The 18th was #PhotoAnHour day in August. I took part, posting most of my day on Instagram.

8am Late to bed, late to rise. After a late night watching Much Ado About Nothing at the Theatre in the Forest, I needed a big coffee, even if it was only decaf.


9am Tried out a solid hair conditioner from Lush for the first time. I keep it (and my solid shampoo) wrapped in @beeswaxwraps_uk reusable wraps. I didn't like it at first, but it seems to be getting easier with each use. It's very different from liquid conditioners so took some getting used to, but I think I'm going to stick with it. I might have to do a weekly olive oil hair mask as well but it saves on plastic packaging.


10am And the cleaning began. The kitchen got a thorough spring clean (in the summer).


11am Tea break, or more accurately, a jasmine green tea break.  


12pm When shuffle knocks you sideways with THE song that is guaranteed to make you cry. Every. Single. Time. Listen to it here, it's beautiful.


1pm Lunch. Omelette with smoked salmon, spring onion, pepper, feta and chives. 


2pm Going for a ride with Andy. He was working in a field within walking distance of home, so I hitched a ride. It's the most time I'd spent (awake) with Andy all week.


3pm Being dropped off as close to home as you can get in this. Andy was off to a field further away, so I headed to the sofa for knitting and a film.


4pm Sewing up and together, my least favourite part of knitting.


5pm In the company of cats. I have a feeling that Socks had a touch of lap envy.


6pm I gave up on the sewing up and knitted ears instead. Two pairs, because ...


7pm ... I can never have just one knitting project on the go at any one time. I have a monkey without arms, a dog without limbs or ears, and several pieces of what will, one day, be a rabbit. None of these projects have progressed any further because I've started knitting an alien.


8pm The one nice thing about Andy working late is that I can go to bed early with a book. I got to read for an hour before Andy came home and dropped into bed.      

Thanks to Jane and Louisa for hosting.

Making pom pom wreaths has become a bit of an obsession recently. I'm spending far too much time turning balls of wool into little fluffy spheres and making them into one big soft circle!


They're so easy to do. I use pom pom makers. I ordered mine from Amazon but you can pick them up in other places too. If I didn't have these, I'd be using the old two pieces of cardboard method and I can guarantee that the obsession wouldn't have taken hold if I was doing it that way. It would take far too long.


I purchased some wire rings to use as a base. I started with 10" and have since used 14", 12" and 8" too. My very first wreath was made using a simple ring of cardboard. If I were to do that again I'd wrap the whole thing in wool, ribbon or fabric before tying on the pom poms, just to make it a little prettier.


I make a large selection of pom poms first and when I have what I think is enough, I begin tying them onto the ring. Generally I like to have an odd number of the largest size, so that it doesn't look too symmetrical, but this one didn't work out that way.


I don't like them to be too neat and precise so when I space them out I make the spacing random. I tie them on until all the space is filled, making more if I need to.


Then I step back and gaze at it a while. Sometimes I add another pom pom here or there, sometimes I remove one or two and make alternatives. This goes on until I'm happy with the end result.

And then I start all over again...

So I can look back at these after they're sold and in their new homes, here are all the wreaths I've made so far.

They all have names. My friend used to name each piece of furniture she restored and sold. When I started making these I knew that she'd love them so I named them all in her honour.


Rose


Holly


Merry

Dee


Robyn


Ivy


Berry

 Blythe

Candy

Belle

Dorothy

Luna

Hattie

Fizz

Buzz

Dasher

Violet

Dancer

Dolly

Rara. I spent a very enjoyable afternoon making this with my youngest nephew and two nieces. It's for their Grandma (aka Rara) to hang up for Christmas.

Lottie

The first full weekend of the month saw England play (and beat) Sweden in The World Cup. I watched the game alone as Andy was gearing up for harvest and working all day, everyday. He hadn't started working into the evenings but as kick-off was a 3pm, he missed the game.

I sat down with an elderflower spritzer and picked up my knitting (standard practice when watching football, yes?). I can't just sit and watch football, I have to have something else to do (I used knitting to ease the tension of the England vs Columbia penalties). By the end of the game I realised that I'd finished my third lion. Apt, right?

It seems like an eternity ago already, it's a shame we didn't make the final, but didn't the England team do us proud?

The Sunday was all about pom poms and writing blog posts. I always have 20 - 30 posts in draft, some which need updating as time goes on - my seasonal list, or my Day Zero updates for example, and others that I just need to get on and finish!


The following Saturday was Latitude. I camped at a site in Dunwich with friends on the Friday and Saturday nights. On the Friday I made my way to the campsite to help set up the tents in the afternoon. Whilst my friend returned to Ipswich to pick up his kids from school, I spent a few hours on the beach. I read, I napped a little, and I made a sea bouquet for our tent - something every tent should have!

The evening consisted of a BBQ on the beach, and sitting around a bonfire until 1am catching up with friends I haven't seen for far too long.


The next day we didn't get to the festival until 2pm and our first stop was to find food! I don't feel like I explored as much of the festival as I normally do. I didn't go into the forest at all, and there were lots of new things that I just didn't get time to check out.


I did meet up with Sophie though, and we fell back into our normal Latitude routine of bouncing between the Radio 6 tent and the main arena, with trips to the bar in between. I then found the friends I'd arrived with and headed to the main stage to watch The Killers. They were awesome. The 2 hour wait to get out of the car park however, was no fun at all. It was chaos and there was not a single warden around to help. Luckily I wasn't driving so I was able to get some sleep in the back of the car.

On the Sunday I got up surprisingly early considering I didn't get to bed until almost 2.30am. The day consisted of slowly packing up the tent, whilst drinking mug after mug of tea, and making my way home.

Andy was at work until late and I arrived home to an empty house with a touch of the festival blues. I made a pom pom wreath to keep myself occupied.

I'm hoping to go to Latitude for the entire weekend next year. I feel like I missed so much by only going for one day, but I did enjoy the camping tremendously. It's years since I've been.

The third weekend of the month was one I decided would be just general pottering and with a little being sociable thrown in.

The Saturday was all about pom pom making, and in the evening I went to friends house to watch a scary movie. The film was IT, which was rather good and thankfully not as scary as I thought it would be. Then we watched a documentary about a haunted farm house in the middle of nowhere. It was terrifying, and then I had to drive home to my farmhouse in the middle of nowhere... I had to have a cup of tea and a sit in the garden with my friends until I felt brave enough to drive home alone. In the cold light of day this seems ridiculous, at nearly 1am in the near pitch black it seems totally reasonable.


Sunday I made more pom poms (have I mentioned how addictive it is?) and Andy was working close by so he popped home for lunch, which was a lovely and unexpected surprise. Later I nipped to my  brother's for a while and came home with an abandoned knitting project to frog and make into more pom poms.


The final weekend was dedicated, once again, to pom poms. I made my biggest one yet - 14". Saturday was Photo An Hour and Sunday consisted of more pom poms and the making of a Malteser cheesecake for my nephew's 18th Birthday BBQ the following day.

...................

It was my wish at the beginning of the year to avoid that Sunday night feeling of a weekend wasted. My goal was to have a plan in place for the coming weekend by each Friday evening. July seems to have been largely dominated by pom poms (if you're wondering about the pom poms you can read more here. Long story short - I had a load of green wool that needed a use, I decided pom pom wreaths were the answer, and I'll be selling them on a craft stall in September, October and November), but it's also been a good month for seeing friends I haven't seen in far too long.

Every once in a while I pick up a new hobby craft creative outlet addiction.

This one came about thanks to a bag of Bri Nylon wool. My Mum is often given odds and ends of yarn as she is known, amongst her friends, for knitting for charity. Anyway, Mum said she was going to donate this wool to a charity shop as it was horrible to knit with, and, in her opinion, not a very nice colour.

I hate to see anything go to waste, I took it saying perhaps I could knit some frogs or aliens... or something.

But when I felt the wool I understood my Mum's reticence to knit with it, it feels horrible. It's 100% Polyamide, and makes my hands feel odd after touching it. My thoughts of knitting with it went out the window, but I wasn't to be defeated, I was determined to do something with it.

An idle scroll through my Pinterest feed gave me the answer.

Pom pom wreaths!


I have pom pom makers and set about making some. I raided my wool stash for other colours and soon I had a pink and green wreath, of which I was delighted. It's mounted on a cardboard ring, but it was pretty flimsy (this one folds itself in half), so I knew I'd have to find a better way.


A bit of a scroll on Amazon and a one-click payment later, I had some 10 inch wire rings coming my way. Refusing to pay postage costs I had to wait patiently for them to arrive, all the while making pom poms of different sizes and colours.


The rings arrived on a Saturday morning and I immediately abandoned what I was doing to start my wreath production. A few hours passed without my noticing and it was only my rumbling tummy that brought me out of my woollen bubble. By this time I'd made three wreaths.


I'm going to sell them at a charity craft stall in September, and at another in November. My only problem is, and maybe you can help me out here, I don't know how much to sell them for, what do you think?

If you need me, you can find me under a pile of pom poms...