Summer has arrived here in this little corner of England. The last few days have been wonderful weather-wise and over the weekend our whole family has been outside  – the sunshine even coaxed Amy out of the teenage stereotype of preferring bedroom living 🙂

I’ve been sitting in the shade at the end of the garden and working on some end of term presents for Toby’s teachers. I plan to pair each strawberry bookmark with a pretty note book and pencil and wrap them up nicely.

Free pattern from Pezdiva (with a few adaptations).

Toby has of course been enjoying bouncing, swinging and paddling

even the chicken has been enjoying the hot weather with a paddle in her own pool

Poor H has been the only one not relaxing or keeping cool – he’s still been hard at work building paths and paving around the garden room.

I am also working on a little batch of knitted animals. It’s been a while since I offered any for sale so I hope to have them finished soon, I’ll post some pictures when they’re ready.

Talking of knitting, thanks so much to Love Knitting for featuring little cotton rabbits as their blog of the week last week.

Thanks too to all of the people who sent me emails and messages about the book of the week on radio 4. ‘The reason I jump‘ is written by Naoki Higashida an autistic boy living in Japan and takes the form of questions put to him and his answers. It is a fascinating and thought-provoking insight into the world seen from an autistic perspective. My copy arrived yesterday and I’m already halfway through (and scribbling notes to myself as I go). The introduction by David Mitchell is brilliant and any parent of an autistic child will be nodding in agreement and probably like me welling up with tears at reading things that so often go unsaid.

The book itself is revelatory and has again made me tearful many times, both in recognition of the huge implications it could have in the way that others perceive those with autism and because current state schooling often deeply underestimates and mis-interprets many autistic children. My head is literally buzzing and I’m trying to think where we go from here in order to give Toby a way of communicating all that is in his head (rather than just his basic wants), because there is a lot more going on in there than most people give him credit for. I’d urge anyone involved with any aspect of caring for autistic people to read this book, it is an eye-opener and has the potential to change lives.

Thanks as always for popping in to visit. See you again soon, J x