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!

This March...

I ended last month’s post on needing to sort myself out a wedding outfit, thankfully that turned out to be a relatively easy task in the end. I saw a dress online that I loved and ordered it, but when it arrived it was lovely, but just wasn’t right - a tad too flouncy for me, and I knew that I’d be fiddling with it more than I ought to be. It was the type of dress that was all chiffon and floaty, but it wore me rather than me wearing it if you know what I mean, so it went straight back.

So I took myself into Newark and wandered into the posh dress shop and well basically stood there looking overwhelmed which was absolutely the clue the ladies in the shop needed to jump into action. I tried on many dresses and left with one of the first ones I tried on.

I have a hat (well on a headband), a jacket or a silver cardy, one or other or both depending on the weather - it is in Wales in early April, so you never know. I have a couple of options on shoes - as you’d expect, and have also purchased a lovely green bag, and a pashmina too. So I’m all set.

Well apart from the food shop - we have three nights in an AirBnB with my parents and my brother and his wife. But that should be easy enough, shouldn’t it?

At times it’s felt like spring has arrived - and we’ve had lunch outside at one of our favourite cafes - and yet at other times it feels like winter is well and truly back. But there is hope of more blue skies to come, as the garden is also starting to wake up.

There’s been a couple of torrential downpours, almost storm-like conditions and way more than ‘April showers’ and we woke one morning to further issues with our heat pump, with it tripping the RCD which wasn’t great. Thankfully this was easy to resolve and shouldn’t happen again.

One of our old - and the most used of the two - sofas has been collected, which leaves one to get rid of which I’m hoping we’ll be able to give to someone who needs a sofa - but that won’t happen until I’ve sorted that out obviously.

We also have a brand new road through most of the village, and right outside our front door. It meant two overnights of work but it’s worth it. We no longer have pot holes and it’s much quieter with the traffic too. Though it followed a week of overnight closures on the nearby A46 which meant increased traffic for those nights, so it’s been a long slog of interrupted sleep. But with the roadworks cleared on the A46 there’s definitely less traffic passing through the village - there’s still some speeders, and these are much more noticeable with less traffic so there’ll still be ongoing speed watch sessions I’m sure.

MOH flexed his cooking urge making slow cooked lamb shank and artichoke ragu from the Padella cook book which he received at Christmas. It tasted fabulous and while the original plan was to also make the pasta, that was shelved for another day, which is fine as I’ve got two more meals-worth in the freezer ready to go.

We’ve been out and about a fair bit this month too, even heading to Nottingham twice in a few days once to watch some Super League Netball games, and the other for Alex James’ Britpop Classical. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in and around the netball community, and even then in a totally different area, but it was great to see a friend umpiring one of the games.

We’ve been enjoying listening to Alex James’ Sunday evening show on Virgin Radio and it was great to see the Britpop Classics in person, as well as having a good old 90s singalong and bop around to the songs.

It’s been a busy month for making too. I’ve set out my quilt plans and non-quilt plans for the year and it’s helpful to have a plan. Last year my sewing was dominated by the one a month charity quilts (aka my ‘stretch’ project) so it’s good to have time to explore other things.

And I have. Already I’ve explored some miniature makes and taught myself how to use the Flying Geese rulers I’ve had for a while, and which will be a game changer for my Teal Flying Geese quilt. I’ve even finished my most recent hand embroidery project which I already love - and it’s so my colours.

I was also pleased when my skein from Vicki Brown’s 100Skeins project arrived this month in ‘my colours’ - I have no plans for this at the moment, but it’s a project that I love and I love to support. Each year Vicki dyes 100 skeins which are all different and does this with the support from backers who pledge to buy at least a skein. Times are tough right now, especially for small businesses and so I was really pleased to see this initiative continue, and it’s even better when she sends a skein that matches your preferences so well.

So that was a busy March, April is already looking just as busy but with the lighter evenings I’m here for it.

This February...

There has at long last been a break in the rain! There’s also been glimpses of the sun, and for a couple of days I’d even go as far as saying it was sunny. Whether or not spring is really on its way or if the weather is fooling us, I’m not so sure but I am glad to see the cheerful snowdrops and even more cheery daffodils appear in the hedgerows.

Our heating is fixed, and it’s stayed working better than it ever has which is even better news. I’m not looking forward to the bill coming in though, as I suspect it will be more than it usually would be, but life, hey. We’ve spent afternoons and early evenings watching the Six Nations tournament, and have quite gotten into the Premier League darts matches each week too, and we’ve finally started on the second season of The Night Manager - though we had only just watched the first one!

There’s been more speedwatch sessions, and the traffic is still high, and faster than it should be. In one of our sessions the highest speed we recorded was 59 mph, and it isn’t the first time one of our volunteer group has recorded that level of speed, which is shocking for a 30 mph limit - or it is to me anyway.

Somewhere along the way this month I seem to have crocked my ankle, or more specifically my achilles, and I’m not sure how which is odd as I’d expect something dramatic for the amount of pain there’s been. But some rest, my trusty Italian ankle support and putting my foot up and a painkiller or two has taken the soreness down many notches, what really seemed to have fixed it though is one of my regular massages. To be honest I wasn’t sure if I would be able to bear anyone touch it at one point, so for this gentle, recuperating massage to have had the effect it has has been wonderful.

I had a day in London at the Garden Press Event speaking to suppliers and leading figures in the garden industry, learning lots and with plenty more to share from the day in the next few weeks. That same day my blog turned thirteen, a fully fledged teenager now which hardly seems possible. To celebrate I picked up some glorious cut flower hyacinths, which I’ve never seen as cut flowers before, little did I know that my challenges with drooping hyacinths were about to start!

To round off the day in London I visited the most fabulous haberdashery just off Oxford Street, all the time wondering why I didn’t know of MacCulloch & Wallis while I lived in London - and more amazingly, I left without a purchase too. Then we headed to The Barbary in Covent Garden for dinner, which was fabulous and a much smaller than we expected restaurant.

It’s been a busy month in our home too, with a couple of new blinds fitted on the small but long front windows and the blue chandelier was assembled and installed - and we love it.

I’m not sure our electrician loved putting it up quite so much, but he agrees it’s a good addition to our stairway. We gambled on the length, reducing the drop by 50 cms, gauging this just by him holding the wire in place, and we got it right first time, which he definitely was pleased about, but I know if it wasn’t right he would have insisted on changing it. But phew, from us all in this case!

We also took delivery of our new sofas, much earlier than expected. They were due towards the end of March, but the company are ahead of themselves at the moment and so they’re here already - and have only been here a day or two, but even on the day they were delivered they just felt right for our space.

We’d hoped to book a decorator in before they arrived, and decide on the colour scheme too - but we haven’t, and so we’ll sort that out another time. In some ways it’s good to have them so we can be as sure as we can be that the colour we finally go for works, but in the meantime our house is currently auditioning as a sofa showroom and a cushion mountain!

I’ve finished the last of my ‘stretch project’ quilts, which I’m glad about as they really have dictated my sewing time, and I really have so much more that I want to sew. I will still sew more charity quilts, but not on the scale and voracity that I have this past year.

Finishing the last of my one-a-month-charity quilts also means I’ve completed the last mystery block of the month, so now I have twelve blocks to assemble into a quilt top which has taken some maths to make sure I have enough material to carry out my plans. I’ll be sharing more soon on both of these year long projects, so watch out for those posts.

I’ve realised that over the past year I’ve not found as much time as I’d like to ‘play’ when crafting, and trying out things I’ve not done before, this month though I’ve had more time for that and have found myself tackling a series of sewn miniature items. They’re not perfect and I’ll find a use for them (and will most likely share more here at some point) but it’s been good to experiment and get things out of my head!

I’ve had a request for a rosette from my mum, so I need to make her one of those for an upcoming family wedding - which is also a good reminder that I need to sort myself out an outfit too, but it’s a tricky one as April weather could be literally anything - wish me luck!