making and reading

I took this photo for January's Yarn Along and I'm only just getting around to writing this in time for February's. We read the Secret Garden for my WI book group. I thought I still had my childhood copy somewhere, and I did. I have a shelf of childhood favourites, one day I'll show you. I loved the Secret Garden when I was  a girl and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it again. The wonder of the garden awakening in the spring is just as magical to me now as it was forty-odd years ago. It made me feel eager for spring too. There is one little narcissus by the front door which is showing a little bit of yellow bud, and my rosemary is flowering but other than that things are still decidedly bare. Every year around this time I wish I had snowdrops in the garden. Maybe this year I will remember to plant some. I'm buying daffodils for the kitchen windowsill every time I shop, they are so cheery and definitely worth the £1 outlay. I get much more than a pound's worth of pleasure from them. I am keen to get my sweet peas planted, as I do most years, but it's a bit early yet. I can't decide whether to take the frugal option and buy seeds or to order seedlings which already have a head start. 

Talking of sweet peas, I'm crocheting a Sweet Pea blanket, which is a crochet-along at Lucy's blog, Attic24. Lots of people are making it at the same time, though as I am a fairly new crocheter and slow,  I'm poodling along a couple of weeks behind. I'll get there! 

I've also just finished a knitted scarf, here's an impromptu photo of it that I just took sitting on my laptop (the scarf, not me). If I'm going to start blogging again, and I just might, I really miss it!, I should get my decent camera out instead of my phone. 

I enjoyed knitting the scarf, it was a simple Old Shale/Feather and Fan type pattern, three rows garter stitch and then the fourth row a simple pattern. I got the variegated yarn in suffragette colours from etsy, and finished it in time to wear it the other evening when our speaker at WI was Helen Pankhurst, great granddaughter of Emmeline. 



Joining Ginny and others for Yarn Along