April showers

What a miserable day it's turned out to be! This morning it was gloriously sunny, I was quite excited about getting outside on the balcony and doing some gardening. The seeds in the greenhouse all seem to be pretty well compared to previous attempts at seed growing.

However the sun didn't last and it's rained on and off all day. Boo! We went out for lunch this afternoon but failed to get a sunday roast - literally no where near where we live make sunday dinners anymore. This should be a crime! So I got a burrito and the Mr-non-crochet got a steak.




As it's so dull I can't really take any pictures of what I've been working on but I can tell you that thanks to Alice @ Crochet with Raymond I have been knitting!!

Nevermind, what I can do is show you some cards I've been making for the million weddings I'm going to this year (not a sniff at an invite to the Royal Wedding, think my invite got lost in the post). The pattern is the Sweet Heart Crochet from Bella Dia, the small one is just a slightly smaller modified version and they're just hand stitched onto card.




And even more excitingly I can show you this!!



Ikea have these reduced to a mere £20! My Local Yarn Shop Purl City Yarns has these in the larger size, and obviously with their collection of millions of amazing colours they look fab! I might only have enough yarn to fill one square but I love it :-D And it's freed up some other shelves for J's fish keeping equipment...

I will leave you with some nice photos I took in March, before it started raining... I'm off to knit! x x x

Getting ready for Spring

Hello! Welcome back :-) Today has been such a beautiful day it would be a shame not to give it some credit! We've been warned that the sun won't last so I'm making the very most of it.

This is the view from our flat, it's not very pretty (not like some of these views, and these) but a lot goes on down there and I find it very interesting to watch the canal boats, trams, trains and rowers on the river.



This is Salford, our neighbourly city.

The weather up here (we're on the 7th floor) is pretty kind to my plants so most escape all the ground frost.



My bulbs have started to come up nicely so we'll have lots of colour soon!





It's so nice when everything starts growing again! After Christmas I really just want winter to be over :-)



Before & after!

I decided to get busy this afternoon by sowing some seeds while J was sorting out the millions of CDs we have in boxes!



I got to put into action my new scieve which makes me feel like I'm looking for gold!



Fingers crossed this little lot will make it, I've not always had much luck with sowing seeds (apart from sweet pea and nasturtiums which I think must be the easiest thing in the world to grow!)



I think I took too many photos to show them all so I've made a little mosaic to summarise :-)

1) Some tiny sempervivum "chicks" that I found in the compost, they'd rooted themselves so now they're in this little dish :-)
2) A plant I found in the green house, it has such lovely colours!
3) A hand carved muchroom from the Manchester Christmas Markets
4) My lovely polka dot watering can, I tried not to use it to keep it nice but it's got a great pouring action!
5) Tibetan Buddhist Prayer Flags from Glastonbury Festival
6) My hard work!
7) Hyacinth from Wythenshawe Market
8) The other end of the balcony
9) My £1.99 peony!

I'm off to watch Wonders of the Universe now with the lovely Professor Cox, byee!

x x x x

The garden centre

It’s taken two years but I finally visited the Hulme Community Garden Centre and I regret not going sooner because it’s really lovely. It’s run as a not for profit centre and as well as being a garden centre it’s a community space for people to come and garden which is great for local children.



My favourite area is pot rescue, there are probably hundreds of plastic pots, tubs, containers and troughs given away for nothing and there’s a neat little roof garden which shows what you can do with not a lot of space.



I came away with a lot of bulbs for next spring, costing something crazy like 10/15p per bulb – bargain!

September

Better late than never

My seeds have finally started to flower :-)