…blogtober day 29 :: Saturday stitching…

After seemingly unending rain, days at a time, followed by a day or two of glorious spring warmth, and back to driving rain, the lawn has, predictably, grown at a rate of knots. Invariably, the rain has settled in on Thursdays, continuing through to Friday night, leaving the weekends too wet to try and get the mower out. This week, however, we finally got a dry lead up to the weekend, and despite several muddy patches, almost swamp-like in their ability to continue clinging to water, the time had come to reclaim the jungle. The mister even treated me to a new whipper snipper for the occasion. Married life is just filled with romantic surprises like that.

Between the two of us, we managed to get the bulk of the yard, and the high traffic areas of the house paddock, snipped and mowed and trimmed and looking fabulous by lunchtime. There’s something so satisfying about the freshly levelled, vibrant green lawn, offset against the brilliant blue sky of a spring Saturday. From where I sit in our cabin, looking out over the orchard, the outlook is what we consider our “back up view”. Nice, but not the main event. That is reserved for the valley our new house will overlook. As far as views go though, even the “back up” is pretty darn good, especially when everything is neat and fresh like it is today.

Once I had the children fed and lunch tidied away, and the fourth load of washing for the hung out to dry, I settled in on the couch to soak in the view and unwind with some handwork. The rest of the family were occupied with various projects, leaving me with the house to myself. I popped on my audiobook, picked up my gnome, and got busy stitching with the aim of getting the face done.

The last stitch went in as everyone started filtering back into the house, and while I chatted, I pulled up the pattern ready to pick my next colour, and realised I’d made a rather spectaular error. The face? Yeah. It wasn’t a face. I’d just spent my afternoon stitching a BEARD. In skin colour.

My last gnome had exactly the same beard, which in theory means I should have realised a lot earlier what I was doing wrong. This gnome, however, has a visible mouth as part of the beard section, which my other didn’t and I think that’s what threw me out. I feel so so dumb right now! Especially after moaning most of the way through in the stitching chat about how slow this section was and how much it was annoying me – and now I get to pull it out and do it all over again in white. A classic “assumption is the mother of all…”, I didn’t once check the actual pattern or colour chart because I “knew” what I was doing. Spoiler: I very much did not know what I was doing.

The mowing & whipper snipping was, at least, a good chance to make some solid progress on my audio book. The combo of AirPod Pros with noise cancelling turned on, and Mr Barefoot’s good tractor earmuff headphones on top, made for a very peaceful morning with very little of the whipper snipper noise impacting my audio book. Madam Butterfly has joined me in the house this afternoon, having a little boogie to herself while she does some baking for a family lunch tomorrow. Her cake has just come out of the oven, and it’s smelling amazing. I believe she has plans to ice and decorate it, so while I’m on moral support duty, I’ll pull out my knitting and see if I can’t knock over the rest of this audio book.

Before that, though, there’s homemade pizza for dinner and washing to bring in and a Ministry blog post to get up. The Saturday Night Craft Along is in full swing, so I’ll pop on over for a chat in a minute. I started a new book on my phone this afternoon, and I’m thinking it might be the perfect time filler until I can spread out with my knitting and settle in to find my rhythm. I hope your weekend is going swimmingly with lots of craft and productivity as well!