Pass the Book

I had a perfectly lovely day last Sunday, sitting in Emma's garden beach hut admiring her jewellery, and trying not to squeak too loudly when she sold lots and lots of gorgeous trinkets. You can see the fun here if you haven't already done so. Mavis and Celia arrived in the afternoon and we had a fabulous impromptu tea party (wherein I proved I should never, ever be allowed to make tea in someone else's teapot).

I spent a good part of the day crocheting pebbles - as you do - inspired by the gorgeous creations of Margaret Oomen at Resurrection Fern. Initially I used the pattern she'd very generously provided at Purl Bee last week, but soon was chaining and trebling and doubling at will - I'm pretty rubbish at following patterns, and using a 0.6mm hook with fine perle cotton there was not much chance of keeping the stitch counts and tension regular!


Sitting in the garden I suddenly remembered with horror that I have Emma's first Pass The Book sitting on my windowsill and it really, really needs to go to a new home. I was sent it by Fiona at Tizduster (clever, clever silver and clay sculpting Fiona) along with some gorgeous silver earrings and some chocolate, many weeks ago. I read this lovely little book by Miss Read in about an hour and a half sitting in the sunlit living room of a beautiful cottage in Suffolk on a birthday weekend trip - yes, that's how long it's taken me to sort this out!


Anyway, it's time to pass the book on, so if you'd like to read it, leave a comment on this post and I'll pick a name at the weekend or early next week. The person whose name is chosen will receive a little parcel of goodies along with the book - not sure what yet but there are bound to be toadstools in there somewhere!

We need to talk about roses

No, not the pretty flowers, though I am very fond of them. What I want to talk about is this:


Lots and lots of perfect circles punched out of the leaves of one specific rose bush in our garden. It happened last year and I realised that the creature responsible was most likely a leaf cutter bee - at which point I decided to do absolutely nothing and thank my lucky stars we operate a wildlife friendly (read: lazy) garden policy. You've got to be a really persistent weed for me to even consider eradicating you.

Anyway, this summer they've been at it again and while I haven't seen one in the act of cutting, I have seen what they've done with the leaves:


This is just one of those cheap boxes bought from the garden centre and attached to the fence and forgotten. It's behind another rose that they don't seem at all interested in chomping.


You only need to wait a minute or so to see bee activity.


I think we may have mason bees in the bottom half, and also in the loose mortar in the wall of our old house, and I couldn't be happier to just leave them to it. We've stashed lots of bundles of bamboo canes around the garden, and I've now seen a plan for another, fancier bee box - time for my little wildilfe DIY helpers to get busy with the power tools again?

PS Thank you for all the lovely party comments and birthday wishes. If you're inspired to do the same, please do - once I put ideas up here I'm happy for them to be used, though obviously not my words or photos. Life is hectic as it is for all mums of school children at this time of year, so I've been a bit quiet. Lots to show and tell, one of these days!