Ever had that feeling...

...When there is so much going on inside your head...

...That any second now it might just explode!?

X

Oh Edinburgh...

I've spent a lot of time indoors working at the minute...

...So to remind myself of how beautiful Edinburgh can be I checked out some of my favourite art sellers on Etsy and this is what I found...

... Ahh much better now...

... All the snow is melting now but I did get to play for a bit...

...I can't wait for next week my family are visiting, all my work will be done...

Bliss! 

X

Two long months

Ok. Not the best two months. I had to close my Etsy shop for a while, and abandon the blog, and neglect my crafting to deal with some tricky situations... So here's a smattering of photos from the many things I did these past two months that I never got a chance to share...

...A rainy walk to Musselburgh along the sea front...

...The most delicious pie ever made (Thank you Rachel Allen!)...

...Is it a treecow or a treepig at Roslin? I can't decide...

...The most lovely crisp in Darlington...

...And best of all, the cutest new cousin ever!

The coolest thing about my new cousin? 

Thanks to an unusual law in France that means the mother doesn't have to be present when you register the birth, my cousins middle name really IS Danger. 

So cool!

X

Adventure is not always just bad planning...

... Sometimes it's just what you need.

Every now and then I like to go on city adventures, we live in an amazing city but occasionally when I've been so busy living in it I forget what it's actually like! 

So this week, on a lovely sunny day, we went on one of our explorations to try and go somewhere unfamiliar where we felt lost. We got lost alright, but look what we found...

...An unusually placed apple...

... A man buried up to his chest...

... And a sign to make everything better.

Our mini exploration was fun, especially this super slippery slope!

(Afterwards we saw a sign then said please don't slide on the slopes... woops! What do they expect if they construct a super steep slippery soft slope with a walkway up it??)

But as we sat on a bench watching other people slide down the slope, spot the sign and scamper away, we realised that what we REALLY wanted to do on such a lovely day was to spend some time in our garden.

We share our garden with 5 other flats, but no one else uses it except to hang up their laundry. It was a wilderness when we arrived and we have slowly tamed it over the past two years with help from a neighbour. So as a reward for our hard (maybe unappreciated?) work, we decided we were allowed to make one of the beds a little bigger and plant some vegetables in it, maybe our neighbours will be inspired to join in? I certainly hope so. 

First things first, I needed some new gloves...

... My old ones fell apart. So we set to work digging up the turf along the bed...

...putting my knot tying skills to the test by making a shelter for our spring onions...

...and finally relaxing with a glass of home made lemonade...

... yum!

Steve was inspired to mow the lawn so it looks really neat now. 

If only the mysterious vanishing builders would come and finish our wall then we could plant things out without worrying about having to leave enough room for them to trample over without destroying our plants!

=D

I hope you're all enjoying the lovely sunny weather and having some mini adventures of your own, whether they are far away or even in your own back garden!

xxx

New Camera!

Ok, so for a long time we'd been thinking of getting a new camera. The last few cameras we've had were found and repaired or bought second hand from friends, so we've never really splashed out on a nice one. 

We knew a fair bit about photography but not enough for our liking so we bought this great book to help us figure out the more complicated aspects of it.

During a quick trip home my Dad gave me a couple of old SLR cameras that he doesn't use anymore. They were gifts so he didn't really want to get rid of them, but my parents are moving house and so rather than give away his cameras forever we are taking care of them until further notice!

Olympus 10

Zenith 11     

So we played around with these for a while, and our book came in very handy for understanding what everything does.

We looked around for about a month and read a lot of reviews (and I mean LOTS)... but eventually we settled on this one. It's probably not perfect, and probably not what a professional would go for, but for an entry level camera it's pretty good! So far we've not found anything wrong with it at all.

We haven't had much of a chance to play with it yet, but these are a couple of photos from our garden for you until I go out somewhere exciting and take some really nice ones!

xxx 

   

Summer Showers...

The weather is dark and gloomy outside today, so to make myself feel better about it I decided to look up lots of dark but beautiful things on Etsy.

See it's not so bad!
x

Busy Busy Busy....

DIY... Graduation... Work... Gardening... New Camera... Catching up with my Blog and Etsy (oops)... Friends... Family... Old Photos... New Cousin!... 

x

Guide Camp Green...

I've been very busy finishing up uni, catching up with chores and getting ready for guide camp the past few weeks and have neglected my blog and shop for a wee while... I am now back from Guide camp and filled with a renewed love for the colour green in all its varied glory! I also remembered how much i love my waterproof trousers, but let's not focus on that...

I've spent a lot of time recently lamenting the lack of tea and cake in my life so I've gathered lots of tea party and picnic things to make me forget the rain and feel calm, in lots of lovely shades of green like the field and canvas tents I've spent the last few days in...

Ahh I feel better already....

xxx

A cause worth fighting for...

Today I heard news of a person who has been disowned by his family because of his faith. Tomorrow he will fight for his right to stay in a place where he is loved and respected. He will not be fighting alone, he is surrounded by the loving friends who have helped him to build his new life, the friends who place their faith in God in protect him, whatever his fate may be.

I am not a particularly religious person, but I am loving.

If his God is out there, I hope my love and the love of others are proof enough that this man deserves to live out his days in a safe, loving environment where he can be respected and happy.

Spare a thought for him this week if you can

X

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so...

For the past few weeks I haven't had a minute to myself. Every spare moment has been filled with lesson planning, report writing, sorting out playground tiffs and trying (or rather failing) to keep the flat in an acceptable state. Despite having no time to do any cooking, or even to grab a sandwich for lunch most days, there are a lot of dishes around... 

...Worse still, in the most severe of times when all I can fit in is a cup of tea, I will invariably discover that all the mugs and teaspoons are gone...

The last week in particular I've felt more like a mother than a girlfriend. I wont dare to admit to how many loads of laundry I had to do the other day I could almost hear the polar bears crying out in despair...  

I've been so busy taking care of everyone else and the flat that yesterday, I managed to wash, dry and pack a 4 day rucksack for a certain someone else (who had more or less forgotten about their trip), before realising that I had no clean clothes for myself!

So now, with no formal lessons tomorrow to plan for, only myself to take care of, and a tremendous 5 day weekend on it's way (thank you Victoria Day!) I can finally relax...

What will you do with yourself?? I hear you say... Why, knit of course! I did a few more twists on my Begonia DNA scarf (only 11 more to go, and 6 weeks to do it in) before deciding to treat myself to some lovely yarn that looks like this:

from which I want to make a set of crocheted cushion covers. The picture is from the wonderfully cheap website that I bought it from so it isn't the best... But the yarn is Louisa Harding Kashmir DK in (clockwise from top left) Olive, Burgundy, Plum and Rosebud. I already have some cushions in these colours so it should fit in nicely on my sofa.

=)

Next Thursday I have my observed lesson which is fairly nail biting stuff, luckily I have those immortal words in large, friendly letters to keep me company.

X

Fantastical Botanical Exploration!

Oh the last few weeks have been so busy... Lot's of university deadlines, my first school placement (one week down, 3 to go!) and lots of preparation for summer jobs and maybe a visit home if I'm lucky! So I decided to skive for a few hours, and meet my best friend where he's working at the minute, the Botanic Gardens!

A few more daffodils first, they are so relentlessly cheery, I wish I could be that colourful...

...and some Fritillaries to match...

...a whole mini green house of colour, too bright for my poor little camera to cope with...

...we went to the Glass houses next, to look at some slightly more exotic plants...

...and found to our surprise and delight, that due to important maintenance work...

...it is free to visit the Glass Houses at the moment!...

...I am growing some of these Begonias from a cutting, but they'll take a long time to look this nice...

...I really like this metal frog, it looks so real...

...I think I'd like some of these epiphytes in my bathroom, so I could pretend I was under a jungle waterfall and not a shower head... Though I'm not sure my flatmates would agree...

Visiting the Botanics never gets boring, everything is different each time I go there and there is so much of it to see! I'm so lucky to have this on my doorstep.

x

Narcissus

For the past few weeks we've been enjoying our daffodil sea in the garden...

We planted a LOT of bulbs this year (two bags of bulbs!), and it turns out our neighbour did too! So now we have all kinds of daffodils of all shapes, colours and sizes, my favourite are the ones that have lots of flowers on each stalk but are teeny tiny...

The walls of our garden are very old and very worn (in some places you can see right through them!) so we've been waiting for a builder to come and fix them all year. We couldn't plant out any of our vegetables until they were fixed because we knew they would get trampled... We eventually decided that something had to be done, so we bravely planted out some sacrificial lettuce...

The lettuce is now thoroughly trampled, but at least the walls are getting done, and we have plenty more lettuce where THAT came from! 

It also meant that in order to save the daffodils from certain death, we got to bring some inside...

I'm so excited for when the walls are finished so we can get our vegetables outside! 

We have squash (butternut and regular!), spring onions, tomatoes, and of course the almighty, indestructible courgette! 

How cute is that butternut squash??

x

Ellie the Elephant packed her trunk...

Today Ellie the Elephant is finished and will be sent to her new home, in the flat above mine to live with my neighbours!

This gorgeous elephant was made using this pattern with a few alterations on the ears and the addition of an adorable tail. I managed to make the whole elephant out of one ball of debbie bliss cashmerino (just 125m) so I now have enough to make a friend for Ellie!

I'm really pleased with this, it's just so cute! I want to adapt this pattern to make a cat, a dog, a piglet, a sheep, a cow, a monkey, a tiger, a hippo........ A whole ZOO!!

I definitely recommend this pattern, sometimes picking up the stitched isn't the easiest, but it's more than do-able =) 

I love this elephant! I will miss him sorely, but I'm sure my neighbours will let me visit him!

x

Work in progress...

I am two pages away from finishing my final portfolio for this year, which, due to a fortuitous twist of fate, is due for a day after I thought! Meaning I could spare a couple of hours this morning for knitting.

Here is my begonia scarf developing away nicely, it's going ok, but every now and then I realise I've made a colossal mistake and have to back track...

Here is my elephant which is coming along quite well, should be done by the end of this week if I can find a couple of hours to do the arms and ears. Then he'll be ready to move into his new home with my neighbours upstairs =)

I suppose I'd better go do those last two sheets so I can finally relax! At least until tomorrow when I start an essay, oh how I long for the summer holidays to begin...

x