Time for another 1st – I knitted my first beanie and I used circular needles for the first time!

Charlie’s Farmer Boy Hat
100% Pure Baby Alpaca, Knit.

This was such a fabulous beginners pattern I came across a little while back on the gorgeous blog ‘Foxs Lane’. The lovely Kate kindly wrote up a free little beanie pattern to make your farmer boy a hat, and although my hubby isn’t a farmer boy anymore… he will be… again… one day… when our dream of having our own little farm comes true.
In the meantime he does work outdoors gardening, so a warm beanie is definitely a must for the cold mornings.

This beanie is so so so soft! Pure chunky baby Alpaca yarn is definitely one of my top 3 yarns as it soft and fluffy and feather light and super warm. I think it feels like what you would imagine a cloud would feel like if you could touch it… one of those really big fluffy puffy clouds. Delicious!
And it must be comfy as Charlie is still wearing it from the ‘photo shoot’ even though it’s actually quite sunny outside!

Now… onto the bee part of this post… have you ever heard a swarm of bees… before you even saw a single bee?

This is what a small section from a small (according to the apiarist!) swarm of bees looks like.
I thought the swarm was HUGE! Believe me, it was LOUD!
I was weeding the garden when I heard what I thought was a car engine pulling up… but I looked around and I couldn’t see a car… so head down, weeding some more… then… the humming got louder… and louder… and louder…
This time I stood up and had a good look around, over the fence and up the road… and that’s when I saw the swarm… this huge swirling humming cloud… heading past the tree on the corner… and over the fence… into my front yard!

Within about half an hour they had made themselves quite at home… seems the big ol’ gum tree in the front yard of Dove Cottage was the new address… and a few thousand bees couldn’t be wrong… right?
In no time, two huge busy buzzing hives appeared amongst the gumnuts.

A quick google… and a call to the local apiarist…. and 20 minutes later… we had gentle Gavin… in the yard… up a very tall ladder… with a box… full of bees!

After a fiesty shake of the branch most of the bees droped right into the well positioned box.
Then after a minute or so… one flap of the box was opened… and the straggler bees buzzing about gently buzzed into the box… like they were being quietly summoned… by muma queen… it was amazing… almost a bit magical… and made me want to learn more about bees.
Apparently, Gavin said the bees in the box released pheromones which ‘called’ the other bees in. Clever hey?
I also found out that any bee can be a queen bee, the queen bee is just the bee that gets fed royal jelly for all of her life, instead of the first few days of her life like the rest of the bees. That made me curious about Royal Jelly too.

Fascinating hey? At least I thought I was… Do you already know lots about bees? Sorry if I’ve bored your to tears with my bee post. I’ll buzz off now…

Hope your day is full of magical suprises… and maybe even a hand knitted gift… made with love.