This Week

Hello! What a cold week it's been! Still no snow, but very chilly. Thank you, everyone, who commented on my last post. It was so nice to read all of your kind comments about my hand-made books. I shall definitely make a little tutorial when I make my next one. 

I've done very little crocheting lately as we're coming to the end of term here and I'm feeling a bit frazzled and lacklustre. I've even frogged my pale blue scarf because I wasn't happy with how it was looking. I don't think the combination of garter and moss stitch was working, so I started again in blackberry stitch which went a bit wrong and am now trying double moss stitch. See what I mean? I've been a bit restless, and am looking forward to re-charging my batteries in half term next week. As a result I haven't got anything much to show for my efforts recently, so I've been trying to just go with the flow and enjoy the things around me.

Indoors on the windowsill my amaryllis has flowered and is quite a beauty, rich red and multi-flowered. I'm always amazed that the stem is strong enough to hold the flowers up, they are so enormous. 

There's even a second stem emerging which I hope will bring a second set of blooms.

As the evenings are lengthening noticeably now, I've been going outside for a breath of fresh air in the garden after work. There's a fair bit of tidying up to do out there, but I'm doing my best to ignore it and look for flowers. I was delighted to find that one of our hellebore plants is blooming away in the corner of the garden, and I hadn't noticed. Hellebore flowers tend to droop and hang their heads, so I always put them in a dish of water to appreciate their stunning patterns of dark speckles and pale stamens.

At the end of last week I decided to make cakes for my work colleagues to celebrate the fact that it was Friday. I made orange and almond cupcakes from this recipe, and they weren't in the least bit healthy but very delicious. They went down well with our coffees at morning break. I kept these back at home too for the three of us to enjoy.

Just outside the back door the winter-flowering honeysuckle is covered in tiny blooms, and smells so sweet that I picked some stems and brought them indoors. They're not the most spectacular flower so I added a hellebore for a bit of interest. They made a pretty little winter posy.

So there we go, some lovely things that I've been enjoying recently.

(Before I go, I must mention the fact that I recently discovered that I'm a 'no-replies blogger', and I had no idea! I just want to say that I like to be friendly and do love to hear from you all, so apologies if you've ever tried to contact me by e-mail and not been able to. I'm pretty sure I'm contactable now and have sorted it out. I still have the odd blip with the technological side of blogging, but am learning fast!)