Blue sky with some wispy cloud from bottom right up to the centre. Just off centre is the moon, waning gibbous.

Above: Love seeing the moon during the day.

Time for a little catch up. I’m happy to report that the high strength vitamin D tablets that I started taking last month seem to be helping with a lot of the seasonal misery that I get at this time of year. Also the first half of the month was very mild, albeit a bit wet and windy. As predicted a big named storm took the last of the leaves from the big sycamore in the garden. The temperature has dropped like a stone lately now though, and ice and frost are a regular morning feature.

The top half of this picture is the sky, it is mostly cloud ranging from grey blue through to white at the upper left. At the centre left is a hill; it is a perfectly shaped hill, like a child's drawing of one. The hill is white with frost and there are two birds silhouetted against it as they fly past. The foreground is scrubby hillocks topped with dark looking trees. Emerging from centre left are the pointy fronds from somebody's yucca tree (bit incongruous but what can you do?). A grey slate roof is just visible at the bottom left corner.

Above: The view from the back door featuring two birds flying by that I was lucky to catch.

Right, I have had several goes at writing this now and I’m sick of trying to make it sound good and deleting and rewriting so it’s going to be a bit stream of consciousness instead. Brace yourselves. I’ll try not to go too far off piste but I’m making no promises.

Two images, on the left is the branches of a sycamore tree, it still has a good amount of leaves on it, they are mostly green but turning yellow. The right hand image has the same tree but there are a lot fewer leaves on it.

Above: Before we totally lost the leaves.

The one thing that I do like about this time of year is the comfort food, mine is usually chicken based because it’s not quite as expensive as other meats. Chicken and chorizo with chickpeas and chicken and barley with root veg are current favourites. Though having a pile of veg to use up before shopping prompted a massive tray of roasted vegetables which was delicious. If you’ve not tried roasting Brussels sprouts before I can totally recommend it.

Two images. The left one is looking through the glass lid of a slow cooker and shows chicken pieces, chickpeas, carrot and red pepper. On the right is a, frankly, murky looking plate of chicken and barley stew with carrots and potatoes. There is a lump of buttered brown bread on the edge of the plate. I can assure you that although it looked a bit swampy it tasted lovely.

Above L-R: Chicken and chorizo in the slow cooker, chicken and barley in my bowl.

A selection of vegetables clockwise from top left are: two parsnips, a sweet potato, two onions, half of a red pepper, two slightly old looking carrots and a pile of Brussels sprouts.

Above: Veg for roasting.

Also on the pile to be used were a bunch of apples. I like an apple but just lately every one I’ve had has had a really tough, thick skin and they’ve been really unpleasant to get through; it’s put me off wanting them. I don’t like to waste things though and the birds can only eat so many apples so I decided to core, peel and chop them up into a crumble. I added cinnamon and mace to the apples and coconut and oats to the crumble topping and it was glorious. I didn’t add any sugar to the topping and only a tiny bit to the apples so it wasn’t over-sweet either.

Three images. On the left are five pink lady apples with one of those apple corer and slicer things. Honestly, it's quicker to peel and chop by hand. The centre image shows the apples after they have been stewed a little with a little syrupy liquid and flecks of brown spice. The right hand image is of the finished crumble, apple underneath and an oaty crumble on top, some of the bits of shredded coconut in the crumble have caught a little and are dark against the beige topping.

Above: From apples to crumble.

I’ve been looking for a good flapjack (British oat-based confection, not the U.S. kind) recipe to use for breakfasts; I struggle with breakfast as my stomach often rebels at the thought of it but I definitely need something in a morning. Most flapjacks are really high in sugar so they’re not that good for every day and I wondered about breakfast bars which is a phrase which popped into my head from nowhere. Quick search on BBC food and I came across Nigella’s breakfast bars recipe. Actually she has two but the second one is when she was going through that weird phase after the Saatchi divorce and subsequent court case and needed to present a clean face to the world. The first recipe is on her website and also in Nigella Express and that is the one I used.

A pile of oaty bars stand on a wire cooling rack. There are dark green pumpkin seeds and dark red dried cranberries visible on the top.

Above: Breakfast bars, rippling with healthy things.

They were the easiest thing in the world to make, though trying to find shredded coconut in the U.K. is not easy and I had to get it from an Amazon seller which rankles but at least it was a seller and not Amazon proper (I’m telling myself this so I don’t feel too bad for using Amazon). It’s a really customisable recipe too so I can just chuck in whatever dried fruits, nuts and seeds I have to hand. Most importantly, they are really good.

I have cut out two garments to sew, the first is a pair of velour pyjama pants to wear as lounge pants, I think I mentioned I might do that in a previous post. I have also cut out a kind of dress/tunic thing from some striped fabric that I bought to make pants from but it turned out that the stripes ran the wrong way for pants (unless dressing like an old timey convict is your thing) and it’s been languishing ever since. The only problem I may have is that the neck band is cut against the grain (for stretch I guess) and I didn’t have quite enough width left so I’ve had to cut it in two pieces. Fingers crossed that it will be fine.

Black and pale grey striped cotton jersey fabric some of which is folded over to show the patern pieces pinned to the back. On top of the fabric is the pattern envelope showing a young Asian woman in a loose, midi length dress with long sleeves. The dress has a high-low hemline. I am confessing in the Alt-text that as of July 2026 I have still not yet sewn this together, do not tell the people in the main blog.

Above: Cutting out stripey fabric makes your eyes go googly.

My knitting is growing slowly, I keep getting distracted and also moss stitch is a pain in the bumbum over an entire garment. It’s an odd way to knit a jumper, going from wrist to middle, front and back in one piece but not technically difficult. I bet I struggle with the second half though, like second sock syndrome but bigger.

A piece of knitting in a marled grey yarn, it is knit in moss stitch and quite textured. Another Alt-text confession though, I have since pulled this out because I didn't like it and am going to use the yarn to knit a similar shaped jumper but in garter stitch.

Above: I am actually further on that this and have all the stitches for the back and front on now.

Speaking of knitting I have another couple of old Rowan magazines, I am properly obsessed with them. I have an idea for a kind of challenge to knit only Rowan patterns for next year. I’ve queued up a bunch of patterns from my various books on Ravelry to pick from. The only problem is going to be yarn substitutions because most of the yarns used in the older books have been discontinued. That’s a problem for future me though.

Two Rowan knitting magazines, the left one features an young East Asian woman wearing an off-white silk dress tied at the waist. Over it she is wearing a cream coloured knitted jacket with a crocheted lace edging. The right hand magazine features a young black woman with beautiful natural hair. She is standing in front of a floral wallpapered background and is wearing a knitted colourwork tank top over a white short sleeved top.

Above: Behold my newest obsession. I love them, the patterns, the styling, everything.

Though the sun going down at 4pm is still a little upsetting it does produce some spectacular sunsets, when it’s not grey and miserable anyway, the dawn isn’t too bad either on a cold and clear day. Also as at the time of writing the Solstice is only four weeks away! We’ll soon be at the top of the hill and even though it will still be dark at teatime the knowledge that the days are slowly drawing out again will keep me going for the rest of the winter.

Two images both of which show the sky which is the most vivid golden and orange. It looks positively molten. The bottom of the images has the silhouetted hills which I can see from my window.

Above: The sky is on fire!

Two images this time from the other end of the day. These were taken from the front of my house which faces west as the sun was coming up. The sky is half fluffy cloud ranging from light grey blue at the bottom to white on top. The sky in the left hand image is a pale pinky lilac colour and on the right as the sun has got a little higher is flushed with pale peach.

Above: First light.

I’ll leave you with a few pictures of November which hopefully aren’t too dreary.

Photo taken through a car windscreen showing a tree with bright golden leaves against a backdrop of bare branches on the bigger trees behind.

Above: This looks a bit odd, took it from inside the car. (I was in The Range's car park and didn't want to look like a weirdo)

The end of my garden path. The ground is covered with dead leaves (the downside to having a massive tree at the end of the garden). There are three plastic planters, I've no idea what's in the left hand one as I can't remember and it has lost all its leaves anyway. The middle pot has the red stems of a dogwood and the right hand one has a fuchsia still in green leaf and flowering. In front of the fuchsia pot is a brick which is completely covered with bright green moss and there is ivy growing over it and over the ground around the pots.

Above: Sweeping leaves is a never-ending job le sigh. Also, that fuchsia is still flowering.

Close up image of a geranium still in leaf and with buds opening up.

Above: Speaking of still flowering, what is this geranium doing? It's November for crying out loud.

Two images. On the left is a Christmas cactus on a white windowsill, the plant has a mass of bright red flowers and buds. The right hand image is a close-up of one of the flowers.

Above: Flowering at the right time though is my Christmas cactus, it's going mad this year.

Close-up of a bright rust coloured oval leaf with a pointed top. The leaf is shiny with rain.

Above: I think this is a copper beech leaf. I don't have a copper beech and neither do my neighbours. Sure is pretty though.

Picture of the sycamore tree as described in earlier photos but now almost all the leaves are gone. The sky seen through the bare branches is blue with a large poofy cloud.

Above: Barely a leaf left.