Knitting and daffodils

I've been going a bit mad in the garden recently, including taking a day off work to catch up with some gardening (!), and we had a lovely afternoon out today to see some daffodils, so I'll put some gratuitous daffodil photos in this post, but leave most of the garden update for garden-at-the-beginning-of-April, to make room for the knitting update.

A couple of people have messaged  me to say they've had trouble leaving comments, and I know I've struggled with some other Blogger blogs in the last week or two. If you want to leave a comment and are having trouble, please let me know - my email's in my profile on here or my Rav profile is here.

A couple of projects have been finished this week. I finally finished the KAL blanket from last year (!), just in time as I will be seeing the lucky recipient who's having it as a birthday present next weekend and want to take it with me, as it's a bit big to put in the post.

I'm pleased with how it's turned out. The squares aren't quite all the same size, but the crochet edging helped even it up a bit.

And I produced another tea cosy. Last year I knitted one for an old-lady-at-church, who wanted one to match her kitchen. Well, it turned out that old-lady-at-church thought her friend would like one too, so I ended up knitting another, identical, one! It's the Terrific Tea Cosy pattern that I've made a few times now. I am kind of hoping that old-lady-at-church hasn't got any more friends who would like tea cosies though...

And I'm trying to find some yarn to knit a jumper for my nephew's birthday in May. He apparently would like an Auntie-knitted jumper (thought he might be getting a bit too old for these things) but it has to be soft and bright red. I've settled on the Intrepid Pullover pattern from Interweave Knits, now I just need to source the yarn. I'm thinking either Patons Smoothie DK, or Sirdar Baby Bamboo (but without letting on to him that the yarn has "baby" in its name, as he'll be 6 and would be Totally Mortified).

How did I get so old and wrinkly that my youngest nephew is 6?! Although I now have three grey hairs, so it's obviously downhill from now on.

This afternoon we went for an afternoon out to Valley Gardens, as I'd heard rumours of some amazing daffodils at this time of year. And we weren't disappointed.

Some bits were very familiar. I went to university very close to here, so I've walked past this pool many times (usually whilst avoiding revising for exams/with an essay deadline looming etc)

 But I hadn't ventured into the gardens themselves before, and they're spectacular. With a lot of rhododendrons (we later discovered that it's the home of the national collection of rhododendrons, which would explain why there's rather a lot!).

 And beautiful swathes of daffodils as far as the eye could see!

These are some of the daffodils out at home. I planted the same varieties together, so they group into different coloured clumps around the garden. Apart from at the far end, where I obviously forgot to plant any at all.

Think that's all for now. I'm away next weekend so I'm not sure when my next blog update will be.