Knitting the night away

I finally picked up the sweater I'd started knitting at the beginning of the year, but I've had to put it down again as it's just too hot here in Portugal at the moment to continue with it. I picked this patter out of a Rowan Magazine and the pattern is called Gaby and I'm making it in Rowan's Kidsilk Haze which is made up of very fine Mohair and silk.

Fruit Picking Weekend

This weekend I went to visit the Medieval Fair in Leça de Balio. It was rather small and it was more of an art fair than Medieval Fair, but it was fun nonetheless. I went with a friend of mine and her boyfriend and then some of their other friends showed up. We managed to have a "guided" tour of the church - Igreja de Leça de Balio - but I didn't hear the history of it, as the person giving the speech, spoke very badly and with the echo in the church, we couldn't hear a thing. However, that didn't spoil the fun, because we got to visit the tower, which was actually closed already. The only thing we didn't get to see was the monestary as that is closed at night. As you can see from the photos, there were also some hawks and owls present for some shows, which we missed because they were on while we were visiting the church. But like I said we had fun and that's what really counts.

On Sunday I visited my parents at their farm and after lunch I helped my dad with some fruit picking. Seeing as we have quite a lot of fruit trees in our garden and we're planning on planting a whole lot more, I'll be spending a lot of weekends picking fruit, depending on the season of course. Two weekends ago my dad and I picked all the quinces we had and since then, my mum has made some preserves and a really nice cake using about half of the quinces, the rest were still a bit unripe, so they're laid out in the sun during the day to ripen a bit more. So this past Sunday we went for the figs, and I think we managed to get a good 5KG of figs out of the first tree because the other two were either already plucked by the birds or still very unripe due to less direct sunlight. This photo shows only a small portion of the figs we picked and which I brought with me to the office.

We also picked some grapes, which are tiny, and actually used for making wine, we only got enough to make some sweet wine. The vines need to be cut, because at the moment they run rampant wherever they want as do all the brambles, which we also picked. We managed about 2KG of grapes I think and about 800g of brambles. Most of the brambles are already dried up or eaten by the birds. By next year, when we've had a change to really take care of all these fruit trees and bushes, we should be able to get a lot more fruit. As for my cross stitching it's at a stop at the moment, just can't seem to want to do any, so I picked up this sweater I started knitting earlier this year from the Rowan Magazine, and I now only need to do another 9 rows to complete the neck opening and then it's about another 110 rows to finish the sweater off. I quite like the pattern, it's super easy to make and even though I'm using Rowan's Kidsilk, which is really thin wool, it works up like a charm. I'll show you some progress soon.

Spring Cleaning at the end of Summer

Seeing as I only officially moved into my apartment on the 29th of August there is still a whole lot of cleaning to be done and after I get home from work during the week, I have no energy, so last weekend I spent cleaning and this weekend will pretty much be the same again. However I will take a little time for myself to go to the gym in the morning. In the afternoon I'm off with some friends to a Medieval Fair close by, should be fun, will be meeting a whole lot of new people as well, that I will be hanging out with a lot more in the future. The weather has been great up till now, although we did have a little bit of rain this week, but nothing major, last week Friday's rain storm was a lot worse, but it only lasted the morning and by the afternoon the sky had cleared up and the sun came out. Have a great weekend everyone.

A Very Sad Day

I'm still very sad from yesterday, because my darling little Puppy Max died. He was only 15 months old, unfortunately he had an epileptic fit. Unbeknownst to us he must have had a brain aneurysm and during the fit it must have burst causing him to die, there was nothing anyone could have done. He will be sorely missed.