Splash of colour - January

I always think of January as a clean, white month.  I love the sense of a new start and empty pages in a fresh diary...everything plain, simple and clutter-free after the green, red and gold excesses of Christmas. 

I wasn't sure how much colour I would find when I went looking for it for Silverpebble's Splash of Colour project yesterday, but it is here.  The house may be refreshingly free of decorations and holiday clutter, but there is still plenty of colour too.

My beautiful new green satchel, a Christmas present from G.  Other delicious, vibrant shades, sizes and styles can be found on the Cambridge Satchel Company website.

Strawberry and vanilla buns in bright, cheery, red paper cases, waiting for their icing.

Another Christmas present - this magnificent book.  I picked up some good, bright shades of cashmerino and organic wool yarn in the John Lewis sale, and have started by making the sprig of lavender you can see lying on the book in the picture above. 

I am a little obsessed by lavender at the moment.  When I finally made it to Oxford over Christmas, Mum gave me some of the lavender she harvested from her garden in France last year, and which she dried out over the autumn.  She had so much of it that we lost perspective somewhat.  She gave me three carrier bags full of dried stalks, which when I got it back home to London, suddenly seemed like an enormous quantity.  I stripped the stalks from just one of the three bags and have ended up with a huge bowl of lavender - so full that I can submerge my hands in it up to my wrists.  The resulting smell of lavender throughout the whole house is astonishing.  This may be adding to the general, and very welcome, sense of January calm and simplicity which is enfolding us all at the moment.