Well, Easter was a wash-out. Literally, almost- on the 5 hour drive to my mothers, we went through every conceivable English weather condition except thunder and lightning. Rain, snow, sleet, hail and horrendous gale-force winds, we had it all. The drive was pretty awful.
Despite having spent the 1980s wrapping me in waterproofs and dragging me outside for some fresh air, my mother has seen the error of her ways and now refuses to go out in the cold, and so we were stuck looking for some indoor activities. Saturday was spent at the amazing Life museum in Newcastle, which is great, but very very busy- I wish we lived close enough that we could explore slowly and steadily at our own pace. Newcastle also has the fantastic Childrens Gallery at the Laing, which is another great place to spend a rainy day. Steve and I have made the decision that he isn't restricting his job hunt for next year to just Swindon, so we're on the move again- he's applied for a job in Berwick, all the way up on the Scottish borders, which would be brilliant if he got it. This town has never really felt like home to us, and the constant senseless vandalism to the car is grating. I don't want my children to grow up in a place where it isn't safe for things to be outside in the evening- what about people?

We also continued the discussion with my family about River's name, as we were on the receiving end of an extremely bitchy comment on Sunday morning. I was talking to one of our local ministers about it last Thursday, and she suggested that we write something explaining exactly why this is the name we chose for him, the name that we gave him- and either give it to them or use it as notes to explain ourselves more clearly, so this is something I'm going to do. Isn't he gorgeous? He's such a chubby little hamster...




In other news, I finished square three of the Lizard Ridge. It's funny how strongly colours can affect you- I've bought a lot of pink tops recently- I'm wearing one right now, as it happens- but working with the colour again and again, I was really starting to resent it. It was a relief to get to the very pretty yellow/pink stripe at the end, which reminds me of rhubarb. Very seasonal. It was a real effort not to try and cheat the colourways this time and to stick to letting it flow as it wished, but in the end I do like the way that the colours are flowing through the short-row bubbles in the stripes. It's helping. I have another ball of this colourway (or at least, I did- I'm 3/4 of the way through square 4) and I'm hoping to get three full squares out of the two balls.