Garden of Dreams

In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful. ~Abram L. Urban

My shawl is finished - and it's huge! I started knitting the day after my birthday last year, and finished a week and a bit after my birthday this year so perhaps this is a shawl of almost birthdays.

After a gargantuan marathon of knitting last weekend, aided and abetted by my MIL who sat and stitched and chatted and played along to Millionaire with me, I cast off the final row to the accompaniment of Andy Murray's success on Monday. And here it is



Pre-blocking; my Hidcote Garden; portable and requiring very little in the way of weeding (that reminds me I only deadheaded half the Pinks this evening - it's going to look rather unusual in the morning)

If the Murray match on Monday was tense, it was nothing to the ebb and flow of my confidence in the remaining yarn. I would be convinced that I'd make it, then berating myself for going to look at the tapestry yarn in lunchtime to find a match and not actually buying any.

In the end ...


We have this - about a span's worth of yarn, too light for my scales to register any weight. The rest of the yarn has been tangled into a beautiful cobweb of lavender beds and rustling leaves.

I blocked it out on Tuesday with water, Eucalan (the lavender flavour!) and just a wee bit of perspiration as the shawl grew beyond my wildest imagination, my towels and the length of my sewing room. It ended up with one end pinned up against the bookcases and the other tucked under the desk pinned into a towel that was hastily covering up all of the computer wiring!

I could show it to you now, but this magnum opus deserves a proper showcase and my garden is currently home to an avocado bath (worn), an avocado basin (of a different hue to the bath) and an avocado loo (also slightly different). Reams of avocado tiles have been transported to the tip.

Whilst my MIL suggests that we sink the bath into the garden and arrange the basin as the water fountain into it I think I may be able to do better for a backdrop. The shawl and I are going on a picnic tomorrow come rain or shine and the camera (and two photographers) are coming too.

Those in the area might just be able to guess where I'm going - but shhh - I'll show you tomorrow, just keep your fingers crossed that it's sunny!