Knitting, baking, and ants

I’m turning into an old woman as I spent last weekend knitting, baking, and gardening. I took up knitting in the new year and have barely put the needles down. Oh knitting, where have you been all my life? I always thought knitting was too hard and so stuck with what I knew which is crochet. But in December I found a jersey pattern I really wanted to make and so took up the challenge.

I’m nearly finished the jersey which is for Elizabeth and will share photos when I’m done. It has mistakes and isn’t perfect but I’m still pleased with it. Knitting is slower than crochet but I find as I get older I’m more patient and I think this is part of the pleasure of making garments yourself. There’s no quick win – you don’t have a fully made garment overnight like you would if you went to the shops. Instead it takes time and effort. Knitting also uses less yarn than crochet which is a bonus.

I’ve also got back into baking sourdough. Ever since giving up salt I’ve been baking my own bread because I couldn’t find any bread in the shops without salt but I’ve been using yeast to make it. This week I bought some sourdough starter from Hodmedods – my previous attempts at making sourdough had relied on my own homemade starter. It never really worked. With this new starter I’ve pulled two very good loaves of bread from the oven so far. Yum!

I finally got a video of one of the worker ants in Elizabeth’s ant colony taking a dead fruit fly back into the nest. Sorry for the blurriness at the very end.

This is her setup. It’s a founding colony which means it’s only just starting out and is still very small with one queen and around 10 worker ants. The foil over the test tube is to keep them in the dark which apparently they prefer.