New year, old me

New year, when there are loads of articles about how to make a shiny new you for the next 12 months. But I don't want a shiny new me, I want the old me back. This time last year I was in hospital, after a serious belly ache and a trip to A&E I was eventually diagnosed with appendicitis. "You'll be out tomorrow, we do these all the time" the surgical consult said. Little did she know that the offending vestigial organ was totally gross and going to perforate. This ended up with a nearly week long hospital stay, two weeks signed off sick at home and a year I feel didn't go to plan. We'd bought a house autumn 2015 and I was looking forward to finally have a garden where stuff didn't just blow away, that could actually be sat in, and where plants might survive. The problem with appendicitis is that to get it out you have to go through a lot of muscle which is also in a really difficult place to heal, so although I tried to do garden stuff, it was very tiring and/or painful.

So for a whole year I didn't eat anything I'd grown (except a couple of berries from the blackberry hedge I never got around to cutting back). My poor garden was more or less ignored, after having cleared loads of weeds I didn’t have the energy to keep on top of it. Luckily I’d put black sheeting down on the worst part, but bindweed finds away.  I didn’t brew anything, had no fruit bobbing around in jars of alcohol, bake, or even looked after my little house plants that well.

These are the saddest chillis.

This was really brought home to me when I was cleaning the kitchen after Christmas. I'd brought some flour to make mince pies with (but never got around to it) so was going to put it in the storage container when I discovered some of my flours had flour mites in them! I had to bin four different flours. I’d been thinking about making a summer berry wine using frozen fruits after finding them in the shop, luckily I checked what brewing stuff I had before starting because all my yeasts, nutrients and other stuff was out of date. It took a really long time to find my hydrometer as well before start because it was still in a random box in the shed. For over a year.

Lots of tiny yeast farts.

 So that's why this year I want to go back to the me before. The brewer, the baker, yes, even the candlestick maker. I know I need to be better at getting off my arse and actually do things. I’ve got a self imposed knitting ban for the weekends, it’s so easy to sit and knit and do nothing else, so now it’s an evening only activity. I’m hoping that’ll allow me to do some of the hobbies I’ve put to one side. Already I’ve tried to do more this year, I did start my wine eventually, and started growing some mushrooms a friend gave me for Christmas. I even got one of my spindles out again which felt good (but trying to spin and watch a tv show that has subtitles really doesn’t work).

Mushroom. Mushroom.

And I’m hoping to keep up with this again, share progress on the garden and other projects.

Stuck in limbo...

I'm stuck. I've been stuck for a while. Lurking around my house I have unfinished projects. Plans. Things I want to make and do but for my worries and fears of messing them up or doing them wrong I can't.

In October I started a jumper. It was going well, apart from the apparent pattern problems I didn't know about when I started. The pattern is quite easy and repetitive so I could easily remember it without having to sit there with the pattern all the time. And because its quite chunky wool it builds up quick.  It was going well, I got the back done and was part way up one of the front sides when I was distracted by a mystery knit along.

Correct cables. Not shown: incorrect cables.

For those not in the know, a mystery knit along is where a designer releases a knitting pattern in stages, with enough of a gap for everyone to finish each step before the next part is released (in theory anyway) and all you know before hand is what it might be. In this case it was a hat. I'm a hat lover, and the idea of it being a surprise intrigued me, so I signed up. I was even doing it properly, measured my head, did a tension square and everything. I bought some amazing wool (actually I bought two amazing balls but didn't check my yardage so could only actually use one). I learnt how to make a brim, took a couple of goes to get the band right but it was all going swimmingly. I didn't quite manage to keep up, I'm not the quickest knitter and a couple of busy days put me behind, so I was still soldiering on with part two when the final part came out. But when it was finally large enough to try on it dropped down around my ears. So it's been ripped back to the brim and is waiting for me to tackle it again.

Not currently a hat.

And of course Christmas came along, and all the faffing that goes with it (lots of baking, wrapping etc) which doesn't leave a lot of time for much else. I did manage to knit some small Christmas themed things, but they really are tiny.

No, I don't know why Santa has evil eyes either.

I started writing this post the week before Christmas, but along with everything else it got set aside. Then it was 'crimbo-limbo' which I mostly spent travelling to different parts of the country. And now it's New Year, and along with the knitting projects I already had on the go, the wine I need to bottle, the candles I need to redo (remember the candles I managed to not spontaneously combust? I left them on a table in the sun and the colour bleached), I was given books for Christmas. Cook books, knitting books and a gardening book. 

My garden is a large grey area at the moment, I want to move this year, buy a house of our own, but that means I have to make a decision (and I'm pretty awful at those). I have to a) dig up what I want to keep now, while it's dormant, grass over the beds and put up with an empty garden, or b) think about putting stuff in and maybe digging up/leaving it behind at a later date. Both are going to be a bit shit, and it doesn't help that I got James Wong's "Homegrown revolution" for Christmas because the list of things I want to grow gets longer every time I have a flick through (and even longer now I've been on Suttons Seeds and seen the plants I want for sale, I'm *this close* to buying something). But as I haven't even turned the bed over yet, my gardening credentials must be rock bottom and there's a picture of me in the local garden centre saying 'do not sell to this woman' (although my bad luck with keeping stuff alive may have earnt me that without my bed management failures). It doesn't help that I read my friend Dans's blog about her garden. I am jealous of the amount of fruit she gets, but then I also know how much time she's put in to it, and to get the same I need to as well, but it'd just be nice to get more than one or two gooseberries a year.

On the other hand, the courgettes do keep me amused if not fed.

So now what? I've written a big ol' whiney blog post and what have I got out of it? I think I feel better. I need a plan. I almost feel enthusiastic (but not quite because I've got a stupid cold and have had hiccups all day). I need to pick a knitting project (probably get the hat done and out the way) and then go back to my one-project-cast-on-at-a-time rule. I'm going to start container gardening (I *really* hate weeding anyway) which means I can pick up and take the plants when we do move, and hopefully protect them from the wind a bit more.

I'd love to know how the kiwi didn't blow over too.

And all my other little niggles? Well, it's the New Year, and I guess I just have to remember that the things I do are meant to be Fun. Maybe I will make a dress from the patterns I bought last year (but maybe not in the white fabric, I'll get something more basic) And maybe I will dye my hand spun yarn. And maybe I will make my own soap (my lovely friend Dans (from above) gave me a book that, amongst other things, tells you how to make soap). And maybe I'll do all sorts of other things. But at the end of the day it's just fun and something new to try, and if they go wrong it's not the end of the world.

Bugger, that's gone a bit twee.

Arse. Tits. Wank.

That's better.