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!

Away …..

…… just getting some sunshine on a family holiday :-)

more photos when we get home.

Things that made me smile this week….

……. making a present as a thank you. I love making these clip bags as they are so useful for so many things,

eating lots of good food over the Easter break with friends and family  - tabbouleh today for lunch,

C's breakfast dippy egg - she is now back from Leipzig and it is lovely to have her home for a while,

eating loads and loads of purple sprouting broccoli fresh from the garden,

feeding the pig at my friends farm,

 watching the seedlings grow,

being so excited by the figs starting to appear on the fig tree I was given for my birthday last year  - the plant is in the green house and I had to put a sheet as a backdrop to get a photo as it is very bright today

finding violets in the hedgerow on our walk ….

 ….and these lovely young ferns emerging.

Hope you have had lots to smile about too.

'Jamaica Inn' on the TV

Back in October I blogged about a town nearby to where I live being used as a film set for part of the new BBC adaptation of Jamaica Inn. Well, on Monday evening (21st April) the first part of three episodes will be shown on BBC 1 starting at 9pm. I don't know how much of our town will be featured, but it will be good to watch and see!

This is how the town square looks on a normal day - used as a car park and there is a lovely market on a Thursday…..

…… and here it is again during the filming

I've booked my place by the TV for tomorrow night to watch!

Happy Easter

Crochet catch up and a sunny walk

A little update on my crochet endeavours. I'm really getting my confidence now and trying out new patterns. I saw this pattern on The Sewing Wren, where Jay had used the blocks to make a little bird - go have a look it is really cute. I just thought I would see if I could manage to make this African flower hexagon pattern, and I'm so pleased with my success!

I'm still enjoying making the other squares for a blanket and the pile is slowly growing - just picking up the yarn and hook when I have time.

The weather has been so wonderfully warm these last few days I've been trying to get out in the garden and out and about with our dog. We have had a couple of lovely walks on a nearby fell. The larch trees are looking a lovely fresh green as they start to get their new needles.

We had some very inquisitive sheep watching us on our upward climb...

 It was just so nice being out in the sunshine, with the curlews calling and hearing the bees buzzing - there did seem to be a lot of bees around for some reason. I'm not sure what this little bird is, but we got very close before it flew away.

….and then finally at the top, where the walking is much easier. Beanie must have traveled miles, far further than I had walked. He just loves to run and run, and I love to see his ears flapping as he goes - once the bracken starts to grow you only see his head and ears appearing every so often as he runs.

He always makes it to the top before me!

This photo is for M as she is missing her dog now she is living away.

Then back down again from the top, looking into the valley towards the village of Barbon.

I hope you are enjoying the sunshine too, or having warm autumnal days if you are in the southern hemisphere!