Knitting my sock stash

 In January I set myself a goal to knit a pair of socks each month throughout the year.  The idea was to fill a box with hand knitted socks for both myself and Mark for Christmas.

We are now in the middle of August and I've just recently finished my eighth pair.  I could choose to miss knitting a pair this month but I decided to cast another pair on this weekend and if life gets too busy towards Christmas I'll still be on track.

These are the latest two pairs finished

A pair for me....

And a pair for Mark.

And all the ones I've knitted so far this year.

It's going to be a tight fit, but I think I should manage to get them all in.

I wanted to try and knit all the socks from stash this year, and I'm happy to say that I have acheived that, so far at least.  I've only purchased one ball of sock yarn this year so I haven't been adding anymore to stash either.

I didn't think to take a photo of my commercial sock yarn stash back in January...But this is how it's looking at the moment.

It makes me happy to be using what I have and seeing less on this shelf.  The shelf is only one ball deep but there is still a fair bit to choose from; and certainly enough to keep me going until the end of the year.  There are also some part balls of solids in there too that I can use for cuffs, heels and toes if I choose to.

I find that the older I'm getting the less I want, of anything, not just yarn, and having a large stash of yarn, or any crafting supplies, is not something that bothers me anymore.  I love to look at yarn and enjoy a browse at yarn festivals and yarn shops, but I think I would much rather be in a position of finding a pattern I would like to knit and then shopping for the yarn, you know, like it used to be before there was so much yarny temptation on social media, lol.

Of course I will still sometimes get tempted along the way, but I would still like to keep to a sensible amount.  

I do have a reasonable amount of hand-dyed yarn - not a huge stash by any means, but enough to have some options.  Most of it is single skeins that I bought because I loved the colourway at the time, while some were gifts.

I could use some of them for socks, and there are definitely a few that I will.  But others are far too pretty to be hidden inside shoes!  So, I've been thinking about pairing some of the skeins together and using them to knit a few Tee's for next Summer - I think that would be a lovely way to make use of those special yarns and getting to enjoy the colours - Watch this space 😉

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Too close for comfort

You may have seen on BBC and Sky news tonight about the wild fires in Stourbridge -

This fire spread so quickly across the fields local to us - and is still going.

My daughter, Joanne was going into town and spotted a small fire in the bushes on the edge of the field.  She stopped and called it in but said by the time she had got off the phone it was already spreading across the field.

While it looks like they stopped it spreading across the the fields in one direction, it carried on in the other direction and now the local golf club is gone and the fields are still on fire, this is the road currently just short walk from where we live.  There are so many trees and hedges along that road, making it easy for the fire to spread.

These are the roads I drive down to my Roots allotment, the farmer and locals were seen taking the horses to safety early on, so hopefully all livestock is safe.  At the moment the allotments are ok, although we have been asked to stay away, not only to allow the emergency services to do their job, but also It's just not worth the risk at the moment the way it's spreading.

The council have opened up the Town Hall to accomodate those evaquated and also one of the churches in town is open for people too.  I think a few people have been treated for heat and smoke inhalation but thankfully no more than that, lets hope it stays that way, but sadly there have been at least six houses lost at the moment.

The photos i've shared are not mine, they were posted by people from the Roots allotments on our whatsapp group who were there at the time.

It's so scary how quickly this spread, everything is so dry that it wouldn't have taken much to get going...lets hope that they get it under control soon.

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Last Week

The start of another new month already.  These months seem to fly by and before we know it, Christmas will be here!

This week has been spent mostly around home and playing catch-up.  Some weeks go smoothly and everything seems to fall into place and I manage to get loads done, while other weeks I appear to acheive very little, last week was definitly a week when I acheived very little.

Even so, I managed to get three days in at the allotment last week, not full day's but I've made some good progress - I'll be sharing before and after photos soon.

I put some mystery flowers in one of the raised beds and they are doing really well. I think these are zinias.  I've never been successful with zinnias before, they are so pretty.  I did nothing but clear the weeds in this raised bed, the soil wasn't particulaly good, but perhaps that's what they like.

My sunflowers finally produced a lovely flower head too...they were very slow to get going but now I get to enjoy them a bit longer.

 I took myself for coffee and cake one afternoon and finished the book I was readin.   I'm on the look out for Liz Nugents other books now, this one was really good, well written and with an ending I didn't see coming.

Book & Pudding club was on Wednesday night - Yet again my choice didn't winn the vote.  This is the one that received the most votes.  I do wonder If the fact that our host went on about how much she enjoyed it had an effect on the voting?  I have noticed she does that quite a bit, and that's ok, but I wish she would wait until the voting is over so that there is no influence.

I'm not sure how I feel about reading it, I've listened to a preview on Audible and I didn't like the narration and our local library doesen't have - I don't feel inclined to spend £9 on a book I'm not sure about.

Stevie Is starting to have nail clients again one day a week, and I get to look after Freddie while she is working.

Stevie always say's he never falls asleep on his own at home, but come to nanna's and he will fall asleep on the floor, ha ha.

I spent yesterday tidying the garden. The earth is so parched, the grass hasn't been green for months, everything is desperate for water, even shrubs in the ground are suffering this year - I've never seen my hydrangea this bad.  

I gave everything a really good soaking yesterday, but what we really need is some rain....There is a rumour that we might see some rain tomorrow, I'll beleive that when I see it, we've only had one morning with some light rain in five weeks!

On Wednesday I have a procedure at the hospital.  Mark is coming home tomorrow evening so he can come with me.  I may need to be sedated, which means I won't be able to drive afterwards.  Even if that isn't necessary, I wouldn't have fancied going on my own.

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