More days home this week than expected

...because the abrupt change in weather seemed to trigger a head cold for me so I ended up missing two days of work being sick instead.  It meant that in between nose blowing and sleeping, I could do some quiet work on crafts.  I'm feeling better now by the way although still a bit stuffed up.

I finished the Japanese fabric picture and made it a little frame by cutting up a couple of pound-store frames to the right size. I've included a side view so you can see the texture created by the kit which has you pad certain pieces with felt to give a more 3D effect.

We saw thatched houses like this when we visited the UNESCO world heritage site of Shirakawa-go in the mountains.

I had already finished knitting the purple roses cardigan so I sewed it up and blocked it but haven't sewn the buttons on yet.  In this pic, one front is looking longer than the other but it isn't really!

This is supposed to be a size 2-3 years and the chest has come out about 18-19 inches.  I've emailed a friend whose daughter is whom I had in mind as the recipient, to see if she thinks it will fit her.

Now I've started knitting a shawl from the Stylecraft Batik Swirl I bought a few months ago, using a pattern from Simply Knitting magazine.  The shawl is knit on the diagonal to begin with so you are increasing on one side and decreasing on the other to knit a diagonal point.  There is no picture of this part of the shawl and I got a bit confused and ended up with six inches of knitting bent like an elbow.  So I had to pull that out and start again!  The second attempt is looking better.

I also did some more work on the second bedroom for the Japanese dollshouse.  I created an aged effect for the floorboards similar to floors in photos I took on our Japan trip inside historic houses and temples, and I fitted the irori or traditional fire pit.  It looks great with the Japanese tea kettle that my friend Anita gifted me with.

After that I fitted the sliding fusuma doors and I'm currently working on the ceiling.  There will be a traditional stair cupboard at the back of the room so I decided to create a false ceiling hatch back there  to give the stairs somewhere to go to, as if the occupants could go up into the attic.

The garden is really appreciating the cooler damper weather.  Yesterday we trawled a couple of garden centres looking for bargains, I particularly like to buy perennials off the 'sick plant' table because they are cheap and usually recover fine with some care.  We tried Podingtons first which is part of the Wyevale chain, and it was so expensive!  A lot of their plants weren't even in that great condition yet everything was really highly priced, like a smallish pot of rosemary for £10.  DH remembered another one called Seasons in Burton Latimer so we tried over there, and hit the jackpot.  A whole table of reasonably healthy medium sized perennials all at £2.69 a pot to clear!  So we came home with 17 pots which filled in a lot of gaps in the garden and hopefully will all survive the winter and add value to the garden for years to come.

Today I noticed that the hibiscus we were given by DH's uncle back in the spring has suddenly thrown out two flowers and they are so beautiful!  I didn't even know you could grow hibiscus in this country, and when he gave it to us it was just a bare stick in a pot.  I planted it in a large container where it remained a bare stick for several months.  Finally in early summer it started throwing out leaves.  The uncle said it might not flower its first year so we were excited when we noticed buds about a month ago.  And now there are these gorgeous tropical flowers, so pretty.

Hope you are staying healthy!