Once the party was over and the Endeavourers was finished and I had committed (in my last post) to –

…be a bit more social, work on a wider variety of projects, finish some projects that have been waiting for a long time and start some new ones…

I felt a line had been drawn. Here I was, ready and waiting to plunge into the making of all the things I have been pondering and planning and dreaming of and never found time for.

And then, as is the way with algorithms, I ‘chanced upon’ this quote on Pinterest and it seemed like fate.

(The Wikipedia post, When Pigs Fly throws some light on the quotation)

But what to do first? Without the momentum of a project in recent progress or an Endeavourers theme to ruminate on, the question seemed urgent because, by now, the feeling of being a woman who has drawn a line was beginning to give way to the, more familiar, feeling of being a woman whose time has always already been divided up and allocated and portioned out to pretty much everyone who and everything that is in need of immediate attention.

So, late but kindly welcomed, I jumped into Elizabeth’s ‘Oh, Granny! • Granny Square Sewalong 2026’.

I have crocheted many a Granny Square over the years but never sewn one so I joined Instagram and made a start and, after a couple of days of ponderings (such as It will look amazing!/It will be horrific!/I definitely will…/I most certainly won’t!) I came down firmly on the side of going with a very yellow background. for three reasons-

The first is that I saw lots of Granny Square quilts online and none of them had a yellow background.

The second is that I have very few fabrics in quantities sufficient to make enough background for a quilt (and this one might well have to end up smaller than is set out in the Sewalong).

And the third is that I’m using, mostly, the same Summer colours as my 2026 SAHRR quilt and I don’t want this one to be too similar.

Outside, on the subject of Summer colours, for reasons that don’t bear repetition, the garden has been left very much to fend for itself so far this year. Every gardener knows that the more you work with the earth and the less you try to work against it, the less work you have to do but, given the string of late frosts we’ve had recently, this is not the worst year to be behind.

Getting the bean sticks up and planting out the vegetables in the greenhouse, though, has become quite overdue so that was just what I was making a start on on Thursday evening last when I heard an unmistakable banging and clanking drawing ever closer and I ran to the bottom gate just in time to wave to the steam roller that was rattling by, no doubt on its way to the Cuckoo Fair.

And it was the most pleasant evening of the year and the birds were singing and the insects were buzzing about and the air was hot and heavy and thick with the smell of coal.

And I walked slowly back to finish tying up the bean sticks, with the heat of the sun on my back to avoid the dazzle of its sinking rays as I tied. And then I got to thinking, perhaps I’ll be the last generation of my family ever to hear that familiar clanking and to run to wave at a steamroller as it chugs off down the lane, tooting it’s horn as it rattles by.

And I thought, perhaps I’ll be last to grow a bean…

And quietly and unbidden, the cloud of the future, which has already seen so many farmers driven from the land and so many villages engulfed in new housing estates as the countryside of our parents and their parents and all those before them is trashed in the name of progress, seemed to cast its cold shadow over the garden.

And I laid down my tools and came inside.

I wish you Summer colours, this week and always :)

Janine @ Rainbow Hare

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