The weather is calmer …

But today, when I’m talking to you, the world is in turmoil.  My love and thoughts are with everyone who is affected by this, and I think that probably most of us are in one way or another.  If you or your loved ones are in Ukraine, I hope you are safe, and for the rest of us, I hope that our combined wishes for peace will bring the right solution very soon.

It almost doesn’t seem right for me to chirp on in my usual way, but writing my blog posts and chatting to you is always a very positive thing for me to do and I think the world needs all the positive energy it can get right now.

I’ve got a few things to tell you about this week, and the first is about RHS Bridgewater.  You might remember that I visited this garden a few times last year and some of the conversations in the comments about the post were about how the garden site used to be a Scout camp called Middlewood.

I got an email recently from RHS Bridgewater to tell me about forthcoming events and one of them is an exhibition about the Scout camp – it’s called Middlewood: 73 years of Scouting and I thought I would mention it here in case it appealed to anyone!

I was a Venture Scout (as Explorer Scouts were called then) for quite a few years but didn’t go to Middlewood (it probably felt a bit close to home and my unit liked to go further afield! 🙂 ), although I’d be interested to see the exhibition.  It’s on at RHS Bridgewater from 18 February until 20 May and you can find out more details here.

 

I’ve also been contacted by a councillor from Chester Council to ask if I know of anybody who might be interested in taking up one of the stalls in the new market that has been developed there.

I don’t know of anybody myself, but I said that I would mention it on the blog here in case you know of anybody – feel free to pass the details on if you do!

This is the information that I’ve been asked to pass on to you:

“We are now seeking tenants for the remaining vacant units in the market. Haberdashery or vintage clothing traders would certainly be of interest, and I recommend any potential trader interested in applying has a look at our website, in particular the trade page: https://newchester.market/trade/

The most direct way to follow-up for any interested traders would be to contact our letting agents Barker Proudlove, via Jessica Swain: [email protected] and discuss further.

More information on the current line-up of traders confirmed or under offer announced this week is via the news page:
https://newchester.market/first-traders-opening-in-chesters-new-market-announced/”

 

Market stalls can be a fantastic way to get started if you’ve always wanted a shop of your own and this may be just the start you (or someone you know) needs!

 

I’ve not been doing much knitting this week – I’ve been faffing about with video nonsense as YouTube have emailed me to tell me that I’ve not uploaded any videos for a long time and I need to get my finger out.  Oh dear!  Videos take me such a long time to make and I really do prefer to be on the other side of the camera, but after stepping right out of my comfort zone last year to go to the Yarn Lane TV studio, I decided that I could probably be brave enough to make a new video.

Ha!  There is no such thing as “a quick video” for me!

I spent a few days procrastinating and another few days working out what I was going to do and setting everything up in my video editor.  Then I thought I’d better get on with it and got the lighting out (I bought some proper lights for my photographs last year, it makes a real difference when the light is bad!), mended the plug on the one that wasn’t working, procrastinated a bit more and two days later, I was still faffing and that was just over the bits with me in the picture!  Eventually, there will be a new video up on YouTube (not as “eventually” as I might like as YouTube have given me a deadline of next week) and I’ll be able to get back to my knitting! 🙂

There has been a little bit of knitting this week – not socks but blanket squares.  Years ago, I decided to start a sock yarn leftovers blanket and made quite a lot of squares in the Vivid pattern by Tin Can Knits, but then decided that wasn’t really what I wanted my blanket to look like.  Then I had a go mitred square blanket squares but they weren’t really floating my boat either – I think it was something to do with joining the squares as I was going along and a worry that I might decide later on that I really didn’t like a coloured square where it was but there would be nothing I could do about it.  So, here I am again, with yet another version of a blanket square, and these are squares that I can sew together later so it will be more effort, but I like the idea of being able to arrange them before I join them.

It’s a pattern of my own creation and once I know that I’ve got it right and it works in the way I want it to, I’ll be able to show you but at the moment, it’s entirely likely I’ll change my mind again so I’ll just show you the edges! 🙂

Finally, for this week, something really lovely has happened in our family.

We’ve got kittens!

This was the photo on the website, and we absolutely couldn’t resist them.

I know, it seems very sudden doesn’t it after last week when I said that we were thinking about it and it did all happen very quickly – we saw the kittens on the local Cats Protection website, applied for them not thinking we would get them, had our video interview on Saturday and picked them up on Sunday!

They have settled in so well, you’d think they had always lived here!

We’re keeping them away from the dog at the moment.  We’re lucky that we’ve got the space to be able to keep them in separate rooms, but once the kittens or the dog have moved into a different room, we’re letting the others in there so that they can have a good sniff around.  We’re hoping that eventually, they will all smell normal to each other and we’ll be able to introduce them a bit more.  So far, the dog is fine with the kittens if you hold onto them and they don’t move, but he’s not sure about these little furry things that ping about like fleas when they’re on top bouncy form so we’re not risking letting the kittens go in his presence just yet!  It will take time, but it will be fine, I’m sure.

I’m not quite sure what he would make of this, though – he doesn’t really like sharing his cosy bed next to the Aga!

They eventually have names – we were told the kitty on the left was a boy which was fine as we had a name for him (which was very definitely a boy’s name) – but then he turned out to be SHE and whilst we’d name the tiddler on the right, our poor tabby was The Kitten with Many Names as we couldn’t agree what she should be called.  Anyway, we now have Astrid the tabby and Hattie the tortie (or perhaps more correctly, the calico cat, although she’s certainly full of Tortitude!) and we are delighted that they have come to live with us.

 

And there we have it for this week.  I’m going to love you and leave you because the sun is shining and I might just get outside into the garden for a short while – goodness knows, the garden needs to see me!  I hope you are able to have the best weekend possible, and I’ll see you next week xx