Squirrel Nutkin goes a roving and a pillaging ...

The other morning I had a troupe of acrobats in my garden. They really ought to have been performing in a circus. 

As I poured my first coffee something caught my eye. I glanced out the window to see the peanut feeder arcing through the air as though it had been catapulted out of the laburnum tree. Slinky Paws and his missus sat high in the branches, watching me, watching them and wondering whether they could safely harvest their bounty on the grass.

Carry on rocking that spring bunting ...

The other week I started making spring bunting. Well I've carried on down that route, and now I've got quite a merry little string of contrasting patterns and textures.

Spring Bunting

I used my basic pattern, but played around with it to mix things up and add variety.

I'm using Costa Brava Knitting's 4 ply organic cotton range - colours Rose Blush and Honeysuckle, and I'm knitting on size 11 (3 mm) needles to a tension in stocking stitch of 26 stitches x 36 rows on a 10 cm x 10 cm square.

Step into my office ...

I love, love, love the month of May - especially when the sun puts in an appearance. My kitchen door is thrown open, and I live on the terrace. How do you like my office? Please do step outside ...

I come out here on sunny days during the rest of the year - often wrapped up warm with coats and scarves against the elements. I leave the parasol in situ all year round - just on the off-chance,  although it's sometimes more of a rainy day umbrella. It feels fabulous to be able to take up my al fresco lifestyle every time the sun comes out and there's just a smidgeon of blue sky.

New stitch pattern ...

Yesterday I decided that I wanted to make a summer cardigan. It's going to be one of those relaxed loose-fitting numbers. I'm going to use some wonderful Costa Brava Knitting DK Bamboo in Sandy Beach, and I'm searching around for a nice openwork pattern that will work well with the variegated wool and the summer vibe that I'm hoping to channel.

One of my favourite parts of searching around for a new design is the bit where I get to play and try different stitch patterns with the yarn that I'm proposing to use. With the sun beating down through the glass roof of the conservatory yesterday afternoon the WonderDog and I enjoyed a merry old time playing or knitting sample squares to see how things turned out and to check my tension. I'd got a stash of Radio 4 podcasts to listen to, the child was elsewhere at a birthday party and it was the very best sort of me-time imaginable.

And this is what we eventually settled on:

Georgian Embroidery Workshop ...

Last Wednesday I headed over to Osterley Park, where their lovely volunteers were hosting a Georgian embroidery workshop. It sounded amazing, and, whilst my terrible eyesight makes embroidery a bit of a challenge for me, I was intrigued to learn about a group of ladies who were keeping alive the skills of the eighteenth century needlewomen. Bravo to them!

As it turned out the workshop was on whitework, which involves white stitch-work on the finest and most delicate of cotton cloth to produce an effect (when done well!) not dissimilar to that of fine lace. With my limited experience and wonky eyes it would have been difficult to have come up with something that was a greater personal challenge for me. However, the wonderful ladies assured me that they would not be put out in the least if I failed to place a single sensible-looking stitch in my fabric. The object of the workshop was to learn, to be inspired and to enjoy.

The ladies leading the class had very kindly brought along their own favourite books on the topic, which they invited us to look at for some inspiration.

Ham House ...

They say it's haunted ... very, very haunted ... .

Ham House, Richmond viewed from the Duchess's Garden

And I guess if a house's been standing since 1610, just playing the statistics there's got to have been one or two residents over that length of time who were reluctant to move on - especially when the setting's as splendid as this one. So if you're going to go looking for spooks and ghosts and things that go bump in the night ... then this house is probably a pretty good place to start.

Sloppy Joe Sweater ...

If you’re looking for a quick, easy pattern that will just about knit itself then this baby has your name written all over it. It’s a super easy, knit-in-the-round (all the way up the armpits) jumper that self stripes so you don’t have to do much else to add interest to the design. I’ve gone all out with a simple open work texture created by double-wrapping the right needle on every 10^th row to create a drop stitch row that makes it look even more summery and beach-casual. 

Then on the next row (row 1 on the pattern repeat) you simply knit each double loop once to produce a row of extra long stitches that creates the textured open work. 

It’s conceived as a loose fitting, anything-goes kind of look that measures 20”/ 51 cm from armpit to armpit, and measures 45 cm/ 17.5” from the armpit down to the bottom of the waistband. I've knit it in Costa Brava Knitting's DK Bamboo in Cobalt & Lime. This yarn knits to a tension of 22 stitches x 28 rows on stocking stitch on a 10cm x 10 cm square, and I used 400 g of yarn to knit this baby. That's 8, 50 g balls or around 800 metres of bamboo yarn. It's a lovely silky yarn with great drape. 

Just read on for the pattern ...

Anniversary of Anne Boleyn's arrest

On this day, 2nd May, in the year 1536 Anne Boleyn was arrested on the orders of her husband, King Henry VIII. She must have known the writing was on the wall. Her nemesis, Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had died at the beginning of January, and Anne's position went from precarious to hopeless when she miscarried the child she was carrying on the very day of Catherine's funeral. With Catherine dead, and many believing that the marriage to Anne was a sham, Henry was free to marry another without any question-marks hanging over the new union.

At the time the Imperial Ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, remarked of Anne, "She has miscarried of her saviour".

 She must have known all of this at the time. She'd already seen evidence that Henry had his eye on her lady-in-waiting, Jane Seymour. A clever operator like Anne would have realised that she was fast falling out of favour and quickly becoming expendable.

Hever Castle in Kent, the childhood home of Anne Boleyn

Celebration of Spring Bunting

In honour of the season – and in the hope that it might inspire the weather to play along – I’ve been working up some spring bunting in the lighter shades of pale. I’m using Costa Brava Knitting's 4 ply organic cotton range – colours Rose Blush and Honeysuckle, which are so very subtle together. I've knit on size 11 (3 mm) needles to a tension of 26 stitches x 36 rows on a 10 cm x 10 cm square. 

Happy Earth Day 2016 !

They've been celebrating Earth Day, 22nd April, since 1970. It all kicked off in response to a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California in 1969. At first it was a bit of a fringe event, but by 1990 amidst rising concerns about global warming and the detrimental effect we were having on the environment, Earth Day went mainstream. Now about a billion of us do something on this date to mark our support for environmental protection.

It's co-ordinated globally by the not-for-profit organisation Earth Day Network, and has become the largest secular celebration on the planet. You can find out what's happening in your area on their website: http://www.earthday.org/.

I know there are lots of climate-change doubters out there, and folk who challenge the science on all of this. I'm not really qualified to argue with them, but it seems to me to be an issue that's just too big for us to gamble on. The downside of getting it wrong, for the sake of our children and the world we leave behind, is just too terrible to think about.

So for Earth Day 2016 here's my own little collage of favourite moments from the last 12 months, by way of celebrating Mother Earth and her rich bounty.

All the best for now and Happy Earth Day!

Bonny x

Ode to the Costa Brava poppy ...

If there's one flower that really makes my heart sing it's the wild field poppy. Here on the Costa Brava there are millions of them, all over the shop, dancing in the breeze, and looking splendid in the warm spring sunshine. To me they represent pure joy.

The Platja de la Fonollera i Mas Pinell ... a heavenly beach

The other day Emi and I were in Pals. We hadn't gone there for anything in particular. It had just occurred to us that it would be a good place to take the WonderDog for his afternoon stroll. As it happens Pals is the most amazing town you could ever hope to visit, but the thing is once you're there, inside the town, you tend not to look beyond its walls. Everything inside is stunning, so why would you? Well I was standing on the terrace by the 11th century Torre de les Horres waiting for Emi to finish buying a (toy!) sword in one of the tourist shops when my eye was drawn to these amazing islands, sitting on the horizon, just off the coast.

They were stunning in the afternoon sunshine. I was amazed as to how I'd manage to miss them before. I've been to Pals more times than I can count. I've wandered around with my camera clenched to my face taking photos of everything, but I've never actually looked outside of the wonderful little town I was visiting. And just look what I missed over there on the seaward horizon!

Emi and the WonderDog were amenable to going on a wild goose chase in search of the islands, so we all piled into the car and headed off in the direction of Platja de Pals, the official town beach, which is some little distance removed from the town itself.