I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes, yarn is all around us and so the knitting grows .....

It is a time of year for finishing things off.  Northern Man has a problem with finishing things:  if he does a DIY job the tools sit where he last used them for weeks;  he has an issue with using up the last of the mayonnaise from a jar and he deserts a tube of toothpaste with at least two or three good squeezes left in it.  I was not surprised, therefore, when I found several almost-but-not-quite-used-up bags of potatoes in the fridge last night when I went to make the shepherd's pie.  The first was a bag of Vivaldi potatoes - we know who he was.  The second was a bag of Chopin potatoes - we know who he was.  The third was a bag of Maris Piper potatoes - who was he?  Is there such a place as Maris or was he a non-geographically-specific figure from Scottish history, heard piping mournfully across the Highlands at the end of the year to welcome Hogmanay?  Perhaps he followed the lead of Scottish football teams in not being named after his place of origin - Queen of the South (Dumfries), Raith Rovers (Kirkcaldy), St Mirren (Paisley), St Johnstone (Perth), Hibernian (Leith), Queen's Park (Glasgow), Albion Rovers (Coatbridge), Heart of Midlothian (Edinburgh), etc, etc.

Every year we have to move the The Box in order to make room for the oversized Christmas tree that Big Girl and Youngest Child insist I buy.

 The Box, which stores the-things-I'm-going-to-do-something-with-one-day, has to be partly emptied and this is when I come face to face with my own inability to finish a project.  I decided that this holiday I would finally put this right.


A knitted gargoyle has been in a dismembered state for  at least two years .....

A knitted devil who was completed all except one foot!  Why?  What can have been so important that I got distracted at that late stage and left him?

These knitted dolls have been partly knitted and partly put together for months.  I had a problem with the hair which I feel I have solved and with the face, which I have not.

And finally, the knitted dragons produced off-spring ......

Happy New Year and every blessing to you all.

Fortune telling and glue gunning ......

This morning I went to Chiswick car boot sale, not to sell, but to wander in the hope of finding a thing or two to buy.    As I was passing one stall I heard a lady ask the dealer if he had any books on fortune telling.  The dealer looked her straight in the eye and said 'Next week'.  I can only hope that she can see far enough ahead not to go back next Sunday in the hope that he is a man of his word.

I was tickled to find a professional sign writer there with beautifully painted things.  He had a collection of vintage saws for sale.  They were painted with opulent scroll work around the words 'Tattoos Removed'.

I have indulged myself with the purchase of a hot glue gun, Who knew there was so much fun to be had?  Everything is getting a stick-on make over ....

Sets of painted drawers with crochet flowers ...

Baskets, boxes and a hat box with crochet flowers .....

and a pretty vintage basket with knitted and crocheted flowers.  I've taken this basket to lots of fairs and it has refused to sell.  Add a few flowers and it disappeared first thing yesterday morning!  This could be the future .....

Summer's lease hath all too short a date.

In the knowledge that we are almost at the end of the car boot sale season, I went fair distances on Saturday in search of things to buy.  My route took me across country along lanes and byroads and, as it was still very early, wildlife was out in large numbers.  As I swerved around the tenth or eleventh pheasant, I mused on the joke nature played on them - delicately camouflaged so as not to be seen by predators but so stupid that they cannot stay hidden.

Here are some of the things I collected today ....

Lovely painted paper mache coffee filter paper holders. I don't understand why anyone would want a coffee filter paper holder, even one as beautiful as these, as it seems to me that they are the ultimate dust collectors.  However, I didn't buy these to sell - they are staying in my collection.

Pretty trios and a very damaged but charming porcelain flower box.

A velvet hat box with the strangest porcelain flower decoration glued to the top and vintage crochet gloves.

Carved wood panels and vintage wooden shoe shapers ...

Isn't he great?  No hint of camouflage here!

I welcome little fishes in with gently smiling jaws!

I was reminded of this poem on Wednesday when the doors of the hall were opened and 160 new year 7s, with shining morning faces, poured through to begin their secondary school education.  The full poem, as you will likely know, goes:-

How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail,

And pour the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,

How neatly spreads his claws,

And welcomes little fishes in

With gently smiling jaws!

But rest assured, I have not yet been known to feast on any part of a year 7 student ....

On to other things.  The nasty boot, which has been my constant companion this summer, has gone, the bandage has been removed and my battered, puffy, scarred foot is once again in daylight.  It was an interesting experience wearing the boot:  complete strangers struck up conversations in queues, on trains, in restaurants and at the car boot sale.  People got out of my way, apologised for bumping into me and offered me seats.  The assumption was that I had done something to my foot by accident and I had to explain that, actually, I had decided to put myself through the last, very boring, six weeks of inconvenience.

We did have some amusing times together, the boot and I, particularly with the business of keeping clean.  One hotel in which we stayed had no bath (didn't check in advance - lesson learned) but, luckily, did provide little plastic bags to dispose of STs, etc.  I discovered that the plastic bag was a lovely snug fit over my foot and its bandage so that was how I showered for several days.  We also had a few days at the Scottish estate and there is no bath there either, only a shower with a waist level barrier around it.  I knew that I would have to shower with my foot over the barrier in order to keep it dry and I was so focused on this that I forgot to take the shoe off my good foot.  Once I noticed the squishy feeling, I was so suprised that I immediately put my bad foot down in the shower to get my shoe off!

In two week's time, on 21st September, it will be the Vintage Bazaar at Hartley Witney.  There will be lots of exciting stall holders there selling lovely things and I shall be there too. Here are some of the things which will be coming with me ....

Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen, we daren't go a-hunting, for fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, trooping all together. Green jacket, red cap, and white owl's feather!

I am very bored.  Did I mention that?  I have been driven to such things as scrubbing the grouting between the kitchen floor tiles, sorting out the yarn stash and vacuming the beams to get rid of spiders' webs.  Luckily, I have Pinterest to keep me going.  Some weeks ago Nikki mentioned Maggie Neale's Pinterest page and I have been following keenly ever since.  Every time I visit Pinterest there is a lovely array of pictures to gaze at and, when you follow the links to other pinners, lots more beautiful things.  So much to look at and, luckily, so much time to spare!

Also, so much time to knit.  Following on from the dragons last week, I now give you the following mythical creatures spotted in the garden .....

 Knitted gnomes....

 Knitted elves (or are they imps?).  Every time I look at these boys I think Jedward ...

and a knitted troll (or is it a goblin?) who has has clearly been going to the gym and working out to develop those muscles.

Romance and Northern Man .....

Northern Man is bored.  He is working from home to help me following the removal of the hallux valgus last week which is a sign of his love - or so he would have me believe.  Personally I suspect that it is a practise run for retirement, something I have been discouraging vigourously.  I know nobody less suited to a sedentary life than my husband as this week has conclusively proved, to me if not to him.

He has always had, right from the very beginning of mobile telephone technology, a work 'phone and he is supposed to pay for any private calls he makes from it.  So bored was he yesterday that he decided to work out how much he owed his employers for calls made over the last few years and he started with me.  Last year, my husband spent £10.40 calling me from his mobile.  Who says romance is dead?

I am bored too.  Many people, I know, would love to be told that they had to spend 6 weeks off their feet, preferably lying down with one foot elevated above the level of the heart.  It would be all their summer holidays come at once.  Not me - I'm just bored:  can't drive so can't go to a car boot sale; can't walk so can't enjoy the weather or the countryside;can't cook, shop, clean, launder - ok, so it's not all bad.  But I can knit!  Here are the latest creations ....

Dragon rampant and Dragon couchant ...

Graduation, goodbyes, goblins and gargoyles ...

Goodbyes seem to be a theme in our household recently.   It was no time at all ago that we left Big Girl at university for the first time but last week she graduated and waved farewell to Lancaster, at least for a while. Northern Man also said a sad, permanent goodbye this week to a friend from the North from his formative years.  I was luckier:  I said goodbye to my hallux valgus which has been keeping me company since my teens.  I shall not miss it and I am already planning to buy a completely new shoe collection as soon as the swelling has subsided!

As I am unable to walk at present I have been doing some knitting and decided to revisit gargoyles.  I love the Georgina Manvell gargoyle patterns but they are labour intensive and I thought I'd have a go at something smaller and simpler.  Here are the results with Simon the Baleful for comparison.  I feel a little Victor Frankensteinish - have I created a goblin or an imp?  If I add horns, wings and a tail do I have a gargoyle? 

This one reminds me of somebody ......