February might be the shortest month but it always feels to me like time runs much more slowly in February than in any other month. To be honest I’m tired of grey, dreary, overcast days and I’m so looking forward to feeling the days lengthen out and seeing brighter colours emerging in the countryside. I’ll be off on a snowdrop hunt sometime later this week because those delicate little bell shaped flowers are always the first signal of a change in the seasons. In the meantime I’m cosying indoors and knitting February away. For some reason I seem to have been mostly knitting in blue for the last few months. Do you find that you get drawn to a particular colour at a particular time? I was knitting mostly in warm tones of gold, pink and mustard throughout last year but blue seems to be the colour of the moment for me, though I think I might be hitting saturation point as I have been finding myself looking at lots of lovely brown speckley yarns on Etsy.

Anyway, two pairs of socks have been finished, the top ones are Fair Isle Flower Sock by Candice DeWitt knitted mostly in Eden Cottage Hayton ‘tarn’ and below are a pair knitted from Helen Stewart’s Fragment sock pattern in Madeline Tosh twist light yarn ‘well water’ (I’ve added both as projects to ravelry if you wanted links to yarns etc.)

The pair I’m currently making are from the Kia sock pattern by Dawn Henderson. It’s a lovely rhythmic and relaxing pattern, perfect for knitting when you just want something undemanding to occupy your hands and soothe your mind from a busy day, and it’s generously shared for free (though if you use the pattern you could buy Dawn a ko-fi to thank her).

In other news I’ve had some interesting visitors in the garden. With the weather being colder last week, and there being less food out in the countryside towards this end of winter, we’ve had flocks of finches swooping in to the bird feeders (mostly gold and green finches); the squirrel has been doing his best acrobatics in his attempts to loot some of the bounty and we’ve also had a few rather exotic visitors moving into the area from London. This is a ring necked parakeet – and she’s not alone as one morning a flock of 12 or so flew over and I’m now regularly hearing their raucous calls echoing around the neighbourhood. My favourite garden visitor though has been this cheeky fox. I always know when he’s around (usually appearing in the hour before sunset) as the chickens go berserk with squawking and when I look out there he is running up and down outside of the run trying to get in. As soon as I go out he runs down the side of our house and leaps through a narrow gap in the fence to our neighbours garden and there he stays in the hope I’ll go back inside, every now and then popping his head through the gap to check if I’m still there. I’m very happy to have him in come and visit because he’s beautiful and such a character but I’m not sure my chickens are as pleased the have him around!