However, for some reason my pictures have come out really blurry. I have this problem now and then with Blogger and think it might have something to do with how it compresses them, but I'll just live with the blurriness for now and resolve it for future posts.
So, with blurry photos and all, here is my 2017 review in Instagram pictures.
January
In the autumn and winter of 2016 I was applying for PhDs after spending years making the decision to go back to school. I applied to several, but only really wanted one, the one I'm doing now. I had the second interview on January 11th and spent all my free time until this date preparing. After the interview I had a few hours to kill before getting the train home, so I visited the Abakhan store in Manchester and bought these buttons.
The rest of January is a blur as I waited for the result. (I didn't get the funding straightaway, but got on the reserve list and eventually received a studentship.)
February
On February 1st Josh and I hopped onto a flight to Rotterdam. I wrote about it a bit here. We don't go on a lot of holidays together, so it's supernice when it does happen. This one was extra nice because it was so chilled!
By mid-Feb I started getting over my annual winter blues and started getting excited about spring. The appearance of snow drops was magical.
And before the month was over I decided to join in on the Moneta party, last minute, on the closing day. And to my great surprise I was a semi-finalist! That was the biggest boost to my sewing confidence ever!
March
March brought new hobbies and new love for old ones.
I decided to learn how to garden! Did my research, ordered my seeds and got to work. It was a project filled with love and happiness and I miss that garden dearly. Scroll down to July for more details.
And I bought a new sewing machine! I went for a computerised one with lots of lovely features, and am so happy with this purchase. It's supposedly great for quilting, which was a factor in my choice, but I still haven't tried it for quilting.
April
In April I was making beautiful things on my new machine, like this blouse, and enjoying the fab weather...
...which warranted walks in the woods among the bluebells. Magical.
Meanwhile I had more than plenty of Spanish bluebells in my garden. This is probably the prettiest weed ever.
May
May is usually one of my favourite months of the year (along with October and December), and this year was no different. I only posted photos of my Me Made May outfits, partly because I really didn't get up to much else this month. It was probably the busiest month in the garden, and every free moment was spent tending to it.
The one massive event of May (and the year!) is that I heard about my PhD funding!! I got it! And one week later I gave my (3 month) notice at work!
While choosing the PhD over my job at the time wasn't that hard, because I'd made the decision a long time ago already, it was really, really hard to give up my life in Oxford. I was tired of the city, but I had just began to explore the countryside and I LOVED my country life and everything and everyone in it.
June
June is my birthday month and I am slowly turning into one of those people who celebrate all month long. The weekend before my birthday I went to Brighton with one of my best friends, and it was amazing. The day was hot and sunny and we had so much lovely food, delicious frozen passionfruit daiquiris and even dipped our toes in the sea!
My birthday itself was in the middle of the week and because I was about to leave my job and needed every last day of annual leave to house hunt in Manchester, I decided to not take the day off. But it was really lovely anyway. It was a hot day. I had lunch with two friends in a local farm cafe and after work I mowed the lawn (as you do) and then got dressed up and cycled to the pub with Josh.
July
The beginning of July was fab! The weather was good and life was sweet. The evenings involved drinks with friends and the weekend mornings plenty of lazy al fresco breakfasts in the garden.
The garden vegetables finally started being ready for harvesting!
And this is when the garden looked its best. Everything was blooming or bearing fruit. This was my happy place. I can't begin to tell you how much I loved this garden. I dedicated a sewing project (the Turia dungarees in the photo) and a blog post to it.
And then at the end of July Josh and I went up to Manchester for a few days to look for somewhere to live. We had a pleasant enough first day, with nice weather, a run in a beautiful park (where I run regularly now) and dinner out. But the remaining days it rained relentlessly, we got car trouble and the house hunt process was wearing us down.
August
Ok, one last picture from the garden before we moved. My sweet peas. These were amazing. It took them the longest time to blossom, but once they did they didn't stop. They bloomed all summer and when we moved away they were still in full bloom.
And then we moved to Manchester. And frankly, we don't love it. Maybe because we had such a fantastic life in Oxford and our life in Manchester is so different. Maybe because we haven't been here long and don't yet know it. Maybe because we don't know many people here yet. I don't know what it is. But we're here for the next three years, so 2018 will be about trying to find our favourite things about Manchester and build the kind of life we actually want.
September
September was a long month of settling in and starting the PhD. The former was not so easy, the latter was fab!
A close friend was moving to Australia forever, and I went down to the south east to say good bye. The photo is from brunch with friends the next morning. The friends in question moved away from the area themselves a month later, to Scotland, and in less than two weeks I'm off to see them. Can't wait!
October
October is usually my favourite month and I love going for long walks in the country and foraging in the hedgerows and making bramble jams and sloe gins, but this October I wasn't feeling comfortable with my life, so I didn't do any of that.
Instead, I turned to the two hobbies that always lift me out of an unhappy mood. Firstly, running. And secondly, sewing. This Nina Lee Kew dress was my first make since moving to Manchester, and I love it both for its beauty and for cheering me up.
And finally at the end of October I went to Paris for a conference. I stayed with a close friend I don't see often and just hanging out with her and having fun was tonic for the soul. The conference is the biggest in my area of research and the presentations and talks were the biggest boost of inspiration ever. I came back and couldn't care less about my unhappy life in Manchester, the next few months were going to be all about work!
November
And the next month I went to Obergurgl in Austria to attend a training course organised by the Human Brain Project, where I got to present my research to fellow junior neuroscientists. Came back even more motivated, inspired and committed to this PhD.
December
December was a mad race to finish the first draft of a literature review and some other bits and pieces. On the 22nd Josh and I finally got on a plane home to Sweden for two weeks. We had a lovely Christmas with my family and as her Christmas present I took my mom for afternoon tea in Stockholm.
And then we went to the very north of Sweden to visit our friends. We chilled, rode snow mobiles and just hung out. It was perfect. This photo is the sunset on New Years Eve from a mountaintop. Shortly after my friend and I had a sauna bath and rolled around naked in the snow in -24 degrees C to cool off. Spoiler: it worked. This is the good life.
We stayed in Sweden until the 5th, and now we're back in the UK and ready for 2018!
No comments