Monday 21 March

Spring, it's officially Spring today! (or was it yesterday?) Not that Spring is my favourite season or that I'd ever be able to choose a favourite season. I even like winter. Before Christmas, when you have all the dark days in November, there is nothing better than to light the fire and have the candles burning on the mantelpiece. As soon as the festivities are out of the way, the days noticeably start to get longer and snowdrops begin to appear. It makes up for the seemingly endless days of dreary, grey weather.

Talking of Spring, we had a lovely sunny weekend. After N's swimming lesson, where to my surprise and delight I spotted two other women knitting, we drove to Bury St. Edmunds for our fortnightly treat of lunch at M&S. We even eat the same thing every time: I. has egg and watercress sandwiches, N. has a bacon roll, I have ham and mustard dressing sandwiches, all followed by a fruit scone. Afterwards we wandered over the market, getting some fruit and veg, and then it was back to the park for our first icecream of the year in our usual spot:

We didn't stay long though, as the sunny weather was calling me to the garden. On our way back to the car I had to stop to take a photo of the cathedral spire looking pretty through the still bare tree branches:

Back home N. and I spent a couple of hours pottering about in the garden. I'd given him a job which made him feel quite important and which he was doing quite well, until he decided to add water to the mix... What is it with boys and mud?
It was even sunny enough to have our first cup of tea at the picnic table - or so we thought! There was a bit of shivering going on and by the time I got to B.'s house, it was well and truly chilly again. Spring's here but Winter hasn't quite left us yet.

Quite a lot of progress on the building project. B. surprised us all and was outside measuring at 6 on Saturday morning (he's notorious for getting up in the mornings) and by the time I got to his place on Saturday evening, the two end walls were up. By the time I went back home again on Sunday afternoon, this is what it looked like:


And he did a bit more after I left, even getting a few floor-joists in. I'm hoping to get to see it for myself tomorrow evening. What I like about a building project is how doing something seemingly small, can totally change its character. It looks so different now from when there was just the brick walls, and once the gables go up (hopefully in the next couple of weeks), it'll look very different again.
It was great being outdoors all day, originally neither of us thought I could do much - I'm happy to do general labouring stuff, but the real building work I leave to the expert. But when I got back from my bike ride, he asked me to hold a post while he attached them, and it ended up being teamwork. Good fun.

The cat very much enjoys a new structure to explore too:

He climbed up the ladder you can see in the previous photo, walked all the way across to the other end of the building, walked along this ridge, turned around and came down again, without falling, on one of the cross-battens (not the right word but I sometimes forget the right jargon...)
We've also already found him once underneath the concrete floor - he's one of the most curious cats I've ever known.

Something that made me happy this week:
I've already used the photo of I. and N. eating icecream in the park, so I can't use that, but this came pretty close:

Knitting my Cairn hat outside in the sunshine