Giving thanks

Are you ready for lots of photos?  We’re nearly at the end of November and I’ve still got so much to show you from this month!

We don’t have Thanksgiving in the UK as a national holiday (Happy Thanksgiving to you if you celebrated this week), but I think it’s always appropriate to give thanks for what you have, whatever time of the year it is.  Today’s post is a round up of what’s on my camera roll this month that I’ve not shown you so far, and as I came to edit the photos, it made me realise how grateful I am for all of it.

❤️  Woodlands to walk in with the dog.

It felt like autumn came late this year with the trees not wearing their autumn coats until further into the month than usual, but the wonderful thing about writing a blog is that you can go back and look – and the leaves are doing their thing at about the same time as they have done in other years.  The weather has been different – we’ve had plenty of rain, wild winds and even snow this autumn – but nature has done her own thing and the leaves have turned from green to red and gold just as they always do, and I am grateful for the familiarity of the autumn season.

❤️  Snow!

If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you’ll know I get a bit giddy with even the fewest snowflakes so you can imagine my excitement when we had just a little bit of snow the other week!  We don’t live in the snowiest part of the world so I am always grateful when I see it 🙂

❤️  Nature.

Wherever you are, there’s something of nature to be seen.  This is the Manchester Ship Canal, surrounded by apartments, shops and industrial units – but the swans still make this stretch of water their home.  There were so many of them – we counted at least eight pairs as we walked beside the canal.  They were busy looking for something to eat – you don’t often see swans up-tailing, or maybe I’ve just never seen them do it on our local walks – and it does look funny!

Every time I see a duck (and now a swan!) do this, it makes me think of the poem from the book The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame:

Ducks’ Ditty

All along the backwater,

Through the rushes tall,

Ducks are a-dabbling,

Up tails all!

Ducks’ tails, drakes’ tails,

Yellow feet a-quiver,

Yellow bills all out of sight

Busy in the river!

Slushy green undergrowth

Where the roach swim—

Here we keep our larder,

Cool and full and dim.

Everyone for what he likes!

We like to be

Heads down, tails up,

Dabbling free!

High in the blue above

Swifts whirl and call—

We are down a-dabbling

Up tails all!

You might not have swans near you, but I expect you can still see the sky … there have been some amazing sunsets this month.  They don’t last long – the sun moves faster than you think at this time of day – but I find myself wanting to stand and drink it all in.  Those colours … they’re food for the soul!

❤️  Spending time with the family.

This month, I’ve been to visit not so small daughter at uni – it’s an easy train journey (as long as your train doesn’t get cancelled part-way through the journey so you have to run through the station to catch another train heading in the same direction just before it leaves) and it was so lovely to see her.  She’s thriving, thoroughly enjoying her freedom, her new friends and university life.  I think she enjoys her course too, although she was so busy telling me about other things that it was hardly mentioned 🙂  It’s lovely that we can have grown up leisurely lunches with a glass of wine too!

I’ve spent more time with my husband too, going out for meals or for walks, or just sitting and chatting, and that’s been really lovely.  I do still have the occasional wobble about this new, different life of mine, but mostly I’m doing OK, and I am grateful for the way that our family has pretty much seamlessly changed shape to how we are living now.  Big daughter isn’t so far away either so we see her regularly – our last weekend was spent getting the ducks winter-ready after all the rain and snow and despite the mud in the duck pen (oh my goodness, ducks turn everywhere into such a muddy mess!), we had fun making sure that their house was clean and warm, and their food box was easy to get at on a dry surface (they were slowly mashing it into the mud).  Hopefully they will be happy, warm ducks this winter!

❤️  Our furry family members.

Oh, I could never imagine a life without animals in our house!  I am both a cat person and a dog person, and despite all of their quirks and demands (honestly, it’s like having a house full of furry toddler sometimes!), I love them all.

❤️  My socks!

Did you spot the socks in progress in today’s photos?  That’s the second sock of the second pair of Winter Haven KAL socks – I wanted to knit the pattern in two colours, and there’ll be a choice of cuff patterns too; only a slight tweak to the main pattern but I couldn’t decide which I liked best so I thought I would put them both in the pattern 🙂

The Winter Haven KAL (knitalong) runs throughout January in the dark winter weeks of the northern hemisphere, but as the point of it is all about rest and recuperation after the holiday season, you are welcome to join in wherever you are in the world – and you wouldn’t be the first to be knitting with your air-con on!  I’ll write more about it nearer the time, but it’s easy to join in – there’s no sign up or obligation to finish – and all you have to do to take part is knit a Winwick Mum pattern and/or use Winwick Mum yarn.  Each week, my blog posts talk about resting and looking after ourselves (self-care isn’t just bubble baths!) and as the weeks go on, I’m able to share project photos from around the world too, as people join in.

If you’re not a regular reader of the blog but would like to know more about the KAL when it happens, you might like to join my mailing list to get the updates.  I usually only send emails once a week so I won’t be swamping your inbox, and I’ve recently started adding extra info to my newsletter to go with the week’s blog link.  It’s also where I’ll be putting exclusive subscriber-only pattern discount codes in the future – I do have patterns for sale as well as all the free ones, and intend to add more to the list next year.  My plan for the next couple of years is to reduce my reliance on the ads on the blog, so I need to get myself moving with having a few more patterns available!  In the meantime, if you know of anybody who wants to learn to knit socks and you’re able to point them to my blog and the Sockalong tutorials, I would very much appreciate you spreading the socky word!

❤️  Last but never least – YOU!  I am always so very grateful that you take the time to read my ramblings, thank you!   xx

I’ve still got the Monthly Musing to write for this month (I’d better get on with that!), and then we’re into December … how the year moves on!  I’ll see you again soon! xx