Jan. 11, 2025

The first full week back after Christmas and New Year was a cold one. Around 0 degrees and below pretty much most of the week. I had made some progress on my new Grobbendonk jumper on the weekend, but by Monday I decided I needed to restart. The pattern is quite an involved set of cables and textured patterns and I made quite a few mistakes on my first try. Too many for me to continue. I thought better to restart now than regret it later as you can’t fix it once you continue. It was about 3 evenings of work, but fine. Here is the first attempt, see if you can spot all the mistakes, including the big one. 

The spinning has not started great either, I over-plyed my first 100g and then under-plyed the second. My fault for not paying attention and turning on autopilot. Will do better next time. The second attempt is coming along well. However, I did have to pause mid-week as my fingers were starting to hurt/be strained. It is a risk with knitting, especially cables and rougher yarns where you have to put in more effort and force. You can get finger joint or ligment pains. I think it got aggravated by the cold weather, especially since I was on the field 3 days this week. 

Anyways, I paused completely for a day or two and then decided to start a new knitting project as a side-along. I’ve been making hoods or snoods, which I’ve found really practical in cold weather and using up some leftover yarns. I did have to buy some new yarn to accompany the leftovers and hold them double. I finished the first hood, a blue one, which I’m really happy about. The fit turned out great. Now onto a beige coloured hood. My fingers are still not 100% so the jumper will be paused for a few more days. I’d rather wait until I’m 100% again. The hood knitting is much easier on the fingers so I’ve simple stockinette stitch and soft. It's also using 6mm needles, so it went quick.

As I mentioned, I did a lot of field work this week; I had ordered pioneer trees, fast-growing ones, including alder, poplar, birch, maple and willow. So been digging and planting those in place, scattered across the width of the field. It’s gone really well. I’ve locked in on a digging method for now, which funny enough is the simplest one… Just using a garden fork to dig up the soil and grassroots, sticking in the mini tree and compressing the soil back around it. I tend to put the grassy clumps upside down to potentially kill off that patch of grass and stop it from competing with the new tree. I did 175 trees in the 3 days. I now need to stake them all with bamboo, and I’ve ordered plastic tree guards because the rabbits are coming for them! I noticed they started to nibble the bark of the fruit trees, which could easily kill them. I put some temporary plastic around the bark to protect it and immediately ordered the tree guards, which will be arriving next week. So next week will be all about staking and protecting every tree and hedge I’ve planted so far… About 500 or so. So important that my hard work does not just get destroyed! 

I planted my Christmas tree, which I had bought in a pot, on the corner of the field. Let’s see if that takes. I need to source an enormous pile of cardboard to mulch around every plant so I can surpress all the grass. That’ll take some time, but equally important to let the trees thrive with minimal competition.

In the woodworking shop, I’m using up my leftover plywood with some smaller projects. I’ve made a wooden plant pot, which has been on my to do list for a while. I now know how to make rabbets to help glue and nail wood together. I’m still struggling with making the plywood square. Once it’s wonky all over, I find it hard to cut it perfectly square as I don’t have a single straight edge to reference from. But the pot came together in some form or other… I like the stain I’m using, but the finish is quite patchy. Not ideal for a clean look. But it’s all practice. I’m starting to think about my next wood project, where I’ll use some solid wood instead. Maybe that’ll be easier to work with / cut straight. I’m still going to stick with cheaper wood from a homebase type shop.

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