Crochet Blanket Inspiration: Roundup

I think I’ve blogged all of my blankets now! I have so many ideas for more but I really need to finish the ones I’ve got left first (manic laughter, who does that, right??!!). I wanted in on the crochet blanket stash on Instagram a while ago so I posted this pic:

Top - Down:
Temperature Blanket, Cosmic CAL, Random Stripe Blanket, Giant Granny Square, Ombré Blanket, Drop in the Pond, Mega Chunky Blanket.

No this is not all of the blankets!!

I had great fun (not) trying to get downstairs with an armful of blankets and then arranging them on the chair. It was quite nice seeing them all together in a pile and to admire the colours. All of them are made with Stylecraft Special DK, except the mitred granny square which is made with scraps, so it is mostly SSDK but has other offcuts too.

I want to make a blanket with muted, heritage tones – I’m thinking dusty, pale, pastel type colours. Stone, Pistachio, Lincoln, Sage, Denim, Bluebell, Pomegranate, Vintage Peach, Mushroom….. Ooooooooh I need a trip to the yarn shop with a colourwheel to plan!

I truly love making blankets. They take a lot of time (I am slow with blankets (hook slow, die cold)), and are sometimes very  stressful and complicated and I feel like I am not relaxing whilst I make them as I focus so hard and if I crochet when tired, I end up frogging a lot. 

The finished product though – amazing. Every time, I am amazed at myself. Warm, comforting, cosy, squishy, colourful, memory-inducing blankets. Handmade with love, determination and care, as well as frustration and maybe some cat hair. Making blankets has developed my crochet skills and expanded my stitch knowledge. It has encouraged me to try new things, to plan colours, to nail bullion and catherine wheel stitch, and it has also has made me realise that I can do whatever I put my mind to. As long as I have a pattern.

The First Bumblebutts Of The Year

Words in green are links to external sites; click them to learn more :)

I have seen my first two bumblebees of the year – the first was a Tree Bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum) at the allotment, basking on a shed door. I think she is a year-old queen, as she has a bare patch on her back where the ginger hairs have rubbed off. Tree bumbles are a relatively new addition to the UK, having first been recorded in about 2001. They like to nest in bird boxes, though last year an allotment neighbour had a nest in a plastic compost bin which had a mouse/rat hole in the front.

The second bee, at first glance I thought was a Red-Tailed Bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius), but then I noticed yellow stripes (queen or female worker red-tails don’t have yellow stripes). I then thought maybe she was a Buff-Tailed Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris), and put her on Twitter and Instagram labelled as such. However, a man (who is a bumblebutt expert) named Paul at the Natural History Museum then suggested that maybe she is an Early Bumblebee, Bombus pratorum. Of course, now that I have read the name and looked in both of my bee books, I can clearly see it is more likely to be an Early Bumble. 

So now that an expert has told me and I’ve triple checked, I am more sure that she was in fact an Early Bumble, which doesn’t make me feel too bad about her being awake too early. Here she is, massively enjoying a small clump of crocus at Bumble Hole (coincidence, no?) Nature Reserve. You can see why I was confused though - she is so covered in pollen it is hard to see her stripes (or her butt!).

On this pic you can just see a gingery orange tinge to her bum.

I call them bumblebutts as you often need to see the tail (butt) to identify bees. The vividness of the yellow stripes, the spacing of them, and the colours of the tails tell you which type of Bombus you are looking at.

To encourage bumblebutts into your garden make sure the queens can find somewhere to nest. They will be waking up from hibernation over the next month or so, and will start flying low, zig-zagging across the floor to investigate suitable holes. They like old mouse holes. You can use some 6” sections of 4” soil pipe capped off at both ends, with a small access hole and an air vent hole / small air vents along the top. Any holes the bees don’t want, they will block off. Put some moss, grass cuttings or dried soft vegetation in it to make it a bit more homely. You can also do the upturned plant pot method (below). A terracotta plant pot, length of flexible hose, and a tile to stop rain getting in.

From: www.bumblebeeconservation.org/bumblebee-nests

Place the nests where there is food – spring bulbs, a flower bed, near fruit bushes etc. A queen bee does the initial forage to get enough food for her first brood and it drains her energy so she needs a lot of food nearby to keep her going. If you have badgers in the garden (yay!!) make sure you badger-proof the bee nest, as badgers love eating bee nests. If you use 4” soil pipe, maybe try burying it 6” down with access tubes up to ground level.

Tree bumbles like bird boxes or holes in trees. Red-tailed bumbles LOVE chive flowers. Common Carder Bees absolutely covered my allotment comfrey last year. Buff-tails seem to love teasels. A few years ago a volunteer I worked with at Moseley Bog Nature Reserve found a Common Carder Bee nest in some long grass; they were just below the surface. We sat and watched them work to recover and repair the nest for a while - incredibly fascinating!

You can learn more about bumblebutts over at the Bumblebee Conservation Trust website.

These two pics show the Common Carder Bee nest at Moseley Bog. I had never seen a bumble nest! I didn't know they made little cups; it is very different to a honeybee nest.

These bees had made a nest in a wooden doorframe. Not sure they appreciated flash photography into their little eyes, but it was really interesting to watch them come and go.

Allotment Life: No Dig?

So one of the absolute perks of my new job is the fact that I have money now and can actually afford to budget a set amount each month for the allotment. It’s not lots but it’s enough to get me enough to work with or on for a few weeks. I have been buying lots of wood to build up the depth of my raised beds – Plot 31 floods quite bad and it is on clay, so I really need to be growing well above the water table.

I amused myself by building up my two largest beds. They are both 6ft square – this was done purely so I didn’t have to cut wood shorter – I am lazy. The first bed has had two new courses of gravel boards atop the current one (which is basically sunken into the ground, so none existent) and the other bed had one new course, but I then painted the first course to match. These beds are now 6ft square and about 12” deep.

Ta-dah!

The plan for them now is to line the bottom with cardboard - this will suppress weed growth by blocking out light, and also gives the wormies something to munch on, - and then fill them with compost, dirt and chicken poop. I have been reading a lot about No Dig Gardening, inspired by Sharpen Your Spades on Instagram – I am very jealous of his soil condition!! These two large beds are going to be both my no dig trial, and my Square Foot Gardening trial beds.

So for no dig, you basically… don’t dig. I spend a lot of time every winter digging, turning, breaking up and weeding all of my beds. It takes ages and it knackers me out and does my back in. It also seemingly hasn’t done much to improve the soil. Over the years I have tried digging in compost, ‘soil improver’ (weed seed city), and sand to improve drainage. None of it has worked. The plan is that I can get enough compost from a variety of sources to fill these huge beds mostly to the top (about 1-2” shy of the top) and then each year I can just add new, fresh compost to the top and let the worms and beetles and other small critterbugs do the job of turning it over and aerating it.

For the square foot gardening I am going to mark the top edges of the gravel boards every 12” or so, then lay some twine across and pin it in place to make a grid of 6 x 6 squares on both beds. I will then plant crops within these squares, quite tightly packed, which will maximise my use of space, reduce weed growing areas, remove the need to hoe, and hopefully make for a very productive small space. I am going to grow things like carrots, parsnip, radish, beetroot, chard, spring onion, lettuce, and then maybe a courgette in the centre 4 squares surrounded by marigolds, because pretty!

The next task is finding enough compost (and money!) to fill both beds…………………………………

"I know there's food in here somewhere, hooman!"

My first queen bumble of the year - a tree bumblebee

Blue tit

Anxiety Crochet

This past week and a bit I have been quite anxious but I’m not sure why. I have started to make some small amigurumi hearts to keep my hands occupied. I haven’t done any amig for a long time so it’s nice to get back to where I started with crochet and to have a break from making blankets. I am using scraps of Stylecraft DK.

Little hearts on my Drop In The Pond afghan

I am nearly finished with Cosmic CAL – I have started the final part this week! So hopefully it will be done by the end of the week. I always get sad when I finish a blanket; it becomes such a big part of your regular routine to work on it, and then it’s just done and gone and finished. I am going to have some blanket downtime while I finish up some other amigurumi I started last year (!), and then I’m going to sit and have a think about colours for my next blanket…

My temperature blanket is over halfway done (well, a quarter done as I'm making two six-month blankets instead).

London: Day Three

Our last half-day in LDN. Our train home was at lunchtime, so we didn’t have any major plans for day three. At breakfast we had the excitement of seeing two Great Crested Grebes in the dock in the middle of Canary Wharf!!! No one else noticed or cared, but I was very excited.

The walk back to Canary Wharf tube was quite bewildering. For all the money in CW, you’d think they could afford a) proper grass, and b) someone to maintain it. But no; astro turf everywhere. The mind boggles.

We got up to Baker St and found a little café to sit in for a while, and another friend of mine came to meet us. It is the first time we have seen him since we were last in LDN for his wedding, two years ago!

I have really enjoyed being back in London - I love it in small doses, and I’d love to come back for another mini break and explore a different part. I want to stand on the Prime Meridian line at Greenwich because I am a nerd, and I want to explore varying parks. I also really like the tiled artwork in the tube stations.

So at the end of three days we have added new things to Our Map, and I have grand plans for more visits. However, London is just so expensive – we got Oyster cards and spent £33 on public transport between midday Saturday and midday Monday. When you’re on a budget to start with it can be quite restrictive as we just couldn’t afford to top up the cards and venture beyond zone two.

Still, we had fun and it was nice to get away and spend time with David. I even ate actual tomatoes with the seeds in on my pizza, so it must’ve been good.

London: Day Two

Day Two in the Big Smoke saw us navigate the ‘continental breakfast’ at the hotel which included fries……

We / I had decided that I wanted to go to the London Wildfowl and Wetland Trust site near Hammersmith. David has been before, and we are members of the WWT so get free entry to their sites. We got the tube across LDN and then a bus across Hammersmith Bridge – I have driven across this bridge with Kyle and I love it. Such an impressive structure!

Sir Peter Scott and Swan

It rained

There are no flamingos at this WWT site (there are LOADS at Slimbridge which is why we keep going) but we had a nice walk round dropping into the hides and having a shufti. We saw lots of herons and cormorants, geeses and ducks, otters!!, and David jokily tried to stroke a pigeon but the stupid thing didn’t move, so he actually managed to brush it with his hand.

Grumpy heron waiting for otter feeding time

They also have a Wild Walk (it is probably / possibly aimed at children, which meant me and David definitely had to have a go). Stepping stones, balancing logs and rope bridges across the water! It was slippery but great fun.

Following my Saturday afternoon bath I had to top up with bubble bath, and I once again sent David some beautiful, romantic, gorgeous, truly amazing selfies while I was in the bath on Sunday…

Honestly I don’t know why he’s still interested. It definitely isn’t the selfies keeping him here.

The plan for Sunday evening was to meet up with a friend from school, but when we (finally) found a route through all the roadworks and building sites on Canary Wharf, we discovered that the ‘Spoons kitchen was shut, so David and I wandered around before deciding to go for pizza. I had a funny tummy so we didn’t meet my friend (which means I need to plan another jaunt to LDN), but the pizza was pretty swell. So was my tummy afterwards.

As we meandered our way back to the hotel we discovered………… more fossils! Canary Wharf is FULL of geology. The building stones are amazing – lots of granites and gneisses and marbley types. This particular stone I think is unpolished Jura Marble, full of fossils including these belemnites. David also took time to pose with every statue we found.

Belemnite 

An early night – we walked over 20,000 steps on day two! – so we retreated to bed with Dantes Peak on the tellybox.

Infinity mirrors in the lifts. Lots of fun. 

London: Day One

As part of my new job I had six days annual leave to use up before the end of the financial year so this week I am off work! David and I have managed to synchronise our days off, so we went down to the Big Smoke for a mini break. We went on the train cuz it was hella cheaper than parking the car in Canary Wharf for 48 hours (seriously - £15 cheaper on the train and it was only £40 on the train!!).

Ok, so really we went because last year sometime my best buddy bought us, as well as him and his wife, tickets for a show. Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem, acoustic, solo, in a church.  Beaut!! Didn’t want to miss this.

David and I went down on Saturday morning to maximise our time in London. By some kind of sheer dumb luck I managed to pick a hotel which has a granite façade, fossils in the foyer, and a marble and gneiss lined bathroom. Geologists, eh. Can’t take them anywhere.

I also managed to book a hotel with a long bath!! I do like having a soak in a hot bubble bath. Whilst in the bath I like to send seductive selfies to both my fiancé and a friend of mine (no shame). An example of such a selfie is below: ladies – please don’t be jealous of my amazingly effective come hither eyes…

Just kidding. I couldn’t do a seductive selfie if I tried (and I wouldn’t post it here (hi, mom!)).

The venue was beautiful; a church which is used as a church, but in the evening becomes a beautiful acoustic gig venue. Clara and I had hot chocolate with mini mallows AND cream (this is extra luxurious because I don’t actually particularly like hot chocolate, but I really fancied one, so I indulged and it was GOOD). Kyle and I had a little cry as we tend to do at Brian gigs, and Dave bless him doesn’t really know any of his music so just sat there while I wept.

On the way back to the tube we dropped into a paper shop and I discovered white Twix bars that I’d seen advertised, so I helped myself. So many good things in one small day! Truly a wonderful way to spend a Saturday. I took a selfie with said Twix but was too excited when I ate it so no pics of the actual bar, but ya know, it was a Twix with white chocolate, and it tasted just like a Twix. No surprises.

And so, back to the hotel for some fossil hunting before bed…

Osyter shell

And here's a vid I took of Brian Fallon:

Allotment Life: A Sunny February Day

I spent a happy few hours in the freezing cold but glorious sunshine, pottering around doing bits and pieces. Momma P has decided she doesn’t want the purple pansy boards that I had been painting, so we bought new wood and new paint and hers are now going to be willow green. I learned that I can fit 6 gravel boards in my little car, so I ferried some up to the plot, painted the other sides of them, fed the fox, fed the birds, and then went home to get the next lot of wood.

Probably not even twenty minutes later I was back at the allotment with the wood. The fox had been and licked her plate clean – 50p dog food must be yummy – and in the process of sorting out the shed I discovered that a something had been having a party in the bird seed. A large hole in the bag, seed EVERYWHERE, and some little poops too. I started sweeping up, and then I uncovered some bits of hessian sacking. I keep hessian in my shed as It Might Come In Useful ™. Well I guess for this wee rodent it came in very useful; I found two entrances to nests in the bundle! I pulled it all out so I could tidy up the bits and then I found a shed spider or two, so I decided I had done enough tidying. The loose seed and hessian bits went out under the plum tree, and the remains of one of the sacks went behind the compost bin for something to use as nest material.

I have been testing my new phone and its camera – I am in love – I set up a bench about 5m away from the plum tree with the feeders in, and I saw three great tits, two blue tits, two robins, and a dunnock. Then! I was just sat enjoying the sun and an egret flew over!!

Great Tit and a Dunnock butt

Robin and two Great Tits (snigger)

Blue Tit

David then appeared and we did another jaunt home to bring up the paving slabs and the rest of the timber, so I still have loads to do. More wood to paint, slabs to install, and then raised beds needs to be built. I have also done all the hinges on the shed doors so it looks like Fort Knox, but I am glad that it now all matches. They do look good, and were only £1.50 each.

I really want to start digging out around my fruit bushes before they start to grow. I want to clear the grass, dig a trough around them, lay newspaper or card down, then build a frame of bricks or timber and fill it with aggregate. I need to stop the grass and brambles growing up around the fruit bushes, but I can’t do any digging yet as the ground is solid.

A very successful day in the sunshine. I feel like I accomplished quite a lot, but I have infact just added even more things to the to do list!