A bit of everything!

That’s what’s in this post today – flowers, fields, knitting, socks, cats … it’s a mish-mash of a happy week – oh, and a couple of photos that have been lurking in my camera roll waiting to see the light of day too.

Like this one!  Back in June, we took ourselves along to the playing fields in Winwick where the second annual Winwick Beer Festival was being hosted at the Leisure Centre.  It had started on the Friday night and by the time we got there on Saturday late afternoon, there wasn’t an awful lot of choice left.  I guess that’s a good thing as it shows it was a popular event, and hopefully next year the organisers will be able to buy a few more barrels in to keep them going through the evening!

They had been so lucky with the weather as back in  June, the sun was a bit hit and miss but we enjoyed a couple of hours sitting out on the grass.  There were seven of us in total – my husband and I, our girls, their boyfriends and the dog – and it was such a nice evening in good company.

The weather has been really warm this last week or so, hasn’t it?  We had rain for the first time in quite a while the other day, and I was just getting to the point where I felt that the garden needed it, but I have enjoyed the sunshine!  I’ve been trying to make sure that I sit outside with my brew first thing before I do anything else; the birds are singing, the sun is warm on my face and it’s a time to be grateful.  We don’t get long with days like this in the UK these days as it seems to rain more than anything else (I’m quite sure if I looked at some statistics I’d be proved wrong, but it feels like it!) so I’ve been making a special effort!

I was coming back in from the garden a week or so when I spotted this – my cactus was flowering for the first time ever!  I bought this cactus as a tiny plant from the RHS Tatton Show about 20 years ago and it has never flowered up until now.  It’s a funny plant, it goes round and fat and then long and skinny, but I like it because it’s not spiky 🙂  It produced three flowers over three days, and I got to admire a new flower every morning!

I never think of cacti producing pretty flowers, but this is as lovely as any that appear in the garden borders!

Our garden has reached that stage of overgrowing greenery – entirely my fault as I haven’t spent much time in these borders this year but when I look through the arch into all those leaves, I don’t care.  I love it!

The Trachelospermum jasminoides or star jasmine by the front door has been flowering for a few weeks now.  Oh, this has to be my very favourite plant in the garden, it is just AMAZING!  I can smell the scent of the flowers from the end of the garden path and there is just a mass of them all over the front wall.  Every time I come into the house, I take in huge breaths through my nose to get the full impact and I’ll be sorry when they start to fade.

The dog is recovering well from his operation last week and the vet is very pleased with his progress.  He’s still got to wear his cone when we’re not watching him until Monday but he is such a good boy about having it on, and having the furniture wrapped in bubble wrap to stop him taking chunks out of it as he bashes his way around the house was an inspired move, if I do say so myself!  Not so small daughter is slowly becoming accustomed to life back at home and in excellent timing, spent a day and a night in Leeds with big daughter this week finding her bearings for when she goes to live there in (aargh!) five weeks’ time.  They booked into a hotel next door to her accommodation and spent time checking out the local day and night life, but also spotting landmarks so that not so small daughter would always be able to find her way back to her accommodation and study buildings.  It was such a good thing for them to do together, and an inspired idea on big daughter’s behalf – it’s obviously been the week for them!

The cats have been too hot and haven’t known what to do with themselves.  Astrid has been wandering about the house playing a game called “No, I’m not in the place you last looked for me“, although we did eventually find her one day in the office in a bed that they have both refused to entertain so far …

I was very pleased with myself when I found the box in IKEA!  It turns out, though, that me being impressed with something doesn’t mean that the cats are going to be impressed, which I think is very rude of them.

Hattie has been perfecting her poses for her latest photo exhibition entitled “Crash landed and dropped from a great height – a study of a sleeping cat”.  Just as I grabbed my camera to take this photo, she moved her front legs from where they had been stretched out behind her, looking as if she had taken a nose dive into the rug.  She likes to lie with her chin on the rug or the carpet so will lie in all kinds of strange positions to do that.  Funny cat.

There’s also been knitting progress this week.  I have managed to sort out the puckering on my Polkacats jumper (Ravelry link) by adjusting the stitches in the coloured cat sections.  I’d pulled them all a bit tight so I started at one end by loosening them with a wool needle (thank goodness for a long tail end!) and then pulling the excess yarn back through each stitch until I had evened them all out.  Yes, it did take ages but I am very pleased with the result and it avoided me having to block it just yet … although that may be coming!

I chose the size up from the one I would usually knit because I wanted the jumper to be wide and boxy.  I tried it on and …

Hot day, hair up! 🙂

It is not wide and boxy!

I’ve re-measured it and my gauge, which was spot on when I swatched, is now slightly tighter and I’m getting half a stitch per inch extra to what the pattern recommends, and it’s coming in at about 5cm narrower than it should do.  I huffed and puffed for a while about what to do, resisted ripping everything out (ooh, such a temptation, I had to put it down and walk away) and I’ve finally decided that I like the jumper very much as it is so I’m just going to carry on.  It will block out a bit wider but probably not 5cm so I am going to finish the body – I’ve got a way to go as the pattern finishes at 18 cat rounds.  I am going to do quite a few more as my days of cropped jumpers are behind me now and I prefer to be warm 🙂 , and then I’ll take a view about what I’m going to do with the sleeves as I’ve got a choice of long or three-quarter length and my choice might change now the jumper isn’t the shape I was expecting.

I have to resist putting it in the corner and not touching it again now as it’s not matching my expectations, but I think I’m at least half way through it now so the incentive to finish is still quite strong.  I’ll keep you posted!

I’ve been back on with a pair of socks this week again too.  I’ve had these on the go for a while – since I finished the Monkey Puzzle Socks, in fact, as my husband said he’d like a pair with the leftover yarn – but I felt the need for a break from socks whilst I was on my stay-at-home holiday so I’ve only done the odd round here and there.  I picked it up again last night and finished the leg and turned the heel – gosh, socks are so much faster than jumpers, aren’t they?!

I know, you’re going to tell me they look like football socks for Norwich City FC, but although my husband has every intention of wearing them to football matches over the winter, Norwich isn’t his team.  I’ve been told I need to get a move on with them as the season starts next week!

It’s starting to get dark earlier these days but the pay-off has been some remarkable sunsets.  Some evenings, the sky is on fire and this particular evening, I was taken by the display of clouds as the sun disappeared.  Such a spectacular view, and it’s entirely free.

Not long after I took this photo, I went to collect not so small daughter and her boyfriend from Liverpool.  There’s something about a city at night, isn’t there?  I like the lights, and I liked the blue of the sky.  Not so small daughter suggested it was my camera altering the colours and it’s true that I am still getting used to my new one (you can seen the difference between two photos that we both took with the light adjusted), but apart from that, I like the lights and seeing people out and about in summer clothes on a warm evening, instead of wrapped up in winter coats as has been the case many times I’ve picked them up from the Albert Dock!

This is not so small daughter’s photo, with the light adjusted differently

Anyway, this is me for today.  I hope you’ve had a great week and I wish you a good one to come.  I’ve been reminding not so small daughter about her Nepal post so it will appear at some point, but for now, I’ve got some knitting to do before the start of the football season!  See you next week! xx