Coronasocks - the sequel

 I knitted a lot of socks in the early days of the lockdown. It was the only thing keeping me busy when my brain felt like it was in turmoil from all the strangeness of those early days.

Over the summer, I gave them a rest - partly because I have so many socks of my own, I couldn't justify knitting myself more.

But of course, the nights are drawing in. The weather is getting colder, and coronavirus is rearing its head again as England prepares to move into a new, national lockdown for a month, possibly longer. 

Seems like a perfect time to start knitting socks again, actually.

This time, they are for other people. 

I bought the wool (lots of it!) and have a variety of sizes to knit for - from a size 1 to an adult size 12! Most are bigger than what I knit for myself, so they're taking longer, but I'm OK with that. Two pairs have already gone to my mum, and two pairs are ready to be posted. 

I've also given a sock-knitting lesson to a neighbour - she picked it up really quickly (most people struggle to start with when they're trying to handle four pins at a time) so I'm looking forward to seeing how her socks turn out. 

I also seem to have set Squidgeling J off on sock knitting too, although she's found a rather novel way of knitting two socks at the same time on a magic loop, combined with a much more technical approach to making her socks fit perfectly, which takes away all the guesswork. She might have to give me lessons the next time she's home. Assuming of course, that's possible with the new lockdown.  

Great, eh? 

Only problem now, as we head into November, is that I've now lost count of how many pairs of coronasocks I've knitted to date! I haven't been taking pictures of them all, so I think - THINK - that I'm currently on my 23rd pair!!! I have one more gorgeous colourway to knit for myself at some point, but that will have to wait as I still have about four pairs to knit for other people first.

At least it'll keep me busy...

Fenced off

 Mr Squidge and I were hard at work the other week, replacing the fence in part of our garden. 

The fence was put up about seventeen, eighteen years ago, so it's lasted fairly well. It did have a few adventures though...

The gentleman who used to live next door used to be very much a DIY kind of person, so there were a lot of assorted pipes and slabs and bricks in his garden, often leaning or fallen against the fence. So various bits got a bit...broken. 

Elsewhere, the fence had a bit of an incident with a couple of policemen; Mr Squidge recounts the tale of how, one afternoon, several polica cars pulled up in the street, and the officers were moving up and down the road and trying to look over gates in driveways. Realising they needed to get into the back gardens somehow, Mr Squidge let them into ours, and the officers had a bit of a Hot Fuzz moment, and leapt over the fence. It never fully recovered.

Then there was the badger. There are several badger setts near us - some on nearby allotments, the others disturbed after houses were built on what used to be the cricket pitch. Badgers aren't stopped by fences...they just...push. (Mr Squidge did his best to barricade them out with old slabs, roofing tiles and railway sleepers, but the damage had been done.)

So yeah, we needed a new fence. Thanks goodness none of the posts had rotted - they were still really sound.

After discussion with our new neighbours - and a lot of skip-filling on their part, bless 'em! - we bought replacement panels and trellis to put on the top.

The old panels came out easy enough, but then we had to dig up all the brambles growing along the fence line, and cut back overhanging branches etc. The first few panels went in easy enough - I stood one end, Mr Squidge the other, and we hammered them down into position. Fab.

Only problem was, we made the mistake of starting at one end of the garden, then moved to the opposite end to fit a panel that needed to be cut down, leaving a gap in the middle. And of course it had to be that the last panel we fitted needed to be cut down - on both ends - to make it fit the gap. 

We got it done though. Took us the best part of two dry days. We filled two builder's bags with brambles and branches, plus two trugs, a compost bag and a bucket with weeds. 

It looks fab. 

And we've even left what we're calling a 'wildlife gap' underneath it. 

*wink wink, could've hammered it down further but didn't*

Now all that's left is to fill in the empty spaces in the border with bedding plants the rest of my family gave me earlier in the year...