victorious

These four strawberries represent our victory against the fieldfares:

Attack of the killer strawberries

As I'm sure I've said before - I'm trying to grow some fruit and veg to help support the monkey house kitchen. I'm a great believer in fresh and seasonal food and would much prefer to eat some fresh veg grown in the garden than some super duper organic product that's been shipped half way around the world. I like to stand back and get a little perspective on these things, and not be blinded by the organic = best mantra. That said, I've used a bit of fertiliser, but no bug sprays, or anything. I believe if there are bugs, there's always a predator that will come along eventually and eat them (hopefully before they've devoured my crop!).
Talking of crop devouring I had to ask David to make the strawberries a cage - not because they're vicious and were attacking the other plants, but because the fieldfare were attacking them.

David made a less sturdy version at first, but after a couple of days of looking at it, consulting the blue prints and waiting for a couple of strawberries to ripen, the fieldfare carried out an organised attack, found their way in and ate them. And so this cage was built. So far it's kept them out. We've only got two plants, and I want to be able to eat at least a couple of strawberries from them.

more finished socks

I've finished the other pair of socks that I was working on... they are the embossed leaves from the interweaves book of favourite socks. I was so close to finishing the second sock when I ran out of yarn. Luckily the yarn shop had another skein in the same colour, and even the same dye lot, so it wasn't the end of the world - just a shame to be so close. I weighed the remains of the new ball after I'd finished - it was bought as a 100g skein, and according to my "not so precise" scales it still weighs 100g.

I think this is a really nice stitch pattern, not too girly but interesting. I'm tempted to make a pair for my Mum too.

So now I will spend a few days trying to make a dent in the Jacob cardigan I seem to have been knitting for ages - I think this has stalled as I don't seem to be able to do the cabling in company. I've cast on the first sleeve, so should be able to concentrate on the cabling at home and still be able to work on it in company.

Once that's a bit further on I'll allow myself to cast on some more socks - we met up with Cecilie yesterday and she brought me bounty that she'd bought in China - it's mostly sock weight yarn, although there are a couple of balls of even finer. She chose some very "Deborah" colours - greens, browns, blues and a bit of red - lots of mulling over and plotting are in order.

Enough yarn?

I'm making good progress on the embossed leaves socks that I'm knitting - the picture below is the second sock, and as you can hopefully see I'm on the homeward straight now that I'm onto the foot. I'm a little concerned that I'm going to run out of yarn though as the small ball in the photo is all I have left. I think it's going to be close.

And yes, the area behind the bench is our lawn - it looks a bit pitiful at the moment, but it's currently undergoing some re-seeding.

Things are growing in the garden, this is a picture of our tomato, pepper and chili plants. There's flowers on both the toms and the chilies (or maybe they're on the peppers, I can't remember which pot is which!), but they seem to be quite liking their sheltered spot. I'll be interested to see if we get much fruit, or if next years will have to be grown inside.

I found a recipe yesterday that we had for dinner, it was very tasty, so I thought I would share. We had sweet potato ravioli with toasted pine nuts, sage and rocket. The recipe can be found here. Typically we didn't have all the ingredients, so replaced the fresh sage with dried sage and the rocket with some chard from the garden. I did plant some rocket seeds the other day to give us a few more leaves to pick, but they're not up yet. And I will get a sage plant. So no doubt we will try the recipe again with the full set of ingredients to hand. You really can't beat freshly made pasta - it's so easy to make.

stagnating socks

I've been plugging away at trying to get some of my knitting projects that stagnated while we were away moving and done - first I now have a pair of socks knit from Trekking pro natura using the sailors stitch from More Sensational Knitted Socks. I've gone off self striping yarn, but this one is subtle enough to be fine, they're also relatively thin for a hand knit sock and I'm hoping the mix of bamboo in with the wool will make them a little cooler to wear during the summer. Although with the rain that's currently falling I don't think I'm going to have a problem with hot feet.

I especially like the continuation of the pattern down the heel flap, this isn't something I've done before, but I'll definitely do it again.

Before I cast on something new, I have the second sock of the embossed leaves socks to finish and am also part way through making the cable and rib jacket from the Jacob Wool.

We've received the official photos from the photographer and have sent on the link to them on the Internet to friends and family (Kristin, I sent them on to you after you commented, did you get them OK?). We're pleased with the photos, and now need to sit down and choose which photos to have put in our album.

We've also been sent a few "unofficial" photos... here's me beforehand... showing the dress and wrap that I made:


And here's us afterwards..

I don't think we scrub up too bad! Most people knew about David's socks being hand made, but I haven't seen a photo of them yet.

post wedding

I don't really know where to start. How about:

• We're back;
• We're married;
• We had a great time;
• It was great to see all the friends and family that we did.

We did a weeks walking in the Lakes before the wedding and a weeks walking afterwards, and then a weeks camp and explore once we got back to Finland. It was really nice to be amongst the hills of the Lakes

and I realised how much I miss beech trees.

There are a huge number of trees in Finland (as was proved to us during our week of explore), but there's just something about beech trees that I love.

I don't have any wedding photos yet, but once I do I'll post an odd one.

As for knitting and crafty activities - I hemmed my wedding dress, did a bit of my sailor sock and managed to acquire some patterns and yarn, but I wasn't nearly as productive as I'd imagined.

pre wedding update

I haven't been very good at blogging recently. I've been in more of a do mood than a talk about doing of having done mood - and so the blog has suffered. There's been lots to do recently with wedding stuff and knitting etc to keep me busy. We fly back to the UK tomorrow so there won't be any blogging until we're back at the beginning of the 2nd week of June, so I thought I'd better have a quick update of the ikke ferdig progress...

here we have the sailor sock with the heel turned

And here we have the first embossed leaf sock finished.

I knit to the heel turn on both of these and then had them around in case Cecilie needed visual aid while she turned her first heel. Her heel passed by without incident and so I can now get on and get both of these finished. I'll take them both with me to the UK and hopefully get some knitting done between enjoying real ale in real pubs and walking.

And then we have the first little bit of the second front of the Jacob cardigan - kind of a token cast on.

So, a bit of sock knitting in the UK and maybe a look in the rowan shop (which sounds dangerous).

I'm sure I'll blog more when we get back....