This blog has been going for a year

This blog has been going for exactly a year.  I had all kinds of ambitions when I started out.  I occasionally think about stopping because I haven't hundreds of readers and I'm not sure where I'm going.  Then I find, I don't want to stop.  I have created something of value to me and It doesn't matter that I haven't achieved a huge following.

In this blog I have found a space to record some of the things I see and things I love.  It's my space away from other pressures.  If I go on a walk, I don't come back until I have at least one photo that might be blogworthy.  That means I really look at the world as I walk and I've loved it.  It also means some days I walk further to find 'that' photo and that's no bad thing either.  I've become fascinated by wildlife again as I was at ten years old. 

I've discovered that my garden (in spite of some eccentricities) is rather photogenic and I have found that although I have knitted since I was a small girl, I need to improve a lot.  It's when you try and photograph it and write about it, that the little imperfections really show, especially when you look at the wonderful work done by others.  My photography needs to improve as well.

I've met some lovely people in blogland, it's been a good year, I have lots more to aim for.  I'll keep going.

I'm feeling very noble

I'm feeling very noble.  Day off yesterday and was in the mood to clear up all the tedious jobs.  I managed to :

• mend my umbrella
• mend mum's skirt
• shorten dad's trousers
• finish knitting and sewing up a large shapeless tunic in Sirdar Indie for mum (lovely colourway, but a yarn and pattern I would never chosen to knit. She started and couldn't finish)
• finish proofreading my uncle's memoirs so the grandchildren have it as a memento - he progressed from Dorset farm boy, to property developer, to repairing snooker tables in Ghana
• get somewhere near the bottom of the laundry basket
• do a litter pick up the lane

I'm glad some of that's over.

Not much to photograph recently and it's a rainy old day today, so I dug up a photo from my files.  This blackberry leaf caught my eye back in the autumn.  I'm wondering about swatching some of the colours including the deep green of the ivy in the background.

Feeling in need of a bit of summer

Can you hear the bees?

This picture was taken some years ago and it was one of those rare occasions when the planting came out as I wanted it.  There is a door to the road in the old chalk garden wall and growing beside it are hollyhocks, honeysuckle, tansy, marigolds, nasturtiums, stocks and sedum.

After several years I have now managed to get the honeysuckle to grow up over the wall and down the other side.  In the spring the wall is due for major repair by conservation specialists and the honeysuckle will have to come down.  Hey-ho.

I'm going to have to move all the compost bins as well.  But the rhubarb.  Well, they'll just have to work round it. 

Mid-late forties? 

When it turns cold, my mind runs to bed socks.  My feet are never warm.  This little pattern which is A5 size comes from the austerity period during or just after World War II.  The size of the pattern and the black and white photo are down to shortages of paper and ink. 

There are embroidered socks knitted in 3ply with a kind of Tyrol look going on - quite popular in the late forties.  Also ribbed socks knitted in 4 ply (the pattern suggests blue and white stripes) and garter stitch socks, also blue and white.

The garter stitch socks are discribed as follows :
"Knitted on two needles these cosy garter stitch bed socks are given a snug fit with double ribbing at the tops of the legs."

I think these might be just the thing to use up all these odd balls of 4ply I seem to have amassed.

We've had some weather

1943 AEC Matador in our wintry garden

We've had a bit of weather and the up side is that the snow always makes our small collection of rather rusty vintage vehicles look rather elegant.  This baby will be 70 next year and a re-fit is planned to celebrate.

Father bought 'the Mat' in the late sixties from a Ministry of Defence sale.  She was a gun tractor.  He converted her for timber work and I pretty much grew up with her.  In the early eighties she was in a bit of a sorry state and Dad sold her to a young man he knew who was keen to restore her.  In 1993 this young man took me out on our first date.  We went out as exhibitors at a vintage vehicle show.  She was fifty years old. 
People told him he would never get a girl to go out with him in the Mat.  I'd been going about with my father in the 'Mat' since the age of ten. 

Next year, in 2013 this same young man and I will have been together for twenty years and our 'Mat' will have pretty much been in the same family for forty five years.  We've had other old lorries and cars and sold them on.  The 'Mat' is family.  She stays.