Bobby Dazzlers

Yes, check out these little beauties! Heather came over today and the first thing she did was to hand me a bag containing this pair of scrumptuous socks. She has been knitting away and told me that as many as five needles are needed at once which rather made my brain hurt...I can knit a plain scarf and that's about it.

So, not only are they a perfect fit, comfy and wonderfully warm, they are also in my favourite colours. It was a pure coincidence that I was wearing my "new" sweater and that I was so very nattily co-ordinated! Thank you Heather, I love them and so do my tootsies!

We spent much of the day together, went to visit our mum and then called at a nearby carvery to have lunch. It was a mixture of sunshine and dark gloomy skies but now the temperature has dropped like a stone and it's bitterly cold. At least my toes are warm even if my fingers are cold. Isn't it awful that we have to weigh up being reasonably warm with the worry over whether we can afford to keep the heat on? Don't get me started on that one! I've come down with a bit of a cold now, so I'm definitely more inclined to leave the heat on at the moment. Fingers crossed that the paracetamol and hot drinks will do the trick and send the sneezes on their way.

Thank you for all the comments about the garden progress. I'm terribly impatient and always want instant results but I'm learning to think about the long term - though I have got some little Pansies to brighten up the expanses of brown soil everywhere! 

In response to Mark - sorry I don't have your email to reply personally - and the queries about my journal....I really don't worry too much about what I use in there. The Moleskine papers (in the lilac banded one anyway) are pretty tough and are, as you said, very smooth. If I use Promarkers they show through on the reverse of course, and the options are to either stick two pages together (waste of a page!) or to disguise the bleed through. I coat the page with Gesso, paint it with acrylics or glue book paper over it...any of those work well. If I use book paper I sometimes spread a little Gesso over the surface leaving some areas exposed to show certain words or images. Then some inks sprayed over or I'll use acrylics or Neo Colours to add colour to the surface. I don't usually have much of a plan! I'll often make a background and then decide where to go with it - other times I know what I want to do and then do a background to suit. I do like a smooth clean page though, so I can sketch onto it and then work the drawing up into a completed page. Hope that helps! Any gardening tips would be welcomed by the way!!! Lol!

Well, the heat's on but I'm still cold, so I think it may be time for a bite to eat and another hot drink to get warmed up from the inside out.