Walking

As long standing (and long suffering?) readers of my blog will know, before Long Covid moved in to stay I used to go for a lot of country walks. Now that breathing is something that has to be monitored and handled with care, this is obviously not possible. What I have been doing though is a daily walk, building it up very slowly.

I started in late January by walking round the block, the same route every day - a distance of 0.5 miles. The idea is that doing the same route gives me less decisions to make (decisions make me tired) and also gives me landmarks to measure how I'm doing.

So, many months later, I'm now up to one mile and the walk now extends to take in the park which is nice.

Things I have learnt:

1. Walk slowly. I'm naturally a bustler but, if I walk too quickly, I run out of breath.
2. Walking on grass (or in snow) makes it much harder to breathe.
3. It's easier to walk earlier in the day when I'm not so tired. This only dawned on me last week when I ran out of breath and only just made it home.
4. When I run out of breath and start to feel dizzy, I need to stop for five minutes ... even if I'm nearly home (see point 3)!    

I am now an expert on the local front gardens, who has what plants and which houses have dogs or cats. You can find something interesting on even the shortest walk.

But ... it's not countryside. Nor is this but it's a lot more like it ...

This is the view from the slightly soggy bench where Jack, Rose and I had a picnic last weekend. This is Spiceball Park which is in the middle of Banbury, right next to the canal and it's the furthest I've walked from home. It was so nice to see all that green and the trees (and my flask of tea was good too). After the picnic we had a bit of a walk round by the river and back along the canal path.

By this point, we realised that I'd probably done a bit too much so Rose and I sat on a bench for another rest while Jack found me a conker. The walk home was very slow and I ended up leaning on Rose before we got there. But - I'd walked two and a half miles all together. It's not something I could do regularly but it did me good. I was wondering why my face felt different and I realised it was because I kept smiling.

             

Marmaduke and Stanley

Today I thought I'd introduce you to two friends, one old and one new. First of all, meet Marmaduke.

As you can see, Marmaduke is a mouse troll with orange fur and he's a very old friend that I thought I'd lost. He turned up in a box of various small toys when we were sorting through a cupboard last weekend and, after a clean up, he really looks good, considering he's over fifty years old. I'd forgotten his name but, as soon as I picked him up, it came back to me. I suspect I named him after Marmaduke Stanley, the cook / housekeeper in one of my favourite books, The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge.

Marmaduke is special because he brings back a nice memory of Mum and me having 'spendies' on a shopping trip when I was little. I remember being very excited at being able to choose things, just like that. This is where we went - Andover High Street in the 1960s.

I have no idea what Mum got for herself but I do remember choosing a red bouncy ball and then spotting Marmaduke. He was in a clear plastic box with a hole in so you could feel the fur and I can still remember how soft he felt; I thought I'd never seen anything so wonderful. Mum and I would have fun shopping together for many years but this was the first time that I remember.

Moving on, I bet you're wondering what sort of toy Stanley is going to turn out to be. Meet Stanley the Vice ...

Stanley the Vice - isn't that a great name? He only arrived yesterday and is already proving to be a very useful sort of friend. And no, he didn't come with the eyes already fitted; I have to say, I think the manufacturers are missing a trick there. This is what he was helping me with this morning ...

... drilling holes in lots of little wooden shapes. My daughter Rose and I bought a big bag of wooden shapes for £1 at Orinoco, our new scrap shop. It's full of donated and recycled craft supplies and yes, it's named after the Womble of the same name. All together now:

                                            'Underground, overground, wombling free,

                                            The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we.

                                            Making good use of the things that we find,                                                                                     Things that the everyday folk leave behind.' 

I think these wooden shapes will make great gift tags or decorations, they just needed holes to hang them up by - hence Stanley's involvement. 

I predict a happy future for Stanley and me. I think he's going to be very useful for all sorts of crafts.

Before I go, look what else I bought from Orinoco.

Don't get too excited - they're empty (although they do sell old knitting patterns too). These three files would have come from a yarn shop and cost me £1. I'm planning to fill them with some of my collection of old knitting patterns. Isn't that a fitting use for them? In fact, I may go and do that now.

Handy Bag

My new pattern is a riot of colour, featuring no less than twelve different shades of yarn.

This is my Handy Bag, worked in the round using my favourite knitting technique - slip stitch. This gives a lovely, complicated looking finish while being super easy to do. But what about all those ends to sew in, I hear you cry?

Just knot them together and hide them under a fabric lining. Problem solved. Actually, I think the wrong side of this stitch pattern looks good too ...

What with changing colour every two rounds, I found it  handy to make a little shade card to remind me which one to use next. You can also pre-cut lengths of yarn, should you not feel like carting round twelve balls of yarn in your knitting bag. As I hardly leave the house, this wasn't a problem for me.

Inspired by fabric bags with a contrasting casing sewn on to the outside, I decided to copy this look. It turned out to be quite straightforward to do actually.

The top of the bag uses a reversible stitch pattern so that it looks good on the inside too as that part of the bag isn't lined.

I used another fun technique for the drawstrings to give a double sided strip with the knit side of stocking stitch on both sides. I like to knit outdoors and wanted to be able to attach the handles / drawstrings of the bag to my chair handle to keep it off the ground. I was going to put buttons and buttonholes on the end but then my son pointed out that I would be too lazy to button and unbutton them and suggested a magnetic clasp instead.

And here it is in action - out in the garden on a sunny day recently.

Obviously, you can use any combination of colours for your bag. Mine was inspired by this charity shop scarf that I bought ages ago, purely because I liked the combination of colours.

I think choosing colours for a project is one of my favourite parts of designing.

You can also adapt the pattern to make other sizes of bag. I made a little gift bag on half the number of stitches; here it is having a cuddle with the Mother bag.

I hope you like this pattern. It would be lovely to see your own versions of it; I really like it when people start with one of my patterns and develop into something uniquely their own.

The next pattern will either be a set of knitted round nesting boxes like the square ones I published earlier this year or a crochet mini stocking, similar in size to my Mini Dotty Stocking.