Blogtober 2022 : Day 3

It’s Monday and a whole new week – hello to you, I hope yours is going to be a brilliant one!

When I left you yesterday, I had a brew in my hand and yarn at the ready to start my Split Mittens, and despite the likelihood that was I wasn’t going to do very much at all, I actually had a pretty productive day!

There was cuff progress on the Split Mittens …

I showed you yesterday the set of short circular needles that I was planning to try out on these mitts and I’ll be honest, 28 stitches in chunky yarn on a 25cm needle is not the most comfortable to knit, but seeing as it transpired that the 5mm tips for my long circular cable are somewhere (no doubt in yet another project bag that I haven’t rediscovered yet), I’m a bit stuck.  I managed, but I’m not sure that I’d recommend using a short circular for these mitts unless you wanted to knit a bigger size.

Susan commented yesterday that she always feels unwell at the mention of “mindful” and “wellness” and I can see that – sometimes it feels like an instruction rather than something can actually help you – so Susan, if you’re reading today, you might want to miss out the next photo! 🙂

I’m really hoping that there is the instruction to “inhale” on another needle (I must check!) otherwise you’d be going blue in the face and passing out before anything got finished! 🙂

What is useful, though, is the needle size stamped on the other side of the needle, and I hope these numbers are created in such a way that they don’t wear off.

I also managed to get myself outside yesterday and I always feel better for it, even though it’s very hard to drag myself away from my knitting!

There are no “before” photos of the garden as they were too embarrassing, but you’ll be pleased to know that I have mowed the meadow before it required a scythe to get through the grass and I have done battle with bindweed, evening primrose and Echinops (globeflower) to reclaim my vegetable boxes and now they look like this …

That courgette plant in the front of the photo is on borrowed time – it’s produced 3 courgettes this year and has only in the last week grown to that size.  I have had words with it as I’m used to courgette plants producing more fruit than I can deal with and growing out across the grass, but I am glad that we’ve not had to resort to searching the internet for inventive uses for courgette this year.  I think I might have bought that as a ready-grown plant rather than grown it from seed myself and I won’t bother doing that next year as the result has been disappointing.  I can’t remember why I will have done that – most likely I didn’t get round to sowing the seed on time and there was an offer on veg plants at the garden centre, but I think next year I’ll try to be more organised.

Also in the raised bed, the grass cuttings which I am hoping will deter our cats from thinking they have had a giant toilet extension and which will hopefully have rotted down by the Spring.

Finally, I got my cloches out (again to deter the cats but they have already been spotted doing acrobatic stunt-walking across the metal ribs) as I found some sprouting seed potatoes in the greenhouse and some kale plants that should have been planted out months ago.  Oops!  I have been a terrible veg gardener this year!  I doubt that the potatoes are going to come anything, and I really don’t know why I buy more seed potatoes each year as I seem to find them growing in all of my raised beds whether I’ve planted them or not, but I figured that I might as well plant them and the kale and see what (if anything) they do because otherwise, that’s another extension to the outdoor litter tray.

Time for another brew, I think, and to try to remember where I might have put my needle tips.  Oh dear, the joys of WIPs in project bags! 🙂