Tuesday 19th April - In other news

 I mentioned that I was knitting, and un-knitting;

The 'Baby Surprise' Jacket took a couple of restarts, but is now underway;

I have knitted this pattern twice before. At this stage it is impossible to visualise what is going on. The blue line (deliberately chose to be easily identified once I have finished knitting!) will form the cuffs of the little sleeves, and the top of the back. Somehow. At the moment I am knitting in towards what appears to be the centre, decreasing by two stitches at each of the diagonals. Eventually, once I am down to 90 stitches from the original 160, I will increase by two stitches along the diagonals, creating a weird 3-dimensional shape. By some magical sleight of hand, the lower edge of the blue strip will be folded up and over, and something sewn to something else to make shoulder seams, and hey presto - a jacket! It worked the last two times so I am hopeful.

The cardigan that I was ripping out is almost completely unravelled; 

One thought I have is to just knit up another 'Surprise' jacket, following the same instructions with thicker yarn and larger needles, to see if I get a me-size jacket. A better idea might be to get hold of the book 

 which has the pattern written up to make a number of different versions in different sizes. It is rather expensive though... The annoying thing is that I remember cutting the pattern out of the Sunday Times magazine about 35 years ago, and throwing it away about ten years ago. It just goes to show that you should never throw anything away, ever. Not never.

The weather was so warm on Friday that we spent a lot of time sitting out in the garden under the tracery of the apple tree branches, just coming into blossom. I took my tablet out, intending to read, but the light was too bright, so, using the stylus and a fairly primitive drawing program produced this instead;

I've not really got my head around how the different 'pens' in the program (called Bamboo) work, so it was all a bit hit and miss. Sadly the following days grew progressively cooler, until today it really wasn't warm enough to sit outside. The scattered pink dots of blossom have given way to a complete canopy of white petals, and the big old oak at the bottom of the garden, always the last to realise that it is Spring, has suddenly burst into leaf.

Yesterday we finished the Hot Cross Buns, and tomorrow we will start on the Simnel cake. I do like to make a celebration last as long as possible!