Category: general stuff

countryside · crafts & knitting · general stuff · wildlife

Summer days

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)9 Comments

First published on my typepad blog, August 1st 2023 . . .

Well, we’re half way through the long summer break here and have settled into a comfortable daily routine. Mornings are calm and quiet as happily Toby enjoys quite long lie-ins, so I usually have a couple of gentle hours to call my own, either reading or knitting and sometimes having breakfast in bed when the mood takes me. Once he is up we head out for a walk, usually walking around 3 miles and stopping for a picnic snack along the way. Toby is good company as a walking buddy, he so enjoys the peace and quiet of the countryside and looks all around him as we go along. He’s still not keen on me stopping to take photos of things but is getting gradually more tolerant, just as long as I’m quick.

It’s a wonderful thing to be able to share a love of nature and the outdoors with him, and our walks together are often the best part of the day. We’ve seen so much wildlife: lots of muntjac deer, a stoat, rabbits, buzzards, red kites, kestrels, storks, egrets and so very many insects, bees, dragonflies and butterflies, it’s been a great year for them and I’ve seen such a variety. It looks like being a good year for blackberries and hazelnuts too, with a bumper crop ripening in the hedgerows and we’ve seen a lot of early fungi too, doubtless sprouting well because of all of the rain we’ve had recently. Not that I’m complaining in any way, I’m so grateful this year for the cooler temperatures and wetter weather and so is the greenly verdant countryside.

There’s not much progress on anything knitting related at the moment. I’ve been knitting quite a few scarves from the ‘Sophie Scarf’ pattern by Petiteknit as it’s a beautifully simple and uncomplicated knit, perfect for picking up whenever I get the chance for a few rows and putting down again when Toby needs something. As far as my own pattern writing goes I do now have a cow pattern finalised, though still in the form of scribbled notes which need a lot of work once the next college term starts in September.

I hope you’ve had a good month and that August is kind to you, J x

crafts & knitting · general stuff

Horsing around

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)28 Comments

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello Hello, hope you are well. I didn’t mean to be away for so long, but as you can see I have been keeping busy! I have wanted to do a horse pattern for such a long time, but every time that I have made a prototype there was something that I felt didn’t work, and so back to the drawing board I went. Then at the end of last year I had an equine epiphany and things clicked into place for me, resulting in a flurry of knitting activity and the beginnings of a new pattern. I have been working on it solidly now for 5 months and at last I’m almost finished with the final pattern.

So far I’ve knitted 33 different heads, including different facial markings for the horses, along with unicorns and donkeys too. I have to tell you that those manes do take a bit of patience, adding a strand at a time, but overall I’ve had a lot of fun putting this pattern together and am pleased with how it’s all looking in the layout. Just a few final pictures to take for the front covers and then I’ll be ready to share it.

It’s so exciting to almost have it ready. I have adored horses since I was quite little, always clamouring to stop and stroke their velvety noses when out on walks and delighting in donkey rides on beaches and at farms. From about the age of 8 until my mid teens I read about horses, drew horses and dreamt about horses almost constantly. I even tried to convince mum and dad that our very small suburban back garden would be perfectly fine for keeping a horse in, with pledges that I would ride it every day and tidy up after it. Needless to say my pleas did not result in a pet horse at home but they did get me riding lessons. I then started ‘working’ at the stable, I say ‘working’ because none of us were actually paid but we turned up on Saturdays or Sundays at 8.30 am ready for a day of mucking out, cleaning tack, lead-reining small children learning to ride and grooming our adored charges. My appointed horse was Sweep, a big gentle grey who was a little bit dim and kept my toenails constantly bruised by frequently standing on my feet when I was grooming him. I was also so lucky to have two week long pony trekking trips away in Wales, we rode every day in amazing countryside and I loved every minute, even the day three saddle sores!

It’s been fun looking out my old books, though I’m missing a few – the silver brumby series, by Elyne Mitchell – those were my absolute favourites. And digging out these photos has made me all nostalgic, though I don’t think I’m ready to dust off my jodhpurs any time soon!

Anyway, I’ll be back with news as soon as the patterns are in finished form, though next time I’m here will be all about the bluebells which are glorifying the woods right now, see you soon, J x

 

crafts & knitting · foxes in my garden · general stuff

All is quiet

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)45 Comments

January is often a quiet month for me and I’m grateful to be able to be able to slow right down and take everything as calmly as possible as I make my plans for the year. Especially so this year, because for a little while now I have been been feeling rather down and becoming at times overwhelmed with anxiety, so as a way of trying to cope with that I’ve decided to start a 5 year journal and record all of the positive and beautiful things to remember from each passing day. I think that I am very lucky because it is so often the smallest of things that do lift my mood and bring me joy, and once you start to actively look for these moments you find there are actually quite a few in every day. But such moments can often get forgotten and overshadowed by everyday life, so recording them is a good way to bring them to mind when I need to feel brighter.

So far I’ve jotted about red kites soaring over the house, goldfinches and robins in the garden, Toby’s laughter, Amy’s smile, H’s hugs, the taste of a good cake, the delicious feeling of sitting in bed and knitting away a weekend morning, the quiet calm of a gently flickering candle, the glory of sunrises, the delicacy of frost, the gentle balm of music *, and the delight in deciding to finally use a much loved skein of yarn from my stash – this one has been treasured for almost 10 years and is irreplaceable as Asti of Juno fibre arts is no longer creating her beautiful yarns, so I’m enjoying some very careful pondering of what project to cast on.

But above all else there is has been one totally unexpected, unbelievable and utterly delightful moment – the return of Kit the fox!!

It has been over a year since she was last here and I had written here on the blog that she might have died – I secretly feared she had been run over on the main road as there have been a few fox corpses at the roadside in the intervening months. But no, we were joyfully so very wrong because on Jan 13th she sauntered nonchalantly into the garden, as though she had just been here a day ago, sat down by the garden table and looked expectantly at me through the kitchen door. I have never had a jaw-dropping moment before, but I did then. A snack of Toby’s cocktail sausages was swiftly found and as I approached her to put them down, still slightly disbelieving that it really was her, she stood up and approached me, confirming without any doubt that it was. You can see from the pictures below that she’s a little more scarred about the muzzle than when she was last here but otherwise is looking well nourished and cosy in her thick growth winter coat. I suspect that she is pregnant and has come back because it’s been especially cold recently and she’s has difficulty finding enough food. She’s arrived every evening since, just after darkness has fallen and I am so utterly overjoyed to see her again, and she’s featuring heavily in my new journal of happy things 🙂

I hope she sticks around for a while longer and I’ll be sure to bring you further news of her if she does stay around. If you are interested you can see the story of how we became friends and see my previous blog posts of her visits over the last four years here.

 

………………………………………

The 5 year journal was purchased from Mål Paper with some of my Christmas money, (thanks M & D xxx)

* my music of choice at the moment is  ‘Found’ by Martin Gauffin which is playing in the background at the moment and I find especially uplifting