Walking: Sheeps Tor Circular

This walk was my husband's idea and a very good one it was too.  It was in an area I hadn't really thought about before because it's so close to where I work, but it very separate from that with no connection to my work week and the scenery was lovely.  We also really lucked out with the weather after a week of rain.  

We had a look at a route recommended on All Trails, but had to make a slight change to it as we weren't able to find anywhere to park in the location they recommended.  In the end we parked at one of the car parks on the east side of the Burrator Reservoir.  This did mean that we missed out of lower section of the walk and ended up doing the walk backwards to what we originally intended, but adapting is an important part of enjoying the outdoors.

Firstly, we walked along the road that surrounded the reservoir for a little bit before heading south into the woods on a footpath that basically took us straight to Sheeps Tor.  It was a pretty steep climb practically straight away and we ended up with a good view of the area.  We didn't stay up there too long though, what with my dislike of being surrounded by too many people especially when outdoors, and headed down the south side of the slope, looking for Pixie Houses as we went, before curling round the base to head back to the woods we had come out of.

There were a few places you could cross over the wall from this point, but we carried on down the track until we reached a cross roads of tracks and footpaths, and headed right over the fence and onto a footpath that meandered through the woods.  Then it was over a footbridge and onto a bridleway heading north.  We got to cross over a clapper bridge, which I always love, and look at quite a few gnarly trees.  

When we got to a crossroads of footpaths we followed the sign for the reservoir which neatly took us back to the car we'd started from.  There were some ruins of the buildings that looked like it had something to doing with mining and some amazing dry stone walls with enormous stones in them, which made me wonder how on earth they got them in there.

This turned out to be a really good afternoon walk which gave our legs a good stretch and the lack of rain made it practically perfect.  It might be worth going back and just having a wander through all woodland paths to see where we would end up.  Regardless, I would definitely recommend the walk up Sheeps Tor, I think it would even be good on a misty day.    

Crafting Goals 2022 Update #3

It's been a pretty busy quarter and I did feel like I hadn't gotten much crafting done, but now that I'm writing this post I've actually realised that I have managed to make a few things made.  I guess it helps that I can usually craft whilst doing something else and it now seems to be my go-to time out activity, though this has been at the expense of reading which is something I do really want to get back into soon.  This is what I've managed to make this time round.

Vivien Fair Isle-Style Jumper

This was yet another item I've made from the Knit Vintage, though it's likely to be the last one now.  I had the same problem I had before in the fact that the information provided isn't quite accurate and I ended up having to order another ball of green wool whilst having an extra pink one remaining.  But otherwise this was a pretty easy pattern to follow and I found that I enjoyed doing colour work.  I actually got this item finished pretty quickly once I got going and did make a couple of changes in the fact that I knitted it in the round instead of having two separate body pieces and I added a little extra design to the shoulders as I found the neckline a little bit too close on my throat for me to be comfortable.  The wool (100% Alpaca by Drops Design) is very soft, but does shed a little bit, and I would recommend it.  Even though this is sort of a summer jumper the wool is definitely warm enough that I will be able to wear this during the winter as well, over a long sleeved top.

The Wrap Top

This item took quite a bit of fiddling with to get it to actually fit my body properly.  It also turned out to be one of those tops that you have to make almost completely before you can work out if it's going to actually fit properly, at least I found it was.  On trying on the first attempt I could see that the bust dart was in completely the wrong place and had to be moved down 4cm, it didn't fit properly just under the arms and these needed to be pulled in by about 2cm on each side, and the bottom of the top had just a little bit too much fabric so I had to add darts in this area.  However, I really like the completed look and now I have all the information I need to help me when making the wrap dress so, whilst it might have made me pull my hair out a little bit, it was time well spent.

Once I had finished this top I realised that I had just enough of this fabric to make a skirt.  Nothing bigger than a pencil skirt, but a skirt nonetheless.  When we were looking around a charity shop I did find a pattern for the type of skirt I was thinking of making (I couldn't find a pattern number but it's a Prima pattern for a fitted peplum top and pencil skirt) and managed to make this in about a day, including putting in my first ever invisible zip - though I would ask you not to look to closely at this.  I did have to make some changes to the waistline as I always do and I basically can't put on any weight at all now, but I really like the outcome of this as well.

Lord of the Rings/ The Hobbit Cross-stitch - Rivendale

As usual this has taken a bit of a back seat whilst I've been working on my other craft projects.  However, I have still managed to get quite a bit of the cliff area done.  My plan is to get all my other crafts finished by the end of November and spend December just working on this, which will hopefully mean it'll be finished by the end of the year.  I like cross stitch, it's very satisfying watching the picture come together so it'll be a nice way to end the year.

Cushion Case and Mittens

There were a couple of things that were needed and I decided that what I would do is knit them hopefully using up some of the wool I had left over from other projects.  Firstly, a cushion of ours that had been a gift was falling apart in a way that I wasn't able to fix and so I decided to use the yarn I had left over from making my wedding shawls to make another cover for it.  The pattern was Classic Textures Pillow by Caron which I found on lovecrafts.com.  It should wear quite well and I can always make another one if it doesn't.  I really like having something connected to our wedding sitting about the home as well.

The second was a pair of mittens for my Grandfather who is finding that he now gets cold hands when he's in the house.  These are the Wizard Warmers pattern by Maire Martin I've used before, also which I also got from lovecrafts.com.  Unfortunately none of the wool I had already was suitable but I ended up finding a Women's Institute yarn that was 100% wool in the colour petrol.  It was a good price and doesn't feel itchy or scratchy so I might look at more colours in this in the future.

The Guernsey Jumper

I've decided to not make the Maggie and Coddy jumpers this year as I would need to buy much more wool and I don't want to spend any more money on crafts this year.  However, I do already have the wool to make the Guernsey jumper for my husband and have started putting this together.  It's a very different style to other jumpers I've made, including gussets at the armpits and neck, and I'm enjoying learning these new techniques.  I think it looks quite good so far.  I'm planning on getting this finished by the end of November.

Christmas Cards

I've decided to make my cards this year using paper craft as I've seen quite a few great designs over the years, but I've never done this before so it'll be a bit of a learning curve.  I've already brought the products for this and have decided on a design.  Now all I need to do is make them.

Wrap Dress

This is the last sewing project for this year.  I already have the fabric and thread for this as my parents brought them for me for my birthday.  The fabric is washed already and I now have the information on what changes I need to make to the pattern, so all I need to do is start.  I really love this fabric so I can't wait to wear the dress once it's made.

Even though I did think that I had picked a little too many things to make this year, it does look like I will manage to make most of them.  I already have in mind the things that I want to make next year.  It won't be anywhere near as much as this year and mainly consists of using up the wool and fabric I have accumulated over the last few years.  But before that I hope to have made a dress, a jumper, a whole lot of Christmas cards, and sewn the Rivendale cross-stitch.

Goals 2022 Update #3

There has been quite a lot going on this quarter and so I haven't been focusing on our goals as much as I probably should have been.  But that's fine, sometimes life just takes over and you just have to go with it.  That being said, we still managed to get quite a few things done.

Financial Fitness

The plan for this quarter was for us to have our four months savings to be 3/4 of the way there, for me to have made a full nine months of pension payments, and for me to have worked out a secondary form of income.  That didn't exactly go to plan, especially on the savings front where we actually had to take money out of there to cover our bills.  This was mainly due to me being ill so often that I haven't had a good earning year at all.  It also meant that paying in my pension didn't exactly go to plan.  However, in the end I was able to mostly catch up on this and only ended up missing one weeks payment, so I'm going to count that as a win.  I'll make up for the lost week over the next couple of months and that should mean I'll still reach my end of year goal there.  

As for the additional income, I have looked at possible things that I could do (mostly on the crafting front), which you can find more about here.  I haven't had the chance to properly try out these ideas yet so that's something I'll need to do over the coming months.  Changing my bank account to a more ethical bank was also something I had planned to do this quarter, but I just haven't had the chance to properly look into this yet.  I have done some research into this, but I want to find out a little bit more before I make a decision on that.

So, what are the plans for next quarter.  I want to carry on putting money into my pension so that I have paid a full year's worth for what I think will be the first time.  I also want to practise the ideas I have for the secondary income to see if it is actually something I can do or if I need to start looking at other ideas.  Then there's the more ethical bank.  I want to have made a final decision about this, at the very least, and hopefully have actually moved my account to it by the end of the year.  Finally there's our four months emergency fund.  It's very unlikely that we'll be able to finish this this year now, but I would like for us to have gotten it back to half way there if we can.  We have already started making changes to our spending and that has been helping us save a little more money so we do have a chance of reaching this new goal.  

Sailing Around the World

I've been looking into electric motors for boats and there does seem to be quite a few companies that sell boats with electric motors or provide the motors that can be swapped with the diesel motors that are already there.  There's still information that I need to find out more though, such as more about the different types of systems we can have, so that when we come to actually buying into this I'll know what I'm actually talking about....hopefully.  And that's my plan for the next quarter, learn more.  Unfortunately financially we probably won't be able to actually start having lessons this year like we had hoped, but we can add that to next year as this is a very long term goal.

Long-Distance Walking

In August we did a walk in the Brecon Beacons which we had wanted to do for a while.  Even though it was only for one day it was still quite a long distance and a small part of doing this was to see how Ed's knees were doing and if they would be strong enough to do a long distance walk in the near future.  The conclusion was that they aren't quite ready yet and need a little more time before we can sensibly do one of these walks.  So I'm putting long distance walks on the back burner for now.  We have a list of what we would like to do and I might research some of them now and then, but we won't be doing any any time soon.

Learning New Skills

We did actually manage to do some skateboarding this quarter and I did begin to feel more comfortable on the board, but no where near what I had wanted to do this time round.  I'd love to be able to come up with an excuse, but the honest answer is that I've been lazy when it comes to this.  I'd just rather stay indoors and have a slow morning on the days we both have time off.  Or, if I am going out, it's to go for a walk instead.  I'll try and change that this quarter and actually get out to do some more practising, ironically in the quarter that is probably going to have the worse weather.  However, Ed should have more weekends off during this time as well, which will make it easier for us to do this together.

As for surfing, we did book that lesson that I had planned to book using the birthday gift Ed had given me and we really enjoyed it.  I really felt like we learnt quite a lot this time, but we want to do a few more lessons before we go out on our own.  I'm not sure we'll manage to afford them this year, but if we do manage to save up enough to get some more lessons in before the end of the year we definitely be doing that.  This might just be something we do next year.

All in all there's probably more positives than negatives this quarter, it just hasn't been as successful as the previous quarters and as we had hoped.  I always knew that we'd picked quite a few goals in for this year which were a little bit unachievable so I am a little bit proud of how much we have actually achieved so far this year.  Our biggest goal was to save up our four months emergency fund and that is the one that we haven't really manage to achieve, but there's always next year where we can put more emphasise onto it.

September 2022 Budget

It definitely feels like every month this year there has been something going on that has put a little spanner in our financial works.  This time I was ill...... again...... for about a week.  It was horrible and obviously stressful as, as someone who is self-employed, I can't earn any money when ill.  Not ideal, but it's also something we don't have any control over at the moment.  Hopefully the tests I'm getting done by the doctors will come up with something that we can then fix and then I can get on with my original life where I'm not ill on a monthly basis.

Due to the whole being ill thing I've had to move some more money over from the savings to help cover some of the bills that came out at the end of September before my husband's wage went in.  Not ideal, but that is what they are there for and I was able to put some money back once his pay arrived.  Thankfully we've both been able to hold onto our personal emgency funds and so we still have some added security for all the financial changes that are happening at the moment.

Despite all this I was still able to pay off my credit card and almost paid every week of my pension, bar one.  I'm still going to classify this as a win though as I didn't actually earn anything one week to pay it.  Once things have settled I will try and make up for that but I'm not going to worry about it too much, just concentrate on paying into my pension for the rest of the year.

We did decided to move our groceries spending to a cash system to help curve the amount we were actually spending on this and I have to say that it worked a treat.  We did spend a little more on the week I was ill as we were basically buying things that I could keep down, but we made up for this on the other weeks and have actually been under budget for September.  We've also been a lot more conscientious about our take-away / eating out budget and have come under budget on this as well.  This is all very good progress and has actually been quite painless to do.

We've also been a lot more careful about the money we spend in general on things we don't necessarily need and that has also brought our overall spending down in September.  And really it couldn't have come at a better time as things are progressively getting worse in Britain when it comes to our economy.  There's even talk about the possibility of us going into yet another recession, so this change in our financial habits couldn't come at a better time.  

September might not have been the month I was hoping for, but we've still managed to make changes to our spending habits that has saved us money and will follow into the next months, bringing us just a little bit closer to reaching our financial goals even in the financial climate we're in at the moment.

Making Our Home Homely

We live in rented accommodation and have been here for over a year now.  We had thought about looking for somewhere else to live, but now with all that's happening at the moment we'll probably be staying here for a bit longer.  The problem is that as it's rented, including the furniture, we can't make any changes to the property to make it suit us and that includes adding hooks to the walls to allow us to put up picture, which is what I normally do to add colour to a space.

There are a few things we have done already, such as the pictures I added to the wardrobes, perched some pictures around just sitting on desks and book cases, and some homemade crafting like my crocheted coasters.  However, I still want to add a little more to our home.  I have to admit that we did buy some stuff from IKEA including a table lamp that nods to a gas lamp and some flower pots to house our ever growing collection of cacti.  However, I would like most of the items we get for this to either some from charity shops or homemade.

Before

We've already brought a table cloth to go on the coffee table with matching napkins, but we don't have any napkin rings at the moment and I'm thinking of trying to make some out of the jute thread we have left over from the wedding.  If that doesn't work out I'll just look for some next time I'm in a charity shop.  We also got a wonderfully weird tea pot that we'll use for spare change.  

After

At the moment we have a throw to cover the sofa which I've had for over 20 years now.  However I feel like I'm getting a bit bored of it now so I'll keep a look out for another one in the future and, as Ed still quite likes this one, we'll just rotate them.  We also have a cushion that was a present from a family member, but it's falling apart in a way that I don't think I can fix.  So I've decided that I might just make a cushion cover to replace it, probably out of all the wool I have left over from previous projects I've made.

I'm almost done with making all the clothes I want to get my wardrobe looking the way I would like it to, though there are still a few more items I'd like to make just for the sake of it.  This means that I will then have more time to make things for the flat should we need them.  The one thing I don't want to do though is cover every surface there is with something as that'll make things a little bit too busy.  In fact, I'm hoping to get rid of more stuff as time goes on.

Who knows how long we'll be in this flat for, but even if it turns out to not be much longer I would still like to make it feel as 'homely' as possible and a place that it ours.  And I'm glad that I've learnt the skills I have over the last few years that now means I can make a lot of these things myself. 

Walking: Horseshoe Ridge, Brecon Beacon

We decided that during our week off in August we would do some walking in Wales, specifically the Brecon Beacons which are the closest mountains to us.  After having a look at what walks there are we thought that the most interesting one would be the Horseshoe Ridge as it's right in the centre of the Brecon Beacons, is a good walk that is challenging but not really difficult, and it includes the two highest mountains in the Brecon Beacons (and south Britain).  

I was having a look at some of the recommended ways of doing this walk and decided that the best one was the one recommended by my Ordinance Survey app.  It also meant that I could check where we were on my app and my husband could carry the physical map and compass in case anything happened to one of us.  We started at the Taf Fehan car park (which is literally labelled on Google Maps as the Brecon Horseshoe Walk car park) and followed the path that takes you up the reservoir.  It did take a little while to get to this car park (and there's no public transport to it) and there aren't any facilities there, but it's definitely worth doing the walk from this starting point.  When you get to the reservoir you get a really good view of the glacier valley you're in and all the peaks you'll be heading to during this walk.

At the reservoir we followed the path left (which got a little bit confusing around the buildings but we found our way in the end) and then headed up the very steep climb to the Graig Fan Ddu ridge.  This definitely gets your heart going, but also means that you've done most of the climbing right at the start making the rest of the walk a bit easier.  I also wouldn't want to do this part near the end of my walk.  Once we'd reached the top we turned right and heading along the ridge to Corn Du.  This bit of the walk is really lovely, easy on the legs after the straight up climb, and you get a really good view of the valley with all the birds flying around the area.  There also wasn't too any people at this point, unlike the peaks we got to later.  

Corn Du is the second highest point in the area and has a Bronze Age burial cairn at the top of it.  There is a little scrabbling section just before you reach the top, but otherwise this is a pretty straight forward hike to the top.  Then you drop down into the saddle and straight up again to the top of Pen y Fan.  There were a lot of people at the top of this peak and, even though the views were pretty amazing and I usually enjoy pottering around the top of mountains when I reach them, I really didn't want to spend too much time there this time.  For me, going out into the wild is about being away from other humans so meeting lots of people there is never particularly enjoyable for me so I dragged my poor husband down the other side pretty quickly. 

It's a pretty steep climb down Craig Cwm Sere and an almost similarly steep climb up to the top of Cribyn.  The top of this peak was much quieter and we did stay a little bit longer before turning right and carrying along the path down the other side.  It was at this point that we past an 80 year old lady practically skipping past us up the mountain, making us feel very unfit.  This walk down is a double descent, where you descend half way down quite steeply and then get to walk for a little bit along a flat ridge, which I would imagine would be quite boggy normally but as it had been pretty dry over the summer was actually quite easy to walk on.  This is where we decided to stop and finally have our lunch as well as reapplying some suncream.  Then we dropped down again to the cross road with Gap Road.  This is labelled as a Roman road, but I couldn't find any archaeological evidence for this.  However, it was one of the first horse and cart roads over the Brecon Beacons.

As we wanted to hit the five points on this walk we crossed over the Gap Road and headed up the last climb to the top of Fan y Big.  You can get very close to the edge here and get a really good view back across to the peaks you've just climbed.  We then climbed back down the route we'd taken up to get onto Gap Road and headed back to the car park.  I was hoping this last section was going to be a gentle road back to help us cool down before we had to get into the car, but unfortunately this path ended up being a complete foot destroyer with loose stones all over the place.  It was almost nice to get back to the tarmac road which takes you to the car park.

On the day we had originally planned on doing this walk it was meant to rain with thunderstorm warnings for up on top of the mountains.  Even without the storm it was going to be very foggy, which isn't the safest way to climb a mountain or the best way of seeing the views.  So we decided to put it off until the next day where we got clear blue skies and views across the whole of the Brecon Beacons.  It wasn't the most difficult walk we've ever done, but it was still quite physical and gave us a pretty good leg work out.  Pen y Fan is obviously a very popular destination, to be expected on a good day and a peak that is close to good parking spot on a main road, but the rest of the walk wasn't too bad when it came to the number of people you come across.

We did really enjoy this walk and it was nice to get back out into some mountains again.  It would have been nice to have done some more walking when we were there, but we didn't want to push it too much seeing as we haven't done this type of walking in a while and we were already aware that our fitness levels aren't as high as they use to be.  I would definitely recommend this walk if you're in the Brecon Beacon area and I'm glad we came here to do it.  We want to come back to the Brecon Beacons again as it's beautiful and very close to us, so we'll be looking at what other walks we can do in this area for the next time we come. 

August 2022 Budget

I have to admit that I didn't really want to write this blog as we haven't done particularly  well this month at all.  We were already starting this month on the back foot we hadn't been able to build back up the baseline of our joint account to £1000 which covers our regular bills.  I also lost one weeks pay as we went on holiday this month.  Thankfully my husband still got paid for the days he took off, but it still made a noticeable difference not having that one payment.

The other thing was that, even though we knew that this month was going to be tight,  we still spent way more money than we should have done.  Ironically this wasn't actually during our holiday, as we had expected, but mostly on items that will allow us to do more free activities in the future.  Theoretically this is good, but maybe not for this month.

As I knew that the money would be low during our holiday I didn't pay one weeks pension or pay off some purchases I had made with my credit card.  Then there was the week I was off and not earning to I wasn't able to pay these again on that week.  I will need to find a way of catching back up on these two items and if I could do that by the end of September that would be very useful.

That being said, we haven't done too badly on the groceries and eating out spending which I was expecting to be much higher as we were on holiday.  Obviously the fuel was quite a bit more this month from all the driving we did when we were away.  We have still had to move money over from our savings again to help pay our standard bills, but this is a habit we really need to break.  However, by the end of the month we were able to bring the balance of our joint account back to where we want it and put just over £200 back into our savings.  Have to take the wins where we can.

Despite all this I don't regret us going on the holiday as we needed the break and we got to go to a place that I love and have a family connection to, but which Ed has never been to.  We also got to get in a great walk as well, but more on that in a future post.

However, it's now time to get serious again about our financial situation now.  We've known for a while now that it is pretty unlikely that we'll reach our savings goal by the end of this year and, if I'm being honest, that did dishearten me a little bit and put me into a 'why bother' mentality.  I did try and fight it, but sometimes you have to sit with those emotions for a bit to actually get through them.  Now the time for wallowing is over.  We may not reach our savings goal, but we can get closer to it and that's still a good thing to hold onto.  I also now made a visual representation of our savings that I can look at on a daily basis and that should also help.  So, bring on September and whatever that month has to throw at us.