Sunshine and a change of direction...

Summer finally seems to have arrived! How long this will last, who knows? But it is so lovely to feel the sun on your skin (adequately SPFd up, of course ;-)). Somehow, it seems to encourage me to just relax a bit more, which is probably just what I need! The last 10 days or so have been just beautiful, sunny and hot so once the working week was over I spent as much time as possible outside!

The festival in Norwich finished this weekend and on Saturday the city was buzzing with people - chilling in the sun, listening to some of the buskers and street performers and outside the forum was music and dancing...

And some fab cars! (not quite sure what the chap on his hands and knees was doing?!! Didn't notice him when I took the photo!)

I have had breakfast, lunch and tea al fresco! What a treat. Which got me thinking about my little bit of garden. I had rather suspected that the pretty pink flowers that I mentioned in my last post were in fact a weed and Sweet Seahorse confirmed this! She said they are oxalis and and as it looked a bit as though they were going to make a takeover bid, so I pulled them all out today! They were beginning to look a bit past it anyway and I wanted to make a bit of space for some tomatoes so out they came (definitely a weed judging by the roots!!!).

When I had my morning cuppa, the rather wild looking patch of oxalis and borage was just to my left...

The pink is the oxalis and it was looking a bit straggly and pushing its way across the whole bed. The borage is a bit floppy too but I read somewhere that its a good plant to have for the bees so I tidied it up a bit but left most of it there. It is such a pretty blue flower...

By the end of the day, I had moved my chair to the other end of the garden where there is just the teensiest bit of sun still peeping over the houses and the view back towards the house looked like this...!

All the sprawly pink stuff gone, a bit of an edging up (the soil was awful up there and I wanted to make a bit of a raised bed) and planted up with tomatoes, marigolds and onions! Quite pleased with this hour or so's work :-)

This is not a bad little garden really; compared to where I have been living for the last 18/19 years its tiny and the sun doesn't get to it a huge amount but it is quite pretty and has some nice plants in it...

My only problem with it is that I don't feel any great sense of permanence here. Because I am renting at the moment and moved here a bit 'on the quick' I don't have a strong sense that I will be staying here in the long term. And I can't really pull out and start again which is what I would do with some of the bigger shrubs I think. But it looks as though I'll be here for at least another 6 months so I figured I may as well do something to make it a bit more enjoyable out here. Fingers crossed for lots of cherry tomatoes!

And as for the change of direction? Well, crochet and I have had a bit of a falling out... Or at least I'm just a bit bored with it. Trouble is I have a limited concentration span I think and have to keep doing something different - hence the number of started and unfinished projects! I couldn't really think what else to make with crochet - somehow the living room in this house doesn't lend itself to brightly coloured crochet - and the hexagons I started on the way to Derbyshire a couple of months ago aren't keeping me interested.

So, I've been having another dabble in some knitting instead! (only a slight change of direction really! still yarny!!) I finished the red white and blue bits for the charity Jubilee party...

And then I turned to this...

I have had this pattern for years and years. In fact I did start it once before - but was just using up bits and pieces and didn't really like the colours I had. Of course, I'm not doing it in such muted shades - I'm using my usual range of stylecraft DK so I hope it will be a cheerful blanket for my spare room.

Its basically a collection of sample squares...

I'm quite enjoying the chance to play with different stitches. They look very uneven squares in this photo but they are all pretty square once blocked.

I'd forgotten how effective cable stitches are...

Just another 133 squares to go... will keep you posted!

Til then, 

Sx