Friday catch-up

As today - 30 June is designated as #SocialMediaDay it seems appropriate to start today with a genuine and heart-felt thank you for being here.

Social media, as a general concept gets a lot of bad press right now. Whether it’s responsible for the decline in our mental health, physical health or the downturn of our business it’s easy to see social media as the bad guy.

But in reality it’s much more like the old pick and mix bags you used to have at Woolworths (yes - showing my age here). Increasingly I’m thinking that it’s less about social media detoxes and screen breaks and more about taking the good bits, the bits that work for you and lift you up and ditching the rest.

After all, if it wasn’t for social media I’d be writing this to just a handful of people - most of whom I am related to.

I wrote a blog post this morning on this very subject in a little more detail - do take a look if you get a minute.

What’s making me smile this week:

• I’m obsessed with this 3-ingredient recipe for ice cream that I found recently. It works really well with different fruit, it’s really simple and you don’t need any special equipment. I don’t normally follow a lot of food based accounts on Instagram but I really love the simplicity and no-fuss approach of this one.

• Petrichor - we’ve had some long awaited rain this week, breaking a run of around 8 dry weeks and the smell of wet earth and grass was just a complete tonic to the senses. One night I went to bed to the sound of gentle (and not so gentle) rainfall pattering outside and it was just blissful. Did you know that the smell we associate with petrichor is actually a compound released by Streptomyceses bacteria that live in the earth. Geosmin is the name of this compound and it turns out that as humans, we are uniquely sensitive to it - being able to detect it’s presence even when it is diluted into the parts per million range. Increasingly it’s scent is being incorporated into perfumes, such is it’s appeal - which will explain the Petrichor candle I came across recently. I’m quite tempted to give it a go actually.

• In knitting news I have finished the I Heart Stripes shawl that I was knitting for the #SassyStripeKAL. I thought the picot bind off would be really offputting but actually I managed to work through it pretty quickly. It helped that I was really engrossed in my latest Netflix find - Pine Gap if you are interested. It’s currently blocking so there are no pretty photos to share yet, but I’ll pop something up on Instagram over the weekend.

How are you getting on with the #SassyStripeKAL - if you are partaking? Do let me know so I can cheer you on. The KAL doesn’t end until the end of July so there is still time to cast on - the link to all the information is here although the discount period to buy the patterns has now ended.

Wishing you a happy - and Petrichor filled weekend

xx