This July...

It’s been a busy July, and time has flown by and felt in short supply. So much so that I’m writing this post a day later than I usually would, but sometimes life just happens doesn’t it?

This month we’ve celebrated three years in our new home, and that too has just flown by. I’ve spent a week cat sitting for our neighbour’s two beautiful kitties who rather obligingly made themselves available for tickles, conversations and extra treats every time I visited, which was much appreciated.

It’s continued to be hot - parts of the UK are on its fourth heatwave, but it’s just three for us - and that’s three too many in my book. Watering the pots in the garden has become a nightly thing, and I’m now resolved more than ever to get things out of pots and into the ground - but of course it’s still too hot, and the ground too hard, to dig any new beds so my genius plan, hatched way back in May is still on hold. But I am starting to harvest a some tomatoes, with more to come and a few strawberries too so it’s not all bad.

We’ve celebrated MOH’s birthday and this year he chose to cook picanha steak (also known as top or rump cap) on the barbecue. Our favourite farm shop butchered the steak for him and we knew it’d be good, and it was. Sadly though the gas on the barbecue ran out just as MOH started cooking, so everything had to move indoors instead. New gas was bought very soon afterwards too!

We’ve been watching the World Cup - I’d say we enjoyed England’s last game against France but perhaps that’s not quite the word, it was definitely nail biting and probably the best game of the competition, and at least we ended up on the right side of the unusually high 6-4 scoreline.

July is also the month of the Tour de France and so that’s also been on our screens, sometimes during the day when we’ve been avoiding the high temperatures outside. In cycling news closer to home MOH is back cycling with his club after his recent health scare and he achieved his next target on his personal recovery plan to complete the annual London to Dunwich overnight cycle, which at just over a hundred miles is no mean feat.

And with it being July, there was another update to dad’s birthday bunting - he had the best birthday present ever he told me, along with his drill and new shirts, and that was me taking him to the tip so he could get rid of the glass from the greenhouse which he’d removed after we’d been encouraging him not to use it anymore. It’s the small things, it seems.

At the start of the month even I dusted off my bike and we cycled to two nearby villages. In Elston we had a look around the allotments at their open day, and then we cycled onto nearby Sibthorpe for the last weekend in their open gardens series raising money for the church bells. They’d opened every month for five months, and it’s been great to see how their gardens progressed over the month, and quite honestly to see in some local back gardens. There’s a lot to be said of learning from your neighbours, especially which plants work well and it’s been great to meet the villagers opening up their gardens too. And there was huge slices of cake available in the church too, well, it would have been rude not to.

ON THE PLOT AT ELSTON

SIBTHORPE OPEN GARDENS

The logistics for MOH’s epic cycle ride were obviously more tricky than when we lived in London, and so we combined it a few nights in Suffolk, staying in Framlingham which is a pretty little town, and probably most well known for its famous resident, Ed Sheeran. So while we were there we took a stroll to see the infamous ‘castle on the hill’ but opted not to go in, and instead visited Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh and on the way home Ickworth House.

THE CASTLE ON THE HILL, FRAMLINGTON

SNAPE MALTINGS

We hadn’t been to Snape Maltings for a while - since 2014 it turned out - and it was good to revisit to see what was new, and like the sculpture above what remained in place. We stopped at Ickworth House on our journey home, which appeared to break our journey into two equal sections, it too was a place we’d been before on a couple of occasions, the last time though was in 2017 when I expect the gardens, the grass especially, were a lot greener than on this visit.

ICKWORTH HOUSE

At my various sewing group meetings this month I’ve spent some time ‘playing’ with some of the pre-cut squares and sewn flying geese I picked up from someone else’s stash - though still need to finish those, and I’ve added to the number of completed houses for my villages, so village quilts 2 and 3 should be completed soon I hope. My aim is to finish them by the Linus Project sewing day at the start of September, so that they too can be donated with the more slowly growing this year pile of charity quilts that I have. It was great to take mum along with me to the Saturday morning sewing group, and even better when she offered to iron my blocks - she knows I’m not an ironing fan.

To end the month I spent the day at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham with my SIL and we saw so many beautiful quilts, more than I could photograph to be honest. But so much inspiration and talent on show, and of course there were a few purchases made throughout the day, as well as the workshop to create our own appliquéd guinea fowl.

Mine still has a way to go before it remotely resembles the gaggle of guinea fowl it’s supposed to, but with two irons between around twenty of us there was always going to be a queue. But I’ve relearnt and refreshed the technique from my rustic barn at a previous craft show, and so it’s something that I’ll finish at home.

NOT QUITE A GAGGLE OF GUINEA FOWL YET

Soon hopefully - and before I lose all the beaks!

And maybe time might slow down a little in August to give me a fighting chance…

This May...

Thankfully May has gone more to plan than last month, although the high temperatures towards the end of the month have thrown a spanner in the works slightly; while it’s been nice to see the sun having temperatures in the thirties on quite a few consecutive days it has meant I haven’t achieved as much as I’d hoped to. But then again it’s my birthday month and if you can’t take your birthday month more easy, then when can you?

I’ll share more next week about the genius plan for my garden, which was necessitated by the influx of quite a few unplanned plant purchases - some were for charity, and others were just too gorgeous to leave behind! But my plans are on hold until the warmer weather subsides a bit, as digging a new bed isn’t going to happen, not least because the ground is harder than it was!

The warmer weather has meant plenty more barbecues though, so that is definitely good news. Even though MOH is on what he’s called ‘light duties’ by the end of the month he was definitely up for barbecuing, and back to washing up. Result!

At the start of the month it was all about MOH taking it easy, which meant I had a lot more chores on my plate - obviously I didn’t mind and I know he’d do the same for me, but it was a lot. I learnt some new life skills this month, nothing too spectacular - well apart from cutting the grass which I haven’t done in over 20 years, but there was also charging the Ring doorbell (and the treasure hunt for the screwdriver), plus lifting everything because MOH couldn’t. But as I said by the end of the month he’s doing so much better - I know I’m being vague, but as I said before it’s not my story to share, but also I can’t write my blog completely ignoring it. So this is where we are right now, maybe another time I’ll share more.

My self imposed plant buying ban has well and truly been broken since our visit to the Newark Garden Show last month. I’ve bought some dahlias and cosmos on our visit to Flintham Hall which opened its Walled Garden as part of the National Garden Scheme for charity.

We also went along to the monthly Gardener’s Market at relatively nearby West Bridgford - and worked out afterwards we could get the bus next time, which would definitely help with my plant influx! We’d not been to West Bridgford before and it was great - it reminded us of a London village, full of the hubbub a Saturday morning brings and we stopped for brunch in Cote, something I’m sure we’ll be doing again. So discovering the Gardener’s Market on social media was a very good thing!

Our holiday plans have progressed and we are off to the Loire to stay in a chateau or two, breaking the journey with an overnight stop in Paris each way. There won’t be any cycling but we’re hoping for some walking, plenty of relaxing and temperatures that aren’t in the thirties!

We’re restricting ourselves to one large sized case, and a hand luggage size case as between as that’s as much as we can manage, so that’s made planning what to take more focussed than normal. Usually my packing ethos is ‘put it in, just in case’ but not this time, although I fully expect still to take too much. The more challenging thing is my shoe choices will be limited, which for anyone that knows me knows this will be hard - I’m better than I used to be, but then again I am the girl that took seven pairs of shoes (plus trainers) for a two week netball tour to South Africa, and I wore the lot of them!

It won’t surprise you that while I don’t know exactly what clothes I’m taking, I do know exactly what my holiday sewing project will be - that’s all packed!

I’ve mostly been slow stitching this month, and really enjoying it. I haven’t made too much progress on the dream birds pouch from last month as I decided I needed a new pouch for my holiday, as you do. And the pouch kit in my Advent Calendar seemed to be just the thing, though I was missing a piece of material, but sourcing another from my stash wasn’t an issue.

All was going well until the instructions said ‘quilt how you want’ which my brain took to mean use hand sewing to embellish the fabric and quilt it at the same time, so that’s what I did (see below), and once I’d done that the newly-substituted fabric looked plain by comparison, so that got a similar treatment.

I’m sure I’ll manage to complete it in time though…

I have managed to complete my mystery block of the month quilt top, and it’s looking great. I ummed and ahhed about the borders and how wide they should be and eventually made a decision to increase each one by an inch. I finished it at patchwork group this month, which was a really sensible thing to do as the village hall floor is way more spacious than mine!

Though now I’ll be putting pressure on myself to baste, quilt and bind it so it is really finished. But that means a temporary rearrangement of my craft room as that’s a lot of quilt and once it’s through the machine it needs to go somewhere, and the ten inches or so I have behind my sewing machine isn’t going to be enough!

But that’s at least next month’s problem.

This April...

As predicted April has indeed been busy, and it’s brought a few surprises with it too - not all of them necessarily wanted, but such as it is we’ve needed to embrace those and roll with it. It’s not my story, though clearly I’m affected but everyone is ok and it’s why my blog has been unexpectedly quieter than I’d planned these past few days. At some point I may share more, but not just yet.

The fields around us have turned a gorgeous shade of yellow, which I love, but which MOH quite literally sneezes at. Though he has discovered a major trigger for his hayfever, so there is that. It’s the first year we’ve seen so much rapeseed growing locally, it could be just the cycle of rotation though, at some point we’ll find out - it makes for a great picture though, doesn’t it?

The month started with a trip to Wales for my youngest niece’s wedding, and somehow the celebrations coincided with those two warm - actually quite hot - days. I’m not sure how they managed that, and I’m not sure they know either - but we’re all very glad it happened that way. Sunglasses were definitely needed rather than the cold weather options I’d been anticipating!

While we were there we had a look around Ludlow, and stopped off at Powis Castle on our journey home. I wasn’t prepared for the size of the 300 year old yew hedges there, and so it was a great garden for me, and a pleasant surprise!

I’ll be sharing more of my photos from there, but just wow to the size of these hedges - and to the job of keeping them in trim, that’s got to be quite a task.

It’s great to see the gardens waking up as spring really comes into its own, my garden has suddenly taken off and throughout the month the blossom on the crab apple tree has formed, blossomed and gone for another year - hopefully there’ll be plenty of crab apples later in the year.

Closer to home we enjoyed the Bluebell walk at local Flintham Hall. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many bluebells before, but I’m more than happy to do so again. I was pleased to learn that the gardens will also open in May as part of the National Gardens Scheme, so I’m looking forward to another visit to see a different part of the grounds.

It’s also the time of year for the Newark Garden Show and we went along on the first day of the show, this year armed with a ‘possible plant list’ - we did buy some of those, but we also bought off list, including a lilac rhododendron, which has been on a longer term wish list. Though for some reason my camera roll is of random shots like the one below, which I guess means it’s more inspiration and future shopping based, than just a day out.

We’ve been holiday planning and looking at returning to the Loire region of France, this time travelling all the way by train. If we’re lucky we may add some cycling to this, or we may just stick with some walking, but our plans include staying at a chateau or two, some wine tasting and return visit to the Chateau and gardens of Villandry.

We’ve had our first barbecue of the year - amazing for April - and tried a new to us restaurant in Nottingham, thoroughly enjoying our meal at Skein, so I’m pretty sure we’ll be back. There’s been a Portuguese wine tasting in Newark, but I found most of the wines more ‘challenging’ than previously but the evening was designed to showcase the diversity in the region, and it certainly did that.

I also discovered that my gold trainers cause my achilles pain, so I’ll be giving those a very wide berth for the foreseeable future; and when in Nottingham last week I seemed to have randomly hurt the top of my foot, the same one obviously, so I’ve been icing and elevating it as much as I can, which seems to have done the trick. I know that for the RICE approach there’s supposed to be the ‘rest’ element too - but with the Newark Garden Show and a quilt show at Uttoxeter almost immediately after the random swelling, that was always going to be tricky.

I went along to the Quilt & Stitch Village show with friends from my sewing group. It’s a show that wouldn’t have even been on my radar before I moved here, but it was a great little show which is held at the racecourse, and as it’s just an hour and a half away by train, so that’s what we did. The station is right next to the racecourse, so as walking goes it was relatively lighter than expected, which was definitely good for me.

Though I never thought I’d be buying material with beetroots and onions on, but I did - and I love them. I’ve no plans yet, but I’d not seen anything like this before and knew instantly that they’d be coming home with me. It was great to see some new to me suppliers at the show, along with some familiar favourites, and of course there was also a quilt or two on display!

Over the past however long I’ve been crocheting larger granny squares at my crochet in the pub group, and this month I reached the eight squares I’d been aiming for. My plan is to use them to embellish a tote bag, but first I had plenty of ends to sew in. It’s not my most favourite job, but remarkably they were sewn in within a couple of days - look out for the finished project which I’m hoping to share soon.

I also realised that I probably had enough scrappy houses now to make my first ‘village quilt’, and so today I’ve finished my first charity quilt of the year. I’d hoped to have finished it and shared it before now, but that life surprise got in the way of this too, so that quilt update will also follow soon, I hope.

I signed myself up for the online taster weekend for the Thread Academy as I’d seen Jo Avery’s delightful ‘Dream Birds Coin Purse’ and thought I’d have a go at making my own. I mean, a bird shaped pouch - what’s not to like.

This is as far as I’ve got at the moment, and clearly the taster weekend has been and gone now, but I have enough information and hopefully wherewithal to finish it and to do it justice. Isn’t it super cute already though?

So that was April, both brilliant and at times uplanned and unexpected. I’m hoping that May, my birthday month, goes a little more to plan!