I was trying to decide what to write about next –  I haven’t told you about the interestingly shaped bed jacket I am making for my mum or about Kit the mystery chrysalis that we are over-wintering in a box:

I have no idea what he is, we found an elephant hawk moth caterpillar (called Kenneth) one year which was fun and he hatched out ok the next summer but Kit is a surprise. He decided the wall on our front steps would be a good place to hibernate but I thought given the quantity and type of traffic that likes to balance on the wall on its way to school the shed might be safer…

I planned out a whole post in my head about how we spent the bank holiday, about the spiders in the greenhouse waging war by hatching out another brood right above the doorway so I got a face full of baby spiders and about  how nice it was to sit in the garden, listening to the church bells ringing and making fruit out of bubble wrap for the Magic Tree to wear when it is being the other tree and about how certain sounds (church bells, the shipping forecast and the bit when Radio 4 goes over to the world service in the middle of the night and plays Sailing By and the national anthem) are nice and make me feel like everything is as it should be. The neighbours now think I am mad (see photo of plum tree with unusual fruit) and I have more or less knackered my long sewing needle by sticking it through too much bubble wrap (the Man in the Shed had to straighten it out for me at least three times before I finished).

I planned out another whole post about how I was going to be very good and finish lots of things I had started before I began anything new – the golden fruit I am supposed to be finishing before June, the bed jacket, the Tiny Clanger that I began about two years ago, the enormous blackwork map of old British counties that I finished ages ago and haven’t worked out how to hang up yet, the tapestry for the top of the piano stool which has been nearly finished for ages and ages and ages and just has a lot of very boring plain border left to do, the blanket with the hexagons that I am supposed to be doing in between things to use up lots of multi coloured double knit, the hats I am supposed to be knitting for the shop, the pattern I am supposed to be writing down, the… you get the idea.

And then somebody asked me whether I could make something or other for the summer fair at church so that they could have a ‘name the something or other’ competition. I made a frog prince and a pony for Small and Tiny last Christmas and I thought maybe that was what the person had in mind but I am not very good at making the same thing twice (low boredom threshold – the second one of anything usually never gets started or if it does then it sits in the bottom of a bag for years).

So I dug out the book of instructions that they came from (by Heidi Bears – ooh look she’s done a stegosaurus pattern too!) and started making a different something or other (sorry mum, I will finish your jacket before it gets cold again…). It is made from forty four crochet polygons and the church fair is in the middle of June so I reckon if I do one a day then I should have it finished in time. So far it just has two back legs, can you tell what it is yet?