I hear you ask.

Well its been well over the 30 days, I think its about 48.

The first two to three weeks went extremely well, then I caught a tummy bug (probably from the Sewing for Pleasure jaunt) and that took me off my feet and meant I stayed very close to home for a few days.  I felt quite weak after that but managed to recover enough for our day out in London (which was blogged about some time after the event) and caught the chills on the way back which went into a cold and then a mild lung infection (green gunk and the shivers), but fortunately recovered from that without medical intervention.

So what I am trying to say is I veered off course.  I am building myself back up, although heading back to Curves when a Zumba class was just about to start wasn’t the best plan for the first day back.  I rather over did that, and needed a couple of days to recover.  Thankfully I am now back to my usual workouts and am feeling fine with that.

Well, what have been the benefits?

Well for a start even though I caught a cold, my muscles weren’t screaming at me the way they normally do when I am having a day out in London, (we do pack a lot in) there were times that I was positively bouncy (although that may have been the Turkish coffee) and I felt that my gait had changed, my stride has lengthened and I felt that I was stronger.

And, I’ve lost a couple more pounds, it would have been more, but colds always leave me ravenous for some reason and not always for the healthy options.

It is good, I am glad I tried this challenge and I think Curves is going to be part of my life for a good while yet.

It is time to move over to another 30 day challenge and this time I want to explore the way I use my time to play.  I spend far to much time on the computer, its true! And because of developing the social places that I go to, let alone the fascinating blogs that I find along the way, my time in my day runs away with me and its all too easy to accomplish less and less, whilst all the time wanting to do more and more creative projects.  So, rather than saying that I am going to limit my computer time and suddenly be faced with a void, which could make me grumpy until I turn on the computer and click onto my social places to see what is going on in the world, I have decided to tackle my time issues from a different angle.  I am going to do more, that right, more.  Crazy isn’t it.  But it just might work, so, for the next 30 days I am going to play with my sewing machine every day.  Even if its just for a few minutes. Every day, for 30 days.

 

I find using pencils are the best way to prick out, I hold the leaf, never the stem, no matter how gentle you are you risk damaging the plant if you grip the stem.  I use the pencil to lift the plant and its roots gently from the soil (no pencil in this shot as I was taking the photo with the other hand)

And then wiggle a hole to carefully place the young plant in, then gently water in and the hole will fill in on its self.

So, there we were at the train station before 7.00 a.m. bleary eyed and yawning listening to the cacophony of the birds morning chorus getting louder and louder as the day became brighter and brighter.  Soon the train arrived and it was really nice waking up to the wonderful views of the fields, hedges and trees just springing into life with their new growth of acid green as the sun slowly warmed the earth.  Having seen David Hockneys work quite recently (and eager to see it again) it has given me a new insight into his use of colour when visually describing the colour of hedges and trees.  He uses a lot of purple and to start with I thought I hadn’t seen those colours in hedges but sometimes when the light is just right or we happen to come across the same species of hedge I see exactly the same colour that David Hockney chose to use.  Its very interesting.  Although I am not convinced of the colour he chose to use when painting May in full bloom, I see it as a much brighter white than the creamy colour he has chosen.  However, I am waiting to see if it changes to that creamy colour just before it goes over and is lost again for another year.  And then when I see it, I will doff my cap to the master and apologise for doubting him.

We arrived just before 8.30 a.m. and decided to see what Borough Market had to offer on a busy Saturday morning.  I hoped we would be rewarded with a show of great magnitude and rewarded we were. Oh to come shopping on a Saturday morning and return home with sumptuous goodies that would be perfectly unspoiled after carting them around London for the day.  One can dream, but until that day, we have photographs to tempt us.

 These were knitted by me and are all preemie size , two cardi’s, two hats.

 and this is a preemie size next to a first born size.

 A couple of photographs of the detail of the ladybirds on my first completed and finally understood Baby Surprise (he sure was!) by Elizabeth Zimmermann.

I do like ladybirds.  They are my favourite bug, they eat all of the greenfly and they are pretty, whats not to love.

 Noelle sat up most of the night knitting this so she could get it in the wash and dry it off for Thursday.  I think red is such a lovely colour on a baby.

 Another lady (Barbara?) at knitting gave me this to keep Baby B’s head lovely and warm.

 There was a lovely matinee set by Kay, which is absolutely dreamy the wool is so soft,

 and this was knitted by Kay too and tickled me to bits. I love it and I sure Lucy will too.

I really am very lucky to have such wonderful friends, thank you so much for all your hard work, I know it will be much appreciated.

Baby B is doing very well and had most of his tubes removed yesterday, its all going as it should. There will be a piccie of Baby B, but I am putting him in Ravelry for a little bit of protection, message me if you would like his whereabouts, he really is beautiful.

Happy Easter everyone.

 I decided to try my hand at hot cross buns this year, mainly because I have been thinking about them for the last couple of months and thinking what an ideal vehicle they would be to use up some dried fruit that has been sitting in the cupboard since Christmas.

I assembled the ingredients and found that I only had wholemeal bread making flour and being too lazy to walk up the town and lug a bag of white bread making flour back, I decided to go ahead and make them anyway.

Which resulted in hot cross buns that if you threw one hard enough you could probably take out a rhinoceros, and you have to check how strong you are before picking one up, they would make great paper weights (really selling them aren’t I?!) but they taste delicious.  They taste nicer than shop bought,  as well as the dried fruit I put a good quantity of mixed peel and spices which has added a really nice flavour to them.  They are proving very moorish and the two dozen I made are being demolished quite rapidly.  (I have a small secret stash in the freezer for Easter Sunday)

 I’d love to have another workshop with Jennie, she was a very good teacher, leaving very little room for her students to make mistakes.  Her humour is lively and she entertained us beautifully.

Jennie in front of her own Scrappy Zappy Do.

 There were some beautiful yarns to choose from, I chose a single ply which was a merino mixed in with some silk, (I think there might have been a little cashmere in there) it was gorgeous and I was soon under its yarny and delightful spell.

 The wall at Sunday lunchtime, over 250 bias blocks were knitted in the four days, Belinda and Ruth are hoping for a million!  So if you fancy joining in, go for it, I am sure it is going to make a wonderful art installation in the future.   Belinda is talking about using it to festoon Tower Bridge with, I like a girl with vision.

 And what were the wondrous and insightful thoughts that were going through my mind whilst I knit.  Well there were many, and some were funny and happy and then there were quiet moments where I reflected upon the last year which brought out some painful emotions, which still include shock, sadness and joy.  But the main one, that kept coming back, time after time, was “Am I going to run out of yarn?”  and as you can see from my bias block, I did!

 John, Dot’s husband took some photo’s of us, whilst we were busy

 and I think they capture the mood

of the event perfectly.

 See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.   We had just been given our packs and as you can see we are completely absorbed.

 Although the museum was closed the section that exhibits the stockings was just above us on a balcony and here lay Queen Victoria’s stockings, there were signs of mendings on the toe!  Only a very small hole and beautiful darned, obviously stockings were an expensive commodity in those days.

 A machine that particularly took my fancy, a Griswold 160/80 which was from Dennis Wright’s collection,  it would be used for very fine stockings, oh if I could only own one of those.

 There were 22 sock machines in the room and discussions were had about just how much they had gone up in the last couple of years.  The regular price for what one hopes is a decent machine comes in at £650/£850 and one with a selection of different sized cylinders will often go over the thousand.  I am glad we bought ours when we did!  Most people may think we were surrounded by a pile of junk!

And everyone giggled that I was knitting a sock by hand, and comments were made that I may well finish my sock before anyone had finished theres.   There is a very steep learning curve when using one of these machines.

We had a very enjoyable day, we learned to use a beret to cast on, and how to sew a backstitch bind off.  A demonstration was given on an e-wrap selvedge and how to rib a sock on a machine.  I was taught how to kitchener  with the purl stitches on the outside and the sock still attached to the waste yarn.  Hubby picked up a few tips and Jane was taught how to change a cylinder.  And we picked up a brand new set of needles, which whilst they are not cheap, will last and we feel very lucky to get.

I like the Tamworths ginger bristles the best.