My knitting smells of suncream and is full of sand, but the good news is that progress has been made on all three current knitting projects over the past fortnight.
The cardigan is officially finished. It’s been sewn together and everything. But, sadly, it’s too short. So there will be some picking up stitches and knitting downwards going on soon. I’m hoping the boucle wool will hide this desperate attempt to make the article wearable.
But more urgently – the local produce show is at the end of the month. I’m just over half way through the lace shrug I’m doing for the knitting competition. I’m starting to feel a little panicky…
And the drop stitch scarf turned out to be good chatting-to-friends knitting last week. I think I’m just going to keep going until I run out of wool, so I have this much left to do.
I’ve just been on holiday for a week. It was a good, ol’ fashioned week away at the seaside involving lots of sand, sunshine, splashing in the sea, buckets, spades, shells, donkeys, pedalos and, most importantly of all, laughter. There were sixteen in the group, ranging in age from five months to early 40s. Oh, plus a dog.
We were staying on an organic dairy farm, which was a bit of a busman’s holiday really. For the first few days my husband was unable to be there; suggest to a farmer that he might want to take a holiday during harvest, and the response is not polite. Every time a quad bike drove past the house my son would shout ‘Daddy’, until eventually he understood and we instead had a rather forlorn sequence of ‘Daddy… gone… baaa’ which I assume meant that daddy was looking after the sheep. Thankfully Daddy arrived and all was well in his little world again, apart from the fact that he wasn’t allowed to go and sit on and ‘drive’ the tractors.
The advantages to being on a farm that didn’t have any sheep was that there were other animals – calves, piglets and Emily the horse, all winners with the children. The disadvantage (for me) was that I didn’t escape the Aga for the week. Agas and I have a relationship that’s based on civility rather than love. It took me about a year to learn to get mine to do what I wanted most of the time, but occasionally it still throws a curve ball just to keep me on my toes.
Also in our holiday cottage was the same dishwasher and washing machine as at home. And just to top it all off, I walked into the local pub to find that the dining room carpet had got there first. It’s a very distinctive carpet and I would have been pleased not to see it for a week.
Now I’m home and after a week of rain and sunshine the garden is bursting with veg, despite the fact that I stripped it and took everything available with us to feed the hordes for the week. The courgettes are marrows, the runner beans are huge… I know that too much food is better than too little food but I hate wasting and the chest freezer is nearly full. I think I may have to resort to bean chutney before the end of the weekend.
Woollydaze 