What happened to August??? I'd swear that the last time I turned around it was July. Anyway, here is my Sit-Rep for August:
STASH Maintained cold sheep. Even went into the lion's den today(the yarn department at John Lewis) and avoided buying anything. Do not expect September to be as good - I-Knit London is on at the end of next week and I'm bound to get ambushed. Have finished another skein of the Heathland Hebridean (am now half way up the first sleeve), as well as one and a half skeins of sock yarn (Mirasole's Chirapa in the spearmint colourway) so that's 2.5 skeins for a total of 18 skeins used up.
OVERDRAFT Another £126.12 paid back for a total of £1,096.30 paid back this year. That is far better than I feared it would be - I fell quite heavily off the wagon and didn't track my spending at all in August.
GARDEN Not a lot to report: the butternut pumpkin is taking over the world and has to be discouraged from climbing through the fence into the next door neighbour's back garden; one of the runner bean plants has finally flowered (very pretty flowers) but the others are still just sitting there doing nothing; and some of the onions are probably ready for harvesting. The courgettes died. We've had a few sprouts from one of the sprouting broccoli (the other will sprout in early spring). The tomatoes have run wild and needed staking (some are supported on bricks); there are dozens of green tomatoes appearing but it's been so wet recently that I'm beginning to worry about blight. I've reused one of the potato tyres to grow pak-choi; they're about an inch high at present. There are about a dozen chillies visible now, spread over three plants and, on Tuesday night, we cooked with and ate our very first jalapeno chilli. Yum!
STASH Maintained cold sheep. Even went into the lion's den today(the yarn department at John Lewis) and avoided buying anything. Do not expect September to be as good - I-Knit London is on at the end of next week and I'm bound to get ambushed. Have finished another skein of the Heathland Hebridean (am now half way up the first sleeve), as well as one and a half skeins of sock yarn (Mirasole's Chirapa in the spearmint colourway) so that's 2.5 skeins for a total of 18 skeins used up.
OVERDRAFT Another £126.12 paid back for a total of £1,096.30 paid back this year. That is far better than I feared it would be - I fell quite heavily off the wagon and didn't track my spending at all in August.
GARDEN Not a lot to report: the butternut pumpkin is taking over the world and has to be discouraged from climbing through the fence into the next door neighbour's back garden; one of the runner bean plants has finally flowered (very pretty flowers) but the others are still just sitting there doing nothing; and some of the onions are probably ready for harvesting. The courgettes died. We've had a few sprouts from one of the sprouting broccoli (the other will sprout in early spring). The tomatoes have run wild and needed staking (some are supported on bricks); there are dozens of green tomatoes appearing but it's been so wet recently that I'm beginning to worry about blight. I've reused one of the potato tyres to grow pak-choi; they're about an inch high at present. There are about a dozen chillies visible now, spread over three plants and, on Tuesday night, we cooked with and ate our very first jalapeno chilli. Yum!
I'm beginning to plan for next year's garden. I want to try over-wintering broad beans, which means planting them out in October. Ditto garlic and shallots. I'd also like to try growing beetroot, having finally overcome a beetroot-canned-in-vinegar-induced aversion to them. Not sure what else to grow.
And finally, we're part way through this year's attempt to make rosehip jelly, having harvested 5kg (11lb) of rosehips from the rose bush in the front garden.
SOCKS Completed another pair of the zig-zag socks, this time for me. The Mirasole yarn didn't knit to the same tension as the pair I made for my sister, which I found out the hard way (I grafted the toe shut on the first one, tried it on and discovered that they were far too short in the foot). Hands up any frequent sock knitter who does a gauge swatch on a pair of socks for themselves. <--stands on toes to look at the back of the room--> No, can't see anyone. <--shakes head--> Since the yarn can pass as DK, this pair were meant to be my catch-up pair, with another pair to follow. However, the subsequent pair were only 40 rows long at month end.
- Pam
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