Blog, I have missed you

It's true, the blogging muscles have grown rather flabby. 

What has been happening? 

We had our sculpting friend Jantien to stay. Here she is sculpting, or her hands anyway:

She came initially because we have a covered space to work in, not very sheltered otherwise, but out of the rain. Then she had to stay in the blue room because her usual billet down the road with her mother-in-law was taken by someone else for a bit, then she kind of decided she might as well stay around as she rather liked it here and it would save upping sticks. We didn't mind a bit, she is the most sensible, sensitive and considerate lodger, helped by the fact she actually has something to be getting on with and so doesn't need entertaining, she frequently cooks us delicious vegetarian meals with her own ingredients and caters for herself in a very tidy and tactful way for much of the rest of the time  and she was always eager to stretch her legs at one end of the day or the other and accompany Elfie (with whom she was rather taken, naturally) and her attendant humans on long country walks. 

So I can't say she kept us busy with extra work at all, but having someone dynamic working away on site, and just being encouraged to chat and be a bit more outwardly energetic and sociable oneself, means the patterns change a bit, and one's mental space feels somewhat rearranged and fuller than usual. None of which is a bad thing, of course. 

Now though, having succeeded in stealing away so early that none of us heard the going of her, she is en route back to the Netherlands for a week or two, whence she'll be travelling to England for this exhibition, and we're all being rather quiet and lazy on this fête de travail.

But I think she'll be back later this month, which should please Elfie, who's been looking around for her rather today.  And perhaps it will be a little warmer by then. Elfie's blanket is finished, despite her attempts to commandeer it even before it was:

It's not really her colours, but never mind.

Thus unseasonable cold has made sculpting, gardening and dog walking sometimes something of a struggle, but I suppose the upside of that is a delayed spring; we are only just at the luminous, soft, multi-hued stage which would normally be giving way to a more uniform emerald by now, of which here are some photos from today's walk:

And an early peacock butterfly:

A cold, delayed spring an upside? Indeed, for truly in this life, anything that seems to hold back time is to be welcomed. Also spracht Pollyanna.

That will do for now, we're off to Kerbiriou for the first time this year, and for our first trip away with Elfie, in a week or two, but I'll try to be back here again before then, and to reacquaint myself with blogging friends in the meanwhile.