spring at last?

Finally, the first snowdrops have been spotted in our garden:

Rabbiting on about spring again....

I know I keep rabbiting on about it nearly being spring, and is it nearly spring, and it's not cold enough to be winter blah blah blah. I'm not quite sure where this has all come from. It definitely hasn't been a severe winter, so it's not as if I'm needing it to warm up so that I can dig myself out of a 10m high snow drift, and it hasn't seemed a particularly dark winter - the joys of living a long way north but actually managing to move south and also closer to civilisation so there's more light pollution. I don't usually count down the days to the start of any other season, who knows what's happening in my brain?

So, anyway to continue the where is spring rabbit:

I spotted some snowdrops coming up in the garden yesterday. I don't think there's a lot of bulbs planted in our garden, but these were nice to see. My seedlings I planted the other week are doing OK. There's been lots of germination, some are a little lanky so we'll see how they go. The peas I planted are doing very well and I've potted them up with some support. Everything's still inside though.

I've also nearly finished my spring socks.... nearly? but there's two socks there. Yes, but if you notice the bottom one is longer in the foot than the first one. After I cast on for sock number two I tried on sock number one and decided it was too big, but as I'd already occupied my needles with sock number two there was nothing I could do about it till sock number two was finished. So, now sock number two's done I'll rip back sock number one so they're the same length and re-do the toe. When ripping back a few rows I tend to use this technique rather than just ripping and hoping that I can pick up all the right stitches again at the right place.

Cherry blossom

The blossom is now out on the cherry tree and it's abuzz with bees - including:

Rob's newly finished bee socks. Just in time to send them off for his birthday next Friday. I hope he likes them!

So, now they're on the ferdig list, I can get back to sock number two of the ice on the pond socks for me and start thinking more about socks for David.

We also now have five sets of friends who are expecting babies between June and November - so I think I'll start knitting some baby booties. I found this pattern, which looks pretty good and claims to stay on baby feet.

We had an interesting walk through our local woods yesterday - with Zoom (our neighbours cat), who followed us all the way around.

Zoom showing David the way.

David and Zoom looking at the view over the fjord.

Singing in the kitchen

I continued to work on my quilt this week - I've waited a few days for the weather to be fine so that I could take a photo of progress outside. I think it's looking pretty good - still got quite a way to go, but it's definitely getting there.

As you can see in the photo the leaves are coming out on the trees and it's definitely looking like everything's waking up. We still have no blossom on the fruit trees, but the cherry tree's definitely showing promise:

I thought you might like to see the series of photos I took through the kitchen window of David cooking....

I think he was making some Japanese food.

skitur

We went to try out the cross country skis we bought in the sale last week. We went to Malvikmarka - there was still a bit of snow, although it was pretty wet snow and a bit patchy in places. we went about an hour each way and ended up at a lake with a public hytta. The hytta wasn't open, but we sat there and ate our sandwiches before heading back to the car. It was quite a nice experience - although I think we could probably do with having a bit of a lesson with someone, if for nothing else than to tell us how to stop and steer! This is us at the end of our trip:

Just to prove that spring is sort of here - these are daffodils I picked from the garden.

I also started sock number 2 - keep the momento going before I fall on a different play.

I matched the start to sock number 1, which I think is probably the right thing to do, I'll just now have to figure out another join somewhere down the sock - I think it will end up being somewhere just past the heel.