Thursday 1st May - a perfect day!

 Today was right up there with the best days of the year so far...

I slept in for an hour, for which I was grateful after yet another rather disturbed night... (it's getting better, I've had a bit of a cold so I wake in the middle of the night needing to blow my nose!)..,

BB watered the garden after breakfast as it didn't get done yesterday evening. They say it's better to do the watering in the morning anyway.

I had a lovely piano lesson and chat on zoom before lunch...

BB rescued lunch, which I had loaded into the crockpot after breakfast. Unfortunately I set the control to 'low' instead of 'high'. Between us we wrangled it (red Thai chicken) ito the microwave for a speedy finish and it came out tasting none the worse...

I got into the garden, and between us we have earthed up the potatoes again, and I've planted out my supermarket basil and parsley, and sown tree spinach and lettuce and rainbow chard. Stirring up the earth in one pot I discovered it was FULL of SLUG EGGS! I'm glad I dealt with those now before they turned into hungry molluscs!

And Ang has received my Collaboration stitching, so I can post the pictures;

Here's Ang's, about childhood memories of beach huts

Her Aunt and Uncle had a beach hut, so that's where they and the children spent long Summer days. 

This is going to be my book cover when we've finished. It just so happens that the four pictures on the back will be each of the four seasons. 

For my April stitching I created a sampler of potential embellishment stitches.

I used perle cotton throughout, and really like the texture and boldness. I was puzzled about how to get my stitching even, and eventually remembered I had a sashiko kit. The fabric in the kit had a very faint grid printed on it; you can just make it out at the top of the picture. Then I just tried to add so juch stitching that I would obscure the grid!

The yellow circles are meant to be Easter eggs. I'm thinking of adding a bit to them the next time we swap covers.

This month we are sewing along all the vertical edges of the patches.  I've made a start already...

Music

I listened to an excellent piano solo version of Percy Grainger's 'English Country Garden', and copied the link, when this piano duo started playing it! I love the absolute concentration, and how they have to have their hands overlapping each other... if you were in any doubt as to how much fun they are having, just look for the little smile at the end...