Cuckoo! 🐦

Hello and happy April! 🌷 I always say October is my favourite month but there is something special about April...everything is coming back to life after winter, the birds are chirping and there is blossom everywhere. Maybe I have been converted to team spring after all!

The title of this post comes from a song which Ed and I have been playing for a few weeks now since we heard it in the film Moonrise Kingdom. We already knew the Cosmo Sheldrake version but didn't realise it was originally an old poem set to music by Benjamin Britten. It reminded us that it's almost exactly a year since we went for an evening walk on Dartmoor and heard a cuckoo for the first time so hopefully we might be able to do that again this year! Have a listen and enjoy (warning: it may get stuck in your head) -

In my last post I had just tested positive with covid and then 2 days Ed did too, so we had a nice week at home together despite being ill 😄 

I think the warm weather we had that week made the sourdough starter happy and bubbly so we managed to produce a very handsome loaf of bread:

😍😍😍

I spent much of my time at home knitting baby socks! They are so quick that I could make one per day if I tried hard enough, they are also just extremely cute!!! I used the same Winwick Mum Sockalong pattern that I've always used but just scaled down the amount of stitches I casted on:

We enjoyed spending time out in the garden, especially on the sunny days before the weather turned chilly again. We sat out reading our books a couple of times and I even hung the washing out on the line for the first time this year (although it was still damp by the end of the day haha). 

Juniper has taken on the role of chief tester, making sure that all the baby products we bring home are safe and fit for purpose:

A brand new leaf in the family:

The big crochet blanket I shared last time has now found its home on our sofa. I originally said it might go in the baby's room but after discovering how warm and cozy it is our seating experience has been elevated to new heights and we will not be letting it go 😆

On our final day of isolation, Ed made gingerbread biscuits and we had a lot of fun decorating them:

Just some pics of a sleeping cat:

Last week we took a trip to IKEA and successfully secured ourselves a cot 👶 though of course the highlight of the visit was eating meatballs (thankful for the opportunity to sit down, pregnancy and IKEA is a tiring combination):

Some blue snippets...my first forget-me-not bouquet, cherry blossom against a vibrant sky, and my growing bump at 26 weeks beneath my old denim dungarees 💙 (I got them in 2014 and they were always so baggy that I knew they'd make good maternity wear one day!) -

Ahh my favourite tree outside our church is flowering! And this year I finally did some research and discovered what it is - a malus floribunda, or Japanese crabapple! 🌸🌸🌸🍃 The blossom definitely is abundant and it's such a pretty shade of pink. I'm in love:

Here you can see Juniper helping put the cot together by reading the instructions for us, and then chilling with Ed in our newly acquired baby room armchair! I found the chair on a chance visit to a second hand furniture shop for only £10, it's comfy and only vaguely looks like it belongs in an old people's home 😆 It's covered in a blanket (the knitted one not the crocheted one!) to jazz it up anyway so we weren't too fussed about appearances. Juniper took a liking to it straight away and it is her current favourite place to sleep.

A few more different types of tulips have popped up recently from the wedding bulbs we originally planted in 2020. Our garden is starting to look colourful again which is exciting 😊🌷

See you again soon! I've just started a brand new knitting project and it isn't socks so I'll share that next time 😄👋💚🌞🌿🐈 xoxo