Happy Saturday to you!
There’s a much more cheerful blog post coming up today – and I want to say thank you so much to everyone who left me a comment or emailed me after last week’s not-quite-so-happy post. It meant a lot to me that you took the time to get in touch and remind me that everything could always have been so much worse! I do try very hard to look past the disasters to something positive instead, but sometimes you need a bit of help to do that! xx
So, what can I tell you about this week? Well, there’s been plenty of cake and that always makes for a good week!
** I need to tell you that there’s a photo of a frog in this post and some people don’t like them – it’s the very last photo and I’ll warn you that it’s coming **
First of all, there’s an update on the events of last week. After telling you about the problem I’d had with Blogger and posts going missing and how this was probably the push I needed to finally round to moving away to a different platform, Sara from my local yarn shop, Black Sheep Wools, got in touch to say that if I needed any help, their website manager would be able to give me some advice. Wasn’t that kind? I’d already done some research but it was really helpful to be able to sit with Lucy (it seems that all my bloggy mentors are called Lucy! ) to chat over what I knew and I’ve come away with a list of things to check but it is all starting to feel as if it’s really going to happen. In terms of what you’ll see changing, I hope it’s not going to be much at all as I’m keeping my fingers crossed the transition between platforms will be a smooth one, but if I tell you what I’m up to then there hopefully won’t be any surprises for any of us!
Lucy and I sat in the Tea Bags Full cafe at Black Sheep – it’s been closed for such a long time but they have made good use of that time and I think you’ll be impressed when you go back there (it re-opened yesterday so you can go whenever you like now!). They’ve had a refit and re-decorated and it looks fab!
They had also had a cake delivery so it would have been rude not to help them sample them to make sure they were as good as they always were …
Source: www.blacksheepwools.com
There was more cake yesterday too, when I drove up to Skipton to see my other bloggy Lucy guru and arrived in time for the Knit n Natter session which has re-started in Coopers cafe bar. Everything is still socially distanced inside the cafe and it does feel quite strange to be back inside – but at the same time, it felt FaNtAsTiC to be there! I so enjoyed just being in a room with other people who don’t live in my house!
If being kept indoors for such a long time has made you long for crafty company, then I urge you to seek out any local knit n natter groups that might be around – try your local yarn shop to start, or look on social media to see if there is anything near you. If all else fails, start your own! I am certain that you won’t be short of people who want to come and knit with you!
That sock on the table is where I’m up to with the yarn that I showed you last week. It’s the hand-dyed yarn from Under An English Sky and it’s knitting up really well – and is much more of a vibrant orange than I expected! It’s lovely to have something new on the needles, and especially when it knits up quickly as well!
It’s not been quite as wet this week (although Tuesday was a bit of a grim day) and it’s been lovely to be able to scoot out into the garden to see what’s going on there.
This Papaver orientale (Oriental poppy) has produced it’s first flower bud. I love how they’re all tightly enclosed in the leaves, kept safe until they raise up on a tall stem to get ready to open.
The lilac has been glorious this year. This was a sucker from a plant at my parents’ house which has lived in our garden for many years, and every year it produces an abundance of flowers in the most gorgeous shade of pink. I love it!
Years ago, I planted a packet of cowslip (Primula veris) seeds and they flowered every year until one year when I thought I’d lost them all. It turns out that I haven’t! They are prolific self-seeders and it looks like the couple of plants that survived have brought on a whole new generation and they’re everywhere this year!
This is another yellow Spring staple in our garden – the Welsh poppy. We have so many of them and to be honest, lots of them aren’t really in the most convenient of places but the bees absolutely love them and they don’t last long so I leave them be.
I had an interesting experience the other day when our new neighbour happened to mention that he had found a frog in an inspection pit in his garage. That’s not the usual kind of conversation you expect to have with someone when you’re just walking past with the dog, but I like things that are a bit out of the ordinary!
Our neighbour doesn’t like frogs at all so I offered to help him get it out and the two of us fished in the pit with fishing nets that I keep in our garage for netting the mice that our cats bring in sometimes until we rescued it.
We have an old sink in the garden that’s full of rainwater – the dog drinks it, the pigeons paddle in it and the rescued frog went into it to recover from its experience of living in an oily water swamp and being scooped up in a pink fishing net. This is the last photo of the post so IF YOU DON’T LIKE FROGS, YOU CAN LEAVE THE POST NOW
We don’t know how long it had been in the pit, or even how it got in and it didn’t look any worse for wear so I just put it carefully into the water and left it alone. There are large stones in the sink to help anything that falls in get out and there’s no sign of the frog now so it must have moved on. I’m glad that we were able to save it though!
See you again soon! xx
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