Has spring arrived?

At last .. the sun is shining brightly in a clear blue sky and I have hung my washing on the line at the end of the garden for the first time this year.  The air is warm and the breeze is gentle and, with lots of squabbling and squawking,  the jackdaw family have returned to the nesting holes at the back of my house.  Could spring possibly have arrived I wonder? But, whether the warmer weather is here to stay, or (most probably) not, we’re making the most of this lovely sunny weather while it lasts.  

We enjoyed a lovely walk up the bridleway toward Stokenham this morning.  Look – no mud!!  And also look – isn’t Daisy grown up?  It’s hard to remember what a tiny fuzzy little creature she used to be ….

Not so very long ago!  I’ve been enjoying some spring stitching too with projects for the April magazine.  I’m in the middle of sewing the binding onto my Woodland Alphabet Quilt – and hope to be able to show you the finished quilt very soon.  But I took a little break from binding to complete ny Running Hare softie ….

I sometimes see brown hares in the fields above France Farm when I take Ben and Daisy to their favourite kennels, and I’ve been planning to make a hare softie for some time now.  I’ve mounted him on the base of a carved bird (the actual bird was damaged so I removed the base and painted it white) and decorated it with ribbon and ric-rac braid.  

Four wooden buttons secure his powerful legs (great for running and leaping) and a tiny dark brown button completes his nose.  He’s found a home on the table next to my laptop with one of the last of my beautiful camellia flowers – the bright pink is nearly over now – but the smaller, deeper pink camellia is just coming into bloom, so I shall have flowers for my vases for a while yet.