January is often a quiet month for me and I’m grateful to be able to be able to slow right down and take everything as calmly as possible as I make my plans for the year. Especially so this year, because for a little while now I have been been feeling rather down and becoming at times overwhelmed with anxiety, so as a way of trying to cope with that I’ve decided to start a 5 year journal and record all of the positive and beautiful things to remember from each passing day. I think that I am very lucky because it is so often the smallest of things that do lift my mood and bring me joy, and once you start to actively look for these moments you find there are actually quite a few in every day. But such moments can often get forgotten and overshadowed by everyday life, so recording them is a good way to bring them to mind when I need to feel brighter.

So far I’ve jotted about red kites soaring over the house, goldfinches and robins in the garden, Toby’s laughter, Amy’s smile, H’s hugs, the taste of a good cake, the delicious feeling of sitting in bed and knitting away a weekend morning, the quiet calm of a gently flickering candle, the glory of sunrises, the delicacy of frost, the gentle balm of music *, and the delight in deciding to finally use a much loved skein of yarn from my stash – this one has been treasured for almost 10 years and is irreplaceable as Asti of Juno fibre arts is no longer creating her beautiful yarns, so I’m enjoying some very careful pondering of what project to cast on.

But above all else there is has been one totally unexpected, unbelievable and utterly delightful moment – the return of Kit the fox!!

It has been over a year since she was last here and I had written here on the blog that she might have died – I secretly feared she had been run over on the main road as there have been a few fox corpses at the roadside in the intervening months. But no, we were joyfully so very wrong because on Jan 13th she sauntered nonchalantly into the garden, as though she had just been here a day ago, sat down by the garden table and looked expectantly at me through the kitchen door. I have never had a jaw-dropping moment before, but I did then. A snack of Toby’s cocktail sausages was swiftly found and as I approached her to put them down, still slightly disbelieving that it really was her, she stood up and approached me, confirming without any doubt that it was. You can see from the pictures below that she’s a little more scarred about the muzzle than when she was last here but otherwise is looking well nourished and cosy in her thick growth winter coat. I suspect that she is pregnant and has come back because it’s been especially cold recently and she’s has difficulty finding enough food. She’s arrived every evening since, just after darkness has fallen and I am so utterly overjoyed to see her again, and she’s featuring heavily in my new journal of happy things 🙂

I hope she sticks around for a while longer and I’ll be sure to bring you further news of her if she does stay around. If you are interested you can see the story of how we became friends and see my previous blog posts of her visits over the last four years here.

 

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The 5 year journal was purchased from Mål Paper with some of my Christmas money, (thanks M & D xxx)

* my music of choice at the moment is  ‘Found’ by Martin Gauffin which is playing in the background at the moment and I find especially uplifting

 

 

 

 

Hello and wow! I am completely humbled by the response to the first giveaway of my anniversary year. Thank you so much for all the wonderful comments and outpouring of kindness on the previous post. I admit that I’ve not yet managed to read all of the comments and hope to do so by the end of this week, though with 2,179 of them I hope you can understand why I’ll not be replying.

Yesterday evening I used the random number generator to pick the winning numbers and these are now posted on the previous post. I’ve emailed each of the winners and will be sending over the first of the pattern prizes shortly.

My three newest patterns are all ready so I’ve just uploaded them to Ravelry and Etsy.

There is a small (7 inch) bear/panda, a small (7 inch) mouse and some small sweaters with panel designs on the front. Both the bear/ panda and the mouse come with a variety of outfits including dresses, sweaters and shorts and the existing extra patterns for the small size animals (dresses, sweaters and removable shoes) will fit them too.

I really hope that everyone has fun with these new patterns and as always I’m so excited to see what everyone makes. If you do give any of them a go it would be lovely to see your project uploaded to either the Ravelry or Facebook groups.

Thanks again for all the wonderfully kind comments. I look forward to sharing more give-aways with you as the year progresses and am off now to finish a couple of wintery themed regular-sized mice ready for my next giveaway, hopefully sometime in February if all goes to plan,

J x

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter is decidedly here. We’ve had a few days of sub-zero temperatures and the early morning frosts have been beautifully sharp and sparkly. Yesterday Toby and I bundled up and went for a long walk at Panshanger. The ice crystals adorning every blade of grass, twig and seedhead made for a very beautiful landscape and even the barbed wire fences were prettified by the decoration of frost.

And then this morning we’ve woken to around 15cms of snow!

I’m glad to have lots of cosy woolly jumpers, scarves and mittens and will be wearing my wrist-warmers constantly now until the weather warms. It looks like the rest of this week is continuing to be freezing, so there will be a little more knitting by the fire going on here. I’m now in the final stages of laying out the three new patterns and am lucky to have some lovely people helping me to error check them. Though it will still be a few weeks before they’ve been thoroughly checked, so I’m aiming to be able to share them in the new year.

Hope you have a good week doing a little of what you love, J x