Sweet Peas and Xmas Decs.

I have never ever picked sweet peas in September, not in decades of gardening. I went out early this morning determined to consign them to the compost heap. I 'm having an early clean up this year so that when I come back from Scotland the garden doesn't look like a dead jungle. As I reached up to drag the first plants away from the trellis the perfume just hit me and for a moment it felt like an early summer's day. Sweet peas are usually over and done with by late July in my windy garden, they've earned a reprieve.

The bizarreness  of sitting in a garden that looks more like high summer rather than autumn was brought home to me as later I sat making Xmas baubles ( thank you Christine for your five minute tutorial).

It's lovely to be sewing something decorative and pretty after the more challenging stuff of the last few weeks.

I also managed to have an hour mindlessly finishing off a sketch from my last Ullapool visit. I remember the day I did it so well. I had been looking across the loch at a line of woodland, the water was inky blue and reflected the image like a mirror. The sky and the mountains merged into one and my doodle / sketch technique came up with this stylized  sketch just waiting to translate into stitch.