I’ve been holding off on showing you photos of these trousers because all the photos I have of them are rubbish.  But they’ve been done for almost three months now, and I do have some photos of them, and even if the photos are rubbish, at least there is a fun story attached!

I started these trousers last autumn (so yes, well over six months ago!) along with a class who were making them:

These are made from the same altered version of Wearing History’s Chic Ahoy trousers as my Pants that Never End.  The fabric is an absolutely delicious lightweight worsted wool that I was given by the wonderful Lynne.  It’s a fabulous colour: grey in some lights, purple in others.

The fabric isn’t quite as successful as the linen was, simply because it is so light and clinging that I feel the need to wear smoother pants underneath, which is more effort than I can usually be bothered with (tap pants are easy and wonderful, smoothers are a hassle.  I’m very specific!).  It also looks terrible the moment you put anything in the pockets, which entirely defeats the purpose of big pockets.  Still, I do love them

I have managed to wear them a number of times, most notably as my Wellington-to-Taranaki travelling outfit for our Anne of Green Gables weekend.

We got photos of the trousers at our brunch stop, and again for an afternoon rest at Virginia Lake in Whanganui.

Nana lived very near Virginia Lake, and was very proud of it.  She always made us walk around it when we visited her, so I like to stop there every time I pass through.  It’s not exactly a hard task: the lake (it’s really a small pond) is beautiful, especially in springtime.

There were oak trees in full flower (an oak tree in flower is possibly one of the most underrated things in the world)

And wisteria arbours:

And, best of all, a teeny bit of bluebell woods:

One of my life goals is to go walking in a proper bluebell wood, with acres and acres of them.  This patch isn’t quite doing it, but  these trousers certainly work perfectly with them, so they immediately acquired their name.

In addition to flowers and bluebell woods, Virginia Lake has ducks, geese, swans, coots and pukeko, all of which were either nesting or had just hatched clutches of fluffy offspring.

We saw a black swan sitting on her nest, with mate on guard:

She was doing a pretty good job of defending her nest from interlopers herself, like this nosy coot:

Based on the nest, I thought we were too early for cygnets, but a few bends further on in the lake I spotted a pair in the reeds.  I crouched down to see them, and  they decided I looked like I would make a nice friend and came to investigate:

Andersen got The Ugly Duckling all wrong, because there is nothing remotely ugly about these darlings!

Look at them.  They even know how to pose already:

The cygnets were coming right up to me,  posing and flirting and generally making me excessively happy.

Stella & Priscilla were calling my name with increasing urgency, but I just waved them away, because baby swans.

Finally I turned around to see what they were so excited about, and discovered that the excitement was the mother swan, who was RIGHT behind me, and not at ALL  happy!

Cue mad scrambling away and hysterical laughter once I was at a safe distance.  I’m sorry mama swan!  I just wanted to be friends with your babies!