A Tale of Three Ones

Yesterday I finished one sock.

It's the first sock I've ever knitted and I'm quite pleased.  I did a short row heel and managed to not have any gaps or holes (although I did unravel it a few times to achieve that!). It's self patterning sock yarn just incase you thought I'd used loads of different colours - it's clever stuff.  I think the 2nd one will be quicker and easier.

A few weeks ago I went to the local silk mill sale and bought silk in the sale for £15.00 a metre and made one curtain for my dining room door/window.

It only needs one curtain as it's really window dressing as the window/door is internal.  Apparently the silk would have retailed at over £100 a metre when it was sold commercially a couple of years ago so I got a good deal.  It hangs beautifully and drapes onto the floor looking very opulent.

And today I spied one hellebore peeping up through the snow.

A sign of things to come.

Winter Reflections

No, I'm not going all poetic or philosophical on you, I mean these reflections:

Our snow only really arrived yesterday and the stillness of the river made the reflections really clear today.

Everything looked really crisp and clean and as you can see I was the only idiot  person having a walk down there today.

I'll leave you with the tiny snow covered cones of the Alder tree (I think).

Keep warm!

Nearly Narnia

Remember my favourite tree tunnel through Elveden Forest?  Today they were like something out of Narnia

beautiful, but not especially nice weather to drive in so I was quite relieved when the school I was heading to phoned to postpone our meeting.

Looking up it was possible to imagine Mr Tumnus arriving to greet me - but he didn't, and I'm now safely tucked up at home.  Hope you're all safe and warm

What's A Cat To Do?

When the weather's like this outside

what does a sensible cat do?

Make a cosy little nest under the table in one of mum's fabric piles of course!

Just snuggle about and move stuff around, until an old pillow and a bit of prefelt are in the perfect position, then sit back and relax.

 

And only move when you've had a perfect sleep as any unoccupied space will of course be reoccupied by your brother pretty quickly!

Nearly Ready for Christmas

We finally got real, proper snow here last weekend.  This is what my garden looked like at the beginning of the week.
 

I couldn't get into the greenhouse for several days, but fortunately the little paraffin heater kept going without requiring a top-up and everything in there seems to have survived fine without me.

Every year I end up racing around for Christmas at the last minute, and this year is no exception.  The snow hasn't helped that, but I think that finally I am nearly done.  The house is cleaned, the food is bought, the tree is up and the presents are nearly all bought. Of course I haven't wrapped anything yet and I still need to make the mince pies but there's still about 36 hours left isn't there!   Before I get wrapping though I think I should sample the chocolate biscuits, after all it would be wrong to offer them to guests without testing the quality first wouldn't it?!

I hope you all have wonderful Christmases and wish you all lots of happiness and peace in 2011.