Absence

I haven't posted for a while because I have been a bit under the weather. It was a fluey type bug but not the full blown variety. It did knock me off my feet for a little while but I am back now and feeling much better.

I haven't really done an awful lot but I did manage to make it to the John Lewis sale yesterday and picked up a few bargains. I also bought some foam squares from the Early Learning Centre in a sale to use as blocking boards.

I hope to have some finished objects to post soon (once they have been blocked and photographed). How exciting!

The photo at the top has nothing to do with the post really. I thought it was quite representative of a long hot summer. A tree in a field like this always makes me think of Tess of the D'Urbevilles. I don't know why.

Hardy's Cottage

I went abroad into Dorset today to do the tourist thing at Dorchester. I took my daughter and friend so that they could go to the Dorchester museum and I searched in vain for a yarn shop. We then made our way over to Higher Bockhampton to Thomas Hardy's cottage. It was a good stretch of the legs from the car park but it was through woods, which was lovely because it was such a hot day. Apparently, Hardy wrote Under the Greenwood Tree here and Far From The Madding Crowd.
The cottage is a lot smaller on the inside than it looks from outside. The rooms are very small and the cottage is only one room deep. There is a small staircase at one end and a step ladder at the other. It is owned by the National Trust who are trying to re-furnish it at the moment because they had the wrong class of furniture in it.
The garden is beautiful. It looks overgrown from this angle but it wasn't. It has spiralling paths around the garden so that you have to walk all the way through it before you get to the front door. There was also a lot more colour in the garden than can be seen in the photo.

If you are a Hardy fan it is well worth the trip both to the cottage and the Dorchester museum.

The dark side

Ok. I admit it. I have been seduced by the dark side. After many years of knitting, I have now decided to have a go at crochet. Well, a granny blanket to be precise. It all started a short while ago when I happened upon a blog called Attic24. It was such an explosion of colour that I resolved to try to crochet again. Oh yes, I have tried before but unsuccessfully. I ordered one of the yarns that Lucy recommended from First4yarns. The cotton has been so popular that they have created their own pack called Lucy's Creative Cotton Pack. The colours are much better represented in their photo. Apparently, they have been inundated with orders so I had to wait a while for mine. It arrived this week and here it is.

I enlisted the help of a friend who was very patient with me. She not only showed me how to crochet but also a way of fiddling the ends of yarn in at the same time. It all looks so neat and there is no sewing the ends in.

Here they are. Sunbathing. The idea is to make a nice blanket for the lounge. We live in an old farmhouse that gets quite cold in the winter so it will be nice to have a blanket to snuggle under. I think I will have to buy some more cotton to make the blanket a generous one.

Some individual squares.

This blanket has also been a welcome distraction to the stripey sweater which seems to be taking forever. I am sure my hair is growing quicker than the jumper! I am now half way up the first sleeve so the end is in sight. I hope to get more done this week.

Beautiful blog award

Being a very organised person I have just got round to catching up on some of the blogs that I follow. I have been nominated for a beautiful blogger award by Life and Yarn or Yarn and Life and Wool and Cotton. Thank you so much.

I now have to tell you ten little known, interesting facts about me and nominate ten other blogs for the beautiful blogger awards. So here goes:

1. When I was in junior school our rounders team won the Middlesex County Rounders Championship. It is the first and only time I have excelled in sport and have remained dormant ever since!

2. One of my favourite songs is Lovin' You by Minnie Riperton. I love the shreaky part and insist on shreaking along everytime I hear it.

3. I turned down tickets to go and see Live Aid at Wembley. I know.

4. I moved in with my husband after knowing him for only a week. We married six months later.

5. My favourite garden is Great Dixter in West Sussex. When Christopher Lloyd was still alive I encouraged my husband to take stalking photos of him on my behalf so that I could put him as a pin up in my shed.

6. One of my favourite quotes is from Pride and Prejudice where Lady Catherine de Burgh talks about playing the piano (I think) and says "I would have been proficient, had I ever learned". I quote this all of the time but have never read Pride and Prejudice or looked up the quote.

7. I cried so much in the opening chapters of Angela's Ashes that I couldn't read it anymore.

8. I had pre-eclampsia in my first pregnancy and my daughter was born six weeks early weighing 2lbs 9oz. (She is now at Manchester Uni and loving it. Here is her blog). I went on to have three strapping boys.

9. I would love the learn how to use my iphone properly. At the moment I use it for phone calls and emails but also as a vuvuzela whilst watching the football.

10. I don't know really what blocking is or how to do it. Can anyone help?

I am going to pass the award to ten people, some of whom must have had lots of nominations but I like their blogs. My nominations are:

1. Eskimimi Knits

2. Mooncalf Makes

3. A Girl in Winter

4. Fridica

5. Krafty Kows

6. Knitknotnat

7. Untangling knots

8. Fiolin and the handy gnomes

9. Hestia's Larder

10. A Homely Heroine

Sheepishly round

Here are some photos of a roundabout in Shepton Mallet not too far from where we live. It has some statues of about six or seven sheep on it and one black sheep slightly out of the main group. I drove around the roundabout to give my children a chance to take good photos and these two are definitely the best ones. I cannot really see the black sheep. Maybe it is behind a sign.

Someone always decorates them for different occasions during the year; witches hats for Halloween, Father Xmas hats at Christmas, Easter Bonnets. It is good fun to see what they have been dressed as.

Groceries and Glastonbury

The other night I had to go grocery shopping. Nothing exciting in that I know. We live about ten miles away from a supermarket but it is a nice journey across lovely countryside which I sometimes forget to appreciate. I stopped to take some photos.

I also had some interested spectators.

The hill you can see is Glastonbury Tor. We live about eight miles away. I tried to get a good photo but it was only on my phone.

And it is quite difficult to photograph with an audience!!

It will be a busy time for us over the next few weeks because of the Glastonbury festival. What surprised me when we first moved here is that the festival is not actually in Glastonbury but in a village nearer to Shepton Mallet called Pilton. People in Pilton and the surrounding villages get free tickets to the festival but we are not near enough for that (boo hoo). Locals are allowed to buy Sunday tickets but I forgot to apply again this year. Doh. One year I will get my act together. Our local train station, which is normally very quiet, becomes a gathering place for people in wellies (young and old, but mainly young), taxi drivers, buses taking people to and from the festival site and police. When the festival is in full swing we can hear it in our garden, not very well, but we can. If we play it on the radio at the same time it is almost like we are there. I could go the whole hog and sleep in a tent but you have to draw the line somewhere and I think that would just be sad. (And I like sleeping in my own bed). I will post photos over the next few weeks if I see anything exciting.

To and from

We made it to Manchester. We left fairly early in the morning so the traffic was quite light. Unfortunately, my daughter hadn't made it out of bed. When I had told her that we would be there by ten, she thought I was joking (although I did actually arrive at 9.30). When we left Somerset we had bright sunshine, but at Manchester it was pouring with rain. Just what we needed for loading the car! I was hoping to load the car and start on our way home but I had forgotten what it is like sociable. We had to stop and chat to loads of people, talk about what we were doing over the summer, say goodbye, promise to keep in touch, etc, etc.

Hall of Residence 1

Hall of Residence 2

Hall of Residence 3

As you can see, the Halls of Residence are quite nice. But the car is always a long way from the room.

Finally, we were on our way back home. There were heavy bursts of rain and the traffic stopped completely. Clearly, we are not used to rain in this country. The weather initially got worse around Worcester and Birmingham but then got a lot better just north of Bristol. It made the last part of the journey quite pleasant. There is nothing worse than being on the motorway in the driving rain.

The journey home

When we arrived home my husband had done a fantastic barbeque and the boys had helped cook and get the garden table ready for us to eat. It was great and such a lovely welcome home.

One of the first things I got my daughter to do was to try on the Daisy cardigan I had made for her. You may remember that my tension was wrong and it had ended up being two inches bigger than it should have been which was a shame. Although, she seems to quite like it. I may have to knit another one sometime that is actually the right size!

What a beautiful, if somewhat reluctant, model. So great for our family to be complete again, if only for the summer.

Lastly, I wanted to show you some flowers I bought the other day. Aren't they lovely. They are Sweet Williams and they were always my grandparents favourites. The photo was a spur of the moment thing (can you tell by the hand).

I hope your weekend was good too.