Spring!

Finally, spring is here! Ok, so officially spring doesn't start for another couple of days, but today it felt as though it was spring.

This morning looked pretty unpromising, with fog and not a scrap of blue to be seen. I had planned to go to the Botanic Garden to take some photos, but the day looked like it was going to be dull, so I didn't pick up the camera. Wrong decision! By lunchtime the temperature was all the way up to 15 °C and the sun was shining brightly, so we went to the Botanic Garden anyway.

For a few minutes at least, both children were happy to entertain themselves, so I got on with a little knitting in the sunshine. The project is the hat I showed you a couple of weeks ago, and it's making excellent progress - just the crown decreases to go now.

 

My hat just fits in this bag! Admittedly it fitted better at the start of the project when it was mostly a tightly bound ball of yarn.

We did a lot of running about with my son, as well as feeding the fish and hunting for the creepy crawlies in the glass houses (thankfully all the spiders and the like are safely displayed behind glass, otherwise I wouldn't be so keen on looking at them), but I did get a few chances to enjoy the spring flowers that are just coming out.

I love the crocuses in their watering can. The colours are wonderful after the lack of colour that comes with winter.

And daffodils. Admittedly these are in the car park as the ones in the bits of the gardens that we visited are still just shoots and buds, but they are glorious nonetheless. I can't imagine ever getting bored of daffodils, they are definitely one of my favourite flowers.

Hope you're all enjoying the warmer weather and the signs of spring. I really hope that spring is here to stay! And next time I'll take a proper camera with me...

Downtime Tuesday

For the past couple of weeks I've been getting a little overwhelmed by all the stuff I have to do, so after getting lots of the more important things sorted out, I decided that today would be a day for me. I started by watching Sunday's Call the Midwife while snuggling my daughter and knitting some of the scarf from my box of unfinished projects. She then decided to have a nap in her cot, a very rare event, so I took some time just to watch her sleep and cherish her little baby toes, which are getting bigger by the day.

While she slept I sat down to get my first commissioned pattern since her arrival written up, and got the complex bit out of the way before she woke up.

My yarn club box from Devon Sun Yarns arrived yesterday afternoon, so this morning I spent some time squishing the lovely chunky alpaca. They're not colours I would necessarily normally choose, but I love the combination, and am looking forward to casting on a cowl with it some time in the next few weeks. The box also contained a cute keyring with a knitted yarn pattern, a yarny postcard (which will possibly go to my mum for Mother's Day next month) and a cute red heart stitch marker. My son saw the stitch marker and declared that it would look lovely on his crane, so I think I might have to hide that somewhere. He also pointed out that it would make a good earring! So pleased I signed up, yarny parcels are always exciting, and this one was really well presented.

 

 
The box also contained the sock yarn I ordered last week. It is as beautiful as Daisy's picture of it. It captures all of my favourite colours, and is too beautiful for socks - it even contains a sparkly thread for extra loveliness. I'm going to make it into a Sockhead hat for myself.

After some more sofa snuggles and a chat on the phone with my mum, I decided that the early spring weather was too good to miss, so we went for a walk on a hunt for spring flowers. We found some snowdrops and crocuses, and while there was still frost on the ground in places, the low sun and clear skies were very welcome, it really felt like spring might be round the corner.

Baking a cake had also been on my list for the day, but we ran out of time. Instead I had an important date with Marks and Spencer's café's cappuccino cake, a coffee and some sock knitting. Happy times!