More knitting

Last May, when I had my final wedding dress fitting up in Newark, Mum and I decided on a trip to Southwell afterwards, where the Little Wool Shop is.

One of those amazing shops that isn't very big and has a heck of a lot of lovely stuff in it. I was very tempted by various things, but loved a sample they had on display of Isabella, a Noro jumper. So I bought Noro Catwalk and 3 balls of Kureyon sock yarn to make it in shade s420.

And I finally cast this on last week and got knitting. I love the way the colours are coming out, although an adult jumper in 4 ply is going to take an age to knit. I'm not at all convinced I'd want to knit socks with Kureyon sock yarn,  it's a little bit too harsh/thick/thin, I think, but I haven't had any problems with it breaking yet. I've also been practising Continental knitting on this as it's mostly plain stocking stitch - I usually knit English style, but learnt Continental several years ago but am now very out of practice! It's on 3mm needles (see what I mean about how long it's going to take?!)

I've also finished the Bonfire Cowl from Yarn Forward magazine, in the Manos del Uruguary Maxima yarn that I bought at Iknit back in January. This is lovely yarn, all soft and squoooshy to knit with, and the colours are great! It takes exactly one skein to make a cowl, although I don't think I'd cast on as many stitches if I was going to make it again as it seems quite big.

And two more blanket squares - this is impressive as these are the February and March squares, and it's still only March! Someone asked me in the comments - the yarn I'm using is a mixture, all in aran weight, but bought at various wool shops around the country in various local sheep breed wools. These two are in Pure Southdown wool, purchased at Creative Crafts in Sheringham, probably about five years ago?I seem to have an inability to use a tape measure, in theory these two are both blocked to 10 inches, despite looking different. Then I checked against the January square, which I seem to have blocked to 9 inches. Oops.

Outside, I've planted 50 snowdrops and 25 bluebells, mostly around the new standard apple tree, but some elsewhere.

Fixed up some trellis to support the espalier apple tree. Both the trees are showing signs of coming into blossom, a good sign considering we only planted them in November!

And I think this is a sedum poking through in the front garden, but I could be wrong. Anyone any good at plant identification? It looks like the sedum pictures on Google images...

I've just finished reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. Not the most cheerful read ever, rather chilling, especially when it mentions the earthquakes and "large waves" that came before the end of the world as we know it. The main character seem to be the last remaining human, who is living amongst the devastation of the world after an unspecified (you find out at the end) disaster of human making, alongside some odd-sounding not-quite-humans called the Children of Crake. The action jumps between his life now and back in the past through his school days, university and what brought the world to this state of affairs, shown through his friendship with Crake. It is very very chilling as you can begin to see how things were going to turn out as the plot advanced, and the sheer stupidity of the humans and the damage they've done to the world. I hadn't actually intended to read this one, but my April reading group book is The year of the flood, which the OH read, then we realised that it was a sequel to Oryx and Crake so I thought it made sense to read this one first.

Thank you for all of the comments on recent posts. I think I've managed to answer any questions - either directly or on here, but do leave more comments, I love receiving them! I've got several things on in the next couple of weeks, so I'm not expecting to blog again for probably a fortnight, maybe longer?