My tree for the year

Noddles has still not committed to what tree he wants to study though he says he does want to pick one. This is probably not helped by me having fasciitis which means I'm trying to limit the amount I walk on hard surfaces so I am not doing the school run unless no-one else is available and I'm afraid I am driving when I do, meaning we don't walk together past the trees every day at the moment.

However in the meantime I have decide to watch the apple tree on the allotment so here it is.
This is inspired by The Tree Year.

Last year this tree was covered in fruit though I am told it has a tendency to fruit every other year so I do hope it has a few apples this year or the boys will be very disappointed.

I don't know how old the tree is but certainly a good few years old and for much of that it probably hasn't had a lot of care. The last couple of years this plot was looked after by someone who knew his way round a tree but before that most of this plot had been planted up with Christmas trees and many of the plots on the allotments had been virtually untended for years.. very much not the case any more and indeed the allotment has just been allowed to re-open a bunch of old derelict plots which were outside the site fences until a week or so ago ! There are still a bunch more but the council are keeping them even though they are no longer planning to build an incinerator there, which is a shame as there is a fabulous huge Bramley tree on one of those plots !

Anyway back to our tree. It has a spread of about 20ft and has several noticeable pruning marks including these ones, the bottom one is quite a noticeable hole.

There is a nesting box rather randomly hung halfway up the tree which blue tits are certainly considering the last few times I have been up there.
It has lovely bark.

This weekend I noticed the first signs of the buds starting to pop though they are far from open yet where as the crab-apple tree is almost in leaf already.

I suspect it is a later flowering and indeed fruiting tree because some of the windfalls were still intact and edible a few weeks ago when I found them hidden under other more eaten ones which makes me think it's a later fruiting apple which will keep well. Hopefully it will give us some fruit this year to confirm or refute that.

Crochet Freeform CAL

The Freeform CAL is great fun and I'm actually managing to keep up.

Treestump who is now the grand old age of three has decided it is a treasure map and that was before we were told to crochet a volcano for it !

I missed off that the grey pearls are coins !

Here it is from a worms eye view !

Table flowers and freeform CAL

Firstly the table-mat flowers. 

So far I have made two!  Both with blue petals and yellow middles though the other rows differ slightly. So I know I want 8 as we have an 8 sided table but do I do them all blue petals or do I ring the changes? I was thinking yellow could be primrose like and perhaps even green petals as I love ariculas to !  I also want to work out a mat for the middle of the table and perhaps some leaves as coasters.

I'm going to put the pattern at the bottom of this post as much for me as anything.

In other news I realised the free-form CAL on Ravelry has started again. As some may remember I did this back when I had only recently started crochet and was housebound waiting on Treestump to arrive.. he did halfway through and I still manage to finish the CAL as I was enjoying it so much, so as we come rapidly to his third birthday I'm doing it again. I'm a little behind having only found it last night but here is days one to three.

The other thing I realised is this red yarn *really* doesn't photograph well !

Table Flowers

(using British terminology)
6mm hook and two strands of double knit.

I used a magic loop to start but a short chain would work too.
Row 1 - 12 tr, slip st to first tr  (12tr)
Row 2 - ch 3 (counts as first tr), (ch 1, tr into next tr) repeat 11 times), ch1 slip st into chain. (12tr, 12ch)
Row 3 - Change to second colour. Ch 3 (first tr), tr into each stitch round circle, slip stitch into chain at the end (24 tr)
Row 4 - Change colour. Ch 3(first tr), tr into same stitch chain comes from, 2tr into each st round circle, slip stitch into chain at the end (48 tr)
Row 5 - Change colour. Ch 3 (first tr), tr into same stitch as chain, (ch 6, miss two stitches, 2tr into next stitch, 2tr into next st) repeat 11 times, ch 6, miss two stitches, 2tr into next stitch, slip st into chain. (12 sets of four tr and 12 6ch)
Row 6 - change colour, dc into middle of a set of four tr, (12 tr round the next ch6, dc into middle of next set of 4 tr) repeat 12 times. fasten off. (12 petals)