Signs of spring

I had intended to post about how spring was coming last weekend, through the week I'd seen the signs on the garden and was rather excited. I got up on Saturday morning ready to take my camera into the garden, opened the bedroom curtains and was met with this

at the back where the flowers were starting to peek through was this.



Rather a backwards step towards winter! Fortunately the snow melted as quickly as it showed up and the week and this weekend went back to showing signs of spring to come.

I don't dislike winter but I wont deny that I am very fond of spring. My main issue with winter is the darkness so in the last two weeks when the sun has been almost up as I've left for work and still just about up when I set off home again was very exciting. The days are getting longer, it's not quite as cold and it's much easier to get out of bed.

I am hoping there wont be any more snow and that the weather gets it's act together and Spring makes a proper appearance. It's clearly making some attempts as there are flowers in the front garden

Snowdrops and the beginnings of other flowers in the back

I'm not a gardener so my ability to identify flowers is very limited but I can definitely see they're coming. I can also see some weeds are coming up too, the worst part of spring/summer being having to actually maintain the garden! I am just rubbish at it. I do like flowers though, so pretty. The other good thing about the beginnings of spring is it means it will be our wedding anniversary soon and we have an exciting trip away planned, I can't wait!

I gave the oven a little workout this weekend, one of my best friends visited yesterday as did my uncle and his wife. We don't often have guests but I did my best hostess attempt and made cheese scones. I didn't get a photo of them as they were all gobbled up before I go the chance! I did more scones today but fruit ones this time as Mr NM prefers those to savoury ones, I did get a photo. I have no idea where my round cutter has gone so I used a heart shape one! I could always just use a glass but I prefer to make my scones a bit smaller so they're not so naughty (Mr NM can always have two if he thinks they're too small but I really shouldn't!)



A couple of weeks ago I won a competition on Josiekitten's blog. The prize arrived last week but I didn't get chance to take a photo. I got a lovely washcloth, some soap and a chocolate sheep, yum! I will be doing my part and "paying it forwards" at some point but as I've just had a little giveaway I'm going to give it a few weeks before I do.



In knitterly news I'm struggling again with the almost uncontrollable urge to cast on for every pattern that takes my fancy. I finished my first of the gloves for my mum so I am making some progress with my current WIPs.



It looks rather odd without a hand in it so I modelled but my hands are bigger than my mum's and the glove is too small for me. It's lovely and soft though, I love the yarn. I haven't sewn in all the ends as I need my mum to try it on and I may need to pull back the fingers and make them sorter, my friend tried it on yesterday and it was too big for her so I'm worried it will be too big for my mum.




I wont be rushing to knit gloves again, it wasn't difficult but it was a faff knitting the fingers, I think where handknits are concerned I'm very pro-mitten!

The faffiness of knitting the fingers led to a burst of second-glove-syndrome, not unlike second-sock-syndrome. I was bored and I wanted to knit just about anything else. The anything else turned out to be socks, the anything else usually is socks, even with second-sock-syndrome I usually want to cast on a new sock in a different pattern instead of knitting the second sock in the first pattern!

I think the urge was enhanced by me packing off that skein of Jitterbug in the giveaway, I wanted to knit with one of the other skeins of Jitterbug I had! It has been lurking in my stash for ages so I wound it into a ball and got started on my second pair of Monkey socks.

This is quite possibly the most addictive sock pattern ever. I cast on the first sock on Tuesday evening, I didn't knit at all on Wednesday as I was at choir, on Saturday morning I had this much sock:



By Saturday evening I had this:



OK so it's shorter in the leg than my previous pair of Monkey socks (I did 4 repeats) as I was concerned about the possibility of running out of yarn. Jitterbug is quite short in the yardage department but even so, considering I'm not the quickest knitter and I only get a bit of knitting time on weekday evenings and had guests on Saturday that's not bad going!

Instead of casting on the second Monkey sock, something I could happily do as right now I feel I could knit all my sock yarn into this pattern, I cast on my second glove. I'm about half way through the ribbing on the cuff and am hopeful they'll be ready in time for my mum's birthday.

I hope everyone has a lovely week filled with knitterly goodness and other wonderful things.