With apologies for recent inattention

We just had 'summer'. I had to go and see it while it lasted. 'Summer' apparently is a weather phenomenon in which it gets warm and sunny and stays that way for many days. I am reliably informed by Google that in some places in the world, this constancy of solar attention may even last for weeks (actually, Google even said months, but that can't be right surely?)

Happily, summer mostly looks like this:


With some knitting thrown in - it was good.

Anyway, now that we are back to torrential downpours interspersed with twinkles of sunshine, I can show you what has been on the needles during the Pimms season:



I fell victim to the craze for Baby Tulip jackets a while back and ordered a kit from Socktopus but never got around to knitting it - mainly because all the babies kept being boys. The horizon is now mercifully baby free for a little while but I knit this just because I wanted to - it's going in the drawer for later.

It's impossible to fault this pattern or yarn, as I knit through each colour change I decided then and there that I just had to have a sweater out of that colour - I think I may be planning a lot of sweaters!



The great thing is that the kit has plenty of leftovers - I contemplated a matching baby hat but as my one regret is that I will never wear this jacket, I think the leftovers might just become a hot water bottle cover (and yes that is a staple requirement of the English summer) so that I get to snuggle up with them.

For a big project I've picked up the Hidcote Garden Shawl that I started last summer and I'm gently cruising through in the evenings. As it resembles nothing so much as the remnants of the interaction between a tap dancing spider and a ball of garden twine at present there is no picture.

Suffice to say it used to be this big and now it's this big. See - I knew that would help.

My train knitting has taken a little variation too - of the Mason Dixon variety:


This is the first of I suspect several tab topped hand towels from the second Mason Dixon book - knit out of Sugar & Cream dishcloth cotton in colours Hot Blue and Summer Splash. It usually lives buttoned onto my oven door, which was not clean enough to permit photos, and is in frequent use. The chief advantage of having the towel buttoned to the oven seems to be that no-one uses it 'accidentally' to dry the plates, pull something out of the oven, or wipe down the surfaces - genius!

The surfaces have been in need of wiping, because I've been baking:






And then icing!







Flowers and butterflies to match the flowers and butterflies outside - and delicious into the bargain!