Simplicity ... is what I am aiming for

The Secret Pal 14 exchange came to an end on September 30th.
This is not the best picture, but here is my final parcel from Heather , which I picked up a couple of weeks ago.
As usual it took me ages to be at home with enough daylight to take a picture.
(Now I see it on the screen it looks rather too dark.)

What I can tell you, is that once again Heather came up trumps for me.
She excelled herself with this parcel, sending me Noro Silk Garden sock yarn, Black Eyed Susan seeds for the garden, the "Simplicity" soap of my title and the most perfect purple "Velvet bilberry" Jitterbug sock yarn.

She must know just how much I need to simplify my life, maybe using this soap will have the required effect!

While my parcel was languishing in our local sorting office I was at Ally Pally for the Knitting and Stitching show.
I stopped and looked at the Jitterbug yarn, and decided against buying it then.
Somehow this seems most apt.

The UKHKA stand is now called "Knit1 - pass it on".
We had a good day in a quieter position than in previous years.
Not so many school and college groups found us, maybe fewer were visiting.
As a result it was easier to teach those who did find us.
I even managed to demystify cabling for one knitter.

Meanwhile, Keila has been my downstream pal in SP14.
Throughout the exchange I found it hard not to let on to my identity, and had the utmost fun spoiling her.

Finally, I made sense of my camera ...

... and can now reveal my latest parcel from my secret pal. Thank you so much - you got it all just right!And here we have: a fantastic project bag in bright colours, just my style!
Some fibres in a bright jewel greeny blue; some mysterious seeds (they came unlabelled) that I don't immediately recognise; and the most exquisite fine mohair yarn.

All this came recently, but I haven't been at home in daylight hours much recently, and then the camera batteries were flat!!

Excuses! Excuses, I know, but all true.

Meanwhile we popped over to Lincoln for the AIA conference, and took a side trip to Gainsborough where we saw this lovely passion flower creeping out from under the metal hoarding of a building site.

In Lincoln itself I was tempted by the texture carved into this stone plinth. It looks as though it would be really easy to translate this into crochet.

These are the latest socks off the needles: I now have a sneeking suspicion that the bright red wool element might not be machine washable, so their first wash was by hand. I will have to try felting a bit of the leftover yarn before I next want to wash them.

Slipping into bad habits ....

... once more.

Having joined up to this round of Secret Pal, I'd had the intention to keep up with blogging.
But for the first time in a year I've succumbed to my usual virus, despite not having the time to feel unwell.
Good news - voice loss 1.5 days
Bad news - earache 8 days now

Best news - we are not open on Monday, so I get a weekend despite working tomorrow.

Knitting news - I have just finished another pair of socks in a mix of yarns.
Half Regia cotton/half some unlabelled sock wool - pics to follow.
Latest pair started in bamboo/wool - one row of each.

... just missed ...

I knew that it was close to the date that I started blogging, and just checked.

In two years I have racked up 111 posts. That is a lot more than I had expected.

Now on to today's business.

We had a day out yesterday, so had to do a lot around the house today.

The rudbeckia is still going strong, and looked glorious in the morning sun.

The flowers are at my head height. They are interfering with the pears, so I don't mind cutting them, and as you saw already we have had some in the house for weeks now.

This year we planted a couple of blueberries. This one yielded 5 dried up little aplogies for fruit, but is making up for it with a beautiful display of colour now. The other one had one fat fruit, that I cut in half for our cereal a week ago.This charming character was lazing near our pond this afternoon, and unusually made no attempt to move when I arrived. If only we could train these cats to use their own gardens rather than ours for a toilet, I'd feel a lot more friendly towards them.

And here are the promised sock pictures. I started out with the remainder of the red yarn for Sylvi's socks, and tried it out with a ball of rainforest Parrot. It was promising, but lacking something.

Then I tried the Parrot out with this yarn. Again it was promising, but also sadly lacking in character.So I went further than usual, and added them together. Here is the result. Juggling three balls is a bit of a pain, but the result is well worth it. With three strands being carried, it may prove to be a bit thicker at the beginning of the round. I'll have to wait until they are finished, worn and washed to see how it all works out. In the meantime, the effect is just right for me.

Travelling, gardening and knitting too!

I seem to have been on the go for a long time.

During the past month or so we have been travelling a certain amount.

First Ian and I snuck in a weekend in the Czech Republic at the end of June, visiting my friend Sylvi.

Ian had to be in Prague for a meeting on the Tuesday, and so we took off on the Friday, and visited Sylvi who lives an hour and a half's drive north of the airport.

We had a good time with her, and saw some sun.

Meanwhile it was raining here!

Then a couple of weeks later we had a quick visit to Hertfordshire for a family party.

The next day we flew from London City airport to Stuttgart to visit Carola.

We managed a quick side trip during the week to see another friend of mine, Tom, who lives very near Basel.

In the meantime it rained here again, and that is why our path looked like this at the weekend:

After dodging about a bit with my secateurs, trying to avoid the ants, it looked like this:

I meant to take a third picture later on, but it was too dark by the time I remembered. It all looks a lot better after being swept.

In order to cope with all the geranium foliage I had to turn the compost heap, so we are all set up to be able to tidy the garden sometime soon.

Sitting out in the garden for breakfast on Sunday (before rediscovering the path) the sun was shining through these honesty seeds:

All of which brings me to the latest socks. This time they are for Sylvi. She asked for reds/rusts, and this is my mix of yarns:

The dull blue one is a pale patterned yarn that I overdyed with a shocking pink to dull it down.

Together it all comes out like this:

The next socks are meant to be for Carola. I haven't decided on a colour scheme yet.

Real rain ... and the latest socks

We had next to no rain for the whole of April .

Coupled with unseasonably warm weather, everything in the garden is now about three weeks ahead of normal.

Well, the past couple of days have made a difference.

Yesterday, Sunday, it rained pretty much solidly all day.

When we had a bit of rain last week, we took advantage of it, and topped up our garden pond by siphoning off water from our rainwater tanks. The pond looked much better, the frogs and newts had more wet space, and we had half empty tanks.

Yesterday's rain has filled them again, and then they overflowed like mad.

The ground had been made receptive by the rain last week, and the temperatures are much more normal for this time of year. Today it ranged from 4 C to 11 C (40 F to 52F), and felt so much fresher.

Which brings me round to the subject of sock knitting.

When we had the warm weather, I found that I had to think about where I would be during the day, and dress my feet accordingly. The concrete floor in the Art Room makes it cool most of the year. Wearing handknit wool socks seems to work well when I am there.

These latest socks have been a long time in gestation.

I bought the Regia Stretch colour 81(Clown) when I first visited Blackberry Yarns in Mountsorrel. That was not long after it opened, roughly a couple of years ago.

Ian and I made a trip by train to the nearest station, in Sileby, and then walked across the fields, pausing to look at Sileby Mill on the River Soar on the way.

Recently I came across some Skacel Trampoline Stretch colour 239.

I had never heard of it, which, given the multiplicity of available sock yarns, is not too surprising. This has the same fibre compostion: 70% wool/23% nylon/7% polyester (elite).

Alongside one another they don't look too promising:

Both are rather bright, and I don't warm to knitting either of them on their own. Together though, I get the perfect "Liquorice Allsorts" effect:

Now I just want the weather/ArtRoom to stay cool enough for me to get to the end of the boring, slow growing, 3 x 3 rib tops so that I can wear them.