31 More flowers, no knitting

Sue at Backlane Notebook has issued a challenge. With only your garden, allotment if you have one, and local hedgerows to pick from, can you pull together some cut flowers to adorn your home each and every week of the year. Rather crazily I've decided to give it a go. Crazy because we have a minuscule courtyard garden, no allotment, and although there are a lot of hedgerows hereabouts I won't find much that's useful growing wild in winter.

I'm going to have to set some parameters of my own I think. Sue explicitly says bunch of flowers, but I shall allow myself the occasional two or three bloom posy like the one above, and accept that there will be times in the next few months when I'll have plenty of leafy greenery available but nothing that's got petals. At least for the moment, with the topsy turvy weather we're having, there are a few last remnants of summer - late roses, some daisies, a couple of shrubs - still flowering, even budding, outside. How crazy is that!

I'm also going to try to use as many as I can of the various 'vases' I've collected over the years - everything from vintage glass teething-powder bottles to treacle tins - although whether I'll be able to resist returning again and again to perennial favourites, like this tall white jug, remains to be seen. I do so love to see flowers in a jug!

I won't be posting about the challenge every week, but I'll certainly be sure to tell you about each week's flowers. I actually took this picture last week and processed it before I knew about Sue's idea. You can just see the tiny, round, brown glass vase peeping out below the flower on the left. This week's photo shoot awaits better light, but I promise, just as soon as there's a spot of sun, I shall photograph the flowers I found and share them with you.

And in other news? Virtual flowers go to Kath at Hillside Cottage, as a thank you for the walnut husks she generously gathered from her garden and posted to me so that I could dye more wool brown, and to Karen at A Quiet Corner, who has so very kindly declared me a Versatile Blogger, of which more another time.

Oh, and don't forget to enter my Vintage Flowers giveaway my lovelies, I want you all to have a chance to win.

And the knitting? Hardly a stitch. Although I am nearly done with the second Downton test knit. So that's another challenge, make more time for the craft I love best. How about you? Have you accepted any challenges lately? Do tell if you have.