An interlude of baby knitting

Tension before the wedding was inevitable and, to take my mind off things, I agreed to knit for a 6 month old baby. 

I adore King Cole Bamboo cotton so the purchase of a few balls came easily. The trip that this necessitated to my favourite little yarn shop - Knit Nottingham, meant that I just had to add a few additional odd balls so the baby knitting extended to four cardigans - to give the Mum a choice, of course. 

I still prefer knitting log cabin blankets but baby items do have advantages:-

Quick

Easy

Tiny

Gratifying

I like the navy - such a good colour for a baby girl!

A Wedding!

My eldest daughter married her wonderful fiancé on Saturday near to Abergavenny. It was just the most perfect day, planned meticulously by the couple to be everything they wanted it to be. From start to finish it was a spectacular weekend. The storms waited until after the photographs, the dresses looked amazing, the speeches brought tears, the dance floor was never empty, the food was great and the bride had a smile on her face from early morning to well after midnight.

I think a list is required:

Venue - ideal, comfortable, intimate, beautiful - and all to ourselves for the weekend

Flowers - just right - colours perfectly matches to autumnal leaves

Cake - yummy - simply decorated by florist totally appropriately

Hairdresser - excellent start to the day - great salon, great styles and they stayed in

Dresses - wow!

Food - we want to go back and eat some more from the chef - wonderful

Speeches - tear jerking, funny, well planned, emotional, just right

Band - great sets, great dance music

Bridesmaids - beautiful

Children - well behaved, funny, delightful

iPad FaceTime guests - in Florida and Staffordhshire - virtual guests welcome

Wedding romance? - yes - one boy totally smitten..............

Hand knitted owl favours - went down well

Families - happy

Jessica's dresser

Jess celebrated a significant birthday in August and, as part of her birthday present, I bought her an old dresser from my cousin, Julie. Julie has been remodelling her home and the dresser was no longer required. It needed a little TLC but I knew that Jess would relish that prospect.

The original dresser:

It fitted into the kitchen - something I had been just a little concerned about. The colour certainly didn't go.

Jess had wanted a dresser for some time to display her collection of old crockery - much of it retrieved from the home of her late grandparents. This collection had been sitting here for a number of years so I was particularly happy to see her have the dresser - more space here for me!

Some trips to a DIY store and a considerable amount of work resulted in this:

It looks pretty good and she is delighted. A picture of her grandparents has pride of place and many of the items are well known to me from childhood.

I now want a dresser myself. Never thought I would but I know just the place and I know what I would like to display too- on the look out!

Pumpkins and figs

This year has been a bumper year for the fig trees and for our pumpkins. 

We must have collected well over 500 figs this summer. Some we ate, some were baked into fig cakes - used instead of apples or bananas in some simple loaf tin bakes, some were dried - not a success, some made into jam - sort of successful but sweet, many were given away, so,e thrown away if i didn't get to do something with them in time, and many were frozen. I read that the best way to freeze in cooked fruits was to cut in half, dip in lemon juice and open freeze. When frozen, bag. This worked well but I have a freezer full! Yet more figs were gently poached in honey or just in a little water and then frozen in plastic containers. It is indeed fortunate that we have a spare freezer! My only issue is when on earth I will get to use this abundant crop.

The pumpkins looked as if they were going to good very early on and so it turned out. Lots of sun, not a lot of rain and taking care of them. Halloween will be fun and there will be pans full of pumpkin soup and an oven full of roasted pumpkin - no doubt to be frozen and added to the freezer.

Then there are the apples - many windfalls already and a number of trees looking as if there are apples ready to pick. I am beginning to worry about whether there is enough space in the freezers......

The log cabin production line

Today I finished Diana's log cabin blanket. Diana is a friend of my younger daughter and she is getting married next year. The blanket is a wedding gift. This is the first log cabin I have made using only 4 colours and it looks quite sophisticated. It has been finished in record time - usually I take a month to complete a throw of 20 squares with borders but I have spent more time than normal sitting around at home, hence the faster finish of the project.

The question is what next? To complete the stash buster which is more than half done? A complete new one in some of the new colours? A potential Christmas present one? Yikes - that is a thought- Christmas. It is October next week and I am usually well prepared for the festive season - but not this year. Much time has been taken over by wedding planning and recent months have been overtaken by illness. Perhaps a list is required and a plan. Last year was a year for scarves. I usually think that a year of socks would be a good idea but I never quite get round to that. I rather wish that I enjoyed knitting socks as much as I love knitting log cabin blankets but the sad fact is that I don't. I did want to attend a sock knitting class recently but it wasn't possible. I wonder what might help switch my pattern allegiance. Certainly not stock - I don't have quite as much sock yarn as yarn for log cabins - but it's not far off. Socks would be much easier to carry around in my bag - yet I have a mini log cabin on the go in my bag at the moment. I will just have to face the reality that I like the simplicity of the log cabin and don't really feel confident about socks - fear of failure, the unknown, the difficulty and, to be honest, my lack of patience.

The log cabins keep on coming

I discovered that I can buy my favourite, cheapest, log cabin yarn online and this is the first of what is likely to be many more throws for those I love.

This one is for Amy and Michael and Amy chose the colour scheme. I hope they love it as much as I do.

A good year for pumpkins and figs

The garden is looking splendid after a summer of sunshine. Our usual crops of coriander, rocket, radishes and courgettes have done well but the real stars this year have been the figs - again and the pumpkins.

Coriander has been frozen in small batches and soon the seeds can be harvested and dried. The Mary Berry recipe for courgette loaf will no doubt reappear in the next few days and this morning was spent freezing a batch of figs - coated in lemon juice to keep the colour. As for the pumpkins - a possible autumnal display at the wedding in October or plenty of pumpkin soup - or both.