A Little Bit Of Sun And A Little Bit Of Green

This week has seen more snow which lead to more wintry photos, finally on Friday morning the thaw began. The daytime temperature climbed to a tropical 4 Celsius and everthing dripped steadily. School still had huge amounts of snow piled up from the pathways being cleared. Yesterday we had lots of rain and many of the local roads flooded. Now the snow's all gone and the garden has returned to green, even the bamboos have recovered from being bent in half. I hope the bay tree will recover as well as it is still leaning over. The fat balls I put out earlier in the week are being visited regularly by a Robin and a couple of Bluetits. This time last year we had to stop bird feeding because our garden was invaded by a huge rat (shiver) the council pest control officer said we and the neighbours had to stop feeding the birds because the food contained vitamin K which helps rats to combat any poison they eat. Finally it was run over on the main road and so for the rest of the year we haven't dared put any food out and gardening gloves have been worn for even the smallest jobs in the garden. I am hoping that this year the problem will not return and that we can enjoy the garden again. Last week whilst clearing the huge amount of snow off the car and from around it (with Tony's help) I managed to hurt my back. All week it has been painful and at times things like getting out of the chair, or picking something up that I have dropped, have reduced me to tears. But perseverance in moving have paid off and today my back feels a marked improvement. Thank goodness. On the crafting front I started knitting a pair of wristys from a pattern on Knitty.com. Sometime ago I bought three balls of Stylecraft 4ply because I liked the colour,

I intended to use it for wristys, scarf and hat but it kept splitting. I finally decided to use the yarn double as the tension swatch was close to Aran yarn. I changed pattern and chose this one, also from Knitty. The initial wristy was too long for my liking and I found that the cables came too far up the arm to be seen, this may have been because of the different tension/yarn. So I made the second wristy with a shorter row count between the last cable and the base of the thumb, this resulted in a much better finish as you can see the cables on my wrist. My next project is the scarf and I have promised to show my friend at work how to cable. I'm off to buy some tickets to a knit and stitch show coming our way soon. I hope you have a good week, happy crafting. Jane x