October - in pictures (mainly)

Lynton and Lynmouth, Devon:

I am rather proud of the above photo, taken without a tripod but I managed to capture the movement of the water. Smug Mode Activated. (I balanced the camera on the bridge railing and held my breath ☺)

We stopped here on the way:

just managing to get round before the three coaches of students arrived. 

There were people feeling the vibes (I didn't get any. I think they got used up):

and this crazy man kept taking pictures of me ☺

Arriving in Devon, we walked on the (very rocky) beach

rode on the cliff railway:

(very cool)

I saw a great sign:

and I may have bought some yarn...

but it didn't come from this chap:

(Valley of the Rocks)

We stopped off in Dunster, and this is the Yarn Market, dating from 1590. I approved most mightily. Dunster needs a yarn shop I think.

and that was Devon. Well, a tiny bit of it anyway ☺

We've also been back to Castle Combe for the Mr's birthday, and saw lots of this sort of thing:

and I had a bit of trouble navigating the car parking field:

In other news,  I'm progressing on the February Lady Sweater, hexapuff production has slowed but is still ongoing, and I just cast on for a new project. Because I'm a sucker for punishment.

~♥~

Cotswold

Whoops, it's been a wee while hasn't it? Time seems to be slipping by faster than I realised :( So what have we been up to since we last spoke? Well, things have been rather quiet at work (here we go again...) so I started crocheting some squares:



It's amazing how much you can get done while you're waiting for a scanner to chew through 40 double-sided pages. This is all lovely squeaky acrylic ☺ apart from the green which is a blend. It was taking up good stash space, what can I say?

We went to Bristol, but it was so busy we didn't stop to look round other than a visit to Brislington, to nowhere other than Get Knitted ☺ Really nice shop, though it's in a totally random place. I behaved myself mightily well and came out with two Rowan magazines, a free (!) Debbie Bliss mag, ordered some blocking wires and got a ball of Zauberball Lace:



I went for a restrained colourway, though I did consider the lurid rainbow one. The blocking wires came in the post this week, they're very nice and come packed in a handy strong cardboard tube with T-pins and a yardstick. Shame the wires don't interlock together somehow to make long runs but it's not really necessary, I'd recommend them anyway.

We saw the Clifton Bridge, drove past the SS Great Britain (smaller than I thought) and ended up in the Cotswolds, because we like random on our days out ☺ I think Steve may have been plotting though, because we ended up at the Motor Museum in Bourton-on-the-Water:



James Hunt's car



Hillman Imp - my Mum had one of these!



Fab advertising signs



A fantastic very early caravan, from the 20's I think - check those leaded windows!



I think I need some of this stuff. I'm definitely suffering brain-fag.

Fleeces

I've been faffing with the fleeces I bought. I started carding the Shropshire, but triggered my tennis elbow so I've laid off on that for the moment. I had a look at the Cotswold, and realised just how deeply dirty it is, even the batches that went through the washer. I've started going over them again, focussing on the tips. This is a problem with locky longwool fleeces - the grot gets ground in to the long locks and getting it out is a bloody nightmare. I've resorted to soak in washing soda / soap flakes mix (the water here is horribly hard) then washing-up liquid, then clean water rinse, finishing up with a vinegar soak. Some parts are still mucky :( I think the worst bits will have to be dyed. It seems to have a yellow stain in certain areas, from what I can gather this isn't unusual for Cotswold. It might be yolk, I'm not sure, but it certainly isn't coming out!

And that's about it, I'm up to my eyes in paperwork, tax stuff :( and general Things That Need Doing, I still haven't got any chests of drawers (too skinted), the dust bunnies have started roaming the floors like herds of wildebeest across the veldt and the ironing basket went critical yesterday. Fairly normal then ☺

♥

Sprint

Yup, motorsport content again ☺ Bank Holiday Monday was time for a trip over to the Smoke (literally as it turned out, a huge fire in Thornton Heath meant some nifty work on my part with the road atlas and Google Maps to get us home again) and to Crystal Palace for their annual Sprint. For those not familiar, sprints are not "racing" as such - each competitor has a number of runs on the circuit one at a time, and the fastest wins. There are lots of classes so like cars compete against each other for the honours. At this event there was also a nice sideshow of interesting cars and bikes, and you can wander around the paddock to look at the competitors.





I found some Honda Civics - my Mum had one of these! Cracking little car it was too:



There were some very serious Minis:



some tidy French retro:



and one of my personal favourites:



oh and the beloved found his next car...he wishes:



There was Actual Knitting Content™ - my Liesl got an outing (excuse the gratuitous butt shot, that's what happens when a certain person is put in charge of the camera)



and I took my latest project and knitted in between cars ☺

Latest project, I hear you cry? Yup, I caved and cast on another project...I do have a (feeble) excuse - I wanted to try out the Wollmeise before KnitNation, to see if I wanted to buy any more. Of course I do. It really is nice, feels like cotton, knits like a wool/cotton and apparently blocks like a dream but I haven't got that far. One thing I have found - it's somewhat overspun imho, so it tends to twist up a bit. This gave me a problem when I cast on the first pattern I had in mind - Pogona. You have to switch between stocking stitch and reverse st st. This lead to this:



EEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWW. I often have a slight ladder when swapping between the two (and some Rav-searching has suggested some solutions) but the twist seemed to exaggerate the problem to an unacceptable degree :-( After a little soul-searching I faced facts and ripped it all out. It's now becoming Sweet Jazz, a nice shawly, crescenty scarfy thing with an appealingly pointy border. Moving on nicely so far, no picture because it really doesn't look very exciting yet.

I've been doing some weaving -



made a start on the "net" curtains for the lounge window. I'm sick of the neighbours gawping! Note the rather dubious warping set-up - I do miss having a really big dining room! I finished the weaving today, I just need to secure the edges and give it a wash, and see what I end up with...there's still quite a lot to do yet. I'm still ploughing on with an epic peg loom rug as well. I keep doing a row or two whenever I walk past.

Colour Project

Still on Red for a week or two yet, I've decided to use the blog as my sketchbook so here's a bit more (I still haven't photographed the yarn I spun, oops)



I was hoping to do some painting, but to be realistic, I doubt I'll have time or space - my huge collection of art materials will remain unmolested for a little longer I fear!

~♥~

WOOD Festival 2011

a.k.a "When Caroline went on her Holidays":



Quick recap - I was invited to run a Knitting Circle at the festival, and I offered to do a bit of spinning as well. In return, two free tickets. So I bought a new camping stove (Trangia 25, thanks for asking, it's very good), made some spindles, gathered up loads of needles and yarn, bought a new sleeping bag and then we Packed All The Things:



and off we trooped to a field in deepest Oxfordshire. The circle went well, especially on the Sunday, lots of takers (youngest I taught was six) including a couple of guys. Although the venue wasn't brilliantly planned for teaching, we improvised and I think everyone went away happy, clutching little squares of knitting :-)

The beloved was entirely awesome through the whole weekend, though I think his allowance of patience for hippies and folk music is probably used up for the year:



^ lots of hippies

although the Tilley hat helped immensely in retaining his equilibrium:



He even packed up the entire camp and shipped it back to the car single-handed while I was teaching (I still haven't got over that one), and manfully braved the pole-lathe:



Note I was standing well back at this point ;-)

All in all, it was good, definitely a different way of spending a weekend, although we got so little sleep on the Friday night (noisy and FREEZING) we sneaked off home on Saturday night and slept in a proper bed, after a proper shower! I think we're getting old :-D either that, or we need air mattresses and MORE BLANKETS next time. And earplugs...

~♥~

I can't think of a clever title...

Bit behind on the blog, whoops :-)

Well, I've been busy. Quick photo-essay of what we've been up to:

Calleva:



Donnington Castle:



Check out that ceiling!



Avebury:



Vale of the White Horse:



(yes, you can't really see it, I know, but without a helicopter that's the best you'll get)

The Wall of Death:



and Barbecuing All The Things:



Mmm, barbecue.
It's official by the way, I'm no longer single on Facebook. SRS BIZNESS. :-D

Other than that, I've been trying to prepare for the festival (I'm getting there, just need to see if my old Trangia stove still works, and if I can remember how to make it go) I even got a new sleeping bag. Rock and roll. I'm trying to make some "teaching spindles" from toy wheels and chopsticks, which is working a treat apart from the hooks :-( The teeny cuphooks I bought are too big and are splitting the chopstick, so I think I will have to make some from wire. Gah. Also all my Dremel drill bits have disappeared, so I'm crossing my fingers that the ones I just ordered arrive quickly...otherwise fitting the hooks is going to be interesting.

The Iced cardi is coming on, I've done one sleeve and now am getting stuck into the collar, the short rows are all done so now it's just the long slog. I've still got a sleeve to finish, I want to do the collar then try it on and see if the shorter sleeve length I settled on actually works. Also did I mention I hate sleeves?

I've been spinning some more Heb, though I've laid off combing for a bit to let my elbow sort itself out.

I've been taking the Hap shawl into work to try and finish off, I'm now onto the last border stripe before I start the Edging of Doom.

~*~

Did you all see Kate Middleton wearing a rather nice green shawl to go shopping?



Top girl. Bet she didn't knit it herself, though she might want to think about a nice indoors hobby, the winters on Anglesey can be fierce :-)

I'm hoping this triggers a bit of a trend for shawls (let's be honest, she's defined wedding dress chic for the next few years) as maybe I'll be able to wear my shawls without feeling like a freak (or a granny) and also get decent shawl pins :-D

Glasgow

really is photogenic you know.

Also I may have developed a serious thing for the RetroCam app on Android.



Glasgow Central. I love railway stations at the best of times, and Central is a particularly nice one. The roof is awesome.







Of course, you can't go far wrong with the Botanic Gardens.



and Royal Exchange Square is always picturesque, and a great place to people-watch.

So anyway, to explain, Jules rolled up this weekend for a couple of days. We roamed Glasgow (I walked his legs off hahahaha) did some shopping,(Jules was very patient) wandered the West End, rode the subway and picnicked in the Botanics. I wanted to go to the Necropolis, the photography opportunities are just droolworthy, but SOMEONE didn't get his backside over to my house until nearly 10am. Tut tut.

I realised that I'm growing to really like Glasgow. It's unpretentious and mainly non-touristy, unlike Edinburgh, but there's always stuff going on and something to see. It helps that I'm finally starting to get to know the place (though I still won't drive into the city centre other than on the M8) This trip I saw a group of musicians in Highland dress, and one had a spinning wheel :-) There were also two fabulous steampunk girls on the subway - goggles, cameos, scary contacts, the works. There were also a group of very happy football fans at the station on the way back, singing loud enough to raise the roof...some things will never change...

Sunday we drove out to Loch Lomond, going via Helensburgh and Faslane and up to Tarbert:



Obligatory car pic, somewhere between Faslane and Finnart.

It's actually stunning up past Faslane looking over Gare Loch, but a) there's few places to pull over safely to take photos; b) Jules was driving and c) I didn't want to get shot by the MoD police :-) I didn't see any submarines though *disappointed* but I did see more razor wire in one place than I have ever seen before! We then headed back down the A82 and called in at the Loch Lomond Shores, which kind of knocked me for six a bit. I was expecting a few wee tat shops and coffee and a scone, and found a huge car park, an entire shopping mall, (Jenners! Yay!) food court and an aquarium. The food hall is bloody brilliant btw, and the cake was nice too :-)




The aquarium

We then made the obligatory stop at Nardini's in Largs for meatball baguettes and coffee, and gawped at Scandinavian navy ships pootering about on the Clyde. I need to get some binoculars. Oh and a DSLR with a good zoom lens :-)

All this means I have got next to nothing done of course, but I did iron nearly All The Things today (I ran out of coat hangers) - Bank Holidays have their uses.

♥