Bees, bikes and yarn

Amber has had a bad cold which has required lots of iPlayer and You Tube to get her through the worst of it and to save a row I let her have my laptop, but I have stolen it back for long enough to do a quick blog post. All my wool from Stash arrived yesterday:

I realised, being rather new to the whole yarn lark, that I had sort of slightly mis-ordered, which resulted in me being rather a sad bunny when I thought I might have to send it back. However, having spoken to Nicky we decided I could probably salvage the situation with a bit of creativity. I want to knit Tristan a woolly hat so having never tackled knitting with circular needles or Fairisle/stranded knitting and with 2 end-of-year exams looming, I thought there was no better time to start such a project. Tristan, of course, is overwhelmed with joy at the thought of one of his mother's hand-knitted creations for his birthday just as any 14 year old boy would be. At least that's why I presume he didn't really say anything when I measured his head.

Here it is thus far though:

I'm on row 4. Or was it 3...

My lupins seem to have burst back into life meaning they have been flowering pretty much non-stop since May:

And the bees are still working the Himalayan balsam by the river. It's tricky getting pictures but they are coming back to the hive with bright gold pollen which according to my chart (yes! really!) could be ivy or balsam so although it is a pernicious weed, it's very good for my girls getting ready for winter. They've kicked all the boys out now as they would use valuable resources and I'm hoping to have a look in the hives once more before the winter to check they've enough stores.

Rosie and I cycled to town today which was nice and surprisingly quick, although perhaps a library trip wasn't very wise as my basket was laden and I had omitted to remember that it's slightly uphill all the way back. Still, R enjoyed it and it was great to use my new bike; it ran really well and I hadn't realised how much I had missed not having one.