A sprint towards the finish line

Guilt free cake

At the start of the week my eagerly awaited copy of One Skein arrived. The approaching birthday of a friend was the only excuse I needed to immediately rummage through my stash and cast on for a knitted cupcake. I used some cream handknit cotton for the base and for the top a combination of 2 shades of Kidsilk Haze and a strand of 4ply soft. I cannot even begin to tell you how ridiculously pleased with myself I am. I love this knitting recipe, I fear this may be the first of many knitted cakes for me, I may even purchase some novelty yarn for the first time in my life. In the same way that I often have the urge to add shockingly lurid food colourings to my otherwise organic, E number free baking I now feel the need to make lurid, shocking and artificial yarn tops. My "embellishments" box is looking a little empty, I need to shop for beads and things to decorate my knitted cakes. I almost cut up one of Tilly's plastic necklaces for this one, luckily the voice of reason stepped in just in time. Of course, providing I don't purchase too many icing yarns, this project is a great stash reducer too.

I even made a little card to go with the cake, I'm rather pleased with this too and I used up some of that quilting fabric that I've been stashing over the years which makes me feel a little less guilty about the fact that I've never actually begun to quilt with any of it. OK, I realise it is only a very small amount I have used, but hey, it's a start.

I don't seem to have had much opportunity to blog this week. Dylan returned to school on Tuesday and Tilly was back at playgroup on Wednesday so mostly I've been catching up in the house and garden. We moved into this house in October so we really haven't seen much of the garden yet, it is lovely waiting to see what emerges and suddenly this week I noticed these blooms errupting from a rather dark corner. Late for Camelias, everyone elses seem to have been out for a few weeks now but these bushes are tucked down the side of the cottage on a North facing wall. I am delighted with them, my previous gardens have been missing camelias and rhodedendrons inspite of the fact that I love them dearly. I like the dark glossy leaves and the big, glad, glorious blooms. They remind me of Ireland too, so many places we visited as children had huge towering avenues of rhodedendrons where we would have wonderful adventures. Our little woodland area is bursting with life too, the daffodils are fading but bluebells are casting that gorgeous blue haze everywhere the oaks are beginning to unfurl their leaves. Another month of course and that whole are will be knee high in nettles and bramble but at the moment it is a lovely place to sit down for five minutes. On the downside it turns out much of the emerging green leaves in the garden flower beds are in fact ground elder. The first house we bought together had a garden full of ground elder too, I don't use weedkillers so I will just have to keep digging and mulching I suppose.