Wednesday, July 27, 2022

Sneaking in a post before July is over!

Now where do I begin? Knitting? Too hot! Mike's cardigan is virtually finished and just awaiting buttons. Running? Yep, lots of that as it's getting scarily close to my 10 marathons in 10 days challenge (trying not to think too much about that!). Wildilfe? Let's start right there as we have been blessed with so much wild loveliness recently: The garden is certainly not looking its best right now and there are wildfires breaking out in the countryside. Everywhere is tinder dry and the village pub had a scary moment recently when their pizza oven caught fire. Thankfully it was spotted quickly and 2 fire engines came racing along the lane and put it out PDQ. Phew! Our wild visitors have been delighting us with their visits most mornings and first we have Mrs Duck and her babies:
Oh my goodness, she'd been sitting on a makeshift nest behind some large rocks in the yard and I really didn't expect her to manage to incubate the eggs without being discovered by Rooks/Crows/Badgers/Foxes but she did it! When she brought them round to show us she had 10 ducklings in tow. Sadly she lost one after a couple of days but atm she still has 9. They are a delight to watch and a great timewaster. I chuckled at one of the photos as the grass looks so verdant but that's only because it's right beside the water saucer and gets lots of duckling splashes. In the photo where Mrs Duck is sititng down, seemingly on her own, I didn't realise at first that all 10 ducklings were underneath her until a few of them popped out! The deer are still visiting every couple of days and are happily munching their way through crabapples/apples/pears and anything else they fancy!
My weaving continues with lots of samples and I am definitely getting better with my tension and beating. What I haven't quite mastered yet is the righthandside which seems to be slacker then the left. I'm sure practice will make perfect eventually (well, I hope so!).
There's been lots of run-training going on ahead of my challenge and I had a lovely day out at a Long Distance Walkers event a few weeks ago. It was absolutely baking hot but thankfully there was some shelter through woods. It was nice to meet up with some running chums and I tried out my new Garmin watch, which is way too snazzy for me as I won't use half its capability or functions but I did upload the route onto it and followed it OK. It was just over 32 miles so was a good leg-stretcher.
My next crafting project is for Christmas - yes, I know it seems a long way off but this project needs good light so I need to get ahead before the days get much shorter. I'm doing it as a virtual stitch-along organised by a lovely lady who used to run a Wool Store in a local village but decided to create a workshop at home to save the cost of rental. We'll be having a monthly Zoom meeting to see if we're all on track and I'm really looking forward to it. Shelley and I were very excited when my package arrived:
I hope everyone reading this is safe and well as there's just so much uncertainty all over the world at the moment.