New Year, Who Dis?

There is change afoot. I treated myself to new bed linen and now feel like I can conquer the world. My phone contract finished so I’ve had a new phone (it is very swish and doesn’t fit in any of my pockets), I am three weeks into my new job (still absolutely fully lovin’ it), and I have wild plans for a new hairstyle soon (aka, just getting it cut and tidied – nothing too drastic, though I do really, really, REALLY, hate having brown hair so it might be going red soon…..)

This year is a year of good, strong, happy, positive change. All I’ve wanted career-wise for the last three years was a full time, permanent job. Every day I am discovering new gems in my home city that I’ll be working in or with, and I am SO excited. I keep saying it because it’s true and I can’t believe it. I now have two sites to run weekly volunteer sessions at, and both are blank canvasses for me to really make a difference. I have met lots of brilliant, fun, creative people and I look forward to working with them more. This job uses lots of other skills that I didn’t really use as a Ranger – I will be propagating herb cuttings soon to grow and then plant out in kitchen gardens. I’ll be teaching people how to live healthier lives, grow their own food, and cook healthy meals from scratch. So far I haven’t had to empty one dog poo bin!

Scarlet Elf Cup

I am planning to start a new crochet blanket project this year but I have told, and keep telling!, myself that I need to finish two blankets before I start another. So far it is working – I have nearly finished Cosmic CAL, and then I can focus on my other multiple-stitch blanket. The temperature blanket is an ongoing project and won’t be finished until this October, so when I finish Cosmic I can start working on a colour scheme for my new blanket (I love working out colour schemes and plotting, it is very satisfying to finally settle on the right palette).

This week I saw my first crocus of the year and I am so happy. Snowdrops to me are a winter flower, but crocus really means spring is about to well, spring. These crocus were so incredibly tiny small (1.5inches tall!) and I nearly trampled them. I planted some daffodil bulbs in a plant pot that santa got for me too. They were intended for the allotment but I haven’t yet gotten around to doing everything I need to do up there to prep for the bulbs to go in, so pots are the way forward for now.

Hanging 'Bra'skets, from Allens Cross Community Garden

I have started swimming again this week, and I am scouting around to find a yoga class. My back is still troublesome from all the sitting in the car, and my hips are starting to throb when I’ve been sat down for too long. Hurty At Thirty was definitely a true statement. But now! Now! Now I have a salary! And minimal commuting costs! And dare I say it – spare money once all the bills have gone out!!! Such a novelty. So I’m going to spend it on EXERCISE. 15 year old me would hate 30 year old me.  

So, third week of the new job and Having Time To Do Things™. What have I done this week? Nothing spectacular I’m afraid.

-          Went swimming again

-          Watched Transformers 1, 2, and 3

-          Stayed up ‘til 10pm. This is a minor miracle. Not having to be up to commute means I can sleep 11pm-7am, have a good long sleep, and still not be rushed to get to work. Lush.

-          Went shopping. Actually evening time clothes shopping. For waterproof overtrousers, but still IT COUNTS.

This week will see me attending a ‘do at the Birmingham Council House (ooooh), and starting to run volunteer days proper. I got one volunteer so far! Come and join me :)

One of my new volunteer sites offered me a free lunch so I had a roast beef dinner. 

Allotment Life; Plot 4

Momma P has been hard at work on her new allotment. She has cut all the grass down by hand, cleared up loads of rubbish & waste, made SEVERAL trips to the tip (she is now on first name terms with the lad in the booth), and has generally completely overhauled it.

The next stage is moving the black plastic sheeting and digging out roots of plants, and getting the shed sorted. A new roof, changes to the guttering, and a lick of paint are in order. Santa has helped her on the way with a new wheelbarrow, paint, timber for raised beds, paving slabs and tools.

November 2018

January 2019

Lickey Quartzite Walls

This is a very nerdy post – if you don’t like geology or care for walls, I don’t mind if you skip over this one!

Cofton Hackett Wall. Nice big chunks of quartizite.

The Lickey Hills in S Birmingham are made up of a ridge of quartzite. This is a sedimentary rock as opposed to metamorphic, and was laid down in the Cambrian-Ordovician periods when this part of the UK was a) not attached to Scotland, and b) approximately where Australia is now (south of the equator). Despite being a marine rock there are not many fossils in this stone.

Locally this rock was used as roadstone (each parish was responsible for making and maintaining their roads). There are a number of disused quarries around the Lickey Hills. When the Frankley and Bartley Green reservoirs were being constructed, the Halesowen-Rubery railway was extended to the building site. During works there was a slope failure (I think in Bartley Res), and quartzite was extracted from Cock Hill Quarry, chucked on the train, taken to the reservoir, and used to shore up the collapse area - I know this because I once had a lovely chat with a bemused man from Severn Trent water about it all. See, nerd.

The stone has also been used locally for walls, and I have been on an unofficial lowkey mission to document these walls whenever I see them. So far I have found a few close to the Lickeys; a couple in Rubery, one by Cofton Hackett, and one long retaining wall in Rednal. I have also found some further afield; Northfield has quite a lot down by the library, and my most recent find is on Bournville Lane by Cadburys!

Bournville Lane nr the railway station. This verge also has massive boulders dropped by the glaciers!

As I build up my collection of photographs of walls (the finance manager at my new job was quite taken aback when I said I needed to take a photo…) I plan to map them. There isn’t really a real reason for this, except the local importance of this stone as a building material. Local history is all too easily erased!

More information about the geology of the Lickeys can be read here: the Lickey Hills Geo-Champions group work to look after the quarries.

Two more walls were tweeted about a while ago;

Wall in #northfield made with lumps of quartzite. Nearest quartzite quarries are up the @LickeyHills! #geology pic.twitter.com/bWMAsi1XKD

— Lickey Geo-Champions (@LickeyChampions) 29 January 2017

There is another quartzite wall in Northfield - part of it can be seen by the steps up to the library and the other is in the front garden of the house next door.

Wall made of Lickey Quartzite up Leach Green Lane in Rednal. #urbangeology #geology #birmingham @LickeyHills pic.twitter.com/AWXFbBh3iL

— Lickey Geo-Champions (@LickeyChampions) 4 February 2017

The map so far. Only four sites have photos.

Things I Have Done in the Evenings; Part Two.

The novelty of having a full time, permanent, local job still hasn’t worn off. My average commute time has dropped to twenty minutes, I am walking more, I feel a lot less restrained and a lot more able to live life, and I don’t think I really truly realised how bad it was until I stopped. Commuting a long way is fine in the short term, but it was really affecting my mental health. My energy levels are higher, my mental clarity is better, I feel I have more focus, and I still have no idea what to do with all of this spare time in the evenings. I put £20 of fuel in the car two weeks ago and I still have just under a half a tank (before, I was filling up every three days; £250 of petrol each month). The time had definitely come for me to reassess life, time spent on & commitment to the M42, and to think about my life/work balance.

So this week was my second week in the new job. It was busy; lots of meetings, lots of meeting new people, going to new places, and lots of getting VERY excited about things to come. I have been given two weekly volunteer sessions to takeover, basically set up from scratch, and develop. The two sites are both blank canvases, waiting for me to come and plan. I am very excited to start planning. Between the two sites I have about 15 raised beds to plant up. One site has a theme/requirement, and the other doesn’t. One site has a meadow that needs restoration, the other doesn’t. Lots of things to do, think about, work on, and accomplish. It’s nice to have a good challenge!

This week in the evenings I have:

-          Eaten a lot of pizza (no real change from before)

-          Helped a friend move house (technically not an evening job but I actually had time to do it, so I did it)

-          Not so much an evening thing but – have VERY much enjoyed not having to wake up ‘til 7:30 to be at work for 9! The JOY! At Rushcliffe to be at work for 9, I would’ve been up at six to be on the motorway for seven, to maybe be there for nine.

-          Done crochet. My temperature blanket is very stripy due to the changes this time of the year.

-          Had baths at like 6pm, just because I CAN because I’m not sat on the motorway

-          Enjoyed a bottle of beer or two

-          Generally not been utterly exhausted and brain foggy

Very nice. Went down very well. Vegan too!

I am very excited (really?) to see what this year will bring. The first step is to get a new phone sorted as my contract has now expired. For the first time in maybe 8 years (!!!) I am not having a Sony Xperia. My first Xperia was the Ray, and my current one in the Xperia XZ. I love them, but they just don’t match up to other phones anymore.

I also am going to start a new large blanket project this year. I am going to make Sophies Universe – a pattern I’ve wanted to do for YEARS but never thought I was good enough to do. I have told myself I need to finish Cosmic first before I can start a new blanket – I only have two parts left of Cosmic, so this week I am going to start planning colours for Sophie…

Lickey Hills Wassail 2019

The annual Lickey Hills Wassail was held on January 12^th this year. An evening of loud noises (aka kids with actual saucepans and wooden spoons), guitars, football rattles, bells, kazoos, horns, items from a brass band (I have no idea what but it looked well good), and all sorts of other instruments.

A wassail is an orchard blessing event, a traditional English ceremony / pastime / thing. The loud noises are made when you enter the orchard and walk around it, visiting each tree, and driving the bad demons out with the noise. It also serves to awaken the good tree spirits and to begin a good, healthy growing year.

After the noise, the Lickey Hills Ranger staff and some volunteers put on a mummers play, another English tradition. I filmed the entirety of the play this year but despite having microphones and a PA system (!!) the sound is awful on the vid. The crowd then moved back into the orchard for a singalong of Gloucester Wassail [audio link], and then we toasted the trees with spiced hot apple juice (I dislike apple juice but this is SO nice, warmed on an open fire), and hung apple juice soaked toast in the trees.

I adorned my hat with sugarsnap peas (mainly so I had access to snacks throughout the evening), and we wore crowns of ivy.

New Year; New Job!

This week I started my new job after five weeks of unemployment. Last year I was on a part time temporary contract and commuting 125 miles a day. This year I am on a full time permanent contract, commuting at most 20 miles a day (but more like 10). I can FEEL the life/work balance coming!

I have started working as a Project Officer with The Conservation Volunteers (TCV). I will be leading volunteer work parties carrying out conservation tasks and food growing projects. I will also be helping with large scale projects later in the year. I am anxious about starting a new role but I am excited for what the next few months will hold and the things I’ll be working on.

The biggest thing I have really noticed this week is that I have absolutely no idea what to do with all this time I now have. I am no longer spending 3.5 hours (minimum) in the car each day on the M42. While part of me misses the drive (my driving playlist is well good), I reached a point where I just couldn’t do it anymore. Now it gets to around 7pm in the evening and I just don’t know what to do. I haven’t really had free time, evening time, a social life, or anything while I’ve been commuting and I’m determined to start having that again – but seriously, what do people do?!

So this week, in my evening time I have:

×          Started hula hooping again

×          Had a bath at 5:20pm (it felt very indulgent)

×          Watched movies

×          Actually made and had dinner from scratch (a massive improvement on last year where I would just skip dinner completely as I couldn’t be bothered to make anything)

×          Crocheted – I have finished another section of Cosmic CAL and I am caught up on my temperature blanket. I also picked up Sweet Caroline CAL to do a few rounds on

×          Spent proper quality time with David

This month is going to be a financial struggle as at the end of January I will have had two months without an income, so I am living off my overdraft. Hopefully from next month I will have that fabled “disposable income” I hear so much about, and I will be able to go out for meals! See my friends! Go to gigs! Buy new clothes! Ugh, it is so weirdly brilliant to me that I'm not spending £250 a month on petrol anymore.

I am so excited. I loved working at Rushcliffe but the life/work balance thing was none existent. This year I am determined to get it back.

Found this beaut in a shop around the corner from the office.

The prettiest chook!

Art

Office door selfie

A walk along the river

More art

Snowdrops!

A typo. I am struggling to not point it out to someone.

MINGOS! I can see these from the office balcony (ooooooh)

A Busy Week on the Allotment

Sort of doing not much, but also sort of feeling like I’m getting somewhere!

I discovered a couple of weeks ago that some thieving git had nicked folding pruning saw, so santa bought me another one. Momma P and I were up at our respective plots (she has branched out and now has her own) and she found… my folding pruning saw! So now I have two, but I am happy to have my old one back as it is slightly bigger than my new one. Before we found the old saw, I used my shiny new one to harshly cut down the dogwood. I planted this as I wanted to harvest the coppice stems to use for weaving, but I’ve had to let it grow for a few years to get it to the stage it can be coppiced.

All cut down.

I also discovered, maybe last week that my bottom hinge (hehehe) had sheared off, so I put it on my ever growing to-do list to buy new hinges. The goddess of new hinges spoke, and I had three new slightly longer ones bought, to replace the two old hinges and add a third in the middle of the door. Well it turns out that I have four batons on the inside of the door, so when funds allow, I will buy a fourth hinge for the right hand door, and four new ones for the left door. The hinges came from Wilkos and are only £1.50 each! Bargain. They look well good too.

I have painted my new bee box a glorious bright sunny yellow and am still deciding where to put it and how to fix it to wherever it’s going to go.

At home I have cracked on with painting gravel boards for Momma P’s new plot. I have also painted the side of the house, a paving slab, the floor, and my glasses.

I have started my new full time job this week so allotment time is now going to be relegated mostly to weekends. I have printed off my bed-by-bed to-do list and I have a plan for what I’m going to grow this year. I need to write a list of the main jobs that I can get done with minimal financial input and aim to get them done this month. When that first payday hits, ooooooooooooooooooohh boy! Big Wickes order here I come…!

Crochet Blanket Inspiration: Mitred Granny Square

I can’t even remember when I started this, but it was fairly early in my learning-to-crochet career. It is a simple granny square, but mitred instead of worked in rounds (I work two sides of the square then turn, instead of four sides in a round), which gives it a different style. I am using scraps for this, and to be honest I haven’t worked on it for a few years now. I am using a range of yarns and I think a 4mm hook. The idea is to not worry about colours clashing, and to just use up odds and ends of yarn balls. 

Before I discovered the joys of sewing in ends as I go, and remembering to leave ends long enough *to* sew in...!

I am not using a pattern for this and I don't really have a plan for it except to make it bigger. Smaller mitred grannies (now there's an image) can be stitched together to make quite effective patterns - Pinterest as ever is a great source of inspiration. 

Maybe 2019 will be the year I get it out and work on it some more….?

Festive Festivities

I have been utterly spoilt this festive season. I hate this time of year and I’d much rather ignore it all. With lots of help and support from my partner, this has been the first christmas in about seven years that I haven’t had a meltdown. I haven’t cried once. At all. Not even a slight tearing up. Success! I even had two sit down meals, even though for one of them I just kept my head down and focussed on sprout wrangling.

Santa has given me some truly lovely thoughtful presents; two antique bone crochet hooks (!), two KnitPro hooks, a Sophies Universe CAL pattern book, a solitary bee house, a tree book, two woodwork books, some raspberry Archers (the lesser known yet superior flavour), a huuuuuuggge 850g bar of Dairy Milk, a picture disc vinyl of Nirvana Unplugged in New York (!), and lots of other little bits and pieces for my sewing box.

Spreading out present giving has helped loads this year. I get very overwhelmed if I have too much stuff on one day. I feel incredibly unworthy and guilty. This year we started opening presents on the 24^th, had more on the 25^th and 26^th, it was David and mines anniversary on the 27^th so we had a few more, and then we had new years gifts on the 31^st.

I have also been more relaxed this year as I have been unemployed but have a job lined up, so haven’t been getting stressed with looking for a new job.

My new favourite neck warmer

I *love* bad disaster movies.

Link

Link

Get in my belly!!!

Bone crochet hooks

7 Wild Days of Christmas; Days 6 and 7!

Day six I spent at Sheldon Country Park – helping to tend the animals! I spent lots of time with the piggies because I love them, but then when it came to sweeping their poop I mysteriously disappeared to talk to the cows…

For day 7 I didn’t do anything. I had some sewing to catch up on to finish making a toy unicorn, so I had an indoor day. To make up for this, I did a three mile walk on New Years Day (technically day 8, but who’s counting). I planned to go on the walk with the Park Rangers as that’s what I like to do, but I ended up being given a hi-vis and a radio, and being asked to back mark.

Allotment Life: December 2018

December is generally a quiet allotment month but it is always weather dependant. I dug over a couple more beds so I only have one left to turn. The big projects I wanted to get done haven’t happened as they require financial input and I have been unemployed since the end of November so haven’t been able to justify spending money on the ‘plot.

Santa got me a lovely solitary bee nesting house which I am going to paint and then put up on my shed with my other bug houses, and I have lots of painting to do for Plot 4 for Momma P. I also got a replacement pruning saw as some git has nicked mine from my shed.

January will hopefully be more productive. I need to coppice the dogwood (and now have a new saw to do it with), and I need to start planning crops and working out when to start sowing. I am aiming for one hour a week, little and often, to try and have a fruitful year.

Some of my presents from santa - new crochet hooks, a tree book, and a bee house.

Plot 31 needs some general maintenance this year including new door hinges...

2018: A Year in Crochet

I make a lot of things during a year. Blankets, toys, clothes, oddments. This year has been no different!

During 2018 I have started two new blankets, and done a lot of work on another. I have made lots of little pieces to sell at a craft fair, and have made things to encourage people to reduce their use of plastic in the home. I have also learnt new techniques, and made new items just because I wanted to.

I have made a stress ball F Bomb, a sparkly rainbow jellyfish, a small uterus with a placard (I love my brain), and I’m finishing the year making a unicorn.

Pics of some of this years items are below, and links to patterns are on the captions.

Random stitch blanket; no pattern

Star stitch wreath cover

A toadstool.

Face cloths / cleaning pads.

Cosmic CAL

I freehanded this but patterns are available on Ravelry

No pattern but I am using tutorials for rows from a variety of sources

Cosmic

Adapted from this pattern.

From this book.

From this book.

Merino Wool hand warmers, freehanded.

A baby blanket, freehanded.

I am so good. Pattern here.