Wednesday Progress and an outing

Midweek already and projects are slowly moving forward. The week so far has been busy so I've looked forward to my evenings with some slow stitching. I have finished another block for the frog quilt. At the weekend we went on a coach trip to Lakenheath Fen nature reserve and I completed the stitchery on the journey home.

I also made a start on the next stitchery.

These little frogs are a lot of fun to stitch. I decided to try and stitch one a month. I'm making this quilt because I liked the pattern but it doesn't have an identified home to go to when it's finished. Here's a reminder of what it should look like when it's finished. In the pattern all stitcheries are completed in green but I like to use additional colours.

Yesterday evening I completed the first of the sashiko panels on the Japanese quilt. In the end I had to use the white ink pen for marking the pattern as it gave the clearest image. My pattern source book told me the order for the stitching, first stitch the vertical lines and then the horizontal. You don't stop and start for each line but move across to the lines you need to stitch by passing the thread behind the work. The stitching is also done with double thread. I managed to keep my stitch length fairly even but there are a few 'dodgy' stitches.

Meanwhile the front band of my knitting is growing slowly. The 364 stitches are knitted in knit 2 purl 2 rib so I'm finding that knitting this part is very slow. The front band has to be 14 cm wide and I've completed 4cm, so I've a long way to go still. However I want this cardigan finished this month.

On Saturday John and I went on a bird watching trip to Lakenheath Fen in Suffolk. Lakenheath itself is home to a large RAF (Royal Air Force) station. Although it's an RAF base it currently only hosts United States Air Force (USAF) units and military personnel. If you want more information about the base Click Here . RAF Mildenhall, which is in the same area also hosts USAF.

On Saturday the weather was beautiful, sunny and warm with a gentle breeze. The reserve itself is long and thin in shape and this meant there was a fair amount of walking involved. Over the day we walked 7 miles. We particularly wanted to get a sighting of a hobby and we were delighted to see 5 of them. 

Credit: FLPA / Alamy Stock Photo

Hobby's are part of the falcon family and are native to the UK. Their preferred habitat is open woodland, farmland, grassland and wetland. The reserve filled all of these requirements and had plenty of food for them. Their preferred dinner is small birds, dragonflies and other flying insect. There was a profusion of dragonflies and damsel flies around, particularly over the water. The adult hobby has no known predators, maybe because they are very quick and acrobatic birds. We enjoyed watching their ariel display.

We saw a lot of birds but I was enjoying taking photos of the flowers. The water lilies were close to opening.

The Egyptian geese were trying to find crumbs that had been dropped from peoples sandwiches, as this was a favourite refuelling spot for humans.

There were quite a few clumps of rape with their bright yellow flowers.

Creeping thistle was also fairly prevalent.

This one is cow parsley which is very common along the roadside and woodland areas. I also found out over the weekend that it's a member of the carrot family.

The tufted vetch was pretty.

 This one I knew as  'Grandmother pop out of bed' when I was a young child. The real name is hedge bindweed. Other names for this plant are bellbind and Rutland beauty. I like the bee in the lower flower, it was very busy collecting pollen. Being me I had to find a flower that I could make the petals pop out of bed.

The Elder was in flower. Mmm I like elderflower or elderberry wine! Way back in my younger lifetime I used to make wine from a wide range of berries and fruits.

The last photo is of common mallow. They are such pretty flowers 

This evening I'm going to do some work on the crocheted blanket if it doesn't overheat me since today was very hot and is only now cooling down. I hope it cools enough to enjoy a good night's sleep!

Take care 

Lyndsey