MouseGarden

Thursday 25 October 2018

Finally Autumn

Mouse October 25, 2018 0 Comments

After several weeks of what felt like early winter, normal autumn has been resumed. This means instead of 3 degrees Celsius I am getting 15-20 degrees. That is a huge improvement! Typical of Canadian Prairie weather which can have extremes in temperature. I'm always amazed anything can grow here.

This is the autumn foliage of some hardy geraniums.

This is a honeysuckle which is still ok even after snow and light frosts. Popular with sparrows who have been hanging out in it looking for bugs, and in warmer weather hummingbirds like it a lot.

I've been admiring some of the shadows in the garden, which are quite atmospheric. Now that the fallen leaves have dried out, you can here that autumn rustling sound as the wind shifts them along the ground, which is a little sinister. These are the shadows of angelica sylvestris, which is a plant wasps love when in flower.

This one seeded naturally from another one further away and is growing between two paving stones. This is the shadow of the flower which is now a seedhead.

These are the red and orange autumn leaves of mountain ash trees and they have red berries which are very attractive to birds. In front of it is a small type of willow.

Thursday 18 October 2018

Yarnspirations Free Halloween Knitting and Crochet Patterns

Mouse October 18, 2018 0 Comments

Awesome rat photo by Yarnspirations

I love Halloween. LOVE.

So I was kind of excited to see that on the Yarnspirations website there are free patterns available for download from Lily Sugar N' Cream yarn that feature Halloween.

There is a knitted rat pattern. I mean, who doesn't want to knit themselves a rat? It's got little shiny red bead eyes! And a pipe cleaner in the tail. And I loved the description too. I have not tried the pattern yet but it is going on the list of patterns I want to make.

And there are crocheted spiders. So you should check out the link here:

Yarnspirations Free Halloween Patterns

And knit yourself some Halloween.

Thursday 11 October 2018

About Templates and Snow

Mouse October 11, 2018 0 Comments

I changed my template to something that is more flexible and less pink. Yay! Because I'm not really that keen on pink. I have seen a radically Christmas red and green template I may inflict on people later.

Meanwhile it snowed a lot on October 2nd. The weather has been consistently about 15 degrees colder than normal so it makes people crabby, though it does make knitting easier. It's hard to sit down and knit when it is hot.

But the bird bath looked like this on the 2nd:

It looks a bit like a cake.

And then you forget to fill the bird feeder so the birds hop round on your door mat. Waiting, waiting.

What is she doing in there, they ask themselves. Knitting?

I should probably warn people now that I've always been obsessed with wildlife tracks in the snow, especially bird tracks. If you learn how to read all the different prints, you really can find out what goes on when you aren't there to see it. I've kind of been thinking bird tracks would make a neat piece of embroidery if I could just figure out what to do with it.