finished friday

I bought this amazing bright green yarn from Easyknits.co.uk at Unravel in Farnham at the end of February - after a few unsuccessful attempts at starting this sock, I finally managed to alter the pattern to fit my fat calves and re-do the awful heel. I discovered a lot with this sock: that I cannot fathom wrap-and-turn short-rows, that toe-up socks are really great, and I have more perseverance than I thought. I had to start each sock about two/three times each, but I got there in the end and now they are precious, precious. But aren't they fancy? I don't know when I'll wear them. I've been wearing them in bed since I made them, since I don't want to wear them out in my boots or getting them dirty in the kitchen, and my other socks take a bit of a beating as I wear them in my walking boots.

Yarn: Deeply Wicked Appletini

Pattern: Nagini Socks

Ravelry Project Page!

current reads: picture books

I received these books for Christmas - but I just have been a bit lax about posting about them! I really love sort of 'coffee-table books'. Sometimes I just like to curl up in bed and have an easy flick-through of something like this.

The Wes Anderson book is such a luxury to have, I simply adore his films, I've spoken about how much I adore them before, but to have a book with all the photos, interviews and behind the scenes photos from all his films (except Grand Budapest) and it just makes me want to re-watch all his films again, despite knowing them all line-for-line, virtually. It is the perfect combination of a 'coffee-table' book and one that is actually enjoyable to read. I'm sort of obsessed by all the media and such that it includes, like the Jacques Cousteau photos and the covers of the books little Suzy reads in Moonrise Kingdom. It's big and glossy, and full of wonderful insights and photographs, but it kept going out of stock on Amazon, so I suggest snapping it up quickly if you're interested.

The other book is buy a chef, author and blogger that I really love, and have used her recipes multiple times (her ginger snaps were a great success and have made her sour cream chocolate chip cake multiple times to great responses, amongst other things). I have wanted her cookbook for such a long time, because everything she blogs about makes my stomach rumble. Her way of explaining things is very understandable, and each recipe is written about like she would on her blog, a little story or explanation of how it came about, which I find so likeable.

sweet summer child

I found blood oranges (the sanguinello kind) today in Lidl. It was such an excitement I grabbed a huge bag of them. I love citrus fruit and I think there is something really novel about cracking open an unassuming orange and finding it streaked with red. It gives me a little bit of a thrill eating these, reminds me of time spent in Tuscany and eating them in the sunshine at uni.

I've been trying to soak up the suns rays as much as possible, I feel like I haven't felt warm outside since the summer, I've been sitting around my garden table eating my lunch and knitting. I've been eating lots of greek yoghurt and strawberries and strawberry gelato in the garden and it's pretty awesome that it's only March and I can do this, it's got me so psyched for Summer, if only it would come quicker!

What have you been doing thats getting you all excited for summer? I keep seeing summery instagrams and it's getting me all excited.

(I forgot to add that eating them outside in the sunshine with the a GRR Martin novel has resulted in making me think I live in Dorne and dream of sunny places..)