Lovely weather for slugs

The slug population of my garden seems to be immense. I am doing a nightly slug patrol, aided by mr/mrs tiggywinkle, and still they come. A slimy tumescent tsunami of mainly black keeled monsters. I need free range nocturnal chickens, about a thousand!!

This living in a cloud is perfect for them but hey ho that,s how nature is, the weeds are growing faster than I can pull them out and luckily the veg is not too shabby either. I did manage a decent strawberry harvest and the apples are looking good. If we get some sun there will be blue berries also, the wild blackberries are full of fruit and given some sun I will be stashing them away in the freezer. My rhubarb is prolific and the plants that I grew from seed are marvellous, both in volume and taste. In fact they are growing so well that I will be moving some of them in the autumn to give them more room to spread.

I have reached halfway on the shawl Linus and will post a pic tomorrow, I am almost at the top of my jumper sleeves and have the next project lined up. The crochet blanket motifs are unchanged, I am in no hurry to finish it. I really want to save this for the winter afternoons, radio 2 playing or maybe an audio book in the background. This is not a project for in front of the telly, I may be making another blanket from Lucy's blog, Attic 24.

I have been podcast watching again, socks in particular. I am hovering between dpns, short circular and magic loop methods. I have a set of dpns and a pattern and yarn so will be trying that out first. Then there is top down or toe up, and what about crochet? Kathryn from Crafternoon Treats has crocheted some and they look amazing. Then heel shape "Fish lips kiss" who would have thought it and what about a "whirlwind toe". There is no wonder that I can not make my mind up, and that is before I consider what brand of needles to use. As for the yarn Oh My Goodness, what a selection, I am in serious danger of becoming a yarn junkie. There are some wonderful small businesses out there dying yarns for socks that look good enough to eat. Then there are the spinners, I want to spin.
On that note Deb from the wool shop has a contact who spins and maybe, just maybe we will have a little demonstration one Tuesday.
I have used a drop spindle before, but that was at primary school. We had raw fleece and went right through the process to spinning and knitting our yarn. Of course I remember very little about it, but if I can relearn those skills, and hone them, there is fleece to be found at reasonable prices.

So many crafts, so little time. I need to live for another 50 or so years I think. But bearing in mind that my word for the year is time. As in taking time to enjoy I am happy to toddle along enjoying each day to the full.

My friend M, who lives a few houses down from me had a problem in her garden. There was a fairly large corner with a very elderly shrub, dying slowly, we had a chat on Saturday about it. Sunday morning she tootled off to buy some pinks and compost. Monday morning I loaded the wheelbarrow up with some manure, a fork and trowel, three potted shrubs that had no particular home in my garden. I added some self seeded Lady's Mantle and a Hydrangea cutting that had made a nice little plant.
I trundled this down the road and 20 minutes later the plot was transformed. M had removed the old shrub, dug out the roots and forked it over with the compost added.
We decided on the planting plan and then added some manure to the soil mix, in went the plants and each had a good amount of water to settle them in.
I walked past this morning and all is looking good, I will take a pic and post as soon as the mist lifts.

Today will be a knitting and sewing sort of day, finish the sleeves and get the bag linings sewn, possible get the bag handles sewn as well.
       I am still waiting for the bamboo handles!!

Maybe today, touch wood.

Any how the lap top needs to go on charge so,

                    TTFN                              Pam