Things that made me smile this week ….

…. watching my knitting grow - which I started on holiday. I've now finished the body, and will start the sleeves. I've not made a sweater worked in one piece before - so I'm on a learning curve!

…. visiting C in Oxford last weekend and watching people messing about on the river,

 and just wandering around the city being a tourist! Sunday was such a lovely warm and sunny day.

M came to join us on the Bank Holiday Monday - it rained, no it poured all day, so we went to the Pit Rivers Museum and the University Museum of Natural History - both were very busy, but really interesting.

 

….. picking flowers from the garden to add to a few freesias

….. cooking for friends - mmmm parmigiano, one of my favourites

 with red peppers stuffed with baby tomatoes, garlic and basil - all ready to be cooked

 …. tidying in the garden and finding a toad!

Hope you are having a good weekend

Making my Yarndale Mandala Wheel

Oh, I have had fun making my Mandala wheel to send to Lucy at Attic 24 for the installation she is putting together for the Yarndale festival. As I have only just begun to get my head around crochet, I was extremely please with the way my effort has turned out!

I have been looking at all the gorgeous Mandala wheels that people have made already on the pinterest page, and there are some beautiful patterns in a host of different colours. I decided to try the Mandala wheel pattern made especially by Zooty Owl for this project. Then I had fun choosing the colours - I got out my (limited) supply of cotton yarn and decided that I wanted to make my sunny flower mandala wheel with bright yellows, reds and oranges - so had to take a little trip to the wool shop to pick up a couple of new colours.

The pattern was fairly straight forward to follow - even with my limited skill - although I am getting more used to pattern reading now. The yellow petal round was the most difficult for me to get right, but I got there in the end….

…. then added the lovely green, and one of my new purchases the bright orange, followed by the touch of white and the soft brown….

…. followed by touches of red and finishing off with the yellow!

Ta dah……. my sunny flower Mandala for Yarndale

I now just need to PVA the reverse side as requested, to give the mandala strength as it will be hung on a wall, and then get it sent off to Lucy.

A great project to get involved with, and I am really looking forward to visiting Yarndale again this year in September.

From blue sky and sea with a little blue knitting - to not so blue sky and bluebells!

We are now back from our holiday, but I have not had time to go through all the photos and write up my travel log! We had a great time on an island that I have never been to before - Mallorca. It was such a pleasant surprise and a great time of year to go as everywhere was green and fresh and not burnt out by the sun.
This was the nearest beach (just look at the colour of the sea), but we didn't spend a great deal of time on the beach as we had planned to do lots of walking, and the girls had also planned some rock climbing - and we did lots - more to come in another post….

Lovely sea views wherever we went

I did manage a little knitting as I watched the sun go down from the patio of the house we had rented for our stay. 

Then back to the dramatic dark sky behind our home and the beautiful bluebell field on the fell. The view from my window -which I blogged about each month last year.

The bluebells are fantastic this year, the dog and I have enjoyed our walks through the wood in the sunshine.

More holiday tales to come when I have time - the house renovation is taking up my thinking time - but a bit on hold as we are talking with builders!