Feeling the chill...or sensing the green?

February can seem a bit slow.  Just more of the same wet blustery days under grey skies. The tail-end of winter can bite.  It can even snow, then the tabloids shout "48 HOURS OF SNOW HELL TO COME!" at us, and measure the horror in centimetres.  The weather forecast is full of colour coded warning triangles. It's a mini apocalypse in a tea cup.

We all know (don't we?) that the media love to exaggerate and worry us.  This  reaction to winter weather makes me feel sad and old.

What's not to like about being snowed in and having a day off? No cars on the road means you can slide and skid on them instead of the pavement, get the sledge out, burn your hands making snowballs and jump around in virgin snow.  Discover the true meaning of 'cold'.

In short - normal life gets hijacked and everything becomes magical for a while.  It all looks and sounds so different.   

white out

But on the bright side...

In February the good people of Amsterdam can skate on the semi-circular canals when traditionally the water ices over for weeks.  It's a thing to look forward to.

The Chinese new year starts in February, and most gardeners can almost smell spring green around the corner, what with winter aconites, snowdrops and witch hazels all flowering.

The days are slowly lengthening.

winter aconite & snowdrops

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Remembering Sylvia...

 

Sylvia Plath 1932 - 1963

The winter of 1963 was especially grim and February was freezing cold.  There wasn't much warmth in Sylvia Plath's flat on Fitzroy Road in London - where the poet WB Yeats had lived years before. Her two young children had both been ill and so was she.  Desperately so.

Fifty years ago today, on the 11th February, Plath killed herself at her home just weeks after her first and only novel 'The Bell Jar' was published.  She was thirty.

her book's first publication

Plath insisted on a pseudonym for her novel, having vowed never to publish it under her own name while her mother was still alive.

At the age of eight, when she was told that her father had died, Plath responded, "I will never speak to God again."

Sylvia Plath in West Yorkshire

Sylvia Plath is buried in the hilltop graveyard at Heptonstall, West Yorkshire.  On her headstone is a line from a WB Yeats poem;

"Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted."

Plath tattoo

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"Top Bombing!" 
or
The Joy of Yarnstorming
 

Technically, you probably can't yarn bomb your own garden - I don't know - it doesn't really matter 'cos who cares?

This year, instead of wrapping my blueberry plants in bubblewrap to protect them from frosts I used old yarns instead and it does look like the knitting fairy has been, which I quite like.

the Bay & Sweet Box get knitted

I do a lot of knitting and accumulate wool of varying colours and types, it feels good to turn random left-overs into crazy coloured pompoms, bunting, and scarves for plant pots.

Before I knew it, I was doing a spot of embellishing with buttons and crocheted flowers, even throwing in a bit of blanket stitch for good measure (my nights are long).  Where will it end? 

I do have my eye on the wider environment.  All Hail the guerrilla yarnstormers who add something colourful, cosy and comic to our drab urban spaces! Those great graffiti knitters embellishing a bench, giving a bobble hat to an overlooked frozen statue, a cloak to a queen, hanging intricate webs of crocheted wool in an underpass or leaving a trail of tiny knitted sheep around the capital.

You Go Girls!  They've got a bag of yarn and they're gonna use it.

a bombed bench

my blue woolly bunting

tree cosy

my Woollywall

hope she's amused...

London 'phonebox by Deadly Knitshade & the Yarn Corps

a red wool yarnstorm

on my doorstep

good idea..!

  

 info on Deadly Knitshade and her yarnstorming adventures at:

www.knitthecity.com

www.whodunnknit.com

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Last word...

The best thing about February (apart from Pancake Day) is that it's a short month, and all things must end.

Soon it will be March.  Your mind will turn to chocolate eggs, hot cross buns and simnel cake.

All will be yellow and green with bunnies and bows.  You'll be stressing (maybe) about what to give up for Lent. Don't say I didn't warn you!



Greygirl x 





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