Sock Weather

Octoberish things:

Enjoying the most beautiful walk through the countryside on Sunday afternoon with the kids and my Dad. I get a bit obsessed with getting to the woods during the autumn, especially these with the copper beech trees. It's been so wet, I am at work Monday to Friday...when it's dry enough for a walk, I pounce.

We've had so much rain that everything is still quite green, but give it a couple more weeks and it will be a different landscape.

I listened to the kids chat companionably with each other, teasing and laughing, and Angus asking my Dad a million questions about absolutely everything, as he does. Bella filmed Angus throwing leaves into the air in slow motion, I took photos of everything, soaked up all the autumn smells and feels. It did me good.

At home I banished all the baseball bats and raincoats from the peg rail to the hall cupboard, and gave it a bit of autumn love. I bought different types of squash for the kitchen table. Eventually they will be roasted and turned into soup, or possibly risotto.

I am rediscovering my love of reading. I do this every autumn, it's definitely to do with the nights drawing in and wanting to create a feeling of cosiness. My taste in literature at this time of year is usually crime fiction, especially if it's the English country house type plot. Fortunately my Dad also enjoys these kinds of mysteries and he always passes any he'dsread my way. (I'm currently reading Colour Scheme my Ngaio Marsh.)

 Autumn is also the time of year when I want to buy and read all the magazines. I can go most of the year without indulging, but show me the October and Christmas issues and I go weak at the knees. So far, all of these have impressed me. 91 is, as ever, worth every penny and packed with the most beautiful features and articles, Mindful Christmas has got a lot of good articles and original ideas for how to celebrate the season in a less consumerist, stressful way, and that issue of Mollie Makes (number 111) is their best in ages. There are a couple of excellent projects in there I really want to make including a Christmas jumper and some beautiful garlands.

And the second issue of South Coast Journal is now available. This is a free magazine local to the Chichester area and I write their food feature. It gives me such a thrill to be part of it, as I think they are doing something really special.

It's still not quite cold enough for a fire but we have started to chop and store wood in readiness, and I just finished, yesterday in fact, a pair of crocheted socks to keep my toes warm.

The pattern is Laverna socks by Vicki Brown and I chose Malabrigo sock yarn in Arco Iris. The colour is much darker than the photo on the website would have you believe, but I still like it. 

The bulk of the sock is made up of a pattern which alternates one slip stitch and one half treble, which creates a beautiful, diagonal weave shape. It took me a while to get the hang of though, as the slip stitches are impossible to get your hook into if you've worked them too tight. So part of sock one is a little tight and the rest a little loose, whereas in sock two my tension is fine overall. 

This has resulted in a pair of socks where one is marginally bigger than the other, but since my left foot is half a size bigger than my right, I'll pretend I planned it that way. The other socks I've crocheted have been bed socks, so I'm interested to see how wearable these actually are on a day to day basis.

That's all I have. Leaves, books and socks. Two more days until half term and I am clinging on for dear life.

Golden

This half term break has been a bit of a retreat for me, a necessary withdrawal from the general hubbub of life and an opportunity to rebalance and to recover my equilibrium. It's been about family, eating, walking, sitting, reading, chatting and just being. It seems I also took a lot of photos this week, and this is often my indulgence when I have the time to wander or potter and capture things on camera. Rather than drawing me away from moments, I feel it makes me notice them more. I look harder, better, more closely, when I have my camera with me. 

My in-laws travelled down from Durham to stay with us this week and it was just wonderful to see them and show them around our new home and the area. We took a stormy, windy walk along the beach where the sea was pewter and the beach huts shut up for the winter.

Remember that village I shared with you a while ago, Bosham?  On a visit this week I was shocked at the height of the tide.

Everyone local was quite unconcerned, the cafe was full and it was business as usual. I think this must be part of life for the residents here. I do hope their homes stayed dry though. 

We've been doing all kinds of autumnal things this week. My father in law, who works with wood for a living, brought his chainsaw and axe with him and helped John tackle our unruly wood pile, and it's now neatly chopped and stacked, ready for winter. I planted 200 (yes, really) bulbs and tidied up the garden. When it rained I baked our Christmas cake, hosted playdates and the children made a superb den in the spare room after our guests had left. It kept them entertained for, quite literally, hours although I did miss my clothes airer and pegs quite a bit. I've been reading a lot, working my way through a pile of magazines that go back to the summer and am currently gripped by an Agatha Christie mini-obsession. I forgot how good they are, how sharp, how well plotted, how funny!

The highlight of our week together was a three mile walk through woods and fields yesterday afternoon with my parents. I actually feel a little bit emotional when I think about it. The light was golden and just luminous, and the air had a slightly hazy quality to it and the sun was soft and bright and warm. Rural England is so exceptionally beautiful at this time of year, don't you think, with the woodsmoke in the air and the leaves changing and falling? I felt so full of gratitude to be out walking in it, to think that we actually live here now, and to be so near my family, but mostly gratitude for just being out in the countryside, to be alive and noticing and breathing in and soaking up that autumn day.