Re-visiting a former passion

I made the trek by train and foot over to the Summer Wool Festival, which has succeeded Fibrefest at the Ampthill venue in Bedfordshire. The organisers had been bigging it up on social media so I was curious to see what it would be like.  It's the first yarn festival I've been to since the COVID years I think.  The Festival turned out to be very similar to its predecessor, perhaps slightly smaller as they were down one marquee. But one thing I noticed was that about 90% of the stalls were selling yarn of some description, either hand-dyed, handspun, home-grown, etc. Lots of unfamiliar vendor names - I'm assuming that over the lockdown period, lots of people decided to follow their dream and dye their own fibre. The previous Fibrefest had featured a healthy percentage of spinning, dyeing, weaving, more guild stalls. There were still a few guilds present, and a couple of spinning and weaving stalls, a few needlefelting businesses and some bagmaking businesses.  I admired the very neat zipper tab ends of one bagmaker and she was kind enough to turn the pouch inside out to show me how she had done the inside corner. Apparently the show was crazy busy yesterday, I had several vendors tell me I should appreciate being able to look around without such a crowd.  A lot of pent-up demand from lockdown I guess.

But overall, it all felt a bit flat for me.  I can remember several prior trips to Fibrefest and the excitement and enjoyment of fondling new yarns and purchasing new colours. I was quite passionate about handknitting for 10 years or so, and always had some knitting in my bag to pull out in any idle moment.  Why do we crafters fall out of love with our hobbies?  I still like knitting, I still knit things, but it's not a passion like it used to be.  I felt no temptation to buy yarn because I still have so much of it up in my knitting room from previous buying sprees.  I also have a ridiculous amount of socks, hats, gloves, and shawls piled up so I just don't need any more.  So I was just strolling by the yarn booths, occasionally stopping to admire a particular colourway. The only thing I bought was a pattern for a lacey jumper, and some secondhand cardcrafting magazines.

This week I finished the frame quilting on the One Block Wonder beach panel quilt.  It needs a bit of finishing off the frame, such as the vertical lines on the fencing. And I need to correct my horizon line which I had a go at freehanding and consequently wavers drunkenly across the quilt.  Most of the quilt is meandered but I did straight line ripple quilting on the sea and path areas.

It's now time to re-learn how to do pantographs (stitching from a paper pattern using a laser guide) so I've loaded the practice sandwich onto the frame.  I had to do a lot of re-taping on the paper patterns since the sellotape has rotted over the five years letting the separate pages fall apart.  Steering my way around a pantograph pattern is quite a different rhythm than meandering - I have to go slower, and I have to pause for a few heartbeats on each pointed point to keep them sharp. And I can't just shuffle along behind the frame as I do it - the precision steering required demands that I stop, move myself along the frame, then restart and stitch as far as I can reach and see; stop etc.  I'll practice a bit then load on the next quilt victim which is the pastel hexie quilt. I also need to flatten out the paper pattern more, once I get it lined up correctly with the next quilt.

Downstairs I was stitching on stencil lines using a walking foot, to fill in the hexagon centres on the Tilda Cot Quilt.  The first hexagon attempt was terrible and I had to unpick it.  It's hard to draw on the lines (from a celtic stencil given away by Today's Quilter magazine) now that the quilt has wadding in it, and my walking foot for my Janome had a really poor field of view.  There was a piece of metal blocking the first eighth of an inch, then distorting thick plastic, so it was really hard to see the lines I had drawn.  Since I now have a spare walking foot (Janome accidentally sent me an extra one when they returned the machine, and when I phoned they told me to keep it), I got out the junior hacksaw and cut away the plastic and metal bits to clear the opening.  Now I can actually see the line I am trying to quilt, which is a big help. The quilting is still a bit wobbly but it looks okay I think.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the cot quilt, it seems a shame to just give it away because Tilda fabric is quite expensive.  One of my lacemaking friends was rather taken aback when I mentioned that I used to make 12-15 quilts a year and now I've only made 15 or so in five years.  "What do you do with them all?" she asked in amazement.  It is a hard hobby to explain to a non-enthusiast, that's for sure.  I bet no one asks artists what they do with all their paintings, but somehow quilts (and knitting) are meant to be functional and useful.

At least the Tannenbaum quilt has an identified use as a Christmas wallhanging.  I finally finished all the rows, I just need to add side strips and it's done.  Then it becomes number 16 in the frame quilting queue.  Although I think I will have to quilt the tree at the sit down machine, but I could stipple the background on the frame.

I'm still doing about 1 -1/2 hours a week on my slow attempt to learn Bruges lace - currently learning how to make a plait and picot filling.  At this rate it will be years before I can tackle actual Bruges lace.

 I realised while bouncing around in the pool on Friday for Aquafit (with my brain cycling in neutral over various topics) that I have been treating retirement as if it's my new job.  Like a job, I feel like I have to tackle certain maintenance tasks every day (Japanese, exercise) and work on longer term projects (frame quilting, decluttering, the Australian BOM etc) regularly - and if I don't then I feel like I am failing and not doing a good job.  Add in all the daily tasks like cooking, gardening, bit of housework, laundry etc., and it leaves very little time for all the hobby things I would like to be doing. I feel like I can't go and 'play' until I get my 'work' done.  So it turns into an endless cycle of feeling like I am running to keep up and not succeeding very well at anything. And certainly not living the retirement cliche of doing whatever whenever.  I suppose some of the tasks have an end date - eventually the house will be mostly decluttered for example (although at the rate I bring in new things, that point may be far in the future). I expect it comes down to personality type - I certainly see a wide spectrum of viewpoints represented on the retirement groups I read on Facebook. Including people who get fed up with retirement and re-join the workforce.  I am obviously a personality with very unrealistic aspirations as to what I can, and want to, get done craft-wise.  I'm trying to do better. I actually gave away a roll of lampshade adhesive backing that I bought 10 years ago to make one lampshade with, and the book on how to do it - I have accepted that I am unlikely to ever make any more lampshades :)  I've seen various suggestions for time management - like having designated days to do things, or doing a deep dive for a week on one task like de-cluttering.  Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Way, way, way too hot

 The temperatures reached silly levels this week, with one of the highest in England being recorded not far from our town, at Pitsford Reservoir at 38.2 Celsius on Monday and then it went up to 40.2 the next day at Heathrow.  One of my friends recorded 49 degrees C in her sunny back garden due to reflected heat! It's just crazy weather for the UK and I want it to stop.

Luckily we were away in the caravan down near Bridport in Dorset, where the sea breezes kept the inferno down to a mere 33 degrees on Monday and 29 on Sunday and Tuesday.  Our pitch had high privacy hedges on three sides so from 3pm onwards there was enough shade for us to sit in to wait it out until evening - DH with a wet towel on his head and me resorting to dampening my entire dress front every half hour or so.  On Monday we actually hid in Morrison's (a supermarket) air conditioned cafe from 12-3 until there was going to be some shade at the campsite.   We were probably better off at night because we can open windows on all four sides of the caravan and it didn't hold the heat the way masonry house walls would. Subsequent days were rainy and muggy before setttling down to more normal summer weather, so it was a pretty challenging week weatherwise and clothes-wise.  Luckily I had purposefully overpacked so I had clothes and shoes for pretty much any condition we faced.

Consequently we had a very relaxed week as the weather conditions prevented us from gallivanting around to lots of sights and walks like we normally would.  We had some nice walks in Bridport in the morning or evening before it got hot, and visited West Bay and its shingle beach a few times.  

I particularly liked that there were loads of what I call 'proper' seagulls, big and white instead of the scruffy smaller grey coloured gulls at many seaside locations.

The rain and clouds on the cliffs at West Bay

Walking on Eggardon Hill - an old Iron Age hillfort with stunning views to the sea

We love higgledy-piggledy secondhand bookshops.

I was rather taken aback to spot 'My First Coffee Machine' on a shelf in a toy store where DH was looking at models - I am obviously completely out of touch with the modern child's preferences. Although the coffee machine was on the same shelf with more traditional pretend appliances such as irons, washing machines, cash registers etc.

Bridport has several antique stores, as does Crewkerne a few miles further north - and we spent a couple of enjoyable mornings poking around. We did quite well for secondhand books, and  I found this carved coquilla nut which is probably an old thimble holder - the actual colour is a dark chocolate brown, for some reason my phone is lightening the pictures.

I also found a very sweet little carved firescreen, probably Victorian, which has a replacement embroidery in a 1920s/30s style.  The wood needs a bit of a clean up but otherwise it's in pretty good shape.

And an impulse buy was this very handsome little worktable, not sure if it's Victorian or Georgian. They were practically giving it away because it needs restoration. But on first glance the woodwork is sound, it just needs refinishing and some veneer replaced. And of course the inside is in a poor state but I think could be improved and repaired.  Another project for me.

Other than books and antiques, I didn't buy a lot this week.  These lace bobbins were ridiculously cheap at one antique bric-a-brac store, 10 for £3.50, so I got three lots of those to share with my friends. The mosaic letter was from a craft shop and I got it home safely only to drop it on the floor and break the tip of the leaf off, aaargh - DH is going to repair it for me.  The bag pattern was secondhand in a craft shop. The vintage huck towel was from another antique shop, I have a few of these already and use them as hand towels in the bathroom.  The glass art reminded me of cherry blossom from Japan, it's by a glass artist called Kathryn Webley.  The rather charming embroidered felt pincushion (which has a weighted base) was from a craft fair at West Bay.

On the holiday I did some more work on the cross stitch Iris bookmark, the Aldi boucle t-shirt reknit, and the lace shawl from Paducah.  But it was so hot that I will admit to spending a lot of time scrolling on Facebook and watching sumo matches on Youtube.  Now that I'm home, I need to get back to quilting on the frame.

Unsurprisingly, the garden suffered a bit in the heat with noone to water it. The central hydrangea in a big pot looks like a dried flower arrangement now, and there are a few other casualties.  But most of it has pulled through and I've got the drip hoses running now to get some water into the beds.  That was our last full week away as DH is now getting low on holiday days, so we may only manage a few long weekends in the caravan before it gets packed away into winter storage.  Even though we are limited by DH's leave allowance, we're still really glad we bought the caravan last year. It's lovely to have a comfortable base without having to take a chance on a rundown hotel or a tired self-catering cottage.

If you're in the UK, hope you survived the heatwave okay.  At least my basement sewing room stays cool!

Retirement is making me fat (ter)

 It's been ridiculously hot lately in the UK, in the low 30s some days, so obviously comfortable loose clothing is a must. Only I've been noticing that not many of my clothes are loose any more.  I weighed myself and I've gained six pounds since retiring - that's a pound a month. Not good.  Obviously doing Aquafit twice a week and otherwise trying to walk daily, is in no way combatting the snacking and attempts to learn how to bake.  Sigh.

Despite the warm temperatures in the dining room/frame quilting room, I have been putting in a daily stint on the machine quilting.  I finished the meandering on the Tilda Cot Quilt.  I left the whole white centres empty - I was able to quilt around them for the most part - and I plan to fill in a mandala design from a stencil using my sitdown machine.  This is the quilt where I recut the borders but only the innermost side, I'll trim up the outer edges after it's all quilted and had a wash.

Now I've loaded on the One Block Wonder beach scene that I made a few years ago.  It's quite large, about a Queen I think. Normally I would load a bigger quilt sideways, to minimise the thickness of the quilt getting rolled onto the take up roll.  But on this quilt I want to change thread colours partway: the sky and sea are in white thread, then I'll switch to beige thread for the sand dunes.  I'm massaging the take up roll as I wind on, trying to keep the size down. Hopefully I won't run out of room and have to turn the quilt around. I'm doing a big meander on the sky and foliage, and horizontal ripple lines on the sea and probably on the path.

The new bobbin case arrived for the Janome and I replaced the damaged one. I'm relieved that the machine seems to be back to sewing normally.  I hope that never happens again.

While listening to the Chooky Zoom call from Australia, I pieced more blocks for the Tannenbaum quilt which went together much better than the previous row.  Afterwards I finished the row up and sewed it on.  Just one more row to go which is the base of the tree.  If I get it done then I can add it to the queue waiting to go the frame if an all-over design would work on it.  Don't know, perhaps I should just baste it on the frame and do more custom quilting at the sit down.

I've been using my son's steam-powered laptop (that he bought for uni in 2014) in my sewing room for zoom calls and watching videos.  He didn't mind me borrowing it because it was on its last legs, constantly overheating and crashing.  I nursed it back to convalescence with much updating and cleaning out junk, defragging etc.  It was okay for a while but the last several months I always have to allow at least 20 minutes before joining a call, to give it time to indulge in up to three hissy fits and blue screens and "we're sending a report to Microsoft" and restarts before it will grudgingly let me use the internet. I decided to call time and stop procrastinating and buy a new laptop for myself.  I don't know that much about computers so the alphabet soup of processors and storage types is all quite intimidating, and so many reviews seem obviously paid for.  I found one useful Youtube video which listed some recommended stats but the whole process still seemed very much like throwing a dart at a dartboard and hoping it lands on a reasonable laptop. It became quickly apparent that a) my imagined budget barely reached into the 'budget laptop' range - technology seems to have gone up in price over the last several years, who knew; and b) the budget laptop range didn't hit hardly any of the recommended alphabet soup and would therefore not be futureproofed. Also, frustratingly, the functions that were most important to me (good webcam, good screen, good speakers, good microphone) were often poor even in expensive laptops and also often not considered important enough to get much discussion in feature reviews which focus largely on performance and battery life.  Long story short, after several hours of floundering, I have ended up with a Microsoft Surface 4 with a Core i5 11th gen process and 512GB SSD drive (look at me quoting the alphabet :)  ).  Largely on the strength of good reviews for the screen and keyboard, with the webcam being rated average.  It came by courier and I flung open the door with what I belatedly realised were very out-of-date expectations that they would be handing me an enormous brown box.  Instead I received a little padded envelope that was so lightweight that I wondered for a moment if they hadn't actually sent the laptop.  But no - inside is a perfect little miniature laptop.  Compared with my son's 17 inch screen and  1.5" thick brick, the Surface with its 13.5" screen and thin profile feels almost dollshouse sized.  Everything installed quite easily, including my one-time purchase of Office (no subscriptions for me) so let's hope it gets a good wi-fi signal in the sewing room.  DH suggested I could take it caravanning as well, but I'm still feeling rather horrified at how much money is tied up in such a tiny package so it feels way too valuable/fragile to take camping at the moment.  Maybe in a few years.

I finished up the Australian BOM block from the month before. It turned out fairly well I think.  The 'lace' on the top right and top left is all embroidery, which took a while.  The bit of lace underneath the blue ribbon card is a sewn-on motif.

I have hurried on to start the next month's block which is a picture of a thread stand, because I know there is already another block in the post on its way to me.

As a bit of a palate cleanser from embroidery, I've also been doing a bit of stitching on the cross stitch bookmark and more knitting on the Aldi Boucle T-shirt part deux.  I'm just about to decrease for the armholes on the first piece (front) on the latter.  

After watching some more Youtube decluttering videos, I took a big box of stuff to the charity shop and also gave away some sewing decorations to my bobbin friends when they came over.  It's a drop in the ocean compared to the houseful of stuff that I own, but baby steps.

Some steps forward and some steps back

 After a few weeks where a lot of things seemed to be going wrong, we seem to be coming through the other side now.  The car has come back after being unexpectedly expedited - it's had a new clutch put in and it was done under warranty so no cost to us - whew!.  We took it for a long run down to Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire today, over an hour each way, and it behaved impeccably.  The manor is home to one of the Rothschild collections of art treasures, and it feels like walking around inside a French chateau.  I saw this very strange modern chandelier in one room, kind of cool, like an explosion of crockery:

I also saw this very comfortable-looking reading (or sewing) nook:

And in their Treasure Room, some miniature books (my finger in view for scale). No labels so I don't know if they are actual books or just pill boxes or similar.

DH with much trepidation had his tooth out - and it came out in 20 seconds and he's had no pain or complications. So still very expensive but otherwise a relief for him.

The builder came back to replace the shower tray, then when he unwrapped the new one, he discovered that the replacement is also seriously damaged.  I was fairly annoyed and enquired as calmly as I could why he hadn't unwrapped it and looked at it as soon as he took delivery some weeks ago - given that this is the second damaged tray they've sent us and the installed one had also cracked.  I didn't think the suppliers were going to cough up yet another replacement tray and that they would blame the builder for damaging it - but to everyone's amazement they immediately responded  that they would send another replacement.  It hasn't actually turned up yet though. Meanwhile we are down one shower.

In not so good news, DS's girlfriend that he lives with has tested positive for COVID and DS has started to feel under the weather.  Not good and I feel quite worried for him, but hopefully they will both be okay.  It's not surprising since they both go out to work and DS travels by train, and almost nobody wears a mask now here in the UK.

I was pleased to be able to pick a good-sized bowl of sour cherries from our tree in the garden - enough that I could make a whole cherry pie for the first time.  The first few years there were only a handful of cherries which I mixed into apple pies.  Last year birds ate the lot while we were away in the caravan.  This year, after watching a blackbird scarfing down cherries from the kitchen window, I went out and netted up several branches so that we could get some cherries ourselves (the tree is too big to net completely).  Netting is a pain in the bum because it catches on everything and the branches and cherries poke through the mesh, so it took about 45 minutes to get the netting off again and pick the cherries.  But the pie was worth it!  Totally delicious, tart and sweet and the same time. And I tried a new GF pastry recipe which worked pretty well apart from being too crumbly to roll out very well - so my lattice is pretty crude.

Since I got my Janome back from the warranty service, I've only been using it for light duties like piecing quilts.  But this week I wanted to sew up a zippered pouch (from Season 3 of Sew Sweetness Minikins patterns) to hold and protect the monitor from our tyre pressure monitoring system for our caravan tires.  The monitor rides in the glove compartment of the car once the caravan is parked up, and the factory box was awkwardly big.  This was the end result - I cut some layers of foam to cradle the monitor inside, and the whole case fits easily into the glove compartment.

However, about five minutes into sewing the pouch, my Janome tried to commit suicide. For no apparent reason, the bobbin case suddenly jumped out of its receptacle, jumping over the stop that holds it in place, and twisting about a further inch out of place so that it was totally jammed.  This caused the needle to hit the misplaced bobbin case (further damaging the jammed case) and deflect to take a chunk out of the brand new needleplate, then the whole machine started juddering and protesting before it gave up with alarm beeps sounding.  It happened out of the blue, and I've never had that happen on a machine in 45 years of sewing.  The bobbin case was jammed so hard that I had to lever it out with the screwdriver.  The plastic case was damaged on the sides from being twisted into the metal receptacle, as well as being pierced by the needle in a couple of places.  I've looked it up, and apparently it should only have happened if the thread had caught so badly on a rough place in the bobbin case that the thread yanks the case out of place.  But this was a brand new bobbin case installed by the warranty people.  So I don't know.  I tried smoothing out the damage with fine glasspaper which got the machine sewing again, but the bobbin is juddering in the case so it's obviously not happy.  I've thrown out the bobbin I was using, in case it has somehow become mishapen. I ordered a replacement case which came today, but if that doesn't help then I may need to go back to the warranty people.

I haven't been using my Brother Scan N Cut for a few months, but I downloaded an svg file from MyScrapChick to make a 3D birthday card for my father-in-law. After taking the pic, I added a personalised greeting to the banner.

I finished quilting the London hexie quilt completely, and gave it a rinse and spin in the washing machine. So it just needs binding now.  I loaded on the next project on the list, which is a table centre made from a Japanese panel.  I quilted this one with a curlique meander as I am getting more confident about steering.

I've now loaded the next quilt which is the Tilda cot quilt that had the obviously crooked borders.  I took the borders off and recut them, as suggested by 'Unknown' on the original blog post, and reattached them.  As this quilt has white centres to each block, I'm wondering if I can meander in the pieced areas and skip over the white centre areas.  Then I could do a motif in the white centres either by hand or on the sit-down machine.  This is where having such a limited throat space can be quite frustrating, I can't do a whole block at one time.

On the strength of a good review in a caravan magazine, I have invested in an air fryer. Now that there are only two of us to cook for, and with energy costs skyrocketing, it seems like a good idea because it cooks quite quickly and I don't have to heat up the big oven just to cook a small amount of food.  It's quite a learning curve, it didn't come with many recipes, but I've had some real successes - like meatballs in 8 minutes, and roast veg in about 10-15 minutes.  There are a lot of youtube videos and online recipes, although a lot of those are American and using pre-prepared ingredients we can't get here. It's really easy to clean and you can use it for roasting, reheating and even baking although I haven't tried baking yet.

Hope you are living on the sunny side of the street!

I am so sick of computer problems

 I have probably spent 20 hours this week trying to get my computer to do what it used to do - just simple things like talking to my printer (solved), acknowledging my second monitor (solved), playing the audio for my Japanese flashcards (solved but it took about 3 hours), playing sound for Skype/Zoom calls (eventually solved although it still wants to reinstall Zoom every time I take a call) and re-installing lost software as I remember it.  For example, you can't actually get a free version of Photoshop any more like I used to have, so I am trialling a Photoshop-alternative called Affinity. Then the downstairs laptop (which we were using to talk to my son on Discord while the broken computer was still broken) decided it didn't want to use its webcam or second monitor - perhaps it felt left out from all the drama. It wanted to install a big Windows update instead but after that it calmed down and is once again behaving more or less.  The kaput drive remains inaccessible - the SATA to USB cable didn't help.  I will hang on to the dead drive for a while in case I remember something vital that is trapped on it, but so far nothing seems worth the couple hundred pounds that data recovery firms want.  Now the case fan on my PC has stopped turning and I just can't face getting down on my knees and fussing with wires any more, at least not for a while, so I've just taken the sides off the case for ventilation. Let's hope the cat doesn't electrocute herself.

Meanwhile the car people called to ask permission to take the gear box out of the car - like are we going to say "no, we fancy a big four-wheeled paperweight!" - and to deliver dire warnings about how many hundreds of pounds it is going to cost if they decide the issues aren't covered by the warranty.  And DH has been to the dentist who will be extracting his broken tooth in exchange for £380.  I'm starting to feel like I should just post my bank details on the front door so people can help themselves.  When the hose fell off the front of the hoover, it just seemed par for the course - but I did manage to work out how to reattach it, so that was alright.

After losing a week while on the holiday, I've been trying to do three passes on the quilting frame every day after lunch.  This got me to the end of the main part of the quilt, so now I've turned it and re-attached it to the frame so that I can quilt the other two borders. My steering is becoming more smooth but I am still getting inconsistent stitch length. I've also spent some time fine tuning the height of the roller bars and in trying to get them as parallel as possible. This is because I noticed I was developing some fullness on the right hand side as I rolled on, and when I measured I found the bars weren't parallel - so therefore the quilt wasn't rolling evenly. It makes me wish I had a proper professional set-up instead of my home-made adaptations. And it would also be nice to have a larger throat size so I could do bigger patterns.

Another stalled project was the Tannenbaum Quilt but I put in a few hours yesterday, and today about another 3.5 hours while listening to the Zoom call that Chookyblue organises for her international quilty friends.  I finished the recent row and attached the rows to their backgrounds and to each other.  I'm not happy with my piecing on this project: lots of floating points and a few chopped off as well.  Accuracy has never been my strong suit and I guess it's been a while since I made a quilt top that actually needs a lot of precision - plus changing between two sewing machines to sew with hasn't helped.  But the quilt still looks good from a distance so I am not going to obsess about it. (I haven't smoothed it out very well on the design wall - please excuse the puckers).

Also while in the Zoom call, I sewed the binding onto the little charity quilt that I quilted first on the frame. So I just need to hand stitch the binding to finish it.

And of course I am still plugging away at the Australian BOM.  They've already shipped the block after next so I think I am about a full month behind at this point.

I managed to find some netting needles to go with the book on netting that I bought on holiday.  They are not very common, as you might imagine. These are actually called a 'filet needle' but they match the picture in the book.  The forks at both ends of the needle are open to hold the cord wound around between the two ends, like a shuttle.

Another money pit yawning open this week was the builder finally showing up to replace our cracked shower tray.  I can't remember if I blogged about it before, but basically several months ago DH noticed a big crack in our shower tray - which was only installed five years ago and had a lifetime guarantee.  Of course, the manufacturers didn't want to honour the guarantee and blamed our builder for improper installation even though he installed it according to their directions.  So it went back and forth for weeks until they finally coughed up a new shower tray.  Of course, the guarantee doesn't cover any labour costs for replacing the tray.  It's not really the builder's fault, but it's not our fault either.  The labour cost has become the elephant in the room that we are tiptoeing around with nothing agreed yet - I'm hoping we can get away with a 50/50 split. In typical builder fashion, he came Thursday and got a lot done, but couldn't come Friday so hopefully we will see him again on Monday.

The former location of the shower was on the left where the floor is exposed.

And I've also spent several hours this week hacking back the garden - when you really looked into the beds beyond the pretty tops of plants, it was armageddon.  Weeds three feet high, self-seeded opportunist thugs staking out territory, roses and geraniums to be cut back, foot-high lawn lurking underneath plants where DH doesn't mow, brambles and nettles sneaking in from the wilderness next door, clematis tendrils waving wildly in the breeze and needing tying back.... and DH wonders why I can't just relax when I go out into the garden.