A Walk in the Woods

The other day we had a walk in the woods at Alton Reservoir near Ipswich in Suffolk. Long walks with short legs are not normally ideal but our little people kept going and going. Little Man really surprised us by walking nearly 3 miles of the 8 mile track with no complaints. There was so much to see and do on the way. We love to collect things when we walk, feathers, sticks, pebbles, leaves and this time sweet chestnuts. The track provides lots of adventure as it winds around corners, up and down hills, through trees and openings where you can view the water and near by fields and farms. Lots of fun was had collecting the fallen chestnuts, filling our pockets, then Dad had the idea of throwing sticks to knock down a few more from high up in the tree. Little Man joined in of course. I had a go with our Nikon DSLR. Need to refresh my skills quite a bit but had some fun playing with it. We have had such lovely autumn weather this year and the colours are beautiful right now. Lets hope we get lots more sunny afternoons as winter comes. 

 Love 

x Sarah x

Welcome To Our Allotment...

Welcome to our allotment.... I have been taking lots of photos over the past few months with the  intention of blogging about my allotment plot. So I thought it's about time I share them with you.

This is my baby boy when he was about 18 months old, he's now 4 and half. Love having a big boy but still I miss this little man watering his sunflower plants. 

And of course Little Lady giving the orders. She is very good at overseeing all the goings on at the allotment.

Four years ago when Little Man was only a baby we decided to take on a small allotment plot at our local field. The main reason, other than to grow veg, was to create an outdoor space for my children to play. This was my idea of a perfect place to learn about the world. I wanted more than our back garden for my little boy. I wanted for him what I had when I was growing up, freedom to explore on his own without a care in the world. The great outdoors where you could create memories spending hours on end playing. This is a relatively safe space where my children can get muddy, do real digging with real little person tools, plant their own seeds and watch things grow. This is where they can build dens, play games with the other children on the site and explore with all their imagination.

We are really lucky that our site has lots of other families with children about the same age. We often get together and like to share ideas, plants, seed, veg. It really is a wonderful community to be part of. Everyone looks out for each other and helps a little where they can. Our site is also full of animals. We don't have our own chickens or goats or anything like that but do enjoy visiting the resident animals at our allotment site. They are always very keen to eat our leftovers too.

Since we first arrived we have expanded our plot quite a bit taking on two other plots next to ours and now we have a rather large space. Our plot is a constant work in progress and it isn't posh, please excuse the weeds. It changes each year depending on the latest project ideas and for of crop rotation. Our original plot is home to all our fruit bushes; raspberries, gooseberries, currants bushes among some. We also have a huge globe artichoke plant, rhubarb, strawberries plants and recently planted asparagus. We make lots of jam and freeze fruit for puddings and cakes to enjoy during the winter months. 

The other two plots are where we grow the real veg. This year we have grown all the usual things you would expect to see on an allotment but have added in some extras for their beauty, colour and interest. I have tried Kohlrabi, Borlotti beans, climbing purple french beans this year. We have also attempted and failed at growing sweet potatoes and baby corn. The baby corn was really easy to grow and would have been a great success but we didn't harvest it early enough unfortunately. You can't win them all. This is something you have to accept when you have a big allotment, or any veg patch in fact, sometimes things fail miserably. Last year we had no onion at all. They all failed. All because I planted the set too deep and we watered too much. This year I simply sat them in the soil, just enough that they didn't fall over, we didn't water them and they grew, every last one of them. We have onions coming out of our ears! Instead potatoes weren't great this year.

We are now about to start packing up the plot for the year. Everything but some kale and a few brussel sprouts growing over winter will need clearing ready for next year. We are already planning what we will do in the spring.  I am hoping to improve the play equipment we have for the children and would like to add a playhouse for Little Lady. This will involve finding one for free as we try not to spend money on the allotment but hopefully Freecycle will come up trumps for us. We also want to build a bug hotel and a mud kitchen. Planting plans will be the same as always with the hope we might tone down our aspirations and be a bit more sensible but I doubt it. 

Thank you for taking the tour. 

xx Sarah xx

Dolly Blanket Ta-Dah

 

 

There is one happy Little Lady in our house. We have been having fun playing with our dollies this week. I finished the little dolly blanket the other night and since then there has been a hive of activity around the wooden goose pram Little Lady got for her birthday all those months ago. She is very much a girly girl and loves her dollies dearly. Spending hours looking after baby is her favourite thing to do.

You might also have noticed the Rabbit I made Little Lady a while back features in a few of the pics today. Rabbit has now got all his limbs and ears firmly secured with chunky buttons and is a happy little chap. He still needs something to wear though...

I used leftovers of Stylecraft Special DK in meadow, plum, pomegranate, turquoise, saffron, lavender, fondant, sherbert, with cream as the main colour and using a 4mm hook. It measures 49cm by 31cm with 35 little squares each with only 3 rounds measuring 6cm square each. It was quite a quick project only taking a few evenings in front of the box but lots of fun to make too. A nice break from some of my other bigger projects. 

The pattern was from this book, Cute and Easy Crochet by Nicki Trench.

I didn't follow the pattern exactly as I wanted my little squares to be quite tight and I made the edging up as I went along using one round of dc first followed by two rounds in htr stitches. 

It's a lovely little book with lots of very vintage and retro ideas for crochet. Took me a while to get going with it but now I have mastered the basics of crochet I can whizz through these patterns easy peasy.

Best be off now for more playtime... Thank you for visiting today. Come back soon!  

Sarah xxx