Hi again everyone, and welcome to my November update! I'm finally back on track with my goal of updating each month at the end of the month (or a few days into the new month which is usually what happens!) I wanted to show you the main reason I went MIA for most of October/November, and that is this lawn! It had been getting on my nerves as it was pitted and uneven, and there were patches of grass that was shaggy and a different colour to the rest, plus a trench where a pipe was laid and when the trench was refilled, the soil they put back in was so bad that nothing would grow. So... I sprayed all the grass, removed the turf by hand, levelled it by hand, and reseeded it. It's so easy to type that in a sentence but nothing was easy about that project! If you plan to redo your own lawn, I strongly recommend hiring professionals who have machinery, and then rolling out Ready Lawn. But if you're on a tight budget you can do it yourself like I did... just be prepared for about 6 weeks (weekends and evenings) of nothing but digging up turf till you're ready to collapse, then breaking up and raking clods till the surface is smooth, checking it from all angles and redoing it, then sowing seeds and watching as cats and birds ravage your carefully smoothed surface and feast on the seeds.
Disclaimer, I did know this would be hard! I also knew it would be worth it and I feel very satisfied when I look out the window and see the green haze that is more vivid every day. Soon I'll have to go through and pick out all the weed seedlings (yay) and sow some more grass to fill the gaps. And we have a hot dry summer forecast (though I'll believe that when I see it) so keeping up the watering is a must.
While I worked on the lawn the rest of the spring garden grew and flourished. I also managed to plant my beans in the potager.
Peony season arrived! I have about nine peony plants and four of them flowered this year. Three plants had one flower each. Precious little darlings, aren't they? The peony above is Pink Hawaiian Sunset which is a coral coloured bloom which fades to this lovely soft peach. It lasted about 2 weeks inside and was gorgeous the whole time. I also picked a lovely bunch of Peace roses.
I finished my second pair of knitted socks and immediately cast on the next pair using my own food colouring dyed yarn. It was very exciting to see how the colours worked up! This pattern is the Vanilla Latte socks.
I did a little bit of work on my Circlepuff Square crochet blanket, not a lot I'm afraid but I did block the squares that I finished.
Now at some time during the month there was a supermoon. It was a cloudy evening and I don't see the eastern horizon from my house so I didn't see it rise, but at about 9.30 I wandered out of my house and saw a glow in the clouds. I went down the street a little way and saw it rise out of a bank of clouds. My photo isn't very impressive but it was certainly big, and very yellow! After I took the photo it continued to rise and soon disappeared into the heavy cloud cover. So yeah, that's my supermoon story.
In other news, Pod and Ini continue to be cute and love to help in the garden (especially Ini who is pictured above testing a pot for me).
I eventually got round to taking a photo of my stripey second pair of socks! They fitted well thanks to some tweaks I'd made in the pattern. I decided to try using smaller needles for my third pair, and they have improved my gauge a lot. However it means there's no point referring to these notes as I have to work it all out again with a tighter gauge! Oh well, it's not like you stop at just one pair of socks is it?
At the end of the month some Christmas crafting sneaks in... I'm crocheting a Christmas tree skirt. Nothing could go wrong with two cats and a Christmas tree, right?
