My top 10 posts of 2024

It was easier to collate the information for this post this year - way easier than it was for me last year, and of course I’d been putting it off based on my last experience. There’s a big life lesson there isn’t there - something about eating a frog and all that.

Anyway, I like to take a look at which posts from the previous year have been the most popular and while I’m at it I also take a look at the posts that have been around for a while and still get looked at, and I like to share that each year. Yes, it’s nerdy, but anyway.

Starting with my most popular posts from 2024, I was pleasantly surprised to see the post which topped the list:

1 A walk from Kinoulton to Hickling and back again

It was a great walk though! And I guess we’re not the only ones looking for walks to explore our beautiful countryside. Sadly the pub we had lunch in on that visit has now shut, but the tea rooms remain open - and are just reopening following their January break. They do a great sausage cob, so we’ll definitely be heading back that way.

2 Gardeners' World Live 2024: Win a pair of tickets for Sunday 16 June, plus discount code (Ad)

I was proud to partner with Gardeners World again to host this great giveaway. It’s always great to go along and see the show too - though this year our journey from Nottingham was vastly different to the intercity from Euston, but the show was as good as always.

3 Book Review: The Ultimate Sewing Machine Mastery by Katie Matthews (Ad)

This remains really useful book, so if you’re a sewer (of any level) do pop over and take a look. I think all sewers can learn something from it.

4 Gelli printing using stencils and shapes

I must do more of this. It was great fun and while I use the prints I did in the class I’ve yet to tackle this at home - and yes, I really did print that many!

5 Industrial open shelving in our pantry and utility room

I still love these and they make me smile every single day. Seriously. And what’s more everything’s pretty much still in the same place, and even better MOH knows where to find things, and where to put things back!

6 Getting organised with pegboards in my craft room

What’s not to love with a bit of organisation? These really are fab pegboards and still in use in my craft room cupboard. They’re so nice that you don’t need to hide them in a cupboard, but for me, I wanted to maximise the space I had there. I’ve more tweaks coming for my craft room, as it’s true you really learn about a space the more you use it.

7 Hamid Zenati at the Nottingham Contemporary

This was a great exhibition - and local too, so a good find for us. I’m still in awe of the patterns and the size of the exhibits, and this is a great reminder for me to check what else is on locally. I’m so pleased that I don’t have to go to London for exhibitions, though they do have some fab ones, there’s often something close by as well.

8 The Fontana Garden (Ad)

This was a very striking garden at Gardeners’ World Live from the 2023 show, and rightly was the image that made it into most of the press stories from the show. It was a fab garden, and no doubt the pictures were helped by the blue skies, but don’t let that detract from the design, there’s much more to it than that. And in case you’re wondering why at 2023 garden made the 2024 list, I didn’t share it here until then as one of my posts which ran alongside the ticket competition post (which is on the list above).

9 Admiring Carolyn Forster's quilts at the Newark Quilt Show

Amazing quilts and my first visit to my local quilt show - and a quilt show I’ve been back to this January too. I’ve many photos to share from this year’s show which are very different to these. I think my heart really is with the scrappy quilts, and all their charm though.

10 Getting started with Gelli Plate printing

A new to me craft, and the post I shared after my first class - it really is addictive in the Pringles sort of way, in that once you start the Gelli printing you really can’t stop! I need to set aside an afternoon (or longer) to do this again!

It’s interesting to see which posts appear on the list, and there’s some of my favourite bits of 2024 there too. As I said the number one post was a pleasant surprise, but I guess people are always looking for a good walk.

So onto the second list

This list is posts created at any time by viewed in 2024, the year in brackets is the year it was originally posted - and this list is often very similar to the previous year, although often the order changes somewhat - and it has this year too. There’s a couple of new entries, including my number one post from the list above and another surprise at number six.

1. Filling our gabion baskets (2017)

2. In the Orangery at Belton House (2022)

3. My IKEA hack: HOL storage table to laundry basket (2015)

4. Planting a strawberry border (2016)

5. Sean Murray's Great Chelsea Garden Challenge (2017)

6. Bagels, cream cheese & jam (2023)

7. Tintagel Castle and 148 steps for starters... (2015)

8. Storing logs in our gabion baskets (2017)

9. Temple of the Four Winds at Castle Howard (2018)

10. A walk from Kinoulton to Hickling and back again (2024)

So not always what I expected but each of them are great posts, and it probably means I should spend some time on these to make sure they’re as good as they can be!

Thanks for being here again over the past year, and bearing with me with this post which you know appeals to my inner nerd. I already can’t wait to see what 2025 brings!

I’ve added the *AD tag to this post as it contains links to posts which were declared as ads when they were published on my blog.

This January...

Like many people the New Year provokes me into thinking about the year ahead and what could be different. As I hinted in my catch-up post for walking East Stoke’s lanes, I’ve been thinking about this space here and more specifically how infrequently I’ve showed up here over the past year, and how I can change that.

One of the ways is to ‘rediscover the joy’ in writing posts which all sounds very grand. You know how much I love a plan, well so far I’ve mostly stuck to it too, as I have a lot of stuff stored up to share. I’ve also realised that I’ve not been so good at those ‘life update type’ posts, and so this new series of monthly posts aims to change that, as there is always something going on. It may not be big (and quite often it definitely won’t be clever) but it is life, and very real.

I’m hoping that it won’t sink into the minutiae of detail, nor be deathly dull - but I guess you’ll be the judge of that!

January has been January-ing

It’s been a month that’s been full of coughs and colds (yes, still) with both MOH and I suffering throughout the month, which made planned appointments with the dentist and hygienist fun though thankfully we managed to navigate with said lurgies, and remarkably each of our appointments taking place when we were probably at our healthiest.

It’s not been all bad though as we’ve had a fair bit of Christmas goodies to munch through; we finished the Christmas cake after a short delay, and the last of the mince pies disappeared this week. It’s been a month for getting things done that we’ve been meaning to for a while, and a new griddle pan was part of that - we were going to replace it when we moved in eighteen months ago, but didn’t.

But it’s also been a month when venturing outside has been minimal - understandable really - though we did make it to our favourite restaurant in Newark for pie night - but after all the effort (and it really was an effort) to get the Christmas decorations down on time, they haven’t yet made it back out to the garage.

Around the house all the components for my craft room mini-revamp arrived and are now in place - I’m already loving it - it’s such a simple change to extend my desk space, but so effective.

We’ve had a couple of issues with our new build and the developers have been back to make progress on those. We’ve had a leak in our lounge, which typically only leaks when there’s really bad weather, and the developers are hopeful that they’ve solved this on their most recent visit - let’s hope so. It’s not a big leak, but of course it’s not ideal.

We’re also expecting a replacement for a failed window sealed unit in our front door, and hopefully a resolution to the main thermostat issue. The heating still works fine as we are able to control the temperature in each room downstairs individually, and separately the whole of the upstairs which has its own thermostat, but it needs fixing.

Inspired by many quilts

I’ve also been more inspired than normal by quilts this month. I spent two days at the Newark Quilt Show and consequently took way too many pictures, which I’ve not even started to edit or share yet - but I will. This year I even went armed with a ‘wish list’ and was pretty good at sticking to it too, though as ever my craft to do list is already growing!

I finished the Noughts and Crosses charity quilt, and have already started on my next one - I’m hooked (again!) This one started with these cute little houses from Sherri’s January mystery block of the month quilt over at A Quilting Life, and there’s plenty more to come, but aren’t they fab?

Impulsively I also booked myself onto a quilting workshop entitled ‘Floral Fancy’ and then spent the time leading up to it wondering if I had the skills to do it justice, and making sure I had the things listed on the requirements for the workshop. Despite being advised not to be intimidated by the long list, I was intimidated by the long list - but as it turned out I didn’t need to be at all.

It was a fabulously creative and inspiring day, and needless to say this workshop left me with even more on my craft to do list, as me being me I’m not content with just finishing the panel I started on the day, and am working out how I can extend it in my own way.

As a teaser, here’s a shot of how it started…

We definitely watch much less TV since we moved here, but this month we’ve subscribed to SkySports mainly to watch Luke Littler in the darts, but the bonus has been a fair few football games too. We won’t keep the subscription indefinitely but it’s been good to have this month, and I can see us keeping it for the winter months (especially as the deal was good).

We’ve been watching Celebrity Hunted (despite not knowing who most of the celebrities are!) and have been looking forward to the CheeseFest which is The Apprentice starting. We’re definitely not loving the upcoming changes to Discovery which results in the loss of Eurosport, which is prime viewing for MOH and the various cycling races, which to continue to watch these the option is to subscribe to TNT Sports at a much inflated price. We’ll see.

Snug as a hibernating bug

There’s been little exploring this month, though we did manage a day-late (thanks to the weather) New Year’s Day walk, but apart from a wander around Newark to see how high the Trent was by the Castle (while MOH was at the dentist) that’s been about it. Unless you count a car trip to a new part of Nottingham, and a cross-city navigation from Beeston to the Meadows for a stop in at my nearest Hobbycraft.

THE RIVER TRENT VIEWED FROM NEWARK CASTLE. USUALLY THE RIVER PATH IS BEHIND THE BARGE.

To be honest I’ve been happy enough being as snug as a hibernating bug and watching the frosts and weather from inside, though MOH less so.

I’ve a day trip to London booked for next month, which I managed to snaffle train tickets for in LNER’s sale. I’ve already got a full day planned in Islington before meeting up with MOH in the West End for dinner, and I’ve even planned in an essential stop in Liberty’s too - just me though, I’ll go before I meet up with MOH!

Let’s hope that February is healthier!

Walking East Stoke's lanes: November and December 2024

Somehow my last post in this series was the October update in which I bragged about it being ‘almost on schedule’ - well, that didn’t bode so well did it? I’ve also realised that there was little joy for me writing these posts so long after the walks, and so having given in some thought over Christmas and the New Year I thought I’d change that. For my 2025 posts my intention is to post them much earlier in the month on the first (or at times second) Wednesday of each month.

But before I can do that I need to catch up with my 2024 posts, and so that’s what I’ll do now.

In mid-November we woke to snow, not a huge amount thankfully, but enough for me to double down on my hibernation tendencies. MOH though has very few of these, and so he ventured out sharing with me a photo or two of his expedition, which he was probably also daft enough to do on his bike, or at least consider in any case.

MOOR LANE

Either way his pictures did nothing to persuade me outside, and confirmed I should stay snug and warm indoors. A week later though it was a different story and I was pleased to get out for an approaching sunset walk, also along Moor Lane.

FOSSE ROAD

It always strikes me as odd when we have snow before all of the autumn leaves have dropped - but then again our weather seems more crazily mixed up as the days go on so I really shouldn’t be that surprised. But what a different a week makes, hey?

And even though it was way colder than it looked, the glorious light more than made up for that.

We reached our usual ‘turn back’ point of the bridge and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it look quite so picturesque - though I’m sure it has, I’ve just not been there to see or capture it. I also noticed ahead of us on Moor Lane the sheep in the right hand field - while this might not strike you as odd, as obviously that’s where sheep should be, it’s the first time we’d spotted them here.

Heading back and it almost looked as if the hedgerows were aflame with the sun - the picture here only does part of the justice, in real life they were flaming beautiful.

We get some brilliant sunsets here, and often my pictures are from our upstairs windows - but not this time, this one was an out in the open natural beauty capture.

In December I only ventured out on foot once, and that was on Christmas Day. We’d booked lunch at the pub in Elston and our plan was always to walk there and back, whatever the weather. We were lucky as when the day arrived, it was another one with blue skies and also unseasonably warm - much better than our worst case scenario of driving rain.

These pictures are from that walk, heading out around 1pm and heading back much, much fuller a good few hours later!

FOSSE ROAD

LOOKING OVER THE A46

Given that it was peak lunchtime on Christmas Day you wouldn’t expect much traffic, but it was a joy to see the A46 this empty.

We turned onto the path towards Elston, and so the A46 was on our left, but you’d never know it (and especially that day) given our view. I think this photo is one of my favourites so far.

Even though we were heading off for our Christmas lunch I still had a couple of photo stops along the way. I mean, catkins and lichen - I was never going to walk straight past now was I?

And then much later, and much fuller, we headed back along the path complete with bright torch and accompanied part of the way by the Christmas lights which were magical - and the first time we’d seen these as they are definitely off the usual routes through the village.

Thanks for joining me for this update, if you enjoyed this post you may also like to see all of the posts in this series or some previous series where I revisit the same place - there’s my year in Greenwich Park and remember that time when I followed a tree?

If all goes to plan, then January’s update will be here sooner than you know it!