Productive and lovely weekend

Last weekend felt like a pretty productive one really even though I didn't manage to get anywhere near as much work done as I had hoped. I was working my second job on Saturday earning my pocket money - all that I earn from this is always spent on fun things so it always feels worth the early start on a Saturday morning.

I also came home to a lovely meal where we could sit at the table and be sociable. Speaking to each other has become a bit of a novelty at the minute as we have both been working so much and at completely un-co-ordinated times so it was really lovely to have the time to sit together and eat.

Adam had made some lamb meatballs during the day and we were to have these with pitta breads and some salad. We did pop out quickly when I got home to get some cheese to have with them. We decided on hallumi cheese which we could lightly fry off and some tzatsiki although when we got the the shop, the only dip that there was a gap for on the shelf was typically the tzatsiki.

Plan B...what do we do? We can't eat it without any sauce at all. I thought it couldn't really be too difficult to make tzatsiki as it must just be Greek yoghurt and cucumber really. We had a little Google and it turns out it is really easy. You need a small pot of Greek yoghurt (or more depending on how much tzatsiki you want to make), a whole cucumber chopped up fairly finely, lemon juice, a small handful of mint leaves and salt and pepper to taste. It's really easy to make and even if we do say so ourselves, it was a million yes nicer than the stuff that you buy in the shops too.

Our version of tzatsiki was lovely and went really well with the other ingredients to make some well loaded and lovely pittas.

It was a proper feast really by the time we were ready to eat. We both thoroughly enjoyed our meal and I loved sitting in the kitchen to eat it too. It always feels like a real treat to sit properly at the table and actually speak to each other.

On Sunday my plan was a pretty boring one really as my hubby was on call for work so we couldn't do too much and I had full intentions of getting some college done but this didn't really end up happening.

Adam had the idea a while ago - almost when we bought the house really - that he wanted a brick built BBQ in the garden. It's always been something that I am not too fussed about so I said that if he could find a way of doing it relatively cheaply then I didn't mind him doing it.

He put a message out on Facebook a little while ago asking anyone if they had any free bricks that we could collect and use to build it. A lovely couple replied and said that they had almost a full pallet of bricks leftover from their house extension so as long as we could go and get them then they could be ours.

We got the message about a week or so ago but hadn't managed to get around to going and collecting them in the evenings after work. Sunday seemed to be the best option and the only time over this few weeks that we would both be free at the same time to go and collect them.

We took around a couple of bottles of wine on Sunday morning and began the process of loading the car. We were quite conscious to start with to not over-fill the boot and weigh the car down but on the second load we were aware that they still weren't all going to fit and there were even more left for a third run as we had just loaded.

The second run I unloaded most of myself as Adam had to do some work at that point. As I was outside by the car to unload them and carry them around the back a man who lives on our street came and asked what we were building. When we told him he revealed that he is in fact a builder and could therefore do it for us for a reasonable price. We were both slightly gutted I think for not being able to do this ourselves really but also pleased as I'm sure it will look a million times better built professionally than if we had tried to do it ourselves.

By the third go I was really happy to see the man who's bricks they were come out to help us put the remaining bricks in the boot. I was starting to flag by this point and in need of some lunch! This did finish the whole pallet of bricks in the final trip. Once unloaded we had a nice lunch of scrambled egg & smoked salmon on toast and then we were fuelled up enough to keep going.

If we didn't go then then we really weren't sure when we would be able to go to look for the rest of the stuff that we needed to buy before the builder could come and do his work. We got a couple of bags of cement and some sand for the mortar. We needed some blocks to go around the top of the bricks that we have. This will hopefully make it look a bit nicer. I had thought that a darker grey-ish coloured block could look good with the light coloured bricks that we have. We have got 20 of these (no idea how many we will need really, this was a pure guess!) We also had decided that, as we have quite a lot of the matching bricks, hopefully there will be enough to have a shelf on either side of the actual BBQ. We wanted a couple of basic slabs really but it would be good to have some grey coloured ones that would match the blocks. We have ended up with some huge slabs that are going to be far too big but, as we now have a builder to make this for us, we are hoping that he will be able to cut these to size well with his saw.

It is a pretty decent size pile of bricks/blocks that we have ended up with!

We also remembered the key ingredient - the BBQ set itself.

Since then, we have had a pretty busy few days really - pub last night & I feel like I have managed to just about get caught up with the college that I should have done at the weekend tonight as well. I just did a couple of hours when I got in from work tonight. I sat downstairs on the sofa tonight and we have had Classic FM on the radio too. I have never really listened to classical music before (& didn't really tonight either) but it was lovely to work to.

I have a few more things that I am aware I need to catch up with blogging about for you - hopefully I will be able to get these written up shortly. Also, there will be the BBQ building starting to happen this weekend as well. Watch this space. See you soon! Hope you're having a good week.

Edit: Oooh Adam has just read this and pointed out that it might sound like we took the wine for our last visit to the people's house to collect the bricks just to drink and make it more bearable. I really didn't mean that! We took them as a thank you for the bricks!

WI

Recently we have been re-watching a TV series on DVD called "Jam & Jerusalem". It's a really great production by the BBC and written by Jennifer Saunders. It also has some great people in it including Dawn French, Sue Johnston & David Mitchell.

It's a TV show about the "Women's Guild" and the lives of the women in it within a small village in Devon. It essentially is a lovely, easy watching, nice program about ladies who take part in the WI as well as some other inter-related parts of their lives.

I have watched it a couple of times before and really enjoyed it but when I looked into the Women's Institute groups near to where I live these seemed to be mostly during the day which would be no good to me and also a lot of the activities that it looked like they did seemed pretty boring. The one in the village that I live in in particular really didn't appeal.

About a week or so ago I started to look for a group for a little further afield. I had a little look at a few groups nearby and quite a lot of them seemed to be just old ladies sitting around listening to boring talks and that kind of thing but then about a week or so ago I stumbled across the "Bingham Belles".

The program that was up on their website looked a little bit more fun and younger-oriented than most. August was the annual summer stroll, September Vintage Craft & Upcycling, November is cheese tasting and even January is a Post Christmas Pamper Time. There seem to be a number of quizzes and craft evenings which sound like just the kind of thing that I would enjoy.

I got in contact with them by email and asked about the group. They said that it was a fairly mixed aged group ranging from late 20s (as I guess I have to admit that I am) to 60s. I thought that this sounded quite good really as there should be a nice mix of people attending. Their first meeting that I would be able to attend was Wednesday night which was the annual summer stroll.

I went along on Wednesday and had a really nice time. We went for a walk along a river and then back to a pub! I think that I can cope with WI if it includes a trip to the pub every now and then! The group was nice and as the lady who emailed me had said was a real mix of ages. It was a really lovely evening with everyone plodding along by the river together and then back to the pub for a drink and pub quiz.

I have found a few pictures today on their Facebook page of the walk

Wednesday night's meeting was a freebie as it was the first meeting that I had been to but as I enjoyed it I think I will go back again for another meeting. I would like to see what a "normal" meeting is like really before I say for definite that I will join. I don't imagine that they will all involve just walking and going to the pub! They do seem like a nice bunch of ladies though and it's a nice escape to be chilled out for a couple of hours, one nit per month.

Joining squares!

I did finally manage to pluck up the courage to finish taking all of he tape off of the pegs from out pit check board in th hall. All of the chicks are now back on and the display is looking all pretty again. I won't be in the bad books any longer. I managed to get it finished in the time that I got home a little bit early from work on Friday before my husband got back.

This now means that I can start to order my squares and even to sew them together as well. Yey! This is the part where things should all start to come together and some of my inner OCD and geeky-ness comes out. Please bear with me!

I decided that I wanted the squares to look random but also to follow some kind of a pattern. So I went with a random order of the 16 coloured squares that I had made 11 of and then a white and beige in between each set of colours. I used a random number generator to produce 11 lists of the 16 random numbers.

I had the squares laid out on the floor in a pattern so that I could identify the number of the square in the formation and therefore follow the order that had got from the random number generator that I used.

And then to start laying out the squares in the pattern dictated by the random number generator. I went with 1-16 for that colourful squares.

Then an alternate arrangement of the white and beige squares.

And it grew...

And grew...

Backwards and forwards until all of the squares wee used up.

Ta dah!

This was the first draft. This was the totally random version of my new blanket but I decided that perhaps I couldn't quite cope with pure randomness. I started to work through and remove some the duplicated squares - where the same colour has managed to end up next to each other.

I again used my random number generator this time taking the number of the square in the sequence that I wanted to change and then taking a random number from 1-16 to switch this with. I would only switch within the same sequence  so as to keep the frequency of arch colour even.

And finally I completely rearranged the final set of colours. I noticed in the bottom right hand comer that there seemed to be far too many dark colours. This became most evident when I viewed the pattern in black and white.

I decided to completely rearrange the final block of colours. This includes the bottom 2 rows in the right hand corner as well as the whole of the bottom row. And the final article looks something a bit like this...

Yey! I did notice since I took this photo there are 2 light aqua coloured squares in the 3rd column from the left that are still next to each other. I did spot this and do one final switch before starting to connect the whole lot together but I never took another photo after this point, sorry. You will just have to wait until the final article to see the full effect.

And so to start attaching them together...I am using the method that Lucy from Attic 24 describes for connecting the squares. I am using some yellow yarn as this is one of the colours that I have an extra ball of and lots left of. If you remember from my last post about the blanket I had this and the pink colour that I had received an extra ball of each.

The first few went together nicely and using the crochet method to attach the squares means that it also doesn't take too long per row/square to attach them.

I soon had 2 rows together

And to start on the 3rd...

There were a couple of things that I needed to keep an eye on. With this 3rd row I had to be careful not to have a twist in the first when I attached it otherwise this could not be untwisted or corrected. Once I got past this row though this is no longer an issue.

I also had to be careful not to make the stitching too tight with this connecting of the squares as it could make the squares bunch up a little. This would mean that once the squares are connected in the other direction I could end up with humps in the middle of each square where these are all baggy and the edges are tightly connected.

I worked through a number of rows this Sunday as my husband day of being on call, which would usually involve answering a couple at 5-10 minute phone calls, turned into pretty much a full day of working from home.

I built up one row at a time eventually ending up with this. The picture is a rotation by 90degrees of the final design so I basically have connected about half of the squares from the left hand side of the origianal plan.

I am currently working from right to left of the above picture (bottom to top of the design pictures). I did miss having my relaxing weekend and seeing my husband during that time however I am really quite chuffed with how far I got with this in a couple of days.

I was generally kept company by Henlow who we now have just roaming around most of the downstairs. We had to give up with shutting him in his house during the day really as he will just keep climbing out now he has figured out how.

This seems to be his new favourite place, hidden behind the door in the living room. He started hiding there with our Xbox guitars that we kept there originally.

We have since moved these upstairs and out of the way but it's still definitely his favourite place to hide.

I would have thought that if he wanted to go to bed then he might find his way back home to his comfy and toasty house but hey ho. I'm sure that it's weirdly comfy behind there. We do have to put him to bed in the evening still as we don't really want him staying in the living room when we're not around but  he seems ok with that too really. Often when we pick him up to put him to bed he is so fast asleep he's all tucked into his shell and his eyes are totally shut. Soo sweet.

I love my little man soo much. He makes me so happy and I love having him around much more now too, even if he does like to hide often really. It is much less difficult now that we have got a plastic box at the weekend and hidden all of the wires from behind the TV so he can curl up I there and we have to worry about him eating the wires. We don't have to leap up from the sofa quite so often to stop him going there now.

Blocking

I have had another go at blocking this week. This time I think (and hope) that I have done it properly. Ihaven't  just used a few pins on a vaguely flat-ish surface, I have actually used proper boards and pins. More by luck than judgement really but I have used the boards that we made for the pit checks to pin out my crochet squares.

I started off with just 1 layer of squares on some pegs spread across the boards but soon realised that the pins are long enough for 2 layers of squares to sit on them quite comfortably. I therefore went with 2 squares per group of pegs.

I didn't have enough space to quite fit on all of the colours in one go but I have pinned a full batch of 3 colours out in one go along with 4 of a fourth colour as well.

Hopefully in this heat (not quite as warm as it has been but still ok) they will dry fairly quickly and I should be able to get through the full amount of squares in not too many days. In the meantime at least they don't look too bad. I wouldn't want them as a permanent feature in our hallway but they could look quite good up in my crafty room.

Instead of bugging you every day or even a couple of times a day for the next week or so with updates I think that this post might have to become a bit of a diary post and wait for a few days befor I actually post it. So above is my first batch of squares pinned out on Monday evening.

Tuesday

The actual blocking of these squares went really really well. I now have a lovely pile of perfectly proportioned squares all ready to be attached together.

The only minor problem that I found with these is that I forgot to check before putting these on the pins, whether or not the pins are actually rust proof. Well it turns out they're not. Adam came downstairs this morning to get ready for work and firstly checked how the squares were doing. They were still slightly damp but almost dry but they had small rust marks on the sides and in each corner. The pins definitely aren't rust proof. I guess they're not really designed for doing this, they are just industrial nails really.

I lef these empty all day today as I had to get to work, however I have been trying to work this out all day today. The only idea that I had was in some way to try covering the pins so that they would not rust any more if I were to put more squares on.

I thought oboist covering the, with paper and taping this around the pins but this seemed really time consuming. Otherwise the only other thing that I could come up with was tape. This might be quite difficult to get off without the paper underneath. My initial idea was electrical tape as i thought that this might be the right width to cover the pins however I thought that again this could be very tricky to get off and I am also not sure if we had any.

I did however find some masking tape. Hopefully this wouldn't be too difficult to get off again once I had finished with it as it is designed to stick to things but then to be removed again afterwards. So begins the pretty laborious task of masking all of the pins that I need to use.

The tape is wider than the length of the pins and therefore really annoying. I went around taping all of the pins that I needed and then the excess has to be cut off the end as I wasn't able to make these neat enough to be able to get the squares over the pin with these still on here.

Getting there. One board compete with the squares on and the other all taped but just requiring some of the ends trimming still. I think I'll be finding the little end bits of tape for ages. They really ping in all directions when they are snipped off!

And finally the board is full again.

 I really really hope that these ones don't rust this time and that the tape trick works, I guess we'll see in the morning. This will mean that 6 and a half of my colours will be done. Only 11 and a half batches to go once these ones are dry. I make that 4 more batches provided that this fix has worked, fingers crossed I can get them all done in not too much longer.

Wednesday evening

I am getting there now with these. The done pile is definitely growing.

I did try to pin some new ones out again this morning before I left for work but it takes a lot longer than I thought just to put on the new squares so I started and the left hubby to finish for me - he's pretty good to me really! He does have slightly selfish motivation in a way as he would like his pit decorations back to the way that they were before his parents come over on Friday evening but even so that has to be some dedication.

I had to do a few more repairs this evening when I have switched over the squares again. It's the middle pin from each square that ends up loosing its coating first as this is the tightest fit for the squares. Also if I had just decided to not force the squares on through then they would rest on he pin head and then this would most certainly rust through onto the back of the squares.

I have added a little more tape to these - it's going to be tricky to get it all off when I'm done! There's one more full board and another part board to go to get them all done. Hopefully I will get through them all tomorrow and have them off on Friday.

I think I might have to get some kind of board like this put up on the wall in my study/craft room. It could really come in handy for a number of things including blocking crochet and knitting. I am not sure if you need anything like this to pin out patchwork and quilts as well.

Completion of the blocking process

I did eventually manage to get through all of the squares just over a week ago before we went on holiday. The pegs were a bit of a pain in the way that they would rust if they got damp and the tape kept coming off towards the end as that was pretty soggy too - it started to loose it's stick and would just crumple towards the end when you tried to push new squares over it.

Half of the pegs are now returned to normal and have their checks back on but the tape was a real pain to take off, I must have been piggling at it for about 2 hours on Friday evening to get it off just one board.

I haven't quite worked up the courage to have a go at the other one yet. This might have to be one of my jobs for an evening after work this week. I am really looking forward to arranging the squares though. I am planning on laying them out on the floor or the spare bed while I work out a good pattern. Perhaps I should tidy up my mess before starting the fun bit though - keep the hubby happy.

Henlow is a little bugger!!!

Tonight we were happily sitting watching TV when we started to hear some weird noises. They were sort of scrabbling scratching kind of noises. They sounded a lot like the noise that Henlow makes when he is rummaging around in his house under the stairs. But it was definitely coming from within the living room and not from under the stairs

The first couple of times we heard it I said we should just ignore it - it had to be Henlow making the noises, it sounded too familiar. It was just coming from slightly the wrong direction is all. The sounds in the house tonight must be just echoing around strangely.

But then we heard it again...and again...

It was definitely coming from the living room and sounded like something was behind the TV. So that meant dragging he TV out from the corner of the room and looking under there. It must be a mouse so when we moved it we expected something to be moving pretty quickly. Shoes on and door shut. Let's go for it and find this thing.

So we slowly started to move the TV stand out of the way. With our shoes on and the door firmly shut as we were fully expecting something very small and fast to dart out from under there and try to run as far away from us as possible.

So under the TV found we found this disgusting mess of tangled wires...

And right in the middle (on the side closest to the TV) amongst the fluff and dust that was under there, there was also what I thought was the biggest but slowest mouse that I have ever seen in my life! I genuinely couldn't work out what it was for a while. It was a big, dark coloured lump. That looked ever so slightly tortoise shaped.

It was! It's Henlow that was hiding out under there!

I have no idea how he managed to get out or even really how long for. I haven't seen him for a Cole of days but mostly because I have left the house well before he's up in the morning and we've been really busy in the evenings this week.

Adam has definitely fed him this morning and as per usual his food has all goner so he can't have been out for that long.

I feel a lot like one of those parents who's kids has run off around a corner and for 30 seconds or so they are not sure where they are. Totally relieved when they are found again and all they really want to do is give them a huge hug and kiss and tell them how much they love them. But equally you can tell that they really feel like they should be mad at the kid for running off in the first place and feel they should give them a good telling off for hiding or running away.

We did both feel very sorry for him and wanted to spoil him a little so a nice new big bowl of food would work for that for now.

We sort of wanted to give him some strawberries from our next door neighbours strawberry plants that we are looking after while she's on holiday but that was were I drew the line. We had to draw a line somewhere. Well until tomorrow morning anyway.

I am so pleased that we found him and he is nice and safe and sound.

We are still really confused as to how he managed to get out. Unless tortoises can jump and we are just not aware of this skill that the little man has then the only way that we can possibly think of would have been for him to have lifted the door to his house. I am not too sure how this could even be possible as the door is really heavy and especially from he bottom where he would have had to lift if, it's really tricky to lift

I think there will have to be a lesson learned from tonight's adventures. The doors downstairs are to remain closed when we are not around. We had said that we wanted to be able to let him roam arou d the hall on his own anyway. We had almost said that most of the living room would be alright for him too the only bit that we wouldn't have wanted him to go in was under the TV as we didn't want him to be eating the wires. Perhaps this is just his way of saying that we had promised him he would have more space to roam when it came to the summer.

Anyway...my final comment on the little man is...

The little git! We thought that a pet tortoise would be easy!

No more ends!

Today I have finished sewing in all of the ends on the crochet squares from my old "mood" blanket. I thought that this could take a really long while and was something that I really wasn't looking forward to.

Yesterday I didn't manage to do too many as I was so tired from my week at work. The 9:30 bedtimes this week obviously still weren't enough. I did do a few but also managed to fall asleep through two films that me and the hubby tried to watch.

Today the whole sewing experience was made a much more pleasant and comfortable for the last few squares as I am wearing my new PJ bottoms. I have to say that these are by far the comfiest item of clothing that I have ever owned. I really wish that these were suitable everyday attire. I would never get out of them!

And the final coloured squares that I had to finish somehow seemed to be the ones that perfectly match the colours of my trousers!

This is the whole pile of ends that I have weaved in and cut off in the last few days. I wish that they could be more useful. I can use them as stuffing for something at some point I'm sure.

This means that I should now have 196 squares all finished and ready to be sewn/crocheted together into a blanket. I am really looking forward to working out the placement of each of the colours.

Today I have also sorted through my wardrobe and sent a lot of things that I no longer wear either to the charity shop or the clothes bank. It feels like a really good job done and one that's needed doing for qua while. This means that I now have a fair a,punt of fabric to chop up and turn into something new. I have a number of different coloured jeans to chop up - this is one thing that I have been waiting for for a while now. I really want to turn them into a denim skirt of some sort with all of the different colours incorporated.

And lastly but by no means least, we have made a couple more banana cakes today. One will be saved for our holiday- they keep really well in the freezer and defrost almost better than when they have gone in. One will go into work with me tomorrow. The last small piece that I took in didn't last too long and was enjoyed by my colleagues so I thought another one might go down well too. Hopefully it won't last too long again.

Have a good week - I hope that you all have some lovely cake to enjoy tomorrow and the weather stays good too. This afternoon we went out to sit in the sun for a little bit - I think that we managed about half an hour before the clouds rolled in. A little annoying as it was gorgeously warm when we took my car for its first shower and scrub. The rain did stay off tonight, or at least it has so far. Let's hope that we have no more storms like the one last night that woke us up with a huge thunder and lightening clap directly above our house at about 3 in the morning. It was quite impressive and relaxing to sit up for half an hour or so to watch the sky light up. I think that the initial noise that woke me up was made all the worse as the rain hadn't even started at he time of the noise above the house.

Weather runner June

As usual I have been a couple of days behind in telling you about the weather runner for this year so today I have just finished sewing in the ends on my weather table runner.

Here's the progress for June (and the first few days if July)

It's amazing what a difference using the high temperatures for the month does to the colour of my table runner. This month has started to warm up as predicted really. Towards the end of this month (including up to today really) we have had a heat wave. The hottest for here in Nottingham has been 33 degrees. This was on Wednesday which was technically July but it had still started to get very warm at the end of June.

Last month I also decided to change the temperatures that would relate to the highest temperatures. Instead of corresponding to a 5 degree range the top temperatures were changed to 16-18 for yellow, 19-22 for orange and from 23 upwards for red. I'm not sure if I needed to do this really due to high temperatures this week but it has meant the we certainly have a good amount of red in the runner. I do think that there perhaps wasn't going to be enough if I hadn't changed these.

I think that it could look a lot different if I had decided ro base the colours on the rainfall levels. Last night the rain was really quite impressive. I woke up at about 3am with the sound of thunder and lightning directly above our house. I have never heard anything so loud and it really made me jump awake. I woke up my husband with e amount that I jumped. It was quite scary to start with but then really quite impressive. We ended up staying up for about half an hour to just watch the Lightning flashes out of the window and to watch the rain.

I like the way that it is turning out still. Perhaps this month to last would have blended slightly better if there were a few more green rows at the beginning of the month but overall I think that it is looking good. I still can't wait to get this out on the table and in use. I hope that you are all enjoying the sun today and making the most of the nice weather. We are having a lovely chilled out weekend. Hopefully I will have another post for you tomorrow or at least in the next few days.