spans the last thirty years or so - Patricia Roberts anyone?) and my treasured Rowan magazines I can always get a blast from the past from them if I need one. See, I'm getting good at this now! 

Which is just as well, because soon I will have to tackle the really tough areas - craft materials and wardrobe - a.k.a. the 'Boss' levels (in old-school video-gaming parlance). "But it might come in handy/fit you again one day...But it cost a lot of money/you've only worn it once". Shudder. I have so much empathy for the people who feature in programmes like "Hoarders" when the voices in my own head start clamouring. 

In other news, my knitting has ground to a halt in the past couple of weeks. Although most of my energy has gone into the de-cluttering, I think it's partly because I've lost confidence in the cotton jumper I started, and don't like the way that the fluctuations in tension where I've put it down and picked it up again are so obvious in the plain stocking stitch fabric. 

Cotton is much less forgiving than wool. No elasticity. Even when I try to adjust/correct the the offending stitches it still doesn't look quite right. It will probably (hopefully) even out and look ok once it's been washed and worn, but it really bugs me in the meantime!

Speaking of bugs, this is a photo I took of an enormous brown moth that came clattering around the lampshade one night last week and was briefly captured in a glass before being released into the darkness. I couldn't identify what type it was, but it was a magnificent beast with lustrous, velvety, tapestry wings.

The beauty of photography nowadays is that you can take as many photos as you like without them occupying anything more than virtual space in an imaginary cloud. My current preoccupations are collecting fallen leaves...

...texture

...and capturing moments along the way - like this morning's walk:

The XXSCat dog demands a fair bit of attention too.

...bouncing back

We've recently taken the plunge and had measurements taken for new carpets throughout the house. The current ones have been in situ for over 17 years, and have finally reached the point where even the best carpet cleaner in the world could not restore them to anything approaching respectability. They really have to go!

Due to the inordinate amount of stuff we possess, the fitting of the new carpets will have to be done in three stages over three consecutive weekends, emptying one of the three upstairs and one of the three downstairs rooms each time. Trying to figure out the logistics reminds me of the puzzle with the fox, the chicken and the sack of corn. I'm hoping to use the whole process as an opportunity to rearrange furniture and lose some more of the clutter, so things need to be done in the right order.

Given that pretty much every room needs a lick of paint or a patch of woodchip somewhere, (so much easier to do when a room is empty), I'm anticipating a non-stop marathon of shifting furniture and DIY for at least a month, which should take my physical pain and exhaustion to a whole other level. At least when it's all over I'll be able to console myself by being glad that my everyday pain is so much more manageable than getting-new-carpets pain!

In the meantime I've been limbering up with a little extra walking, gardening and de-cluttering - the more you can get rid of, the less there is to move! Knitting has taken a bit of a back seat (my current project has stalled) but photography is keeping my creative juices flowing. 

Last weekend we had an early morning walk with friends and their dogs at the park. A long swathe of grass has been planted with meadow flowers and it's just incredibly lovely to look at. 

The colours and textures in these photos remind me of Gustav Klimt paintings. Gorgeous!

Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt

Couldn't resist getting a few close-ups too.

Later in the week there was something about the light that made everything Day-Glo - like a final Summer flourish of bright acidic colour everywhere I looked...

...then, on this morning's walk, the light was different again. Autumn is fast approaching. 

Hawthorn berries, sycamore seeds and the first falling leaves.

The XXSCat dog had a lovely time tearing through the long wet grass, and is now having a well-earned rest at my feet.

...ups and downs

Taking stock of the past few weeks I realise I've been more down than up. My get-up-and-go seems to have got-up-and-gone, mainly because I've been in more or less constant pain from aching, arthritic joints, and I'm feeling rather sorry for myself. A small part of me has been trying to look on the bright side, or at least cling to the belief that there is a bright side, but mostly life has just seemed overwhelmingly hard, relentless and difficult. Work is particularly exhausting at the moment - mentally, physically and emotionally. Every week I count the days until the weekend, but the weekend never feels long enough and I'm often too tired to really enjoy it. "Stop the world, I want to get off!" pretty much sums up my recent state of mind.

I don't like being miserable and grumbly all the time so I thought I'd pause for a while this afternoon to cultivate my inner optimist and play Pollyanna's 'just being glad' game. 

Today I've been glad about the delicious things growing in my garden. Nothing tastes better than a handful of freshly picked berries.

Rhubarb, blueberries, the last raspberry and the first blackberries.

I've also been glad of the visual pleasure the garden gives me.

Rosehips, blackberry blossom and faded Honesty heralding
the coming of autumn. Fiery orange Montbretia and one lone
Clematis flower lagging far behind the rest. 

I'm glad that although I'm in pain it's only slowing me down, not stopping me altogether.

I'm glad to have a job that gives me independence and security at a time when many people are struggling to make ends meet. I'm glad that the people I work with are more like friends than colleagues, and that the work we do makes a difference in the lives of others.  

I'm glad to have a husband who loves me and makes me laugh every day, along with an XXSCat dog who reminds me to 'live in the moment' and be happy in it too.

...turquoise colour-pop baby blanket

The little blanket is finished. Just a very simple stocking stitch rectangle with a garter stitch border, it is nice and soft, and cheerful to look at. Turns out it could have been a medium sized blanket as I still have three balls left over, but I wanted to make it portable and pushchair/pram sized rather than a shawl or cot blanket. Found out last week that the baby is a girl, so I may have to make a few more bits and pieces before she arrives. 

This morning's walk was lovely. I got quite distracted by reflections of trees and sky in the puddles...

...then found this beautiful little feather, with irridescent blue bars along one side. Can't think what bird it could have come from, but it has made the crazy bird lady very happy.

...something different

I'm back at work tomorrow, and I can't say I'm looking forward to picking up where I left off. The older I get the harder it is to hit the ground running! Still, we've made the most of our week off and even got through most of the jobs on our household to-do list. 

Over the past two days I've also been getting crafty, designing and making a decorative clip-on accessory for turning a napkin into a bib! My friend's getting married next Saturday, and she's worried about spilling food on her dress during the wedding breakfast, so I said I would make something pretty and bridal to hold her napkin in place. This is what I came up with:

It's a white organza ribbon with pearl beads in shades of blue (to match the bridesmaids' dresses) threaded on to it, with clips at both ends. It goes around the neck and then clips to the corners of the napkin to hold it in place over the bosom area! I made the little beaded/embroidered felt corsage to match the flowers in her bouquet (sunflowers and thistles) and attached it to the clip on the right hand side as a finishing touch. 

It may not be everyone's notion of bridal chic, but my friend has a great sense of humour and it's a pretty but practical solution to a genuine problem! Plus the ribbon can be removed after the wedding and the corsage can then be worn as a clip-on brooch.

The best thing about this project was the creative thinking and problem solving involved in making it up as I went along. I had some fluffy purple novelty yarn that I knew would be ideal for the thistle head, and spotted the green knobbly bead when I was shopping for the pearls. I used a wire beading needle with a collapsible 'eye' to thread the yarn through the bead and then wrapped the 'stem' with green embroidery thread. I Googled 'thistle leaves' to get a rough idea of the shape and then cut them out freehand along with the sunflower (two overlapping circles with petal shapes snipped into the outer edge). Once I'd sewn the bead 'seeds' to the centre of the sunflower I soaked the leaves and petals in watered down Mod Podge to make them a little stiffer and more durable. This worked really well, and helped add a little 3D curl to the petals. I originally drew the veining on the leaf with a Sharpie, but decided it would look nicer picked out in backstitch. I used a darker yellow Sharpie to give depth to the petals, but in hindsight I think watercolour paint would have been better for adding shading/detail to both leaves and petals, especially if applied while they were still damp. 

Next time that's what I'll do. I enjoyed this little project so much that there will definitely be a next time. Maybe not for a bridal clip-on napkin accessory (it's kind of a niche OOAK item), but definitely for a pretty little beaded/embroidered felt brooch. Just imagine this in brooch form:

Delicious! But for now it's getting late, and I have to be up early, so here's a serendiptous rainbow-tinted photo from this morning's walk at the park, and then it's time for bed.