Mine, all mine

On this occasion I knitted a neckwarmer for my Etsy shop, cast off and thought, nah, bugger it, I’ll keep this one. It’s too soft and snuggly, you see. I don’t like the idea of someone else wearing it when clearly I am the one who should be wearing it. But I’ll make another one once the crazy-coloured kid’s hat is off my needles. I think wearing two might be more of a neck brace than a neck warmer, so the second one can definitely be sold … on condition that I get it back if I have to wash this one.

Mmm, leaves

The leaves, they were raked. I filled a bin liner full of them and Mother Nature, upon seeing my work, today said, “Ok, well here, have some rain that makes more leaves fall off the trees and into your garden.” I’m going to need another bin liner.

Last night we went to a bonfire night celebration with John and Sam. A little early, as bonfire night is 5th November, but what the hell. There was a great bonfire with flames licking up into the sky and a pretty fireworks display that ended with a fantastic shower of golden sparks raining down across the sky. We were stood ankle-deep in the fallen yellow leaves from a sycamore tree and after all my raking earlier in the day I had a hard time not pulling them into little piles with my feet.

Afterwards we headed to John and Sam’s in their new ~~car~~ ~~vehicle~~ tank, a Chevrolet Suburban, mowing down cars and pedestrians alike as we went. Dinner was deliciously autumnal: carrot and coriander soup, followed by sausage casserole. Following that with a snooze in the car on the way home rounded off a pretty good evening.

By the way, I’m thinking of doing 30 Tiny Moments again – and therefore NaBloPoMo too – in November. Anyone care to ~~take a leaf out of my book~~ join me?

And on the seventh day she bitched about how much her back hurt

It’s Saturday tomorrow. The weekend. I’m very excited and do you know why? It’s all those leaves out in the garden that I’ll be raking up. The compost bin is very full at the moment, so tomorrow’s rakings will have to go into a plastic sack for the moment. But having had a potter around the garden today I was far more thrilled about all those leaves than any sane person really should be.

I cycled to the post office today and cycling through a sea of leaves on the pavement brought a smile to my face and I was sorely tempted to stop and have a surreptitious kick and swoosh through them. This was just autumnal glee. There are way too many leaves out there beyond the garden for me to let myself think about. And anyway, the composting part of my mind was still contemplating the soggy rain-soaked ad paper I’d just seen on a neighbour’s front lawn. I wanted want it.

Down on the patch there’s actually a new vegetable in town. I know, it’s very unlike me to have done anything proactive at this time of year. Autumn is more about pulling and rejoicing. And raking of course. But lo, turnips are in the ground, they’ve been thinned and transplanted and seem very merry and happy to grow. Plus, it makes me feel much better about all that moss that’s grown around the stupid onions, to see happy new vegetables in happy brown earth, being happy.

Click to see the latest

7 Days – Autumn mosaic

This is getting silly. There were 61 of us this time.

The 7 Days Project

Woe is me, I say. WOE.

I have a sore throat. Bits of me ache. My hair needs washing.

But all these problems pale in comparison to the one currently troubling me most of all:

I CANNOT SEE INTO THE FUTURE.

I mean really, what kind of world is this? How else am I meant to know whether I should keep my work updates ticking over at two a day, or whether I can afford to put up a third tomorrow, because lots more will be coming after that? Is it really too much to ask that events reveal themselves to me before they happen? I promise I wouldn’t spoil the surprise for anyone else.

Patent pending

I’ve been putting a few things up for sale on Etsy recently: scarves and hats and a short neckwarmer that I finished off with the button that had needed adding. It’s a big chunky knit, meaning thick yarn and big holes between the stitches, but the button I wanted to use only had small holes, so I needed to use thin yarn and a smaller needle than I had.

As I headed towards Mum’s sewing basket for such a needle I mentioned to her that the button and the scarf were of different gore. And with that, I left the room, leaving Mum to wonder what had just happened: was the daughter inventing words that meant nothing and proclaiming them with great conviction, or had the mother simply been left behind in this particular realm of technical linguistics?

After a little silent consideration while at work in the kitchen, Mum came into the office to cross-examine me. She thought I’d made up a word; I was sure it meant something. Well, I knew what it meant. Wasn’t that enough?

Eventually with a bit of searching in the dictionary and thesaurus I worked out what I’d done: it was a combination of guage and bore. In other words, it was the perfect word. Gore. You’re welcome.

Size does matter – as does the intensity of the orange hue

So you remember my first carrot, right? Well, I’ve dug up a few more since then. Five, to be precise, giving me a second harvest of 247g. Four carrots came from the left hand end of the row; the end that didn’t look so promising. They weren’t particularly long, but they were nice and thick and were a glorious bright shade of orange.

I puttered further along the row and found one that had pushed itself a good inch out of the ground. Ok, I thought, if you’re that keen, out you come. I carefully dug it out, trying not to disturb its neighbours and pulled out a fabulous nearly 8″ whopper. Yay! Clearly, the measure of a good harvest is one that I can’t balance on my face.