I remembered my WordPress login, I updated all the stuff that I haven’t updated since March and I tried to upload some pictures but they are all bigger than 2MB and the silly thing won’t let me so now I have resorted to writing the words and hopefully the Man in the Shed will fix it for me later…*EDIT – He fixed it because he’s clever like that. Yay!*

Oops, I was going to write a new post in half term and it whooshed by like all the other weeks and I didn’t. This term has mostly been blankets, there was this one for a soon to be new baby which started off ok and then got ridiculously huge until there almost was no room for my lunch in my bag because it was full of blanket.

There was this one which was a Stylecraft Crochet Along thing which just had to be made because it is so pretty, you can still get the pattern on their website but I’m too lazy to look up the links, I’m just going for speed and actually getting round to posting something. That was a much more sensible size for my work bag because it is made of small hexagons. It has since been commandeered by Tiny for a bedspread although it isn’t really big enough. I added a couple of rows to the border because I had quite a bit of yarn left over and why would you end with a red and pink row if you could end with purple and blue?

There was this one which I started before the first blanket (but it isn’t a blanket) and then it got postponed in the middle to start the flowery one which in turn got put aside to do the rainbow one but they are all done now except the pockets on this. It isn’t meant to have pockets but I am incapable of leaving my phone in my bag and people tell me off if I keep it in my bra. It has got some nice cables on the back but you can’t see them because I put it up this way to dry.

The holidays so far have mostly been making hats, very good stash busting hats. There is a pattern somewhere, I can look it up if anyone wants to know but I am being lazy, as I said, this is also why the photos are wonky and not cropped and well, never mind, at least there is a post. The rainbow one is mine, the striped one is Tiny’s, the scary red one is Small’s and the white one that isn’t finished is for a friend who ordered a lacy one. The Man in the Shed declined to have one made for him, not sure why…

The Man in the Shed has been busy making an outside box (he didn’t do the bricks but he did do the cat proofing) for the So-Called Tortoise (so-called because she does appear to be a tortoise, I keep checking in case I’ve been mistaken and she is really a cocker spaniel or a greyhound but she remains stubbornly tortoise shaped) after only sixteen months stuck inside, poor thing, she is thoroughly enjoying it and I am deliberately planting weeds which goes against the grain a bit. She has been happily stumping around and sitting in the sun enjoying the flowers, I am starting to wonder if I am secretly a tortoise, we have a lot in common.

I’m nearly up to date now, I had about nine months of housework to catch up on so the first week and a half of the holidays was mostly cleaning and getting haircuts (Tiny is very pleased with hers and mine is at least tidier than it has been, I’ve only been psyching myself up to get it cut again for three years this time…) The place is nowhere near pristine but I made enough of a dent in it to show willing, both the small people’s carpets have been visible enough to hoover this month and there isn’t that much washing left.

The second week was swimming, tiling the utility room and waiting for the rain to stop among other things and I managed to sort out some new uniform before the week before school starts this year. When I say ‘sort out’ you realise I mean that there is uniform that fits in the house, I still have a thousand and thirteen iron on name tags to do… Ooh and we accidentally managed to sort out school shoes on a day out in Cheltenham which means I don’t have to drag the Smalls into Cardiff, hurrah! I just hope they don’t grow now.

Now it is the third week, it is the first and only week on the calendar with nothing on it, the sun is shining and the garden is calling, it’s a jungle and the vegetables have all gone to pot, mainly because I left them in the pots and didn’t have time to plant them out – the tomatoes have just about recovered but the brassicas didn’t make it out of the greenhouse thanks to a bumper harvest of slugs and snails despite the slug pellets and going out in the dark with a bin bag to catch them (that was a lot of slimy creatures in one night), I forgot to dig up any potatoes while they were growing and had to harvest the whole lot in one go yesterday (ooh, that hurt!)

I have finally managed to do some weeding (not very much yet but I managed to hack a path to the compost bin so that’s a start, I’m going back out as soon as I have written this) aided and abetted by my lovely and extremely thorough dad who started it off last week for me – there is one border which seems to have been all weeds and no shrubs by the look of it after he had finished but it is full of So-Called Tortoise friendly plants now: pansies, snapdragons, sow thistle and I’m trying to persuade some honesty to grow which I pinched from my grandparents in Hampshire but the soil is very different so I don’t know whether it will work. A couple of weeks ago he attacked a mountain of bindweed for me as well but I’m making him a jumper so I think we’re square.