Autumn Moments {three}

🍁 Loving our morning walks to school, even on days like today when the temperature dropped to a chilly one degree above freezing. We chat to the ducks and swans, and take in the ever-changing boats that come and go along this stretch of canal, it's a peaceful way to start the day.

🍁 The scent of wood smoke in the air is such a marker of the Autumn season here in my town and I really love it. As we walk along the canal, the sight of the little boat chimneys releasing their plumes of blue-grey smoke into the cold air makes me feel very cosy and content somehow. 

🍁 We've been lucky in the weather of late and it's been pretty dry for the most part. It makes for a satisfying scrunchy walk through the pavement drifts of crispy dry leaves. You are never too old to take pleasure from kicking through dry leaves. Never.

🍁 Our first frost was early this year, falling at the very end of October. I was on yet another leaf-gathering mission for yet more Autumnal photographs (obsessed with this autumn thing? Me???) which led me up into the park on my way home from school. The grass was damp and icy, with frozen dew drops clinging to every blade, and I was glad to return to the warmth of home for a mug of hot coffee and a gentle sift through my leaves.

🍁 There are still a few flowers to pick in November, some from my own front garden and back yard and some...errm....pilfered from my neighbours front gardens. I'd like to point out that I do know the aforementioned neighbours and feel confident that they wouldn't mind me snagging a small bloom every now and again. I do so love having a pretty hand picked posy on the table, most especially when Summer is no longer with us.

🍁 I absolutely adore the taste of mushrooms, and they seem very Autumnal somehow. Right now (well not right this minute, obvs) I am indulging in regular mushroom lunches, they are so yummy. I go for firm, earthy chestnut mushrooms quickly sautéd in a little butter, heavily seasoned with sea salt and black pepper and a sprinkling of fresh thyme, then deposited onto some toast. Quick, simple, and very, very good. 

🍁 Low slanting golden light is a lovely sight at this time of year as the sun makes its way down towards the horizon in the late afternoon. So far I'm coping pretty well with the shortening of the days (just over five weeks until Solstice), and enjoying my time spent cosied up indoors with the fire lit and the fairy lights twinkling.

🍁 I'm a bit late with this, but belated Happy Halloween!!  I carved a slightly wonky owl this year, using a pattern I stumbled across here. It was a fiddlesome challenge, to say the least. I should have splashed out and got one of those giant "Rambo" pumpkins which were on sale in the supermarket so that I could have up-scaled my design and cut out bigger bits. 

🍁 It was the usual happy Halloween mayhem here this year and although I do get caught up in the excitement of the Little People, I'm always mighty glad when it's all over. Little B dressed as a ghost and came home with a bucket full of sweets after a mere thirty minutes of door-to-door visiting in our neighbouring streets. On the home front, we had that many callers that our bowl containing 50 packets of sweets was gone within an hour and we had to hunker down and blow out all the candles early.

🍁 We enjoyed a fantastic Bonfire Night celebration at the start of November, de-camping to J's brothers house as he is the only person we know who actually has a garden as opposed to a small back yard. It was the kind of old fashioned affair that I remember from my own childhood - sparklers and rockets and a Family Selection Box of fireworks which were bizarrely awful and fabulous all at the same time. Very nostalgic, the smell of it all in the dark and the general feeling of happiness in the air. 

🍁 Autumn to me right now is so much about the seasonal colours and the creativity - I feel intoxicated by it all and brimming over with inspiration. My crochet mojo has been on overdrive as I've spent hours and hours designing, sampling and photographing for my new Woodland blanket which I'll be able to show you on Wednesday.  The colours in this yarn palette are just so beautiful, I am ridiculously in love with it all. I absolutely cannot WAIT to introduce you to the Woodland CAL which will start in early January - Wednesday is the day for a little leafy show and tell!! Eeeeeeeeppp!!!!!!

Hoping you'll join me to see what is totally floating my crochet boat right now, I'm really looking forward to showing you.

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Comments

[Jenny]

Gorgeous ! Lucy love Autumn too love Jenny xx

[Jane Ware]

Ooops fab!

[Jane Ware]

Can't wait until Wednesday to see more. The colours are fan xx