Another hat

I have been busy knitting little woolly hats for the Big Knit challenge, and have also finished a full scale hat for myself. This is a felted cloche hat from a kit given to me by Monica as part of SP10. I'm really pleased with it... the colour, the shape and the overall amount of felting (quite lightly felted). Given the refusal of the British summer to arrive, I am looking forward to taking this on my holiday to Whitby in a couple of weeks.

In other parts of life... little chap has been in his first school play! He was a wiggly bee, with a very cute group song and dance routine. I have the play on video, so family members who read this can look forward to seeing the performance soon. He was very proud of his role and took it all very seriously. It was part of a key stage one (important newish UK teaching milestone) celebration day and the tone of the day was very nice. 3 years' pupils took part in the play (reception, year 1 and year 2) with the older pupils having the speaking parts and the younger ones singing, dancing and playing instruments. The play was called Honey and is about the workings of a hive, so it was educational too. I am very pleased that our school encourages all areas of development - there are lots of good lessons to be learned from working together to perform a play. This week the older years (key stage 2) do their play, including a performance to the senior citizens of the town who visit from a couple of the local day centres and care homes - so there is important community involvement too.

The school summer holidays start on Friday, so I am aware that my time for crafts and blogging might be hard to find for the next few weeks. Little chap and I have made a list of summer holiday activities we want to do, this includes learning a song on the recorder so that we can perform it by the end of the summer. Little chap is keen on putting on a "concert" for his Dad! I ordered a couple of recorders from Amazon, and was amazed to find they still sell the recorder book that I learned from at school back in 1972!!!!! I don't imagine we will set our sights much higher than twinkle twinkle little star, but I think it will be a good summer holiday achievement.

I have also finished sanding down the old oak stairs in our house, ready for the arrival of my newly ordered handwoven jute stair runner, which should come around the end of the month. The hall redecoration is now on the home stretch with the stairs sorted (pending fitting) and new (low energy) light fittings ordered. We have also hung or recently acquired collection of mirrors, and this weekend will also rehang other decorative pieces such as my collection of fish plates.

As I don't imagine I will get much painting done over the summer, I decided to unearth an old hobby and gave my clarinet an airing this morning. It took a while to get to grips with it again, and an effective and reliable embroucher still evades me, so I am prone to the odd ear piercing squeak. I have found a local teacher, however, so I shall enquire about some lessons for September time. A neighbour of mine plays the saxophone, and I hear him practising as I walk back from dropping little chap at school. At present he is trying to master Habanero, so as you can imagine, it puts a spring in my step!

I have just been given a leaflet for the knitting and stitching show at the NEC in September. I am very tempted to try to go. I'll look into it a bit more.