Winter Haven KAL 2023 – Week 3

Friday again … and we’re past the half way mark in January already.  If January is not usually your favourite month, I hope you can see the other side now, and I hope that spending time in your cosy space has helped the days pass more gently for you.

Thank you for all of your photos and emails again this week.  There have been so many that it’s been quite difficult for me to keep up at times so I hope I haven’t forgotten to reply to anybody!  It’s been lovely to hear from you and to see all of your projects – wow, there are so many of them!

It’s turned cold here again the last few days and we’ve even had a little bit of snow.  I’ve been lighting the fire at every opportunity – partly to keep the house warm, but also to remind myself that it’s fine to sit by it for a few minutes too!

If you’re new to the Winter Haven KAL, you can catch up on the previous posts – Week 1 is here (and tells you about what you need to join in), and Week 2 is here.

 

My space hasn’t changed much over the KAL weeks – I’m right here by the fire!

I’ve been sent lots of photos of your Haven spaces this week and I’m sure you’d like to see them as much as I did!  I’m conscious of this being a photo-heavy post so I’ve put some of them into collages, but it’s so lovely to see where you’re sitting to knit, read, and while away a few moments for yourself!

 

 

Karen emailed me her photo of her Haven space complete with her dog who is also very cosy in front of the fire!

 

Sarah’s cosy space will be very warm indeed, next to her Esse stove, and she’s got everything she needs to hand so there’s no need to go anywhere else for a while!

 

I think that anywhere with a cat on your knee becomes a cosy space (although I am a cat person – you might feel differently if you’re not!) and this week we welcome two cats to our Winter Haven KAL … this cosy cat here …

 

and Tarmac (what a fabulous name for a black cat! 🙂 ).  You can decide for yourself if he’s helping or hindering here …

It’s been wonderful having a peep into your cosy worlds – please do keep your photos coming and I’ll share more next week!

 

🕯 Project

After a speedy start, the Ginormous Sock seemed to take a little longer to get to the toes but I’m there now and will hopefully be able to cast on the second sock this weekend.  It’s been really good to have the KAL to keep me motivated and accountable – I’ve got to have something to show you every week!  It’s not been a chore to knit these socks, though; I didn’t get to knit nearly as much as I had hoped to over Christmas and it’s been so lovely to sit and these simple rounds.

Yes – more Herdy there in the shape of my tape measure … you can never have too much Herdy, I don’t think! 🙂

I’ve needed to keep measuring, too.  These socks will be for UK 14-sized feet which is actually an imperial foot (30cm) long so that’s a BIG foot!  I’ve used less than 50g of yarn so far, though, so I’m confident that I’ll have enough for the second sock and should get a match too.

Meanwhile, you all seem to have been getting on really well with your projects!  Shall we take a look?

 

Basic 4ply Socks up first.

 

There’s an Easy Colourwork Sock on Helen’s needles here …

 

and Yola is working on the Seascape pattern which comes from the first WYS/Winwick Mum Collection pattern book.  She’s extended the leg a little and it works very well!

 

Petrina is working on a pair of Blitzen Socks …

 

and Anne-Mette has finished her Aardvarkish Shawl …

 

Elizabeth has had a productive week but perhaps not in the way she imagined … she’s now an expert at untangling yarn!

 

Isn’t Julie’s yarn lovely?  That’s going to be a fantastic pair of socks!

 

Just a few more …

 

and finally for this week, Caroline has finished the Impressive Socks that she started at the beginning of the Winter Haven KAL.  They look great!

 

🕯 This week’s recipe

Not such much a recipe this week as one of my favourite lunches of the moment – a BLT (bacon, lettuce, tomato) sandwich!

I don’t always have bacon in the house as we tend to go through phases of eating it, but I bought not so small daughter a toastie maker called a Crimpit for Christmas – I thought it might be something she could use for an after-college snack, but she’s actually been taking a toastie with her in the mornings and eating it when she gets to college as wrapping it in tin foil keeps it hot.

Have you seen these before?  It popped up on an Instagram ad and I went to take a look …

You use those square sandwich thins that you can buy at the supermarket, put it into the black square block, load up your filling, put the top on, squish it down and then toast it.  It’s very easy and very quick, you don’t have to butter both sides of the bread like you do with some toastie makers, and it’s just the right size for a quick snack.  Oh, and the company donates money from the sales to the Trussell Trust as well, and having done that myself recently with my Sofa Snuggle Socks pattern, it ticked all the boxes!

And that’s why we have lots of bacon in the house as the breakfast toastie of choice is cheese and bacon (that’s Red Leicester cheese, not my camera having a meltdown 🙂 ).

They actually taste really good and there are lots of recipes on the website so if it’s something that you think you would use, I’d definitely recommend going to have a look.  I found that it was cheaper to buy them direct from the website than another site, and I think they may have offers on from time to time too.

 

🕯 Something green

Something different for this week – I couldn’t resist these pretty carnations at the supermarket

I love carnations, and since I took this photo, they’ve opened up even more.

I don’t often buy cut flowers for the house but because this month I am more focussed on making the space where I am sitting somewhere that isn’t just “the nearest chair”, it’s nice to have flowers next to me on the table.  (Remember I said in Week 1 that my husband had taken to sitting in “my” KAL chair to read?  Well, he’s still doing it and sometimes I have to sit in the other one!)

 

🕯 Light it up!

I’ve been using my wax burner again this week – I like mixing it up with the scents in the house!  I love seeing the light shadows that are formed behind the burner too.

 

🕯 Listen up!

This week, I’ve been listening to Times Radio, a new-to-me digital radio channel which is the new home of Fi and Jane (previously of the BBC and the Fortunately … podcast).  I was building an IKEA unit to house all the cat food tins and pairs of shoes that had previously been balanced precariously on a filing cabinet in the utility room (the filing cabinet has now moved upstairs, spending 3 days on the bottom step in the process because I tried to move it myself whilst my husband was working away and got it stuck) and I thought that I would listen to a talk radio station instead of music for a change.  Usually in those situations, I’d go straight for Radio 4 but decided to try something new – and I was really glad I did.  It took me so long to build the cabinet (lots of distractions) that I listened to Mariella Frostrup, Fi and Jane and John Pienar, all names that I know from the TV or newspapers, and they were really interesting and informed to listen to on the radio.  You do have to put up with them reminding you to read The Times newspaper on a regular basis, but I started to find that quite funny so it didn’t bother me.

 

🕯 Self-care

I’m still doing my flexibility stretches every morning; on the days that I don’t quite fancy it, I remind myself that I like having a sore back even less and ten minutes of stretching suddenly doesn’t seem such an effort.

I’ve started wearing my Fitbit again too.  I stopped a while ago as the strap snapped off and I put it down to having to bend the strap too much to fit my twiglet-sized wrists but actually, I think it was just wear and tear.  A bit of Gorilla glue has fixed the problem and I’ve bought a new elasticated strap (Amazon link) which is more suited to those of use with very small wrists.

Funky, eh?  Fitbits and smart watches are quite chunky just by the nature of them and I always felt like an extra in Star Trek wearing a bit of futurist weaponry (but hopefully not the crew member you’d never seen in an episode before who was encouraged to get out of the space ship first to confront the aliens; it never ended well for them).  It’s still huge but now I feel more like I’m wearing a chunky bangle and that’s much less likely to see me vapourised by anything from outer space.

I’m also now checking my steps and making sure that I’m getting enough decent sleep.  It’s been a long time coming, but I am finally accepting that I need to make more of an effort to make sure that I’m doing the right things to keep myself as healthy as I can for the future.  Or at least, until a being from outer space brings us a way to become immortal by eating chocolate.

 

🕯 Thank you

Have you been remembering to think about what you are grateful for?  It’s good to write it down but it doesn’t really matter if you don’t – the important part is that you think about it as being grateful for what we have opens the door for more in our lives to be grateful for!

It’s made me laugh to see that this week last year, I was grateful for Gorilla glue then too as I had stood on my specs whilst doing my stretching exercises (I’m sure there was a really good reason for that) and I had to glue them back together until I could get to see an optician.

I’ve finished the Rev Richard Coles book.

No, I hadn’t guessed the murderer – in fact, I had trouble remembering who was who so I’d have been really stuck if I lived in the village where the book is set as I never would have known who anybody was!  I still wasn’t gripped by the end of the book, but having said that, I wanted to finish it.  I decided quite a few years ago that life is too short to struggle through books that you are really not enjoying, but it wasn’t that I wasn’t enjoying this one … even though I wasn’t gripped by the plot, I still enjoyed Rev Richard’s turn of phrase, that theology is part of who he is (not just a job), and that I could hear the voice that I recognise from the radio through the text.  I thoroughly enjoyed listening to him whenever he used to be on Pause for Thought on Radio 2 in the mornings, and quite often he would have me in tears with his wise words.  Linda in last week’s comments said that his non-fiction work is brilliant and whilst I know that others will have a different view, I wonder if that is where his strength lies.  I felt that his book would have been better in the style of a raconteur like James Herriot or Gervaise Phinn, tales of parish life with a little poetic license, perhaps, rather than an intentional work of fiction.  I don’t know that I would rush to read the forthcoming sequel to this novel, but I am interested in reading his non-fiction so that probably says that reading this book equals a success even though it didn’t always feel like it at the time.

Finally, this year – this week – I am grateful for YOU.  I’ve so enjoyed reading your emails and social media posts and seeing what you’re up to.  You’ve really made me smile so here’s a big smile back to you too …

Don’t forget to keep tagging me into your posts so that I can have a nosey into your cosy spaces and see your projects – the hashtag is #WinterHavenKAL.

I hope you have a wonderful week in your Winter Haven – see you next Friday! xx