Crochet
July has been a creative month; I’ve now made 50 different
things this year! Many of these were multiples of the same things, so I’ve
probably made over 200 individual things so far. This month, I have made,
fixed, or finished:
·
Cotton cloths
·
Bride and groom mice
·
Mini pigs in blankets (sold three of them)
·
Huge plushie pig in a blanket
·
Oompa loompa cuddly doll
·
Granny square jumper for me
·
Mandala for a vase to stand on
·
Worked on the hoopoe a bit more
·
West Mercia Search & Rescue kayak team
member doll, complete with water safety kit and paddle
·
A glasses strap
·
Started a 100% wool shell stitch neck warmer
I haven’t had any more sales via Etsy and I’ve struggled to
maintain the desire to keep promoting it. Daily or bust, and at the mo it is
bust. There’s a fine line between having enough stuff to demonstrate what I can
do and to generate commissions, and having too much choice and too much stuff
on the shop page. Ho hum. Please buy stuff. My etsy shop is here.
Allotment
I have spent some of my leaving present money from HWT to
buy new herb plants for the allotment, and then I spent a happy day digging out
the herb bed, ready to replant it. Except it all fell apart, and then I decided
I should just join the two beds into one big bed, but I’d already cut all the
timber up at this point, so now I need to buy more timber. And more compost. And
more plants! What a shame.
I also weeded out another little bed on the plot and decided
that it would become the marjoram bed, and it can just grow and take over the
space and hopefully be contained in there. And then I decided that the gap
between that bed and the one next to it that had garlic in was a waste of
space, and I needed to block it up and make another growing space. So I did
that too. No pictures of any of this because my phone is a crock of shite and desperately
needs replacing, and the camera doesn’t work.
I am going to spend some time working on the paths next. I de-teaseled
the water butt path again, fourth time this summer. I have been given some
scrap pond liner so I am going to use it to smother the grass and dock in
between the beds. A big job but it needs doing.
Exercise
I tried to hula hoop every day that I was signed off sick,
and I did it most days. And then I promptly stopped when I went back to work.
Work
I was signed off for a couple of weeks of July, and by the
time I went back, I only had 8 days left at work. I had a couple of days of
annual leave to use up, so I had a long weekend at the end of the month before I
started my new job on August 1st.
one of my leaving presents
Mental Health
Is getting better! The sick leave helped massively. Still a
long way to go though.
Cat Life
He’s such a good good good good boy! Except he’s had really
bad poops for over five weeks now. Really sloppy and wet. He also went through
a phase of eating grass and leaving us piles of presents in different parts of
the house. Poorly boy. We have had to change his diet from wet to dry food and
he is not at all happy about it.
Physical Health
…………… No comment!
Money
Had a tense day when I was due to be paid but then wasn’t,
and was seriously having to consider a transfer off my credit card to be able
to cover my standing orders. But it all got sorted and it’s all fine.
Garden
The gladioli have been utterly FABULOUS and I’ve been
picking cornflower, calendula, and herbs to hang to dry pretty much every other
day. I have run out of curtain pole!! I have engaged the use of a clothes horse
for more drying space. A lot of flowers have had a second flush. The purple lupin
has thrown up a new flower spike which is blue with white bits.
Other Stuff
We went to Whitchurch for a day which we have now formally
renamed Shitchurch, and then we ended up on a massive diversion almost into
Wales to try and get home because a road through Shrewsbury was closed. We did
however have a nice lunch at Alderford Lakes, and I bought a v nice beer.
We had a day mooching around antiques places and I (we) now
have a set of cast iron pans to be used on the log burner for cooking. A stew
pot and two lidded saucepans. We also bought a second-hand table from the
antiques centre in Bridgo which is an old pub table. Pine top with cast iron
legs. And then we bought two chairs to go with it. And we have sat at it for
dinner maybe two times since then, and it has become a dumping ground.
