Encore

 
It's hot.  A thick wadded eiderdown of heat has been pulled off Europe and up and over Britain and tucked in tightly, no room to move to get the covers off and stick a foot out to cool down.

I'm lucky that my Thursday work is as wife and mama, and Fridays we dress down at the salaried job so I've stayed fairly cool and we've had space and time to enjoy August's encore.

It's so very still. Yesterday it was quiet enough to hear the motorway from the garden, in an stagnant calm punctuated only by the shuddery whirr of washing machines up and down the village gearing up for their final spin.

A gold and yellow heat though, not the scorching white hot of full summer; a day-long sunset heat, a summer-set perhaps.  It may be warm but the laundry isn't drying as fast as I expected, and every time I turn around Kitty has added another pale straw leaf to the pile of foliage she's planning to have for snack.

We dressed to match the temperature and found we matched, well just about everything else; the swing, the season and even some newly finished handspun alpaca/merino.

We played hide-peepo with leaves and lay and looked at the big blue sky.

But it's Kitty who took the cooling off efforts to a whole new level.  Today her nursery had their water play dish out for the babies.  Imagine if you will, a large saucer shape filled with a couple of inches of water, and my little girl, dressed in a pretty blue frock, pink frilly knickers and pink flowery baby shoes.  What could possibly go wrong?

Did she splash her nanny? No 

Did she drench another baby? No

Did she climb straight over the edge, crawl to the centre and sit there giggling before anyone quite cottonned on to what she was doing? That's my girl!  I only wish I had a photo to show you.

As for the handspun, the first half had sat on my wheel for a while, but I picked it up again last week when I needed a little fibery calm in the midst of the run up to Kitty's party, and when H wanted company while he painted.  It's an alpaca/merino mix, mostly alpaca I think and it was part of the Socktopus fibre club many moons ago.  I spun an aran-weight ish singles and gave it a nice hot bath and a few thwacks before hanging it to dry.

I've got 192 yards from 100g and I've love to make some fingerless mitts with a leafy design because this weather's only forecast until Tuesday and there'll be days when I'll need them all too soon.