In and Out of the Garden.

Every time I set foot outside with a fork or trowel in my hand it starts to rain. However, with a camera I did a little better today and took a picture of this purple plantain leaf with the sun shining on it. I think it looks as if it could have been made from quilted silk. The colour is a bit washed out in my photo and is a lovely deep plummy red with hints of dark green.

I nearly missed noticing this water snail going for a stroll. We have had to put something into the water to get rid of the blanket weed - it has been dreadful this year, but is now under control.

I am so pleased to see this lovely day lily in bloom. I have had to be so patient. A friend gave it to me three years ago and the first year it just disappeared and I thought that was that. Last year the leaves appeared and one small flower, but this year there are three lovely strong stems full of buds to look forward to - this is the first one to open.

I persevered with my littel embellished landscape and kept adding hand stitching which has improved it slightly but more thought needs to go into the preliminary stage. It actually looks a bit better than it does here, but even so, as they say up north 'it's neither nowt nor summat'.

This should give a better result and I have paid more attention to building up areas of colour and texture with the embellisher. I haven't started to stitch on this piece yet.

The colours on this piece are really quite vibrant and rich. I have just been playing with strips of sari ribbon to see how it responds to the embellisher. It has a life of it's own and twists and almost shrivels under the needles. I was worried about ending up with straight rows but needn't have. All of these experiments have been worked over a small piece of knitting. I didn't like the colours of these pieces so haven't minded covering them up almost completely.

It's early afternoon and has suddenly gone dark - another deluge on the way. I'm quite pleased to have the rain and not spend my evenings carting heavy cans of water about, but do hope the weekend will be kind to Tewkesbury's Medieval Festival and all the other events taking place.