Cooling down

Phew, it’s been a bit hot, hasn’t it?  If you live outside the UK and you’re used to the temperatures being over 35°C (95°F), spare a thought for those of us living on this little island who are not used to being this warm!  Honestly, we can’t cope when it snows and we can’t cope when it gets too hot – we’re used to a rather damp, slightly cold climate with occasional warmer days, not weather that’s hot enough to fry eggs on the paving stones!

It’s cooled down significantly today and it’s cloudy and quite windy outside.  Ordinarily, I’d be huffing that the weather was miserable on a late June morning but not today!  We’ve spent the last few days with the windows and curtains closed to try to keep the house cool, opening them later at night when the air was fresher but even then, we’ve had to be careful that Astrid didn’t make a break for it and she has been offended that she’s been shut into the utility room with no opportunity for escape for long periods of time.  It’s actually one of the coolest rooms in the house so she’s been in the best place, being a cat of thick and fluffy fur, but that hasn’t stopped the FOMO and she has literally stalked past me when I’ve finally opened the door and she can go to see what she thinks she was missing out on (usually nothing).  I consider myself told off!

I’ve been getting out into the garden in the very early mornings – well before 7am some days – and that’s been lovely.  I’m making good progress on clearing out the borders so that I can re-stock them although like any other decluttering session, I’m left with a big mess to clear up and our garden waste bins have been full to overflowing – and only collected every fortnight!  My plan for this afternoon is to get to work with the shredder to reduce some of the pile and create some weed-suppressant mulch from the chippings.

I was also a lady who both lunched and breakfasted last week.  My car needed new tyres and it’s handy that the garage is opposite a hotel so I took myself over there for a few hours – the hotel absolutely don’t mind people working there and even have a special brew and butty deal so I had a bacon butty (sandwich) whilst I dealt with my emails …

and the next day my car was back in the garage as I’d asked about my air con which had stopped working.  “Oh, it just needs re-gassing,” said the mechanic, “Bring it back tomorrow and we’ll have it done in an hour!”  So I dropped my car off the next afternoon to drop my car off and headed over to the hotel again with my laptop and treated myself to some lunch.  This was a fish finger butty and it went down very well!  It’s also wonderful to have air con again as it stopped working a few months ago and I’ve missed it!

I’m quite glad that the temperature has dropped because I can get back to my knitting!  I never thought I’d ever say it was too hot to knit, but it really has been this week.  Anything woolly has had to be put to one side, but that has meant that I’ve been able to make a bit of progress on the re-knitting of my cotton polo t-shirt.

Well, I say “bit” of progress but I’ve done pretty well this week and knitted both sleeves and started the front.  The back is already done so there’s just the front and the collar to go and if I can keep it up, I might actually get to wear it before the end of the year … although I do have another reason to get it finished as I’ve bought more yarn for another jumper.  Oh my goodness, who is this person who keeps buying yarn for things that aren’t socks?!

I was at Black Sheep Wools with my lovely friend Lindsay of Making Stitches podcast last Friday.  We meet up for a brew and to stock up on supplies (Lindsay’s a crochet designer as well as podcast-maker) every few months, and whilst sitting the cafe, a sample jumper caught my eye.  It was the colours of the yarn more than anything, they were right up my street and the longer we sat there, the more the jumper and the yarn called to me.  Clearly, Black Sheep’s marketing was spot on as once we’d finished our brew and Lindsay went to find the yarn she needed, I was straight over to see if the yarn for the jumper was in stock – and there were just the three required balls of it left.  Well!  It would be rude not to buy it, wouldn’t it?

It’s an acrylic yarn and I never usually buy that as firstly, acrylic is not a good choice for socks (ugh to sweaty feet!) and acrylic jumpers I’ve bought in years past have bobbled quite badly, but I’m hoping that this one might not and I’ve got a de-bobbler machine (Amazon link) now so I can de-bobble to my heart’s content!  I didn’t feel quite so guilty buying more yarn as the three balls and pattern for this jumper cost £22 (significantly less than the wool yarn I have waiting for me to start a Kate Davies cardigan); there’s yarn for every budget and it means we can all wear me-made slow fashion clothes rather than buying cheap clothes from overseas that might not cost us very much but someone elsewhere has paid the price for them.  Yes, I do know that acrylic isn’t the best for the environment, but this isn’t going to be single-use item and I try not to wash my jumpers more often than I absolutely need to (easier with wool jumpers, admittedly) so as long as you can’t smell me before you see me, it’s all good 🙂

 

I’ve been able to do a bit more with my new pattern sock, but it did get left this week as it was hot.

I’m working on the heel flap at the moment.  This is a Ribbed Heel Flap, something I invented years ago to give a bit more stretch to a heel flap which can be a bit tight on bigger feet (you can read more about it here if you’ve not seen it before: Ribbed Heel Flap and if you find the instructions for the heel flap in my Patchwork Socks pattern.)  The yarn (Yarn Unique 4ply sock in the colourway Turquoise) is lovely to knit with; I was talking to Caroline about my new sock and she said it’s a new base that’s been dyed and was interested to know how it would turn out.  I am very impressed – it’s got a really nice squish to it and the stitch definition is brilliant.  Caroline currently has an end of line sale on her website (20% off until 4 July 2026) if you already know that you like her yarn, and she’s usually at yarn shows as well so I do recommend that you go and give her yarn a squish if you’ve never used it before.

If you want to catch up with her at the shows, she’s going to be at:

Summer Wool – Ampthill – July
North East Wool – Newcastle – August
Pop-Up Wool – Port Sunlight – August
Southern Wool – Bedford – August
Newark Wool – Newark – September
The Scottish Yarn Festival – September

 

Another gorgeous new yarn is this one from Northern Yarn.  This is Lune* and I wrote about it a few weeks ago – it’s Kate’s brand new sock yarn (about time, I say! 🤣).  Kate and I first met when I bought some yarn from her for my Easy Cable Socks pattern which was her very first British breeds yarn made with fleece from local sheep, and it’s wonderful that the sock yarn* was ready to meet the world on Northern Yarn’s 10th birthday.

It seemed only right that I should knit another pair of Easy Cable Socks and they’ve been coming along very nicely – until, that is, the heat made me put them down!

I decided that I’d put the cables on both the front and back of the sock (it’s optional in the pattern – the pattern photos only show them on the front but you can add more if you want to) and I’m up to the heel flap now.  I designed a “cabled” heel flap which is actually created with twisted stitches (I gave them a different name in the pattern because I could 🙂 ) and it’s been really interesting following my own pattern.

I do this when I’m designing as I knit the first sock, write up the pattern and then follow the pattern to make sure it makes sense, but I very rarely go back years later to knit the pattern again as, much like actors who don’t watch their own films or authors who don’t read their own novels, once I’ve designed the socks I’m moving onto the next pattern.  I learn something new on every pattern that I write, so going back from where I am now to read something written where I was then is a fascinating insight into how my writing and designing style has changed.  I’m really enjoying the process and I’m glad that it’s cooler so I can get back into it!

 

With knitting on the back burner somewhat, what I have done during this hot weather, inspired by Lucy (Attic24)’s recent talk of her tapestry stitching, is fished out my own cross-stitch.  I bought myself a new one earlier this year but I don’t think I showed you.  It’s a Lucy Pittaway picture and it’s absolutely my thing … sheep and the Northern Lights!

I had a bit of an uh-oh moment when I saw how many pages were in the pattern and I bought it back in January so it wasn’t really the best light to be starting a project like this, so I put it all carefully back into the packet and put it away.

This last week has felt like a good time to look at it again, but when I found my needlepoint frame, there was already an unfinished project attached to it …

I can’t remember when I started this but I’ve got a feeling that not so small daughter was very small – I think it might even have been before I got back into sock knitting as I did do a lot of cross stitch at that time, so that would make this over 20 years old.  It’s definitely time it got finished!  I’ve done two-thirds of this picture and it doesn’t feel like the right thing to take it off the frame to start something new, so I’m going to work on this first.  Maybe not as much now the weather has turned into knitting weather again, to be honest with myself, but I’d like to finish it.

The dog hasn’t gone far during the hot weather – only into the garden and back into the house again.  We did manage to get out a bit further to his favourite field at the beginning of last week but since then he’s not wanted to go out.  He’s been out in the garden with me at 7am but only for a few minutes before he decided he was too hot and wanted to go back indoors.  It’s been hotter indoors first thing in the morning but that’s where he’s wanted to be – ignoring his cool mat and heading straight for the kitchen where the Aga is … we were starting to think the heat was scrambling his brains and had to shoo him out!

We’ve had some lovely sunsets this week and this is from when we made it out into the field …

I’m not going to show you the garden at the moment as all my attention is on clearing the borders and it’s not a pretty sight!  There’s been some serious chopping of branches going on – yes, I know it’s not the right time of year for that but I can’t leave all this until the winter again as it might not get done – and a pile of clippings almost taller than me in the middle of the grass.  It’s got to get worse before it can get better, right?  I’m keeping my eyes firmly on the vision I can see in my head of something definitely worth showing you!

What I will mention, however, is that if you are doing any indoor summer decluttering yourself, now is the time to order Scubl boxes for IKEA Kallax units as the price is going up.  You can read my review of Scubl boxes here:  Scubl box review and you can order them at a discount through this link here:  Winwick Mum Scubl box store  This is an affiliate link but you get a special Winwick Mum discount on the boxes so we both win 🙂

The price is going up from £24.95 to £34.95 in July – the price was a bit less than that on my store link this morning, but if you find that it’s gone up or you use the main Scubl website, you can use this code: SCUBL25 to get the boxes for £24.95 until 24 July 2026.

And finally, when I met up with my Making Stitches friend Lindsay, she was telling me that she’s recently uploaded her podcasts to YouTube so I said I would mention it to you.  I find it quite difficult to remember where to find podcasts I’ve listened to sometimes as there are so many platforms, but it’s easy if they’re on YouTube as I’m often on there looking up how to do something.  You can even find the episode that I recorded with Lindsay to celebrate her 100th podcast episode!

Here’s the link to Lindsay’s main page and you can subscribe as well so you never miss and episode: Making Stitches podcast on YouTube

 

And with that, I am off to do some clearing up in the garden and then spend my evening knitting!  Not so small daughter is home from China next week – she’s been having a great time and we can’t wait to see her.  It does feel like she’s been gone a long time!

I hope you have a great Monday and a lovely week ahead xx

 

 

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