On a scale of 1 - 10,

how gorgeous are these fingerless mittens?

 

I know, they're just too lovely for words aren't they?

 

The pattern is from a designer, Hunter Hammersen, whose work I absolutely love, but despite owning six of her books and several other single patterns these are the first thing of hers I've ever actually knitted.

 

I love them. They look more complicated than they actually are, they knitted up really quickly, they fit well and feel gorgeous - partly thanks to the yarn I used, which was Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino Tonals.

 

I can see these giving me sterling service over the winter months in the Cathedral, when I need to keep my hands warm, but still be able to turn the pages of the hymn book!

 

But just before you think I'm getting a bit gloat-y and turn away in disgust, let me just say that the current project, which is a pair of socks, is possibly the most loathsome thing I have ever knitted, and I will freely 'fess up to them and post a photo once they are done!

 

We're not gardeners, but

we can stick things in pots and put them on the paving by the door.

also the OH grows odd stuff like lemons and coffee beans, which you can just see through the window. One day I hope he'll have a greenhouse for stuff like that and they can be cleared out of my the sunroom. Until then I enjoy using the lemons in cakes, and looking at the pretty flowers on the path. Although the view is rather spoiled by the cat dish.

Project 60 Number 27

 

Yup, well, no prizes for guessing what this one is. Baking bread. I know some people will find it shocking that I have almost reached 60 without ever baking bread, but there you go. And anyway, now I have.

 

And not in a bread maker either, but properly with yeast and proving time and everything. And it tasted lovely, and had a good crust and what I thought was a good internal structure. Not sure it would pass the Paul Hollywood test, but hey! he wasn't here and I don't care. I made not just edible, but lovely, bread.  I'm actually a little bit proud of myself.

 

I doubt it will become a thing I do on a regular basis, but at least I know if I need to do it again, I can.

Beck is Back!

Which for the uninitiated means the return of a Swedish detective series to BBC4.

Foreign detective series have been, as readers of this blog might remember, a bit hit and miss. Hits - The Killing, The Bridge, Wallander, The Tunnel Series 2, Those who Kill. Misses - Falcon (oh dear) Top of the Lake (oh dear squared) and a dire dire Swedish thing set in the 1920s whose name escapes me but which rejoiced in a heroine with the unlikely name of Puck. Also Montalbano, which was so far from being a police series that it hardly counts.

 

Beck though, I like. I like it because it's funny, I like it because it's tense, I like it because I can listen to Swedish and remember some of it. But mostly I  like it because it gives me an opportunity to quietly lust over Mikael Persbrandt.

 

Shallow? Moi? Well maybe now and then....

Project 60 NUmber 26 - Walking the City Walls in York

As some of you will know we lived for many years in Leeds, and so we were quite near to York but seldom went there. I can't now think why not, except perhaps that when we went out we tended to head for the North York Moors or The Dales rather than swap one city for another, so that apart from the obligatory visits to the National Railway Museum and one trip to Jorvik, York didn't really feature all that much on the radar.

 

But while we were in York for a week recently and looking for something the whole family could do, we thought we'd walk the walls. They're not quite a complete circle, but as near as dammit, considering how old they, are so off we set.

 

I have to say that for quite a lot of the way the views aren't particularly good, as a lot of city infill has taken place within them, and when I say city infill we're talking warehouses and offices, but in some places the views are very good.

 

I did doubt whether I would get all the way round as walking has been making my back ache for months and months now but I managed it. Not as quickly or as easily as I could have done it 20 years ago, and I did have to stop a couple of times,  but it was all the way round regardless.

 

I did take some pictures of some of the nicer bits, including a very good view of York Minster.

 

Also I have been to see a physiotherapist this week about my back and although she was rather surprised it didn't hurt almost all the time (well thank goodness for small mercies, say I) she pummelled me about a bit and it's a lot better. Also, according to the OH I am no longer leaning to the right when I walk, something of which I was totally unaware. She gave me some exercises to do every day and so far I've been very good and done them (but you know, three day out of three isn't that impressive) If I do them daily for 3 years, then I'll allow myself to be impressed.

 

And meanwhile, pictures of York, from the walls -

 

 

 

I know, it should be white roses, but I didn't see any of those, and the red ones were too lovely to pass by.

 

Project 60 - Number 25 Visiting Alice Springs

This is a Bucket List one. I read Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice when I was thirteen and after that I wanted to visit Alice Springs really badly. It's taken me rather a long time to get there! but The Ghan goes through it and you stop there for another excursion.

Here is the famous camel statue at the station

and this is The Ghan logo

 

so it should come as no surprise that the excursion we chose in Alice was a camel ride.

 

We've done this before in Tunisia, and ever since I have wanted to d it again, because when we did it in Tunisia I was so worried about either falling off, or my camel deciding to make a dash for freedom over the dunes and into the depths of the Sahara, that I didn't really enjoy the experience as much as I should have done. So the idea was that this time, with the benefit of hindsight, I would be fairly sure I wasn't going to fall off and could be more in the moment.

 

It sort of worked. I felt really sorry for our camel as the OH and I were both put on it which seemed a big ask. And it was very very  hot, so that made it slightly uncomfortable. And as I remembered from Tunisia the worst bit was actually getting off the camel, which seems, when your camel flops itself back down at the end of the ride, to be fairly impossible, so I was a bit worried about that.

 

Apart from that and a piece of bad behaviour from our camel half way round, it was fine. There was a  brief photo stop after about 30 minutes, where the group leader takes pictures of you on your camel and gives you a bit of a talk about camels, how to look after them, what lovely animals they are etc etc. Which would have been fine had our camel not made a unilateral decision to sit down while that was going on. Once he was down, he had to made to get up again, and can I just say that the worst possible thing about riding a camel, even worse then trying to get off it, is leaning backwards and hanging on to the harness like grim death while it gets itself into a standing position. I thought it very unfriendly of our camel to do that to us twice!

 

But you know, on the upside, we didn't fall off.

 

 

 

Picture taken by the OH. (Incidentally that blouse you can just see with the pretty floral print? That's a cotton silk mix from Marks and Spencer and it wasn't the cheapest blouse I ever bought. I regret to say  that it fell to ribbons after about six washes. Literally ribbons. It just split along the grain in several places. You could put your finger through the fabric with no effort at all. Impressed? Not so much really. I won't be buying any more anyway.)

You can see what the landscape is like from the photo. Having heard so much about the Red Centre we were expecting it to be totally without vegetation, but in fact there were just acres of this scrubby stuff, not just here but for hours and hours out of the train window.

 

I loved it. Must go back!

Torn

I'm torn between trying to finish up our tales of Oz and launching myself into a description of our time in York, but for today I'll go with Australia and see how I feel tomorrow.

When you ride The Ghan you don't just spend all day on the train. No sir! you have to get off and do excursions and in a way this is a good thing, although I for one wouldn't grumble about getting on the train in Darwin and not stirring off it until Adelaide. I can see that other people might not find it quite so attractive though.

 

So on day one our excursion was to Katherine Gorge or, as you're supposed to call it nowadays, Nimiluk. I was heard to mutter ungraciously that I would call it Nimiluk when everyone started referring to Edinburgh as Dunn Eadainn, but realistically that's  never going to happen, so I fell into line.

 

(This puts me in mind of a funny moment when we did a tour of New Zealand several years ago, and were solemnly assured that Dunedin was the New Zealand 'translation' of Edinburgh. I so wanted to point out that actually Edinburgh was the English translation of the  Dun Eadainn. But I didn't.)

 

Anyway, to Nimiluk. The OH and I had opted for a helicopter ride over the gorge. Generally I pass on the helicopter these days because they want to know your weight, but they didn't ask about that until we were actually sitting in the office waiting for our chopper to arrive, so I blithely took 10kg off my real weight for the purposes of filling in the form and we didn't come to grief, so that must have been alright then.

 

It was a most amazing trip. When I can bring myself to do it, I love riding in helicopters (not that I've done it all that often) and we got a much better view of the whole gorge system than if we had gone by boat - although that would have been fun too. We had the usual crocodile stories , despite being so high up in the air. By this time I was so over the whole crocodile thing I tuned out every sentence of the pilot's which included the word 'crocodile'. It didn't matter, the OH was up in the cockpit beside the pilot making technical conversation of sorts. I don't think they noticed I wasn't really following.

 

Photos? You bet.

 

 

It was only a little chopper!

 

The Gorge. Yes, there are boats down there on the river.

 

Interesting colouration at the top of the cliff

 Waterfall. well obvs! I'm a sucker for waterfalls.

 

Above and below - landscape between Darwin and Katherine.

 

 

The Visitor Centre in Katherine. Excellent displays of aborigine culture - and the air con was welcome too.

 

And back to the train. You can get some idea of just how long it is from this picture.

 

 

Next time it might be Alice Springs. Or it might be York. Who can say? 

 

 

Back Again!

And a gold star to all who thought 'She's been quiet for a bit, bet she's away again' because you were right.

I have spent today unpacking, doing laundry and catching up on a frightening amount of admin, e-mail and snail mail, and as a result I'm sadly too knackered to contemplate doing much of a blog post.

 

I will say that we were mostly in York, and we mostly enjoyed ourselves. The OH and I started off with a two day Dorothy Dunnett event and then we were joined by Son no 2 and  the Canadian contingent for a week, my sister came up from Gloucestershire for two days, we went to visit an aunt of mine who none of us had seen in ages and I met a virtual friend. We also did quite a lot of what I call Real Shop  shopping, of the sort that is not possible in Orkney. Broke our journey home in Glasgow for a couple of nights and finally made it back here last night.

 

More of all of this anon. It's great to go away, but when I think how I run around like a hamster in a wheel once I get back I do sometimes wonder if it's worth it.*

 

*It so is, But I'm rather too tired to appreciate that properly just now.