Indian Summer

 I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a summer person.  Autumn, winter and spring are my forte.  I can tolerate summer for only so long, and then my patience wears out.  The constant heat, not being able to sleep comfortably, having to stay inside to keep cool, and try to keep little ones entertained while stuck inside becomes all too much.  I start pining for autumn.  In all it's golden splendour, crisp mornings and turning leaves.

In the meantime, late in the afternoon, I throw and few buckets of cold water into the paddling pool and let the children do their thing.  It's been the highlight of their day (I'm not a fan of public pools and we're too far from the beach), and seems to release a lot of tension.  For all of us.....

I'll happily sit by with a cold chardonnay and occasionally dip my feet in (yep, that's my hammer toes in the top photo....), but I usually try to have knitting needles in hand.

Ravelled here.

I often find myself knitting as much as I can in summer.  Maybe it's a futile attempt to bring winter on early, or a reminder that winter will come, in all it's chilly glory.  It also reminds me of when I was a teenager, watching the winter Olympics whilst munching on ice in my water.  I liked the fact that these Olympics are always in the northern hemisphere so it's on during our summer.  Seeing all that snow and ice probably didn't make me any cooler, but I liked to imagine it did.

New beginnings

So time has passed and things have changed.  Since we last spoke (nearly a year!) I thought my broken molar was the cause of my misery..... turns out it wasn't.  In July, and after breaking down in the doctors office, I was sent off to pathology for a full blood workup.  Turns out my thyroid is badly underactive.  My GP was very excited because "this can easily be fixed!", which it has.  Although just as I was getting my spring back into my step and started to get stuck into the garden I got a cold, a very nasty chest cold that lasted for weeks.  Maybe it was whooping cough, maybe it was bronchitis, but as a reluctant doctors patient (plus it's difficult to get early appointments with him) I knew I had to take it slow and look after myself.  When I came good it was nearly Christmas and too hot to work in the garden, and that's what I've been doing this long hot summer - staying cool indoors, keeping my children entertained, knitting, crocheting and sometimes sewing.

So for a while there I didn't see the necessity of maintaining a blog.  It's not like I've got wares to sell, which in a lot of ways I feel blogs are perfect for.  I just kept the old thing open so I could leave comments on my friends blogs, when and where I could.  I'm on Intagram, Pinterest and Facebook (oh and Ravelry too) so really, why did I need a blog?

But then a few days ago I whipped up a quick table runner,

and started a new quilt (see top photo).  I thought this was worth blogging about.  More of that next time...

Although the main reason why I've started again is because we recently bought an old caravan.

Thankfully a lot of it's original features are still intact, but I wanted to document it's restoration before (and after) it goes to Bruny Island as our lodgings at the oyster farm.  It's got a lot of potential and the children love it.

I also bought this book for inspiration.

Here's hoping I can keep this going!