This May I’m living in my garden room!

It does sound very unlikely but we’ve had a heatwave this week in East Yorkshire, like many parts of the UK. What a delight after months of cold greyness. I’ve been making the most of it by having some early morning dyeing sessions and then hanging the yarn to dry in the lovely warm shade while I work and crochet in my little garden room… total bliss.

Having a garden room and a garden to enjoy is really lovely this time of year. I like gardening but as things really gather pace on the growing front in June and July, my efforts at weed control, tidiness and watering regularly tend to go by the wayside and it all goes a bit pear shaped. In May, everything is fresh and green and normally we aren’t too short of rain. The roses this year have been just stunning.

Loving my garden room

Its been 7 years now since I got my little garden room. It was originally a brick built shed attached to the bottom of the garage, right next to the garden. The roof timbers had rotted and fallen in, even though the concrete support for the balcony above was still sound, and it was full of junk.

Looking back now I don’t even know where I got the idea from but I got a friend of a friend to help me and we took the front and side wall apart as they were in quite poor condition, rebuilt them and put in a trifold glass door. That was the most expensive item in the whole project but it was so worth it. It now opens out so that the little room has become part of the garden.

It is south facing so the shade of the cherry tree just outside is really good on the few very hot days that we get. The tree marks the resting place of one of our beloved cats, Pickle, who died in August 2004. The other tree is above her partner kitty, Junior, who followed her just three weeks later. It was so sad that he seemed to fade as soon as she had gone. Pickle as 16 and Junsie 19 though, so they had very long and happy lives. I still often think of them when I see the trees, so when we lost our Magic last year, we marked her grave with a tree too. One of Magic’s sisters died a while ago – Meesha is buried near to a weeping silver birch on the other side of the garden and I am thinking about adding a small tree there too.

As well as doing work in the garden room on my laptop, I also find it a great place to make stitch markers, crochet and knit and to take many of the shawl photographs that I use in my blog posts and podcasts. Because its now painted white, it reflects the light and doesn’t produce very many hard shadows.

This Saturday, in between editing Podcast 33 and preparing the notes, I’ve also been having a domestic flurry as my daughter is coming home next week from Bank Holiday Monday until the following weekend. As well as sprucing up the house and clearing away all my wool and dyeing paraphenalia, I’ve also given the garden room a freshen up so this seemed like the perfect time to take some photos of what its like inside… I just love it so much 🙂

I actually recorded the podcast for Episode 33 here on Friday too – so you can see a little bit of the corner in the photo above as I chat on about the finishalong, which will be starting over here at Crafternoon Treats on June 1st.

See you soon xxx Kathryn