Up with the lark

The felted fish are the result of a lovely day on Saturday with Gretel Parker at a local yarn shop where I got to stab things for a few hours. Gretel's work is amazing. Her finish is amazingly smooth and I was hoping to find the secret short cut to achieving it - sadly it's mostly just time, keep stabbing and eventually it will happen (although shallow stabs and keeping them close together help the finish). Some of her finished pieces look like velvet. It's amazing what she can do with wool. She's pretty cool too.  

I've had a stinking cold for the last couple of weeks and a niggling cough for the last few days. One of the results of this is that I've been up somewhere between 4 and 5am most days for the last 5 days. I am not a morning person. Getting me out of bed before 9 was a struggle pre-kids. So you can imagine that it's a little difficult for me to deal with it. Thankfully the sun is shining, the birds are singing and the house is all mine at that time (even the dog stays in bed). Isaac is a little thrown by me being up before him (he's often up at 5) but he's liked the quiet time with me once he's up.

There are positives to being up early. The kitchen has been tidier than in the last few weeks. I've been able to do some quiet reading (The Lovely Bones amongst others) and the children have been able to do some art first thing in the morning. Oh wait did I say that was a positive....

By 7am Isabel looked like this.

By 8am we were in a local park having a picnic.

The rope on one of the climbing frames is starting to be colonised by lichens. Isaac pointed it out to me and said what they were.

We only had the cows for company.

Isabel was a ladybird this afternoon. She got into the role and was doing all sorts of ladybird-like things. Or what she considered to be ladybird-like anyway, which included dancing, squiggling around on the floor and wafting her wings.