Rite of Spring

Like most of you I am looking forward to the end of winter and the proper beginning of spring. In fact, looking forward so much I may a) fall over on my face or b) my eyes are going to pop out from looking forward with such enthusiasm. I was out with the dog today trudging through the mud and drizzle, but noticed the birds are already singing and there are small hopeful changes afoot...

There are buds on the trees...(this one, I think, some kind of maple)

Flowers on the winter jasmine in the (considerable) undergrowth in our garden (Monty Don, get your arse round here, there's stuff to be done);

Catkins on the Filbert (sing this to the tune of 'Tiptoe through the Tulips' and you can pass hours of otherwise idle time in musical joyfulness!);

Snail-eaten primroses...(our garden would make Kew's head gardener blush).

So - spring. Big deal. Stuff's growing. Well, it also means this.

Time to spring-clean the horror that is my craft room floor. And of course, most exciting of all, soon it will be warm enough to wear my (shock!) finished Liesl:

 I'm getting frighteningly good at actually finishing things. Hmm...with the possible exception of cleaning up rooms and knitting purple cardigans :-)
 

Diversion

Bonus points if you have spotted that this is not knitting. This week, I have been mostly stitching and sketching:

If I don't know what to embroider, I'll muck about with pastel or paints for a bit, to a) procrastinate a bit longer and b) to try out ideas. In the City & Guilds courses (a grand total of two courses I took but never finished. That's another story), they taught us to use the sketches as starting points. I've been afraid of drawing for years, ever since I left school with a miserable excuse for a qualification in Art. When I did the C&G, I learnt that sketching and drawing were just a means to an end, and that your sketches weren't supposed to look like Dürer's. Which is just as well, really.

Knitting vs stitching: well, of course, you can't watch Corrie and stitch simultateously, so I can only say that I've heard but not seen recent episodes...whereas I can enjoy the full spectacle when knitting.

I'm not sure if I've finished this or not, so it's sitting in a frame but isn't on the wall yet.

I think I'll keep going back to it. But there is the small matter of a purple cardigan that might just get in the way...