Sheepish post

Monday and this week started as calmly as the last one ended. Perhaps I should stop tempting fate:)

Went out for coffee with the new member of the Leadership team and I'm now allowing myself some hope that everything will be better next year than it has been this year on the work front.
I was at a conference, recently, where one of the speakers - an inspirationally interesting man - talked about there being a difference between hope and optimism. That gave me hope in itself. By nature, I find optimism tricky, but allowing myself to be cautiously hopeful feels like something I can handle.
~~~~~~~~

Got home to find that J had been to the post office. My post was a package from my Secret Pal. Thank you! All the items are lovely, again.



This package brought a great sheep moneybox (just the thing for stash saving, two bars of lush chocolate, a sheep bookmark (love sheepy things), a lovely purple beaded angel (I really like angels, a sheep calendar and a cake of Yankee potpourri wax. Thank you again. This made my day.

~~~~~~~
The temperature has been hovering around 30 degrees for the last couple of days. I've been keeping covered up and covered in factor 50, but I saw some nasty burns on children at school today.

I sat on the deck and worked on Bombshell yesterday, having to restrain myself from starting on any of the more recent yarn purchases. There doesn't seem to be any point in showing progress so far as it's still just a green strip. I'm pleased that I can actually see the sleeves and raglan shapings starting to form as I was a bit worried at first. This is my first top-down project. I'm a bit stressed from reading all the discussion on BGK about the direction of the short rows further down, but am enormously encouraged by Mully Nex's photos of her completed sweater. I actually think that this is the same yarn in the same colour as I am making.

I had a new companion beside me on the table, but he wasn't really interested in the knitting.



This is a variety of pitcher plant (Sarracenia Wrigleyana - fantastic name!) which is supposed to particularly like vine weevils to eat. We want it to grow big and fat on as many vine weevils as it can possibly scoff down as they have been a real problem for us in recent years. What was the plant called in Little Shop of Horrors? Seymour? I shall call this chap Seymour.