Oh dear I have been such a dreadfully bad blogger lately but now I am on holidays for the next fortnight I have a chance to catch up with no real excuse. Nothing much planned as we are not going abroad on hols this year and we will probably go to Dublin for a few days. Meanwhile the weather is pretty awful - today's the August Bank Holiday Monday and it's a steady Irish Mist outside. Temps equally miserable - 14C - and I have been trying to cycle a bit more than I had been doing in prep for the50km leg of the Seán Kelly Challenge end of August.
Enough excuses for my non-blogging. Reason for this post is to tell you about the latest crafty business I've been getting up to - a fundraising initiative for charity, namely the Innocent Big Knit for Age Action Ireland. This is my first year participating but it's been on before. The idea is to make little hats for Innocent Smoothie bottles and then they donate €0.25 for every hat and bottle sold. So it's a win-win- Innocent get to sell smoothies ethically and the buyers get a feel-good factor from a) buying a smoothie which is ostensibly good for you and b) supporting a deserving cause. There are patterns on the Website to download and you can join in and post them off by October 14th 2011 if you are living in Ireland - or the UK which has a similar campaign going on for Age UK
A selection to a few days ago!
The benefits for the knitters/crocheters are that creativity can run riot and imagination know no bounds. Plus a hat can be knitted up in no time - about half an hour for a knitted one and about half that or less for a crocheted one. Jany my d-i-l -to-be is a whiz crocheter and has made some wonderful ones, and a whole zoo of crocheted animal bottle toppers - and I've been doing a mix of crochet and knitted ones. There is some fierce rivalry on Twitter over the County Colours (GAA) and I've made a Deise colours hat in Blue/White while the Red/White one I made could be construed as being a Cork hat - or Where's Wally? - or the good old Labour Party red with a bit of white thrown in. You can follow on Twitter at the hashtag #BigKnit and @AgeAction, and on Facebook you can Like the Innocent Smoothies Ireland page here and the Big Knit page here
It's a great way to use up stash scraps, and anything goes - bobbles, tassles, flowers, leaves, beads, buttons, ribbons, you name it, embellishment is the order of the day and you can go with whatever takes your fancy. some of the members of the Tuesday Knitting Circle at the Lismore Design Workshop are knitting hats with great gusto, and Angela will post them all on her Facebook Page which you can check out and Like - here.
Where's Wally? (or Cork, as you prefer!)
Dennis the Menace!
So here are a few of the completed creations - there will be plenty more added to the Facebook and Twitter pages - and my own Twitter stream if you want to follow me @CatherineRotteM here. It's all good fun and the nice thing it they are so quick to do you don't have to set aside your own projects or WIP* to do these little hats - and Jany is great at making baby clothes for prem babies and little blankets for Project Halo which makes keepsakes and blankets for stillborn babies. One of the women at the knitting circle is also making these white blankets and they are welcomed by most of the maternity hospitals which prepare memory boxes for parents who lose their little ones during pregnancy. It must be a great comfort to these parents to know there are so many caring people out there who lovingly make these blankets and clothes. Irish Prems are closer to home and have a Facebook page here - they may be happy to have crochet or knit clothing and blankets too.
I've just finished knitting this jumper from my yarn stash and am delighted with the result - it was practically a freebie as I bought the original jumper in Shaw's Dungarvan last year and found it didn't do anything for me - in other words I looked frumpy in it when I got home and tried it on. Of course in the shop on the hanger it looked grand and for €7 was a bargain too good to miss. So it was a bit of a disappointment to find it looked so awful on, adding decades to my already mature years! It languished on a hanger on my clothes rail (don't have a wardrobe, just a rail from Argos!) for about a year, till I was doing a charity cleanout and came across it. On mature reflection I decided to deprive the charity and upcycle the yarn. This entailed unpicking the seams and cutting ruthlessly into the jumper from the neckline down - and then painstakingly ripping and rolling the yarn into manageable balls. I probably should have washed and unkinked it but as it was a ribbon yarn it didn't really react like proper wool would have and had an impact on whatever I was going to make. So I just weighed the salvaged yarn and had 350gm. That's like 5x50gm balls so I felt very smug as that would make a jumper even though I couldn't save the top of the jumper from the V-neckline up.
Finished jumper detail
I had a plan to make a jumper like a cream one I had made earlier in the best celebrity-chef tradition - also a ribbon yarn and one I wear to lots of gigs here as it's so comfortable and quite smart to wear - you can see it in the photos in this post - and this lovely burgundy yarn was going to make another similar but slightly longer jumper.
I only started it about a month ago and kept it going between other projects to alleviate the tedium of knitting stocking stitch - or stockinette as the Americans call it.
A ripping yarn!
I was making Jaywalker Socks concurrently so that kept me on my toes - no pun intended! These were a nice challenge and I was delighted with the results using the pre-patterned Lidl wool which is brilliant for socks - I have about 6 pairs in the red and the blue colourways and I am making a pair now in the grey-black colourways. When I'm going on any long car trip as a passenger the socks are a great way to mitigate motorway monotony - bypassing every village and town on the road to Dublin is great to shorten the road but boy is it a dull trip! At least now there are services with decent food and diversions - a good way to part fools and their money but I'm as much a sucker for Supermac's as the next fast-food fan and they do the Carlsberg of Curry Chips - outside of the Perki Chick in Drumcondra and Lennox's of Cork, Supermac's are hard to beat.
After all those deviations from the topic - here's the end result - I am totally taken with my upcycled jumper and I love the cream stripe at the hem - it used a bit of the leftover yarn I had from my first jumper. It's a perfect summer jumper as it's cool and airy, and the three-quarter sleeves are a great compromise - and a great way to mask any hint of bingo-wings!
Stash quantity - 350gm
Weigh-in of salvaged stash!
I'll try to post some more snippets on recent knitting and crochet projects in the coming days, as I've been a disastrous blogger in the past few months. Life's just too busy with work, concert gigs in Dublin and Cork, house renovation in Dublin - a whole other post - and keeping in touch with the kids and grandkids in Dublin and Cork. And as it's summer holidays for the teenqueen in our lives there's a lot of taxi-ing to and fro between friends and sleepovers hither and yon. Never a dull moment, and we wouldn't have it any other way!
I was admiring a lovely fuchsia silk scarf worn by a good friend last Sunday at Devonshire Day, and she said a hat or headband would be lovely to have to go with it. In my optimistic post-election regime-change euphoria, I offered to make her one. So I decided to knit rather than crochet, as I had previously done for the teenagers in our midst.
Reverse side of headband
For inspiration and a new pattern idea I turned to my trusty knitting bible "How To Knit" which is really great as it has load of tips for the likes of me who's been knitting since God was a boy but never knew why I did things the way I did. This included tips like when to use the various casting on different methods (thumb, two needles) and the right seam to use in different situations, and how to turn a sock heel, as well as lots of pattern/design swatches, not to mention lots of practical patterns.
Wearing the headband Rib side.
Me with the reversed headband
From the design swatches I got the pattern sequence for the stitch I used in this headband - Fisherman's Rib. I hadn't ever used this in a garment before, though I'd seen lots of chunky manly jumpers knitted in it when I was growing up. It seemed to be the rib-du-jour for army surplus sweaters, which featured lots of leather elbow patches and shoulder yokes, which were downright ugly, so no wonder I was never attracted by its charms.
Grey headband - Fisherman's Rib side
Grey headband - reverse side
Somehow I've changed! After a few false starts with too many/too few stitches, I settled on a pattern I liked and ran it up in a few hours, spread over a few days as I seemed to have only an hour here or there to snatch at it. I spent a couple of half-hours of my lunch-hour relaxing in Dungarvan library reading and knitting a bit of the band, and then I finished it off last night with the crochet flower - ubiquitous by now on many of my caps and headbands, and which comes from terrific Teresa's crochet patterns. You can find her great tutorials here on YouTube, and then there's a link to download the written pattern.
Apart from that my headband is my own design, simple and easy, so I want to share it with any interested bloggers out there. As I neared the end - using my head as a guide - I realised the reverse was a lovely design in itself, so decided to try and make it reversible. That necessitated putting the flower on a band that could be turned to either side, simplicity itself. So it's double the value with two headbands in one
I used Double-Knitting/US Worsted/8-ply yarn, acrylic and washable, and the tension gauge is immaterial as I used thick 6mm/10 US/4UK needles which is usually advised for chunky wool, but worked fine here - proof that there's always exceptions to the rule. I used crochet hook 4mm for the flower and flower-band, so it's a bit of a hybrid headband - hence the alliterative title of this post!
Hybrid Headband
Using either Thumb or Two Needles Method, Cast on 17 or 19 or 21 stitches - depending on desired width - I used 19 for the cerise band.
Row 1: Purl to end.
Row 2: *P1, knit next st in the row below; rep from *,P1.
Repeat above 2 rows until headband is the desired length - allow for some stretch if yarn is elasticky. Mine was for a 55-56cm/22in head circumference.
This is a flat seam and suitable for the headband.
Crochet Flower
How to Add Rounds
(Written by Teresa Richardson of the YouTube tutorial above) Abbreviations
FPSC - Front Post Single Crochet
SC - Single Crochet
SL ST - Slip Stitch
DC - Double Crochet
TC - Triple Crochet
Chain 5, Join
Round 1: 10 SC through the loop, join in the beginning single crochet.
Round 2: CH 1, *SC in the same stitch, CH 3, SK 1 SC, SC in the next, complete 5 times total from *, the last chain 3 will be a slip stitch to join. (5 chain 3 loops total)
Round 3: *CH 1, 6 DC in loop, CH 1, SL ST in the next SC, complete 5 times total from *. (5 Petals Total)
Second Set of Petals
Round 4: CH 1, *BPSC around the post of the SC on round 2. CH 5. Complete 5 times total from *, SL ST to join in beginning SC. (5 Chain 5 loops total
This section will provide two alternative petals.
Method 1 -
Round 5: *CH 1, 9 DC in the loop, CH 1 SL ST in the next SC, Complete 5 times total from *.
(5 sets of petals total, with 9 double crochet each )
Method 2 -
Round 5: *CH 1, 3 DC, 3 TC, 3 DC, CH 1, SL ST in the next SC, Complete 5 times total from *.
(5 sets of petals total, with 3 double crochet, 3 Triple Crochet, 3 Double Crochet, total)
Third Set of Petals
Round 6: SL ST to the center of the previous petal on round 5, CH 1, *SC between the stitches of the petal, CH 5, Complete 5 times total from *. SL ST the last chain to the SC at the beginning of the round. (5 Chain 5 loops total)
This section will provide two alternative petals.
Method 1 -
Round 7: *CH 1, 11 DC in the loop, CH 1 SL ST in the next SC, Complete 5 times total from *.
(5 sets of petals total, with 11 double crochet each )
Method 2 -
Round 7: *CH 1, 4 DC, 3 TC, 4 DC, CH 1, SL ST in the next SC, Complete 5 times total from *.
(5 sets of petals total, with 4 double crochet, 3 Triple Crochet, 4 Double Crochet, total)
Loop for holding flower
Crochet Chain 15
Row 1 - SC into each chain, turn
Row 2 - SC into top of each SC of Row 1
Cut yarn 10cm long after final SC and pull through final chain to secure.
To Assemble
Put Loop around the Headband and stitch end-to-end.
Attach flower to Loop by securely stitching back of flower to the loop.
Ensure it is not stitched through to the headband as the loop needs to turn freely to make the headband easily reversible.
The Headband can be worn either side out - the rib or the more textured reverse, which looks a little like Moss/Seed Stitch. The flower can be moved to the side being worn thanks to the loop.
Hopefully this headband pattern with the videoclips will make it an attractive project for you - an evening in front of the telly should suffice to finish one - I made the grey one today, St. Patrick's Day, when I relaxed at home knitting, garden-cleaning and reading on the sunny patio and it was done in a few hours. We even had a hybrid BBQ - cooked outside and eaten inside as the evening was too chilly for alfresco dining.
Hubby keeping warm by the BBQ on St. Patrick's Day - 1st BBQ of the year!
I was chuffed when I got this award recently - it's been a couple of weeks ago but better late than never, Stylish Blogger no less! - from Laura in California who blogs at Our Scented Cottage, well worth a visit. Thanks a lot Laura!
I will now tell you what the Award sharing entails, for those of you who will receive it from me - if you wish to share with your fellow-bloggers just follow the guidelines below. I don't think this one is too onerous; I have refused to pass on Awards in the past that were too difficult or intrusive, so it's entirely up to you what to do. It's all a bit of fun, not something to agonise over accuracy or factual verification thereof - even if you're using a bit of poetic/artistic licence to embellish it's not a hanging offence!
To Accept The Award Requirements: Thank and Link Back to the Blogger Who Awarded You With The Award and Share 7 Things About Yourself. Award 15 Recently Discovered Great Bloggers and contact the bloggers, inform them of the award.
Right - here goes - Seven things about me (that you were afraid to ask?!)
1. I love reading - I am in a real-world book club and an online Bloggers' Book Club - which is worth checking out and much thanks to Lily for setting it up. I am not always great at reading the required books as I am always short on time - but I try. I enjoy sharing the reviews and seeing other people's opinions on a favourite read. Our house is full of books - hubby keeps wondering where we're going to fit any more and yet there's a certain elasticity in our bookshelves! I am always reading some book or other, usually multitasking it with something else like knitting (see 2 below!)
My latest socks project - ribbed wool socks
2. My current favourite hobby is knitting - small projects like socks (See photo) which can be done anywhere - in the car, the coffee shop, watching TV, waiting around for people, hospital appointments - it makes the wait tolerable and combined with No. 1 above is the perfect relaxation. I do enjoy crochet but I am not as good at it as I once was so I defer to my daughter-in-law-to-be who has become a whiz at it since I showed her how to make a pot-holder a few short months ago - now she's teaching me her wonderful projects! Check out her Facebook Group (Jany's Cozy Crochets) for her work. Also the advent of YouTube tutorials on knitting and crochet make it accessible to the masses and the plethora of wonderful crafty books now available have reawakened interest in these terrific pastimes.
Sofia's No. 1 Cake!
3. I have always loved baking since learning the craft from my late mother as a child - I also had a friend whose grandfather had a bakery and she taught me how to make yeast bread, something not very common in Ireland - home of the Soda Bread (brown bread made with buttermilk and with Bread Soda (Soda Bicarbonate) as the raising agent. No waiting around for proving or rising and knocking down, it's a simple fast mixing method - can be wet or dry as wished, depending on whether you want to bake in a loaf tin or shaped round or whatever you fancy. Now I mostly bake cakes, buns (cupcakes) and tarts and pies. And I have a Facebook Group (Cakes, Bakes and Tasty Treats) which showcases some of my favourite recipes, all of which I've blogged about. My most recent was Sofia's First Birthday Cake which you can see here - we celebrated the big day yesterday!
4. I never travelled outside of Ireland until I was 17, when I went overland on a youth pilgrimage to Lourdes in southern France, the famous Marian shrine. I was a helper to a disabled girl, as were a a number of classmates who'd signed up for a bit of adventure, which was in short supply in the Black and White TV days of the early 70s! We had a blast - something not usually associated with pilgrimages, but perhaps there's a clue if I say the pilgrimage was led by that notorious party animal Bishop Eamon Casey. He was quite the man-about-town then, little did we know then what we knew twenty years later - that he was a father in more than the religious title, which was disclosed by the mother of his then 17 yr old son, a handsome American lad, whose mother had fallen for the popular Bishop's charms all those years earlier. Sadly, he was vilified by the church and sent into exile in the South American missions, in contrast to all those paedophile priests whose crimes came to light years later which were covered up by the institution all the way to the Vatican. If ever there was a case for married priest and an end to compulsory celibacy, Bishop Casey epitomised it. He was a coward of course, in that he ditched Annie Murphy and embezzled diocesan funds to pay maintenance for the kid, and he never acknowledged him until Annie Murphy went public. But theirs was a consenting adult relationship, and as such should have been acknowledged by the hierarchy.
5. I never flew until I was 22, when I went to Tenerife on my first and only package holiday after I'd finished my midwifery. Nine of us went, all girls, all just-qualified midwives, and we were ready to party. I remember being more excited by the flight than the holiday destination - until I arrived. I had little experience of sub-tropical climes to then, and revelled in two weeks of glorious sunshine in a then largely unspoilt island just discovering its tourist potential. We climbed Mount Tiede, the highest volcano/peak in Europe (not the mainland of course, but the Canary Islands are part of Spain so they are European even though they lie off the coast of Morocco, near the Western Sahara end.
6. I lived without electricity or running water for over a year - in the African bush in the mid-80s when we worked withTutsi refugees from Rwanda near Lake Burigi, the most beautiful place between Lake Victoria and Rwanda. We drew water from the river and in the rainy season collected rainwater in a tank. That was our most basic living ever - we had a small generator which would run a light bulb or two but if you put on the cooker it would dim the lights. I cooked on charcoal and got very creative - anyone who knows those little charcoal jikos or stoves knows they're slow to fire up and can be temperamental, but I ended up baking bread with two African cooking pots - like a bastable oven, one had the bread, the other sat on top with more hot coals in it, and that baked perfect bread. Murder on the tin pots though, as the heat of the charcoal on a dry pot burnt it away after a couple of uses. Happy days, the kids were small and it was pretty idyllic for them, aged 4 and 1, and I was 8 months pregnant with no. 3 when we left for the relative civilisation of Wales and a study break.
7. I was taught Irish for 13 years in school and I still don't speak it comfortably or anywhere near fluency. This is probably a damning indictment of the school system in how it teaches Irish as a compulsory subject which was foisted on us, as it still is. In fact, it was so forced that if you failed Irish in the Leaving Cert you failed the whole exam, regardless of the rest of the exam - straight As or not. That requirement is now gone, but the baggage it carries for my generation is irreparable. I work in an Irish-speaking area and did a conversation course a few years ago which showed me how much I could recall and it was a fun way to learn. I see kids going to Gaelscoileanna where they're taught everything through Irish and they seem fine with it, and there's a resurgence outside Gaeltacht areas. I think future generations will be okay with the language but the teaching has to change and be relevant to everyday life. I speak near-fluent Dutch, am very comfortable in Kiswahili after years in Tanzania, and could even cope with some Lao, a tortuously difficult script and tonal language (like Thai)e that would make Serbo-Croat look like a walk in the park!
So that's some random things to share - I tried to get a different perspective than in a previous list for the Versatile Blogger Award I got from Mimi last year, so I hope I achieved that. I will now forward it to the following bloggers I enjoy and who won't mind being tagged with an award - I will not send it to any award-free zone!
It's been fun to do and I hope you enjoy it too, pass it on and hopefully bring a lot more readers and followers to your blog - which is always nice. Though I write this because I enjoy the process of writing an open diary - as I see a blog - and it documents my life in a way I'm happy to share in the blogosphere.
Happy New Year to all the blog-readers and loyal followers of Dispatches from the Deise from my first post in 2011 - I've been blogging just over two years now since I started just after Christmas 2008, and it's been a great journey as I've catalogued various events in my life and numerous random ramblings. I've enjoyed reading other blogs, following many, commenting on some (not enough!) and having over a hundred followers of my dispatches. It's an interesting and diverse community, and without any literary or journalistic pretensions, blogging's a great creative outlet for any aspiring writers - at every level.
Family photo - Christmas Day 2010
I hope you like the family photo taken on Christmas day on the patio - we were all wrapped up for a walk before the turkey dinner, and it was absolutely freezing. The next day it was about 8 degrees Centigrade (above freezing) - and the thaw has persisted but more frosty Arctic weather is forecast - just in case we get comfortable and complacent. The water's back by day, and down to a dribble at night; the pumps are turned off to fill the reservoirs as there are more leaks in the Irish water supply than Julian Assange could dream of in a lifetime - the County Councils here would give Wikileaks a right run for its money.
I wish everyone a wonderful 2011 despite the state of the nation and the economy and the dread and dismay we'll all find in out payslips in about a fortnight or so when the first haircuts of the hairiest hairshirt budget in history kicks in.
Cloche crochet hat with flower - on me.
I am trying all the positive mantras - lucky to have a job, many worse off than me, and amn't I lucky to be a vilified public servant - albeit frontline so maybe my job won't be one of those targeted for the chop if Fine Gael get into government after the General Election - probably March now. I just hope their expected partners in government, Labour, (my party affiliation) will be able to rein them in - Eamon(Gilmore) better make sure his charm offensive knocks the socks off Inda (Kenny) enough to stall the Blueshirts' proposal to slash and burn the public sector as they promised in their recent budget alternative.
Jany and me with her creation - New Year's Eve 2010
A question for 2011 - will Bono ask the IMF and the World Bank to Drop the Debt for his own country as he has so eloquently advocated for so-called Third World Countries? That would be a supreme irony as he has lost a lot of street cred since U2 headed off on a tax break of their own to The Netherlands when they moved their assets offshore for higher tax exemption savings - all strictly legal but morally very questionable given his holier-than-thou banging on about helping poor countries - surely the best way to do so would be to pay taxes in your own country?
Random-dyed pink flower detail on headband - crochet
Purple flower detail on headband - crochet
Crochet flower headbands
My thinking is that it can only be uphill from here as we can't get any worse than 2010 from an economic and national morale standpoint - it was a new low for our collective national psyche when the IMF rode into town, and we are still reeling from the shock of losing financial sovereignty with the bailout of €85 billion.
But enough misery - this Christmas and New Year I have been mostly crocheting new projects for myself and teen daughter and her pals - there's a resurgence in Hippie nostalgia and retro headbands and hats have become de rigueur - at least around here.
Jany, d-i-l in-waiting, has been instrumental in reawakening this fashion fad as she has been busy with scarves, hats and headbands for little Sofia and her work colleagues. So when she showed me how to make 3-D flowers with the help of a wonderful YouTube tutorial from the wonderful Art of Crochet by Teresa, I was hooked ( I know, I used that pun in a recent post - guilty as charged!). You can see how wonderful it is in the link above or the video clip below.
I want to share some finished projects with you too, and maybe inspire you in the potential for a new cottage industry in the lean days ahead - a stall at the local Farmers' Market would be a terrific outlet for the crafty among you. You could do worse for in this age of austerity!
Jany never crocheted till a few months ago and now she's teaching me techniques and new skills every week - so it's no excuse not to get down to it if you're motivated enough.If I can do it anyone can.
self-timer pic - scarf and hairband/headband with flower
Headband with flower - self-timed pic.
a bit too-close-up! flower cap with brim
The Art of Crochet by Teresa - amazing tutorials on everything you need to know to crochet.
It's a sunny October Bank Holiday Monday and I am looking out the garden at the banana trees that have been burnt by the first sharp frost of the autumn. It's a sign that we're looking down the barrel of winter and while I hope it won't be as harsh as last winter the prophets of doom and gloom are predicting a worse one - in line with the economic forecast and a December budget which promises to leave last year's hairshirt budget in the cashmere stakes.
At times it seems like the revolution must be just around the corner as there's so much anger in the populace. The perception that the government is bailing out the banks at the expense of the ordinary folk was reinforced by the news today that the developers whose assets are in our toxic bank NAMA (The National Asset Management Agency) are planning to pay themselves salaries of around €200,000 p.a. - a drop from their accustomed €1million+ salaries. Not that we feel their pain - some of these wheelers and dealers have been shifting assets to their spouses as fast as their lawyers can draft the documents and moving themselves offshore and beyond extradition in some cases.
The finished coral socks
There are court appearances every week of developers or local Councillors implicated in corruption charges - even this week one developer who has even had the brass neck to revoke his Irish citizenship for expediency and tax purposes was charged along with some former government Councillors who took his bribes - allegedly - and he was granted bail if he had an Irish address - so he gave the Four Seasons Hotel in leafy Ballsbridge as the address! If this isn't giving the finger to the authorities and those of us who are still proud to be Irish I don't know what is.
Detail of the heel and foot.
But to calm me down and stay sane I have sought refuge in (amongst other therapeutic activities like baking!) knitting and have revived a long-dormant skill in crochet. Regular followers of the blog will know I've made legwarmers and socks lately, and now I have finished another pair of textured open-patterned socks this time in a peachy Coral. The photo taken on the clothes line is truer than in those taken indoors. The pattern is a free download from Ravelry - Fixation Cascade Yarn is the recommended yarn but I used ordinary DK yarn - cheap and cheerful. (on the Cascade link they are the ones labelled Fixation Lacy Multicolored Socks W135)
Simple Crochet flowers
Granny Squares and little flowers
Over the weekend Jany (D-i-L to be) and myself dabbled in crochet and made some Granny Squares and flowers, finding an online tutorial on YouTube. (There are lots of tutorials on knitting and crochet on YouTube so no excuse for not trying something new). This was a lot of fun and Jany has been amazingly quick at picking it up. So I hope you get some inspiration from this post and realise it's never too late to start afresh. I loved crochet as a teenager and made some clothes from Granny Squares - a waistcoat and a bag come to mind - but this was the '70s (the decade that taste forgot, some would say!) and I doubt I'll be going down that road again.
Banana plants in the sun
Banana plant after the frost
As for the banana trees - here are photos of them last week in their green glory juxtaposed with some taken today after the frost. They die off each winter and then phoenix-like arise from the ground in May to grow and thrive for the summer. We had so many suckers (little ones) this year we gave some away and brought some into the sunroom for overwintering - and they are already growing like proverbial Triffids! It's lovely to have a mini-tropical garden in the house and it keeps us in touch with our past life in the real tropics - a nostalgia trip for every day.
Please feel free to leave comments on my blog posts and generate some level of debate and communication from like-minded bloggers or blog-readers.
I hope you will become a follower of my blog and share it with your friends, as I am new to the blogosphere and on a steep learning curve. Therefore I will be grateful for any advice or constructive criticism!
Many thanks,
Catherine
(My blog title comes from the name of the ancient principality of the Déise, in roughly the same area as today's Co. Waterford.)
Married to Jan, with four children - three sons in their 20s and a teenage daughter - and two beautiful granddaughters, born in 2010 and 2011. I work as a public health nurse in rural County Waterford. I love my work and enjoy interaction with people, both colleagues and patients. I lived for almost twenty years in developing countries - Bangladesh, Tanzania and Lao PDR - better known as Laos - and loved that life very much. I am Irish and my husband is Dutch. We met in Bangladesh and married in Ireland before going to Tanzania many years ago. We are living in Ireland for the past 11 years, and would love to travel as much as possible in the future, especially back to Africa and Asia.
Political/trade union affiliation - Irish Labour Party member and branch officer, and active in the Irish Nurses Organisation as a section representative and branch officer.
Enough excuses for my non-blogging. Reason for this post is to tell you about the latest crafty business I've been getting up to - a fundraising initiative for charity, namely the Innocent Big Knit for Age Action Ireland. This is my first year participating but it's been on before. The idea is to make little hats for Innocent Smoothie bottles and then they donate €0.25 for every hat and bottle sold. So it's a win-win- Innocent get to sell smoothies ethically and the buyers get a feel-good factor from a) buying a smoothie which is ostensibly good for you and b) supporting a deserving cause. There are patterns on the Website to download and you can join in and post them off by October 14th 2011 if you are living in Ireland - or the UK which has a similar campaign going on for Age UK
So here are a few of the completed creations - there will be plenty more added to the Facebook and Twitter pages - and my own Twitter stream if you want to follow me @CatherineRotteM here. It's all good fun and the nice thing it they are so quick to do you don't have to set aside your own projects or WIP* to do these little hats - and Jany is great at making baby clothes for prem babies and little blankets for Project Halo which makes keepsakes and blankets for stillborn babies. One of the women at the knitting circle is also making these white blankets and they are welcomed by most of the maternity hospitals which prepare memory boxes for parents who lose their little ones during pregnancy. It must be a great comfort to these parents to know there are so many caring people out there who lovingly make these blankets and clothes. Irish Prems are closer to home and have a Facebook page here - they may be happy to have crochet or knit clothing and blankets too.
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