Bisy, Backson

I know, I know - it has been a ridiculously long time since I last posted. I just seem to have been insanely busy recently and a hundred different things - work, rehearsals, concerts, trips hither and thither, new hobbies, more concerts, old hobbies, the occasional bout of sleeping - have intervened to eat up my blogging time.

In fact, I've been so busy I haven't even had much time for knitting! Mainly because I wasn't organised enough to start the baby knitting (discussed below) much before the baby in question was imminent, May consisted of the Attack of the UFOs for me. At one stage I had seven projects on the needles at once, which is a record. However, inevitably the only knitting I was actually making any progress on was mostly un-bloggable (being destined as a surprise for someone who occasionally reads my blog).

Nevertheless, I have been thinking about blogging quite a lot, and taking photos with the full intention of posting. I intended to tell everyone about the nice walk on the Ridgeway one weekend back in late May. You can tell how long ago it was from the fact that the wisteria in Streatley was still flowering in such a spectacular fashion.


Then there was a trip to Anglesey to see Sara and Tim and Iestyn, who at that stage was still bump.


And there's been a fair amount of gardening which (when a work in progress) was going to be a Messy Tuesday post, but that never happened and eventually the mess disappeared (well not really, but I quite like vegetative mess, so tangles of plants don't count in my book).


In fact there have been any number of Messy Tuesdays (and other days), the most memorable of which being the one that produced this unusual scene on the drainer. This came about as a result of a close encounter between C's laptop and the best part of a pint of Old Hooky, when a cunning plan to move the table without removing either of the aforementioned articles from it in advance went horribly wrong.*

There was a Sunday spent mooching about the Cotswolds in pursuit of my brother and his friends who were taking part in the annual cycling Tour of the Cotswolds. Unsurprisingly we opted to do the 102 miles by car rather than bike. Unfortunately, however, since ours was being serviced, the car in question was a mint green Nissan Micra which cornered like a wardrobe on roller-skates and made a noise like a maddened kitten when asked to climb any sort of wold whatsoever. But the trip resulted in a good pub lunch and an enjoyable afternoon spent following the route of a Saltway on the OS map (even if the car was so small that we had to pull over at one point and open both the doors in order to be able to unfold the OS map sufficiently).

And then finally, last weekend, a concert on the Saturday in Deddington, just north of Oxford gave us the perfect opportunity for a night in a B&B followed by a pleasant walk in the country on which we saw some of this


(which doesn't look that impressive until you realise it's quite big)


and some of these


and some of those


and a fox.

On the knitting front, as Ravelers amongst you may have seen, I finished the sheep yoke cardigan


and on the theme of all things oviform**, the sheep toy that I was knitting on WWKIP day, when various people may have seen me struggling to figure out which way round the head went.


Ovine anatomy finally conquered I then progressed to Enfys the Elephant


and having eventually managed to dispatch the whole lot to Iestyn slightly later than planned when he was 1-and-a-bit weeks old (elephants are hard to knit on the train), I returned to the poor languishing Twisted Flower Socks, which have been on the needles since goodness knows when, and finished them off yesterday!


So now I just have the unfinished, hibernating Probably Jumper (probably not at this rate), the infuriating River Stole, and the Moonlight Sonata Shawl which I cast on at the "cast on day" back in late May, and haven't touched since.

Still things should be a bit quieter now, so I'll have more time...probably...


*His cunning plan I hasten to add, not mine. Though since the whole butter-radiator fiasco I should probably refrain from commenting.
** I was delighted to discover (courtesy of Liz) a while ago that oviform not only means "egg-shaped", but (oviform adj.2) "sheep-shaped". This is one of my all-time favourite unexpected other meanings, the other being emboss vb.2, which essentially means "to go and hide in a wood" - "The police are after me; I must emboss at once!"