Are any of you listening to "World on the Move" on Radio 4? It's about animal migration but most fascinating for me is their tracking of a female osprey's journey last year from her nest in Scotland to the part of Africa where she spent the winter and then a month ago, starting on 12th March, her journey back to her summer home.

There's a diary here showing her daily progress and her latest position - just north of Heathrow. She's got about 750km to go until she reaches her nest and her mate who is perched on a nearby tree waiting for her. There's a picture of that too. I can't believe how interesting I'm finding this!!




This is my latest top- down sweater - it took just 3 skeins of lace weight Cashmere, colour "Far from the Madding Crowd" from Violet Green on 3.75mm circular needles to make a useful lightweight Summer top.

Again, I'll post the pattern notes when it's easier to type.


I've been feeling quietly confident that the *kinesitherapy session I had in France made an improvement to my back; it's still not better but there's no doubt the "treatment" had some effect.

In the few hours immediately after, I felt desperately tired and could only move at a snail's pace. Gradually that feeling wore off and I began to feel more normal and that night I slept better than I had done for years - not waking until about 9am. Unheard of as my normal wake-up time is between 5am and 6am

It was a weird sort of treatment. Bruno said there was an enormous block causing the muscles around my lower vertebrae to stop working properly and causing lots of inflammation. Now he didn't touch my back once during the whole thirty minutes. He never "manipulated", just touched very gently always with two hands - one on a foot, the other on tummy or waist. Or one on my tummy and the other on my head. He didn't press - it was all very very gentle. At the end he said the blockage was cleared and that a chain reaction had started so that the body would gradually heal itself.

Mumbo-jumbo??

I don't know. There's no doubt in my mind that something happened, I don't know what, or if it will stop my back pain. If I'm still suffering when we go back at the end of May I'm inclined to give it one more try. We'll see.


* I think I mistranslated this last time as kinesiology. But he didn't speak English.

Hiya Hiya

I am still here.....and actually on holiday in France with the so slow dial-up making it impossible to do anything but the minimum. I shall catch up with you all when we are home because even opening a blog is a five minute wait and leaving comments impossible.

It was touch and go whether we came because I had that lurgy that the rest of the UK bloggers seem to have had - really bad fluey chesty thing and each time I coughed, which was often,I worried that I would be "unsettling" my eye again but my consultant reassured me before we set off so I was able to relax about it (a bit).

We'd planned to come to France for Easter but I was feeling far too ill to travel and only just made it here in time for my sister's birthday - her 60th. My daughter Kate made a beautiful sunflower cake -




and it tasted as good as it looked too. It was a very moist, rich chocolate cake almost more pudding than cake and a lovely way to finish a super celebration meal cooked by my niece. She's just recently started keeping chickens and quails and so quail's eggs featured very nicely in the meal.

The Regia bamboo raglan has been finished for a little while but I've only just been able to take a modelled shot-

It's colour Ethno and 3.25mm needles. The only difference between this and the first one I did is that I shaped the neck so that the front is lower than the back and so the whole neckline fits much better. I will write out the stitch count and roughly what I did when I'm back with my proper pc next week.

Number 3 is in the pipeline - in fact almost finished. It's a v-neck in lace weight pure cashmere - more details next week.


Have you seen Hiya Hiya circular needles? When I saw them mentioned on Franney's blog here I knew I'd have to try them. I've only found one UK stockist - Knit'n'Caboodle and they have a fantastic range including those hard to find 2.25mm and 2.75mm in seven different lengths too.

They are stainless steel and less shiny than Addi turbos which is a good thing for me because I find I get dazzle if the light isn't just so. The needles are the same length as the Addis and the join is as smooth. I think I probably prefer the cable of the Addis but not enough to prevent the HiyaHiyas being a clear favourite.



I hardly dare mention my bad back amongst all my other health issues but this reached the point where I needed some sort of outside help. I've had a bad back of sorts (haven't we all??) since I had to lug 14month old twins upstairs together more than 30 years ago but whatever I've got now is different and I think caused by some awkward action to get into bed over a mound of pillows designed to keep my eye in one position. And I've had it for over two months now.
I don't get constant pain but when I do certain twisting movements I get such debilitating breathtaking pain making moving impossible until the spasm has passed and then I'm left feeling weak and sweating.....

I'm going to see a bio-kinesiologist today. Hmm. No, I'm not sure what one is but he was recommended by my French neighbour and his bad back and his wife's have been much improved by Bruno. If it doesn't help I shall see the gp when I get home......

......speaking of which there should be some lovely Malabrigo laceweight waiting for me to do another stole test knit but more details later.....