My Garden

Yes, I realise it isn't much too look at. It's rundown and overgrown and my husband hates it. Me and the cat love it though. I didn't get a picture of him, but I'm sure he thinks he is a leopard prowling around in the Serengeti, with all the long grass.

I love sitting on the little bench next to the shed. Now the weather is getting a bit better again I want to start making the most of being able to sit outside in the evenings and weekends. I want to start appreciating little pleasures like that more, now my life should hopefully be a bit less hectic (for the time being).

Here is the oldest resident of the house and garden. It's a pear tree that has been here since I was a child and came to visit my grandparents when they lived here, but I'm not sure how long it has been here. It does seem fairly ancient. It's still good at producing pears though, maybe this year I'll get round to making some pear cider.... 

At least I managed to get a few good photos before it turned cloudy......

Easter.... yay.... *collapses with exhaustion*

Well, for saying that I have had 4 days off work for Easter, I can honestly say I feel worse than I did before we finished. I just feel so drained. I've been to church 3 times to sing in the choir (and managed to break my voice singing the descant for the final hymn), I went out to the pub with a few friends on Friday and felt dreadful all day on Saturday even though I didn't drink that much (well, 3 pints of cider, but I never felt anything more than tipsy all night....) and I've posted a few items on the Folksy shop to get it started.

Apart from a bit of housework that's all I've done. I haven't even got to sit in the garden because the weather has been a bit too chilly even though the sunshine is lovely.

And I'm exhausted. And I have a sore throat. And I have to go and supervise a rehearsal later.

At the moment I'm just holding on to the fact this time in 6 weeks, I will A) hopefully still be in bed, and B) I will no longer be directing a play.

An Essay on Colour

I have always been fascinated by colour, the fact that there are almost limitless colours that can be seen by the human eye, and an almost limitless again variety of combinations of those colours.

 I have to admit that colours scare me a bit too though, by that sheer limitlessness. I think its some sort of weird fear that I will waste my time on mediocre or bad colour combinations and never find my way to combinations with that 'wow' factor, which other people seem to come across so easily. Its also a fear that of going to far and using 2 many colours in a piece of work. The lucky thing about crochet is that it is so easy to rip a colour out of the work if it isn't working out so I will have to force myself to experiment.

 I also find that I go through colour 'phases'. Some weeks I will have a hankering for vintage colours such as cream and ivory and dusky pink. Other times I need to work with bold colours such as bright red and blue and deep purple. Sometimes I want grey and brown neutrals and other times pastels.

At the moment I want colours that are somehow toned down and greyish toned, dusky pink, ash purple, olive green. It must be a mood thing. Or just a desire to buy as many different colours as physically possible. I don't tend to worry about colours working with each other or with other colours when I buy them, I tend to buy the colours that appeal to me in the mood I'm in while in the shop.

 Some crocheters seem to find it easy to develop a colour palatte. Lucy of Attic 24, for instance, favours juicy, bright, positive colours. This over exuberant attitude to colours terrified me a bit but Lucy's stuff is all so lovely I can't fault her. I've read other blogs where the crocheter favours neutral colours, or includes pink or blue or purple in almost everything. I just love every colour (except maybe orange) and sticking to one colour palate would bore me.

 Unfortunately, that does mean I have to buy an awful lot of wool......

Brrrr....

I'm cold.

However, I do have a small cat curled up on my lap and a glass of wine, so life isn't all bad. 

I have to say, I like winter. I like the warm, gusty feel of the heating being on everywhere, it makes me kind of Christmassy (Yeah, I know it's September....). I like wrapping myself up in layers of clothes and scarves and gloves and woolly hats. I like putting on my 'granny' cardigans and huddling round a mug of tea to keep warm. 

I don't like standing in the cold waiting for a bus that's 25 minutes late. I don't like the fact that, now it's getting darker in the evenings and it's now colder, people seem to lose any ability to drive safety and arrive at places on time. For goodness sake, it isn't snowing (yet). I really don't like getting up out of my warm bed in the mornings and having he world assault me with icy temperatures so I have to scurry into the bathroom to get dressed huffing and puffing and rubbing my arms to keep warm. 

How does everyone else feel about the imminent coming of the dark times? Although, I did hear that here in the UK, we are due to get some more summery(ish) weather next week, so this must just be the pretend winter.