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??

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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!

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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...

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The graduation scarf begins...

Of course, with my deadline for this semesters portfolio looming in less than a week, I not only have the infamous "fear" experienced by many university students around this time of year, but I also appear to be suffering from the apathy and procrastination that serves to strengthen the "fear's" vice like grip....

At least as a result of my procrastination, I have finally got the motivation to start making the graduation scarves that I've been planning!

I saw the pattern for this scarf several years ago and being such a geek knew I had to make one, but as a humanities student I didn't think it would be socially acceptable for me to wear one.... Fortunately I have some rather geeky plant science friends who would delight in helping me out there

So luckily for them, I am making two of these, both displaying parts of the sequence for a particular type of Begonia that was grown in the botanic gardens where they are both working!

I want to make backs for these as well so you don't see the mess on the back of the work, so I have a lot of knitting to do before June 26th when they graduate. I can't wait until May 21st when I hand in my last assignment and can be stuck to my needles until these are done!

Wish me luck!

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**Update! I finished it, check it out here, or on ravelry**

Spring Cleaning Surprise...

This morning I awoke to realise that my desk was a disgrace. I was allowing myself to be engulfed by an ever growing pile of books, papers, pens, pencils, folders and portfolio work in progress. To match this state of utter chaos my computer desktop was also suffering, making it damn near impossible to find anything on my laptop anymore. So both got a spring clean today!

In a valiant attempt at procrastination I started with my laptop. 

I was making good headway until, to my surprise (and delight!) I found these beautiful flower photos taken by my little sister last spring.

These photos were taken both at my parents allotments and on a walk through some nearby woods.

I love the colours! 

They are so fresh and bright.

I thought to spruce up my desktop I would use the pink flower above as my background picture, so now I'll have to keep it tidy so I can keep looking at the photo!

Ok enough procrastination, I'm getting back to cleaning and working now.

Before I dash, I also found this rather cheeky one of Charlie, our family dog...

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So much yarn, so little time...

I've had a lot to be getting on with recently (as you can see from all of those library books), but as ever the cries of a neglected yarn stash are hard to ignore. 

So I stole myself away when everyone else was out of the flat and secretly started a jumper I have longed to start for some time...

I've decided to do a mixture of patterns and inspirations (as always, which is probably why nothing seems to work out the first time around!) so I'm using Glarna for the yoke, and possibly Vormorgan for the shape but i haven't decided yet. Finally, instead of using separate colours to create the colourwork, I am using rowan colourscape to create the colour changes.

Here is a closer photo so you can see it better...

The colourscape is pure lambswool and can be felted, but the cream yarn (sirdar denim) is machine washable. So to make life easy for myself, I decided I would preshrink the lambswool as an experiment before I knit it all up. I haven't preshrunk yarn before so i did a quick rummage around the internet and came up with a method:

Wash your skein in hot soapy water, then rinse in hot water, dunk in cold water, hang it up to dry, wind it into a ball!

Easy, and very fun. I went a bit crazy during the drying process and hung weights from it and flung it around in the garden and all kinds of strange manoeuvres due to various recommendations from the myriad of yarn loving folk on the internet. It must have looked quite strange to all my neighbours but nevermind!

I can't wait to get cracking on this at last! Just a few more essays to write and then I'm free...

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Spring is here!

Spring has definitely arrived, snow drops, and daffodils are starting to say hello and look at all these flowers that I found growing in my stash!

These lovely ladies are starting to blossom all over my flat at the minute, a new one seems to grow every day! Pearl and Florence have even taken over My Etsy shop, PrettyPorcini

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