Category: travel

White Rabbits!

Oh my, it’s October. Summer seems to have gone in a blink. But this is because it’s been very busy. There’s been:

    • Open Studios
    • Tour de Fleece (I didn’t quite manage to spin every day)
    • Impromptu Home Schooling (for just 10 days when our relationship with my son’s school hit a brick wall)
    • Coach trips to the beach

    • Lots of walks

    • A weighted warp loom on display in a Viking exhibition

    • Knitting art yarn on trains

    • Spinning at Cambridge Rock Festival (where I discovered the music of Doris Brendel)

    • Panicked buying of school uniform. Almost every item for my oldest has to have the school name and logo, even the socks for PE (which was the only item I was confident on the sizing for)!
    • New schools for both children
    • And sunsets!

Now suddenly it’s October! The nights are longer than the days and I have to admit it’s no longer summer. We’re nearly 4 weeks into term and we’ve just had a lovely weekend (though there does seem to be rather a lot of homework). We visited the lovely Anglesey Abbey today to see their Dahlia Festival. It was muddy underfoot but a kaleidoscope of colour as always.

How’s your summer been?

Holidays

Going away for a summer holiday has meant that time for craft has been at a minimum.  I took my portable spinning wheel and on a couple of evenings did some spinning while the children were asleep.  But pre-holiday preparation and post-holiday catch-up has left little time for craft.

My holiday was very child-focused and as a result the vast majority of the nearly 200 photos I took (thank goodness for digital) are filled with pictures of the children, either posing – in gardens or on the beach; or actively playing – flying a kite or digging up large parts of the south-coast.

Occasionally though I was able to take a snap of the scenery.  Astonishingly, for a summer holiday in England, there was an amazing amount of sunshine and clear blue skies.  One day I shall take a photography course and learn to take decent pictures!

boats

waves

sunset

white-bird

hurst-needles

lowtide

Travel and craft

I’m just back from 9 days away with family.  I was very busy before I went away (completing divorce paperwork) and so I didn’t have a lot of time to think about the craft projects I may want to work on while away.  So, I packed a selection of current projects and contingencies in case I finished anything:

  • Mobius cowl (WIP, knitting)
  • Jacob shawl (UFO, knitting)
  • Fruit salad yarn – on Ravely some of my recent fibre dyeing has been described as looking like a fruit salad – so I brought all of that fibre and the large spindle I’m currently using (WIP, spindle spinning)
  • Rickrack yarn (WIP, spinning)
  • My travelling wheel
  • More fibre in case I finish the rickrack yarn and want to spin something else.  This consisted of more hand-painted tops, all of my commercial dyed Shetland, and all of my commercial dyed BFL as well as smaller amounts of natural Shetland.
  • Niddy-noddy (this was my only real nod towards travelling as I didn’t take my skein winder), swift and hand-cards
  • My 16” weaving loom with the purple shawl (WIP, weaving)
  • Some hand-dyed and hand-spun yarn to weave with if I finished the purple shawl.

I did some knitting on the Mobius cowl, I finished one of two skeins of the rickrack yarn and I progressed both the spindle spinning (a little) and the weaving (a lot).  However, I didn’t get near needing any of my contingency projects.  Here’s all my craft stuff back from its trip (this somehow fitted into the car along with me and two children and all the other things we needed):

travel