Its amazing how much you can knit when your feeling a tad grumpy with the world. I’ve been knitting since 5.30 a.m. as I could no longer sleep. ‘Twas a bad day yesterday 😦 Without boring you all with the details, I had to face up to the fact that I will probably never have hair again. I knew it was coming, I am internet savvy after all, but it was still a tough call when my consultant said the words. For some reason, whats upset me the most is that my grandchildren, (should I be so blessed) will never know me with hair. I know there are so many cruel and heartless things going on in the world and really my hairloss doesn’t even register and I do feel so very selfish feeling like this, when it could be oh so very much worse. It just hurts at the moment.

So today, I have knitted and sewn beautiful beads on my cable scarf and all I need to do is to block it. And that is all I have done, to the point that if my darling children hadn’t made me tea, I would probably be a shriveled up prune like person on the sofa as we speak. It helped, it stopped me thinking and leaking and I know tomorrow will be a little bit better than today.

We decided to dig up a couple of parsnips to try them, its a bit early, they say you should have a few hard frosts first to make them sweet, but we just couldn’t wait to see what we had. We were so surprised to find these beauties. We had them this evening to go with a homemade cottage pie. I roasted them gently and then glazed them with honey and sesame seeds, they were delicious.

We picked the last of the french beans and peas today, dug the rest of the beetroot out and tidied up the herb section. The tomatoes are still ripening in the greenhouse, if we can just get a little bit lucky with the frosts, we should get most of them ripened.

This is made from a free pattern from Elle to make a felted hat. I used Elle Wool Boutique Merino Brights in Underbrush. I lengthened the pattern at the rim and on the length of the hat, to accomodate my larger than the average bears head and this seems to have worked quite well. At least it covers my ears, as it wouldn’t have done had I not altered the pattern.

I wasn’t sure about this hat before I felted it, but it is growing on me. It would be perfect if it didn’t have the bright green circle at the top, which looks to me like I’ve just been connected to and am just about to be beamed back to the mother ship 🙂

Yes, I have had to frog the Cobblestone jumper. 😦

Rachel very kindly gave me a quick maths lesson on how to work out the guage on Tuesday evening. I’m still not sure exactly how the maths works, just that it works.

I took it a stage further and re measured one of hubby’s jumpers that is a little baggy and realised I might be out by quite a margin. I’ve had to wait over two days as hubby simply hasn’t been around at a sensible hour to try the jumper on, whilst I critically appraise it.

This morning at something silly o’clock, (about 4.30) thoughts of the Cobblestone jumper were chuntering around in my brain, to give it to Dad because it would fit him, only Dad doesn’t wear jumpers. To give it to son no.2 as he’s built like a rugby player and will with a growth spurt be nearing 6ft 3” within a year, but he doesn’t wear jumpers. To give it to son no.1, who is a slimmer build (not much slimmer, but slimmer) than the other two, he doesn’t have such huge shoulders, but it would just look silly. And… I really wanted to knit a jumper for hubby.

So hubby has just tried the jumper to get the size from on at just gone 6 a.m. Sadly, we have decided that the Cobblestone jumper is going to be too big. So it has been frogged. I might need a day or so away from it before starting again, just to get over it. Its a sad loss. Only knitters will understand those last comments.

I’ve finally managed to finish my Elfin hat from Interweave knits, and I love it. Its so cozy and warm and it has such a fun element in it. I just love the way the pompom bounces around my head, (how old am I!!) I am going to have to knit a red version as Christmas is around the corner, Ho, Ho, Ho…

Seriously though folks, Becky, who I have never met, who is a wondrous woman, knitted me the version below in the summer, when my head was so cold and I really needed a woolly hat and there was nothing to be bought in the shops. I put out a distress call on Ravelry, something along the lines of , “I need a woolly hat:” and she came to my rescue. I was and still am so very grateful, she was a godsend. Thank you Becky,

🙂

I spent a rather pleasant afternoon with Mary, drinking tea in quite lovely surroundings interspersed with sporadic bouts of knitting, mingled with girly chat. It was rather nice.

Where on earth does the time go, one minute it was 2.30 p.m. then the next it was nearly 5.00 p.m. We were in the same time warp that only exists with knitters, I find it most prevalent on a Tuesday evening, I sit my bottom down and the next thing I know, hubby is walking through the door to collect me..

But then I find the same time warp exists at the plot.. I go up to do a thirty minute job and come back home over two hours later.

Perhaps its just me !!!

But I don’t think so.

I’ve just been up the plot for a couple of hours to put in a few rows of Japanese onions. When I realised that we may very well have a frost this evening so decided to pick the butternut squashes.

Huge aren’t they.

Well actually, no. It was a terrible summer for butternut squashes. My plum tomatoes are bigger than the smallest and the largest squash is barely bigger. Still they will make a lovely addition to the Sunday roast.

Quite labour intensive are leeks. Pricking out and puddling in, along with carefully weeding around them. Although you can’t see it in this picture, I have about 96 leeks. So it was backbreaking work but it should be worth it come January, when the frosts are fierce and there is a bubbling pot of home made leek and potato soup to welcome my boys home with.

Some lovely Kale, which will be most welcome mid winter.

And lastly a picture of half of our plot. You can see the greenhouse acquired on ebay that hubby put up in gale force winds and constant rain one weekend in February (he’d spent the previous fortnight digging out the footings and putting in a concrete base) along with my lovely, gorgeous, mine all mine, potting shed, that has been grandly furnished from the tip, no expense spared! Our compost heaps and rows of vegetables that should come good, fingers crossed and quite a lot of weeds! Still, it will all get tidied up for the winter and then to dream about next years treasures, their delights and disappointments.

So the time was right to start on a new winter scarf. I’m very pleased with this, its an Irish Hiking Scarf and I thought the cables and especially the sides were very beautiful.

Another pair of Fetchings are on the way.

Auntie Audrey’s Socks, knitted under duress and much nagging from mum. What is a girl to do when her mum is literally in high pitched mode pleading for a lovely pair of socks for her sister. Of course I capitulated, but they have turned out rather nicely and I caught mum baking a Christmas cake for my hubby and boys today, so she is definitely forgiven.

I picked the last of the courgettes today, it was a very sad moment. They have made me very happy over the summer months with their eagerness to please and their delightful colour.

Although a close cousin, the butternut squash, should keep us happy for a little while at least.

We picked all of the plum tomatoes today, probably about 20lb, so I will spend tomorrow morning processing them to freeze. We also picked all of the cherry tomatoes that were left, I would think about 6lb. Mum had a couple of pounds of them, along with some carrots that were huge.. and looked perfect, no carrotfly on them at all, so we were very pleased.

We also dug out some baby beetroots to have in the week. Strangely, the first row of beetroot is producing tiny beetroots, yet it was planted six weeks before the row that is producing quite large, nearly tennis ball sized beetroots. I have no idea why, same variety and only about three feet apart so I wouldn’t have thought a micro climate was having an effect. One day I may get hit by inspiration as to why this has happened, but somehow I doubt it.

and the answer is most definitely yes. Hubby and I went to Spellbound Beads in Lichfield yesterday and it was amazing. I have never seen anything like it in my life. It really was a lovely shop to visit.

Note, the rather bright unfinished felting project above that will eventually become a hat.

At the time, for some reason, which defies me at this moment, I thought this colour was rather nice and would suit me quite nicely. I think I must have thought, that it was a lot darker in the shop all wound up into its nice ball. Its funny how you can change your opinion, when forced to wait and are no longer on impulse buy mode.

I had a lovely time yesterday evening at Web of Wool. Watching Rachel wrestle with several balls of wool at once was an education in itself. I now understand why the word “Intarsia” strikes such fear and respect in even the most seasoned of knitter.