If you've popped in here for a visit over the last 5 days you may have been greeted by a blank page and been wondering what has happened to me and the little cotton rabbits. Last thursday Typepad (who host my blog) were targeted by a rather massive and sustained distributed denial of service attack which knocked out all of their services and since then they've been working round the clock to get up and running again. Fearing for it's safe return has made me realise just how much I love my blog and the contact it gives me with others who like woolly stuff and similar things and I'm very happy to have it back.

Anyway, I'm getting back into the term time swing of things here, catching up (albeit rather slowly) with an email backlog that built up over the school Easter break, settling back into pattern tweaking and writing for those seasonal sweaters that I promised and generally just enjoying having some time to call my own instead of Toby's. This morning I've been on a bluebell walk as the local woods are full of them and we have a lovely sunny morning here today so it would be daft to sit inside all day.

 

 

I always think of April as the month of unfurling and those bright chartreuse green shoots emerging everywhere from little brown tree buds are quite magical. The most magical sight of all though is the carpet of bluebells.

 

 

For just a couple of weeks each year the woods are transformed into a place where you can really believe that fairies exist. When you sit quietly on a mossy log in a bluebell wood, troubles fade away for a while and you feel a sense of timelessness and peace, at least until a dog comes bounding up to lick your face as one did to me earlier! Still, it's a lovely way to escape from modern world stresses and I have resolved to go walking in the woods on my own more regularly, and of course it is the regular weekend activity with Toby – the woods are his favourite place to be.

Hopefully if you pop in again you'll find everything in it's place but if things do go wobbly again please don't give up on me as I will definitely be blogging here for a long time to come 🙂

It's school half term break here – it hardly feels like enough time has passed since the Easter break and I'm not at all prepared.

 

 

Luckily both Toby and I share a love of quiet, woodland places and since he's so hard to entertain at the best of times, we'll be having a daily jaunt to the woods to help keep him occupied.

 

We walk along in silence, enjoying the sounds of the birds and the wind in the leaves and sometimes we get rewarded for our quiet strolling by a glimpse of a deer or a fox. Toby has a favourite wood walk with ancient contorted trees (a legacy of coppicing) and a brook running through the centre.

 

It also has Ermine Street, an ancient Roman road running through it and I like to think of all of the people who have passed this way through the ages, apparently including William the Conqueror and Oliver Cromwell and now Master Toby…

 

Toby usually loves paddling in the brook (and occasionally peeing in it!) but at the moment it's completely dry thanks to the lack of spring rain.

 

Despite that everything is verdant and cool and so very peaceful. I hope that peace will keep us company the rest of this week as we're still waiting to hear about dates for respite care and Toby has been particularly unmanageable over the last few weeks. Hopefully the woods will work their magic on him and help to keep him calm, he usually is when we're there.

I love this picture of him strolling along ahead of me, he looks for all the world like any other nine year old boy. Seeing him like this does me the power of good!

I won't be back this week but hope to be back with some knitting updates next week. Hope you have a peaceful week where you are and thanks for dropping in to visit.

One of the nicest things about having children in different schools is that the inset days are usually different. This was the case yesterday with Toby going back to school a day earlier than Amy, giving us the chance to spend some extra time together. After breakfast we headed off to the woods where the bluebells were out. Sadly they were a little past their best but still scented the air and made the woods more magical than ever…

 

And then we came home to make (and eat) a cake together

A peacefully perfect day to finish off the Easter break.