Walking East Stoke's lanes: April 2026

Just one walk around the lanes near where we live this month, but it was so good to be out in the blue-est of blue skies - and so early on in April too. But first these gutter loving dandelions on School Lane caught my eye - very resourceful of them to grow there, and great for the insects but not so much for the upkeep of the roads in the village.

A row of flowering dandelions growing in the gutter

I did warn you there were very blue skies didn’t I? I took this as we spotted a couple of large birds - buzzards or kites - but couldn’t work out which so took the photo, and at a quick glance you can’t even see the small bird shapes, can you? If you look closely there’s one about two inches above the tree to the left…

A very blue sky - with a small bird shape to the above left of the tree
A brick archway on Church Lane in the dappled sunshine

But anyway, our walk took us down School Lane and onto Church Lane, which took us down to the River Trent. It was much drier than our aborted attempt last month, where we had the wrong shoes on for the amount of mud! It’s amazing how much difference a month can make, but as you’ll see, it has.

A view along the lane with fields on the left and a wooded area on the right
Looking down towards the river trent, with a tree on the left handside and hedges/boundaries of the fields either side of the track
cracked mud - showing how much drier the path is this month

This month we could see the jetty - and it’s probably the clearest we’ve been able to see it on all of our walks along this route. I’d not seen the sign for the, sadly no longer running, Fiskerton Ferry but we did today. It’s a shame it’s not running as there’s a nice looking pub on the opposite river bank!

The wooden jetty is clearly visible in the centre of the picture, despite the green vegetation either side of it
A much closer look at the wooden jetty, but still from the river bank
An old wooden table and plastic chairs discarded by the jetty

We also spotted possibly the remains of the ferry’s operations - an old wooden picnic table and some plastic chairs in the undergrowth. At least that’s what I’m hoping they’re from as I can’t believe anyone would dump them right on the river bank intentionally, but I guess you never know.

Looking through a metal barred gate at the sheep behind in the field

The skies were blue, and it was much warmer than we expected it to be - but there were no lambs yet. It wasn’t long though as not long after our walk there was the first ‘escaped lambs’ post in our village Facebook group. Two cheeky lambs had managed to get out onto the quiet lane, before being ushered back in by a concerned villager.

Escaped sheep (or lambs) is the best use ever of our village Facebook group. Fact.

Thanks for joining me for this update, if you enjoyed this post you may also like to see all of the posts in this series.

New to my craft room in April

Once again this month I’ve had some essential spend after somehow breaking my automatic threader on my Bernina. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but I do remember thinking how well my sewing was going, and feeling slightly pleased with myself. Next thing I knew something had fallen off, oops. The machine still works and I can thread the needle manually, but I’ve come to rely on the automatic threader, which to start with I wasn’t sure I’d ever use.

So a new one was dutifully ordered from where I bought the machine. And while I was on their site I happened to notice their sale section, so I added another bargain grey for my collection for the background to my floral fancy.

A new Bernina Threader Head and a pale grey bargain fat quarter

In some long awaited but equally unexpected news, one of the outstanding items from a pre-Christmas order arrived - the pink D-rings below. The final item remains out of stock and so a refund was given for this. It’s taken a while, and I was happy to wait as it wasn’t something I had an urgent need for, but thought I’d use at some point. Though at the time I probably had a use in mind, but I’ve no idea what that is right now!

Blue and green variegated thread and a pack of pink D-rings for bag/pouch making

This month I also ordered the gorgeous variegated blue and green thread, which I’m planning to use on my mystery block of the month quilt when the time comes. I also needed to buy some wadding for that quilt, as without that I wouldn’t have a quilt, and so now I’m also the proud owner of a 15 metre roll of wadding. Well, it’s actually less than that as I needed some for my first charity quilt of the year - more on that soon.

The next bundle of green fat quarters, ribbon and a spent glow stick are from our recent trip to Wales for my youngest niece’s wedding; the ribbon and the glow stick are from the favour bags, and the material I picked up on our look around Ludlow, and thought they’d be perfect for the start of my green collection for leaves for my at some point in the future floral fancy.

The wedding bundle: two green fat quarters, plus ribbon and a spent glow stick from the wedding favours

At the end of the month I was at the Quilt & Stitch Village show in Uttoxeter, and I did make a few purchases there, including these scraps costing £1.50 at the Project Linus stand - and yes, that’s the charity I donate my charity quilts too if you thought it sounded familar.

Brightly coloured scraps - checks and flowers for £1.50 for charity
fabric with onions and another with beetroots, in between is a complementing plain fat quarter

I never expected to buy any fabric with onions or beetroots on, but that’s what I did - there was just something about them that grabbed me, and while i was there I also picked up a toning plain to save me the headache of finding one when I need it. I’m not sure how I’ll use them yet, but they do make me smile.

I also could walk past yet more newspaper like text on fabric, it could be said that my curiosity definitely was piqued (again).

newspaper print on fabric - yes please - the picture shows the dictionary definition of Curiosity

The final addition to my craft room this month is a book, on an embroidery discipline that I wasn’t sure I wanted to tackle. But I’ve been one over by the sheer number of geometric patterns included in this book, and my love for hand sewing. I’m looking forward to reading more about the basic principles and seeing where this will take me.

Stitching Sashiko book - a new kind of stitching to embrace

So that’s another month in my craft room, check out my previous updates for earlier additions, and remember to let me know below what you’ve added to your craft supplies this month.

Post Comment Love 1 - 4 May

Hello there, welcome to this week’s #PoCoLo - a relaxed, friendly linky which I co-host with Suzanne, where you can link any blog post published in the last week. We know you’ll find some great posts to read, and maybe some new-to-you blogs too, so do pop over and visit some of the posts linked, comment and share some of that love.

Please don’t link up posts which are older as they will be removed, and if you see older posts are linked then please don’t feel that it’s necessary to comment on those. If you were here last week it was great to have you along, if you’re new here we’re pleased you’ve joined us.

It’s been a quiet week for me online, but busy in real life. I’ve made it to a garden show - my picture this week is the rhododendron which MOH chose for our garden - and a quilt show in two successive days, and even snuck some new sewing projects in as well. I’ve now a stack of ideas I want to post about, but haven’t got to them yet - I’m sure I will at some point.

It’s a bank holiday here in the UK so we’re keeping the linky open an extra day so there’s a little bit more time to join in, have a great week.

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