Most Popular Blog Posts of 2019

I have finally given in and treated myself to a shiny new modern laptop. It is smaller and lighter than my previous lappy, but more importantly, it is FASTLY FAST. So fast! So swish! So responsive! So difficult to type because I am used to a larger and more clunky slow keyboard! Nevermind, I am sure I will quickly get used to it.

One of the perks of having a laptop that ya know, works, is that I can actually load things on the internet without waiting three weeks. In the process of doing this and having a play, I discovered some interesting things about my blog.

I never get a lot of page views on this blog. I am lucky if one post gets up to 20 views. Lots of those views, however, are me – checking for typos and the picture spacing etc. I have made peace with this as I don’t really, actually, truthfully write this blog for anyone else. I write it for me as a memory aid, to document what I’ve done and where I’ve been. It’s super great for me to look back on the allotment over the years and to see how things have changed.

January 2019 seemed to be peak blog views, and I don’t know why. All of my top four page view numbers took place last year, with literally thousands of views each. I know for a fact that I didn’t check typos *that* many times!

Number four, with 1890 views is this blog post, New Year,Who Dis.

Number three, with 1976 views is A Busy Week On The Allotment.

Number two is my Allotment December 2018 update, with weirdly 2018 views.

The top spot at number one is my Mitred Granny Square Crochet Blanket post. Weird, this one, as I don’t particularly like the blanket, and it is nowhere near being finished. This post has 2038 views?!

Funny little world ain’t it. My blog has 22,452 overall page views since I started it back in 2016. It was intended to share Adventures, hence the title. Trips to see geological sites, holiday adventures to see new places and the like. It has however just become a place to document what I’ve done, and I’m ok with that. Quite a lot of what I post is about new things, or new places that David and I have visited. I also discovered that my blog is fractionally more popular in Ukraine than it is in the UK.

It has taken a fraction of the time to write this blog. I LOVE THIS LAPTOP. It is so swish and nice and responsive. Also, it has all of the keyboard buttons which helps.

Here's a bonus picture of Taffy-Cat.

Good Things Jar 2020

I have done this a few times before, in 2013, 2015, and 2017. I recently sorted out my jars and stashed them at the back of a shelf, and I’m not getting them down again now to take photos for this blog!

The idea behind the first jar was to document things that made me happy, made me smile, made me laugh, and made me glad I didn’t succeed in killing myself whilst in the grips of depression as a teenager. I had some pretty rough times as a teenager. As a side note, when sorting out jars and things over the festive period, I also found all the letters from varying doctors and mental health crisis teams – wow, was I ill. It’s amazing how much you forget, or electively shut out. I think I have suppressed it because I never want to go there again, and I don’t want to relive it, and I don’t want to relive it for anyone else either. It belongs in the past and so it shall stay.

Anyway, back to the jars. I have had depression for as long as I can remember, but only got diagnosed about 14 years ago. I have been medicated since about 2006/7. The Good Things jars were a therapy technique. I would write down little things, and then whenever I had a bout of sadness or full-blown depression, I could go through the jar and relive the happy things, the Good Things. I don’t do these jars every year, but over the festive period I felt that this year would be a good jar year, and so here we are.

All it is, is a kilner jar from Wilkos. I use coloured paper (also from Wilkos), and I use coloured pens. I like colourful things. It makes life fun! As an ex-goth, it hurts to say that. I try to write something every day, but often I forget (story of my life), so I keep a list on my phone and then write them up in one big session. I put the date on each bit of paper. The idea is that by the end of the year, I will be struggling to fit any more in because it’ll be so full. I put personal stuff in, but also things relating to work, to David, to wider family, and also inside jokes with friends. Sometimes I print screengrabs of messages off and put them in, and sometimes I print silly pictures off and put them in too. One of the jars contains a bit of a dreadlock, and another contains a strip of broomstick lace crochet.

When I did a jar whilst I was uni, lots of people knew about it and it was their aim to make it into the jar. A lot of them did in the end. I have a lot of memories stored in jars, and they’ll only ever make any sense to me. They are a great memory jogger, and a lot of fun to go through.

Some of my Good things, so far.

A Very Medical Start To The Year

Last September I went for my routine smear test. It was my third one and I remember the lady asking me about my job while she scraped my cervix for a sample. I was in and out in ten minutes and didn’t think about it after that. She said my results would take about ten weeks to come through as there was a delay to testing samples and we worked out that it would arrive about a week before christmas.

So December arrived, and on the day I broke up from work for the holidays, I had a letter from the cervical testing people at the NHS. I had abnormal cells which required further investigation, and I am also high-grade HPV positive. HPV has been all over the news as teenage girls are now being vaccinated against it whilst at school. I looked at getting the vaccine a couple of years ago but it was set to cost around £550, so I didn’t bother.

I then had another letter arrive telling me I had an appointment at the Birmingham Womens Hospital, for a colposcopy to look at the cervix and poke it some more. The logical, rational side of my brain knew there was nothing to worry about, that the chances of cancer were so so SO slim, and that it was just a precaution to get checked out. However, the anxiety side of my brain went into overdrive. I had a couple of meltdowns over christmas and spent a lot of time worrying. I didn’t want to start the new decade as a cancer patient.

The day I was due back at work was the day of the hospital appointment, so off we went. I was so terribly anxious. I cried in the morning because I couldn’t find my vaseline in my hand bag, I cried in the car, and I panicked internally as we waited. When the nurse called me to walk me to the room I had an anxiety attack in the corridor and cried when I got into the room. I had a little panic in the changing room because I couldn’t work the hospital gown so just waddled out, holding it closed behind me.

The actual procedure was fine, and quite interesting. I saw my cervix close up on a telly screen and the lady prodded my baby hole with a cotton bud. I didn’t feel a thing (except discomfort when she put the speculum in). Fortunately, and to much relief, I didn’t even need a biopsy. I am officially abnormal but not enough to require treatment. There isn’t much that can be done about the HPV except wait and see what my body does with it. I have to have a smear test in a years time rather than waiting three.

I really hate my brain and the way it works sometimes. It is so hard to suppress the anxious brain and to let the logical brain takeover. Despite all this, I am very glad for the NHS and the ladies at the hospital. They took their time to calm me down and spoke very clearly about risks of cancer and likelihood.

A week later and completely unrelated to my cervix, I had a bout of incredibly bad heartburn. I have suffered with this for many a long year. I used to be prescribed 3 litres of gaviscon a month and would just drink it out of the bottle, and eventually it stopped working. To this day I still rarely take gaviscon or rennie, as it doesn’t work. I mentioned this to my doctor when I was getting my other medication, and I left the room with a sample pot for some poop, and a prescription for acid-reducing medication.

So now I am being tested for bacteria levels in my stomach (they can measure the levels by looking at your poop), and have medication to reduce acid levels. I have taken them for a few days now and it is honestly life changing. I haven’t had heartburn! For three days in a row!! This is a minor miracle!!! I might need antibiotics and depending how that goes, possibly a tube down my gullet to look at my stomach.

I am so very happy to live in a world where I have access to this level of healthcare for no upfront cost. No questions asked. I do pay for prescriptions now, but it’s a small price to pay for what we get back. I haven’t paid anything to the nurse or the hospital, or to send off some poop.

This has been quite a long TMI sort of blog, but I just want to end it by saying – if you have a cervix, please go for your smear. I have spoken to some people about what’s happened to me over the festive break and quite a few ladies have said “oh you’re so good I never go for mine”. It is such a simple procedure, takes less than ten minutes, and the nurse does not give a flying fuck about the state of your pubes.

The poop sample pot comes with a poop scoop

2019: A Year In Crochet

Last year was a blankety sort of year. I finished the first half of the temperature blanket, started and finished the second half of the temperature blanket, finished Cosmic CAL, and made 182 granny squares for the battenberg blanket. 

In between blanket making, I have also been making pennants for outdoor bunting using coloured garden twine. I still have lots more to make before I start sewing it all together (I hate sewing). I have also started a body warmer/miners vest but I’m not sure if I like it enough to finish it. Last year I started making little hearts as an anxiety buster, but also as a way to use up scraps of yarn leftover from blanket making. I made David some fingerless gloves and I made his momma a new hat.

This year I need to focus on finishing off projects. I need to finish the Willendorf Venus that I started in 2018 but I crocheted her bum on back to front and haven’t worked on her since. I cannot start a new blanket until I’ve sewn all of my granny squares and edged them. I suppose I had better finish the body warmer thing, but I have no desire to do so.

Patterns where I've used them are linked in the image captions, but a lot stuff has been freehanded.

Davids Gloves, or one of them at least. No pattern. 

Little hearts

Temperature blanket part the first

Bunting. Started with a fdc 13, ch1 turn, dc 13, then decreased down alternate rows

Cosmic CAL

Battenberg squares

Temperature blanket second part

Using star stitch with chunky wool to make the body warmer. The stitch is great fun and very decorative, but this is three rows worth so it takes a lot of time and wool!

Momma B's hat. No pattern. Somehow I freehanded it.

Crochet Blanket Inspiration: Battenberg Granny Square Blanket

Well, I have finally finished making the required number of granny squares – 182 to be precise! I have decided to make a blanket that is 14 x 13 squares so it’ll easily be big enough for a double bed – and that’s without a border. I have done ten of each colourway and then two extra. The next step is to sew in all the ends – I sew over yarn tails wherever possible but with granny squares I always end up with bits to sew. I hate sewing.

I laid out and organised all of the squares over the festive break. Every time I take them out of the project bag it takes a stupid amount of time to put them all in their piles of matching squares. This time I decided to get them all together and then thread some yarn through a corner to keep them all together. Some are complete granny squares with all the ends sewn away and the grey border added.

There are eighteen different colourways (!) and I have used three different colours. It really makes my eyes and brain hurt when I try to sort them all out. I am trying to sew a batch every evening which in theory means I’ll get through them all soon – but I just hate sewing so, so, so much. I had wanted to get it completely sewn together by new years, but maybe I’ll aim for new years 2021…

Aims and Goals for 2020

I have re-read my Aim and Goals for 2019 blog post and I am happy to report that I didn’t achieve most of it.

Well, maybe not happy, but definitely not surprised. Despite having a new job I actually put on weight (2kg) and went up a clothes size. By the end of 2019 I felt more unfit than ever. My knees, hips and back ache and seize up quite often, and my lungs don’t seem to be able to hold as much air as they used to.

Over the festive break I challenged myself to hula hoop for at least ten minutes every day. I was off work for 2.5 weeks, and I hula hooped for most of them. There were six days that I didn’t hula, but on some of these I did other things like swimming. Since January started I have been doing some 30-day challenges that I downloaded from Google.

I am doing a water challenge (I tick off how many cups I have drunk during the day and try to get at least 64oz / 1.8L a day), a squat challenge (starts at 20, ends at 100), a push up challenge (starts at 15, ends with 40 – this one is going ok so far), and a plank challenge (start with 20sec and end with 5min).

Some are going better than others (15 days in)! I am not drinking as much as I should but I am being restrictive over what I include to tick off. I don’t include the milk on my breakfast, the hot chocolates, or any wet fruits such as orange, pepper, apples or grapes. The plank challenge is exactly that – I held a plank for 1 minute without breaks but am struggling to get past a minute. Squats are definitely helping my knees but I can’t do more than 30 in one go. I am still hula hooping, and Momma P and I have gotten back into swimming once a week, and we’re also trying to go for a brisk walk each weekend. I now also have a mountain bike so David and I are going to start cycling too. I am now taking cod liver oil supplements which I think are helping. 

So goals for this year in terms of fitness are:

·         Walk every weekend with Momma P

·         Swim at least twice a month with Momma P

·         Cycle with David. I haven’t been on a bike for nearly twenty years so this is scary.

·         Keep up with squats, planks and push ups

·         Start yoga and go at least twice a month.

Another rather large aim for this year is to actually, properly, definitely move out!! I have been saying and wanting this for years but it just hasn’t been possible without the risk of throwing myself into major debt. David has had some money from his pension pot which means we can afford a deposit now, so we just need to iron out some details and find somewhere to live…

My allotment is ten years old and still floody, so a goal for this year is to get more raised beds built towards the bottom of the plot so that I can actually grow things. I have been quite good at the plot this year, budgeting money for it each month absolutely has helped and made such a difference. I am going to keep doing this during 2020.

Life goals then for 2020:

·         Move out

·         Cycle more and get confident at it

·         Not go up another clothes size

·         Keep saving money no matter how little

·         Actually type up my Tree Warden notes. I’ve been saying I’m going to do this for at least six months so this year I will actually do it. I did start over the festive season but my laptop is so clunky it doesn’t motivate me to do anything.

·         Be brutal with tat. I love tat. I love junk and crap and STUFF. Over the festive season I sorted out SO MUCH and sent six large bags of things to a local charity shop and one black bag to the tip. I still have so much that, at the moment, I am holding on to – but why? They have been shoved in a cupboard for a few years and they will probably remain shoved in a cupboard. So this year I am going to try not to accumulate more tat and junk, and then maybe have another brutal sort out when David and I move.

·         Finish at least four overdue crochet projects. Ahhhh, WIPs. I have so many of you. Bunting, Willendorf Venus, body warmer, granny square blanket, random stripe blanket, little hearts. Some of you WILL get finished this year!

David and I saw two starling murmurations last year which was another of my goals. We didn’t make it to Scotland and we didn’t climb any mountains either. I also didn’t get my hair cut more than once a year (there’s a surprise) – Momma P did it for me in the bathroom just after new years.

Crochet Inspiration: Pattern-free Fingerless Gloves

I have made myself lot of pairs of crochet gloves over the years. Dragon-scale stitch rainbow woollens, merino wool overgloves (designed to be big and loose and baggy, so I can wear them over sleeves of jumpers and coats), and big fat fingerless hand warmers. I have made gloves for friends and family, but never for David. He does like to complain that I never make him anything, and I’ve never really had a good response.

He wears a lot of Velcro, which is a yarns nemesis. He doesn’t like bright colours, unlike me. He hates fingerless gloves with a passion, but I have never done close-finger gloves before.

Last year, after he broke and dislocated a knuckle, he was told to wear fingerless gloves to keep the joint and muscles warm which would help with recovery. I decided I would make him a pair of woollen gloves to keep his fingers toasty. While we were away on holiday on the Isle Of Wight we fell into an alpaca farms 'yarn barn', where I bought four balls of wool. A dark, graphite grey. A blend of sheep and alpaca. Not too thin but not too chunky. It had specks of blue in it. It wasn’t my first choice; I had actually picked up some khaki greens, but David preferred the grey. I didn’t start making these while we were away as I was frantically trying to finish my temperature blanket.

 I took the yarn and a hook with me when I took Momma P to the open surgery at her doctors when she was poorly sick – it gave me something to do while we were sitting. I started with a foundation double crochet row (as I utterly HATE working into chains), worked up a rectangle, measured it on Mommas arm, and decided it was far too long and needed to be two thirds frogged. Undone. Ripped out. Gone. Oh well! Such is life, and the joy of not using a pattern.

The aim was to do a rectangle in rows, and then fold it over and stitch it up, leaving a thumb hole. This is a method I have done before for gloves and arm warmers and it works quite well, especially for decorative stitches that work better in rows rather than rounds. I did reverse DC – so  a row of normal double crochet working right to left as normal, putting the hook in from the front. The second row was 1ch to turn, work right to left, but insert the hook from behind. The finished effect is a flat piece worked in rows that doesn’t look as if it has been worked in rows. It is fiddly to get the hang of, especially if the tension is tight, but it does look good. When I finished the rectangles I also decided to turn it inside out, so wrong-side facing. This is simply because the stitches looked nicer and more textured on the back. I held them together with stitch markers and measured them on Davids hands to get the thumb holes in the right places. It was here that I realised that I would need to shape the rectangles to better fit the hand, as there was a gaping corner on each one! I needed to do this before doing the cuff. I quite literally did another row of DC, but I decreased two stitches together three times on the side that needed pinching it. It worked very well and was the right amount of shaping.

I had drawn around one of Davids hands on some paper so that when I did the finger tubes I could measure the length properly. I am not known for being accurate. I did the thumb tubes next, simply DC worked in rounds to the desired length.

Next up was the ribbed cuff where the glove fits snug onto the wrist. I have made these before but had forgotten the technique so it took a while to get into the swing of it. I made it on one glove, was a bit unsure, got David to try the glove on, and realised I hadn’t done it right AT ALL – so that was another thing to be frogged. Unfortunately I sew things a little too well which meant I had to literally cut it off and rip the stitches out one by one. I then redid the cuff, properly, and was much happier with the result.

To work out the spacings for the fingers, I put the glove on my own hand and used stitch markers to segregate the fingers. Again, I did DC in the round for each finger tube. This was also trial and error and I had to redo some fingers as the tubes were too narrow and David couldn’t even get his finger in it! Eventually I worked out the optimum number of stitches per finger and got them done. I hate sewing ends away. Where possible I stitched over the yarn tail but at the ends of each finger I had a huge tail that needed sewing. A night on the sofa (under my temperature blanket) and I sat sewing.

Voila! The gloves were done. I wrapped them up and gave them to David and he loves them. I don’t know what has happened to his stupid fingers but despite the amount of measuring, trying, measuring again, adding extra rows to fingers, making sure they were all the same length – it turns out that his fingers are stupid and are all odd lengths. The gloves fit differently on both hands and I didn’t want to sit and add more rows to the fingers. In the end I sewed a stitch knot of red wool onto the back of the right hand so he knows which glove goes on which hand!

I am very pleased how they turned out, considering I free-handed it all. They are snug and cosy, and I know he wears them regularly at work. Maybe though next time I’ll use a pattern.

Allotment Life: 2019 roundup

It has been quite a busy and productive year on the plots! This year, I have been an allotment holder for ten whole years, and Momma P has had her own for a year. We have both kept Wickes in business with our monthly orders of timber, pebbles, paving slabs and corner posts, and Plot 31 is more colourful than ever thanks to Cuprinol wood paint. I hope B&Q decide to extend their peat-free compost range because I keep buying it, and I'm going to need a lot more this year!

Viviparous germination of teasel seed heads - they germinate while still on the momma plant!

Projects achieved this year include:

·         New shed roof, for which David missed (an apparently) very important football match

·         New guttering and waterbutts with downpipes, for aforementioned new shed roof

·         Built more raised beds – the bean bed, herb bed, bulb bed, quince bed, almond tree bed, raspberry beds, and the big square beds.

·         A brassica cage on one of the big square beds to keep the pigeons off

·         New compost bins

·         Putting a tree stake in for the apple tree and pulling it back up to vertical. I hadn’t realised how horizontal it was…

New quince bed

Flower bed upgrade

Peat free compost by the van load!

Things I didn’t get around to doing include:

·         Putting the polytunnel up. This is on the list for 2020, now that I have decided for sure where it is going and how it is going to be set out on the inside.

·         Archway between raised beds over the centre path. Also on the list for 2020!

·         Laying slabs in front of the shed. It really needs dry weather so we’re not digging in slop. I need to buy more sand too for bedding in the slabs.

·         Putting the solitary bee box on the stake in the herb bed. I was going to, and I even bought a shelf bracket for it, but then bees moved in and I didn’t want to disturb them while they were laying eggs.

·         Putting gates on the compost bins. I kind of like them without doors as it is easier and less faff to tip a wheelbarrow in, so I might not put gates on them. Also I know the fox likes to sleep in the compost, especially when it is full of grass cuttings.

Plot 4

Plot 31 is finally starting to come together and look like how I imagined it all those years ago when I was 20 (!). I think we all thought I’d give up after a year, so to have been there for ten years is quite impressive. I am looking forward to getting back up the plot and get more stuff built. I really want to conquer the high water table this year as best I can and build more beds lower down the plot. I effectively lose a third of the available growing space every year because it floods so badly.

David built a flower bed into the middle bit between the compost bins. This year it had nasturtium and mesembryanthemum. 

Painted lady butterfly

We saw a chaffinch near the gate to the allotment last week, and I saw a greenfinch in the allotment site in August. I have also seen great spotted and green woodpeckers, jays, long tailed tits, and loads of sparrows, blue tits, great tits, and magpies. It has been a great year for bees, so this year I want more solitary bee houses and maybe some bird boxes in the taller trees behind the shed. I am also going to dig a wildlife pond – not sure where yet – and also install a new bird feeding station. I am going to cut back the plum trees, which is where we currently feed the birds so I need to give them somewhere else to go.