After the deluge!

Hello from a tempestuous and flooded York - it's rained cats and dogs practically nonstop recently. Work has been fairly wall to wall since the Lakes & York tour ended, so I've practically lived in my office for the past couple of weeks looking out on rain, rain and more rain whilst working on a couple of pressing deadlines. I feel I'm only just coming up for air, but probably would  have surfaced earlier if there were no distractions.

Django's taken to watching football since he still can't go out
- he's rooting for England in Euro 2012,
courtesy of Filo and Photoshop

The other day while  I was working on a particularly difficult project for my next book, I had Django - who's just beginning to want to play again - on one side, clawing at my arm and pawing my yarn, and on the other a confused bumble bee. The poor bee was making a hell of a racket trying to get nectar out of what he/she thought was just another flower. It must have been very frustrating as it was actually a knitted macquette for the base of a baby cocoon, so he (think it must have been a he) got it wrong on all counts. As I couldn't ignore the noise I decided to join in, grabbed my camera, and spent the next half hour snapping the busy bee, who continued his task blissfully unaware. Didn't help with the deadlines, but I feel it's good to have a natural diversion now and then, so you can resume refreshed, hopefully with renewed sharpness - that's my story anyway.

Suppose it does look a bit like a rosebud?!

Earlier in the week we'd scheduled a trip to the seaside with Isabella and Ava. As you can never rely on summer sun in the UK, we were planning some typically British holiday activities like paddling in the freezing North Sea and walking along the prom in the rain, accepting that any sun would be a bonus. However, the weather was so foul this week with gales and torrential rain that I'm sure even the most intrepid grandparent would have had a change of heart. In the end we abandoned the idea and had two lovely afternoons crafting and baking with the girls instead.  On one they opened a restaurant and made lots of play dough biscuits to put on the menu...

... and on the second occasion Duplo was rediscovered as the deluge still hadn't stopped.  The girls were very proud of their building prowess.

The latest bulletin on Django is that his vets are incredibly pleased with his progress. It's now more than six weeks since the accident happened, and it's been an uphill struggle at times, keeping him in, administering medication and tending his wounds, in fact sometimes it's felt like a fulltime job. But last time he saw the vet, we were told he wouldn't need more stitches or a skin graft and my heart sang.  It made it all worthwhile. My imagination can run riot at times and in my lowest moments I'd feared he might lose the limb, so this was fantastic news. I'm hoping in a couple of weeks we'll be able to allow him to play with Arlo again and things might get back to normal.

Meanwhile we're planning to spend a few days in Wales.  However the weather seems to be even worse there, with flooding within a few miles of our farmhouse, so the first thing to do before we set off will be to check that the roads are open.

Don't forget if you'd like to win a copy of Susan Crawford's new book Coronation Knits, come back on Tuesday, when I'll be posting a review and my Q&A session with her.