Fairy garden

A couple of weeks ago it was my lovely sister's birthday and we all met up to visit Furzey Gardens in the New Forest.  We were all very excited (well, me and my sister and my two boys, not so much the husbands!) because this garden is known to be home to some tiny inhabitants.  Fairies!  Yes, we found out that around the garden there are 30 fairy doors in secret locations.  We all had great fun looking in all the nooks and crannies for them!

 Isn't it so sweet?!  Me and my sister were so excited!  We went back to being little girls again and it was great fun!

 You can see some of us looking at a fairy door on the right hand side!

 See the tiny wellies.....

 

 There was even a fairy school which actually had a little blackboard inside.

 

Two happy boys running around there!

 

Lots of beautiful flowers.....

 And more fairy doors!

This must house a big family of fairies I think!  No actual fairies were seen but there was lots of fairy dust outside the doors so they must be there!  They were probably sleeping!

I know this post is very picture heavy but sometimes pictures are the best way to describe something!  I hope you enjoyed your visit to Furzey Gardens.  I would definitely recommend it for a lovely day out for the whole family.  I am now hoping to go again for my birthday in May when the gardens will be even more spectacular with the flowers in bloom.

Olympics inspired

Hello everyone!

It is good to be back again.  We have just had a lovely week in Scotland and it is a beautiful place.  We love it.  Pictures will follow in another post! 

I have a little finished project to show you.  Actually it is not so little because it took a lot of work to complete!  I was watching the Olympics for a lot of the time whilst I was making this item and it definitely helped to spur me on and give me extra enthusiasm for this project!

I was asked to make a union jack blanket for a baby.  I wasn't sure exactly how to tackle this project, especially as I have never attempted instarsia before!  But if someone puts a challenge before me, I am not one to give up lightly!

I found a union jack knitting chart and bought some suitably coloured aran yarn and began!  I also watched quite a lot of 'how to do instarsia' videos on the very helpful youtube!

 

At one point I was knitting with 13 little balls of wool!  I did get in a proper tangle on more than one occasion, but I persevered and I was very pleased with myself as it started to look like a union jack!

 

After about 30 hours of knitting, I had a knitted baby blanket that clearly depicted the union jack!  Mission complete!  The back actually looked surprisingly unmessy, but I decided to back it because I didn't want to risk little baby fingers or toes getting caught.  I used a navy blue cotton fabric and secured it by hand using the simple whip stitch.  Now, sewing has never been my forte at all, so I was very daunted by this final task, but again, I was fairly pleased with my efforts.  I am sure many of you would do a much more wonderful job, but the stitching was neat and it all held in place!

Hopefully Mum and baby will be happy with the addition to the red, white and blue themed nursery!