…but very slowly, given the teeny weeny needles I’m using and the fiddly pattern – which is, however, very pretty. Things should speed up when I make it to the ankle though, because then the pattern switches into stocking stitch, which should whizz along in comparison.

The yarn is good enough to eat! Thank you Three Irish Girls – this one is gorgeous!!

Helen

All right, I’m joking…

But on a hazy day, when the German side is lost in the mist, looking across Lake Constance (the Bodensee to the German speakers out there) is the nearest thing to being by the seaside. I love it there – I really miss the Northumbrian coast where I grew up – and it has the same feeling of space. Unfortunately the beaches and waves and the salty smell are missing (as are fish and chips eaten out of newspaper wrappings), but it’s almost of good. Also missing is the blasting wind that is ever-present in Northumberland – and if I’m honest, that’s something I don’t miss!

We had lunch in Rorschach looking out over the lake last week – and enjoyed the very last day of good weather, tanking up on some sunshine to see us over the winter!!

Here is the old Cornhouse, where boats used to bring in corn across the lake. It’s now been restored and is the symbol of Rorschach.

We drove over the hills to St. Anton on the way home – but unfortunately the haze stopped us getting the full view of the Alps and into Austria – but it’s still a pretty place and we found a lovely restaurant right up high to eat Vermicelles in the sunshine. Vermicelles are a speciality made of chestnuts – very sweet and delicious and generally only to be had in the autumn – sorry, but I was too busy digging in to take a photo!

I don’t know if there are many of you out there who have grown up by the ocean, but I really think that the ocean is something that is in your blood. Given the choice, I’d live in a cottage overlooking the sea (preferably on a Scottish island). I love the sea – it’s somehow relaxing and exhilarating and totally wild and uncontrollable all at the same time. It says freedom very loudly to me.

However, here I am, living in very beautiful land-locked Switzerland and unlikely to relocate anywhere in the forseeable future – and I really do love it here too!

So I’ll just carry on dreaming of the sea and going up to the Bodensee to pretend 🙂

Helen

Isn’t this gorgeous?

It’s Velvet Sock yarn from Three Irish Girls and the colour is Sproutling, which i think is a real delight of a name! It’s 100% merino and it’s GORGEOUS!!!

I’m trying out a new sock pattern with it – Vintage Quilt Socks by Judy Sumner, which is one of the patterns in 10 Secrets of the Laidback Knitters, which I blogged about the other day. See, I told you you needed to buy that book. Unfortunately I don’t have a great photo of these socks to show you, so you’ll have to wait to see how they progress. All I can say is that how can socks called Vintage Quilt socks be anything other than drop dead perfect? They have to be, right? Two of my favourite things combined.

Mind you, Vintage Quilt Gin and Tonic Cadbury’s Chocolate socks might be even better….

Helen

Sigh…

The bulbs are planted. The compost heaps are full and the recycling ‘green’ garden waste bin is overflowing. All of which means that I can’t do any more – at least until the bin is emptied. I’m not done, there’s still a fair bit to do, but my conscience is clear that I’ve done as much as I can and I’m well on the way. There will no doubt be a couple of cold, dreary slimy afternoons needed to finish things up, but I think I can justifiably put my feet up for a bit.

I hope you like the fuchia photos – a last little bit of summer. By next week I imagine they will be a bit bedraggled, so I’m enjoying them for now!

Temperatures have dropped by 10 degrees overnight and the rain has arrived and seems determined to sit over Switzerland for the next week or so. It’s knitting weather – so watch out for some sock projects coming up. I needed to get started on all the Christmas presents I’m planning…

That should keep me out of mischief for a while!

Helen

I’m on a mission. Well actually if I’m honest, it’s a race against time.

I’ve been reading the weather forecast and today is going to be THE LAST DAY OF NICE WEATHER.

You know what that means?

Tomorrow temperatures will drop…oooh, 15 degrees, and rain is forecast every day for the forseeable future. Temperatures are going to be dropping quite low. Too near for comfort to that critical temperature, where we could conceivably get some of the unmentionable….(I’ll spell it out. I’m not tempting fate. S…..N…..O….W…). Maybe not quite yet, but before the month is out….

Every year this sends me into a clearing the garden frenzy. I love gardening, but I really hate gardening when the weather is cold and grey and horrible and I hate it even more when I’m clearing dead and rotting vegetation that has been snowed on.

‘Well just leave it for the spring’, I hear you cry.

I did that one year. Never again. My poor little spring bulbs – my shining lights when the days are grey and cold, the markers of the end of a long winter – were well and truly covered with slimy vegetation and had a devil of a job getting their heads through. I suspect some just turned tail at the sight of the slime and went back to bed.

So today you will find me cutting back like a mad woman, weeding and tying things back… and planting bulbs….hundreds of ’em….and hoping that they will flower in the spring and not just feed the rampant mice colony that lives in my garden (and which clearly outwits poor old Bumble Bee – there are noticeably fewer tulips these days than when she was younger!).

Needless to say that my next door neighbour has already finished and his garden looks like it’s been manicured. He took a week off work and it is so perfect that whatever I do is very second rate.

But even sub-standard garden clearing is better than slime and no tulips!

Helen