Autumn days and the grass is jewelled * (includes FO)

Oooh – it is starting to feel very autumnal. In a pleasing damp and dank kind of a way. Since I was small Autumn has always been my most favourite of seasons – I love the colours, the nuts, seeds and berries of the season in the countryside, jacket potatoes, fireworks and snuggling up with a book under a blanket.

I was very happy to find some conkers on a walk around near my house,  it seems to be the year of very small conkers.

Ratatouille for me is the ultimate autumn food – unusual since it uses Mediterranean ingredients. Wikipedia tells me that it was, originally a dish eaten by poor farmers, prepared in the summer with fresh summer vegetables. So I can’t really explain why in my head you eat it in the autumn (preferably with sausages and jacket potatoes!).

This ratatouille was particularly good, I like to think this was because I was listening to a Radio 4 programme about Elizabeth David as I made it. I threw in some of the special purple pepper and fennel seeds, and then topped it off with roasted butternut squash. Yum. The perfect companion to a cold, bright autumnal day.

However it has been very cold and dark in the mornings just recently so I have dug out my faithful chunky scarf. I have a love-hate relationship with this scarf – it was my first knitting project when I started knitting 3 years ago and my first encounter with colinette and for a while I liked the scarf a lot. But I didn’t like the sheepy smell of the wool and found it a little wide so gradually wore it less and less. I was going to frog it last year to make a cushion but I’m glad I didn’t.  This year I have been really enjoying wearing it – finding it really cozy and not so smelly. Lots of non-knitters have also complimented me on it which has given me a warm glow of love towards the scarf!

Pattern: Really not much to it, cast on 15 stitches, garter stitch, cast off.

Yarn: Point 5 Colinette, shade Monet 3 x 100g skeins

Needles: 15mm

*I’m sure we always sang when the grass is dewy but according to google it is definitely jewelled.  This was my favourite song at middle school, I never saw it as a religious song (but then I never understood the religious symbolism in Narnia either), I just thought it was nice to say thank you! It is apparently a primary school assembly staple by Estelle White, fact fans. You can read the whole version here. Just to lower the tone, my old housemate liked singing the rude version (but I can’t find it online).  I’m sure it mentions knickers and possibly hockey players….but I might be making that up.

Comments

[John]

The autumn grass was always jewelled at my school. My brow furrows when I think back to some of the other lyrics though: "Jet planes meeting in the air to be refuelled"? Why did I never question that at the time? Peculiar song.

There's a climatological explanation for the petite conkers, but that might be a whole other blog post.

[Ms_well.words]

@ John: I wholeheartedly agree. I hadn't heard this 'hymn' until yesterday, and that line stuck out like a knobbly carrot in a basket of fruit. At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old woman, I've written to my son's head teacher to complain.
@knitwit: nice blog, though I know nothing about knitting. You might like this: http://claireannals.wordpress.com/