Well I've never done this before...

 

That there is a Mystery Yarn Bag. I've never bought one before because you don't know what you're getting ( yup, the clue is right there in the name!) and I've watched lots of people on YouTube unboxing/unbagging mystery stuff and too often seen them try very hard to not look disappointed when the fourth ball of unsaleable dull yellow cotton comes out of the box and they say brightly 'well, I don't know what to do with this, maybe a baby garment ....' and you just feel so sorry for any baby in their vicinity. 

So why have I bought one now? well because it was from a dyer whose yarn I have often wanted to try, so it seemed like  a good opportunity,  and because I knew from the list of bases that were on offer that I wouldn't be wasting my money and because I thought 'I'm x years old, why not take  a punt for once in your life?' So I did. 

and when I opened the parcel I was certainly not disappointed. No gritted teeth or forced smiles here. 

The one on the right is a standard sock yarn, the other two are a baby alpaca /silk blend. And while I will have to look for patterns to use them on I don't think it will be a hardship. 

ION it is very hot. We are not used to it being hot but we're sort of coping by doing stuff in the mornings and evenings. That said the OH is currently putting up shelves for his lego. Rather him than me, although to be fair that wold apply whatever the temperature. 

A Protective Tree

 

It's a Scottish tradition to plant a rowan tree by your house as a protection against witches. We had loads in Orkney, there were one or two on the  property when we bought it, and when we planted our wood we planted lots more. We didn't really think we could uproot one and bring it south, so we decided we would need to buy one pretty smartly after we arrived. That was in part what our trips to local garden centres were all about. Unfortunately we couldn't  find a healthy looking rowan in any of the three we tried so the OH got on the web and ordered one.  Apparently the foliage turns red - possibly in the autumn? I don't know . It's certainly green at the moment. I'd have been perfectly happy with a bog standard one, but there you go ....

It was supposed to be delivered last Thursday. We had a text to say it would be arriving between 2 and 4  We'd had   plans but changed them so that we could take delivery. Much excitement when we got the text to say we were next in the schedule. Less excitement when a little while later we had a text , accompanied by a picture of the sign with our road name on it, saying they couldn't find our house and delivery would be rescheduled. . Honestly all they needed to do was drive up the road a bit further examining the quite large number plates on the houses. They could even have called and we could have talked them through it! but obviously the driver had decided he would rather go home for the day. 

They rescheduled delivery for the next morning, between 10 and 12. That mean I couldn't go to knitting group and again we stayed in. The OH kept a keen look out at the front window whenever he heard an engine louder than a motor scooter, and it's just as well he did as just before midday he caught sight of the delivery van doing a three point turn just outside the house and  and then driving away from it. He hared down the road after it and returned about 10 minutes later carrying the tree! We were not impressed with the delivery service whose name escapes me, so I can't name and shame. I would if I could. Anyway there is the tree, we repotted it, but it has still blown over at least twice so it needs a much bigger heavier pot to go in, at which point we should be able to transfer it to somewhere near the front gate. To scare away the witches. 

The Falkirk Tunnel

When we went to the Falkirk Wheel to see the pop-up opera I invested in a book called '111Things to see in Falkirk and the Lothians'. I didn't realise when I bought it that it's  a bit of an international series, but it makes no matter, it does what it says on the can - brief descriptions of and directions to some of the interesting places and sights that might otherwise get overlooked. It will take us a long time to get round all 111, I think before we bought the book we had visited all of four under our own steam. Luckily they tend to be grouped together a bit, so that we won't be driving all the way over to, say,  East Lothian for one solitary thing, but it's going to take a bit of getting our heads round and a bit of planning. 

Anyway we were over the holiday and I hadn't been out of the house for a couple of days so yesterday we had a quick look at where we might like to go and alighted on the Falkirk Tunnel. 

This is a half mile long tunnel built for a stretch of the Clyde canal, basically because the family in the local big house couldn't cope with the thought that the canal and the boats on it could be seen from their windows, or possibly just from one small corner of their extensive grounds into which no-one but the fourth undergardener ever ventured, but whichever of those it was, they launched a massive lobbying campaign with the result that this tunnel was built so that the gentry didn't have to watch the low lifes carrying stuff about on barges. 

It was built largely by Irish immigrant labour, ( that applies to the whole project, not just the tunnel, and amongst the many men who worked on it were two called Burke and Hare, truly a couple of names to conjure with. This would be before they removed to Edinburgh and started plying a more grisly trade ....

The tunnel was wet and the towpath uneven and dark because some of the lighting ( well quite  a lot of the lighting ) wasn't working. I'm not going to pretend that walking through it was a highlight experience of my life to date, but I am rather proud of myself for making it all the way through.* I did however refuse to countenance going back the same way so we walked along the towpath until we could rejoin the road. Sadly it was absolutely tipping it down with rain by then, and we got soaked. Going back through the tunnel would have kept us drier, but I suspect would have given me the temporary heebie-jeebies. 

At the far end there's a bridge with two contrasting faces on it; the unhappy one looks towards the town of Falkirk and the happy one out over the hills. Photos below, they are quite high up and I was just using the phone camera so not as brilliant as I might like but you can definitely see the contrasting expressions. 

* This makes me a total wuss. Some people were running through it on what was obviously a normal running toute for them. 

entrance

inside - it really was not that light!

the roof

yay! the exit

sad face

happy face

A few days in Shropshire - part 2

 After our busy Tuesday we had decided to take Wednesday much more quietly which we did. First of all we went back to  the Craft Centre where Lay Family Yarn is situated, largely because I had missed my chance to visit the candle shop while I was there doing my dyeing. The shop is shut on Mondays and Tuesdays so we went back on Wednesday, only to find it still shut. This was annoying, particularly in view of the fact that I had spent a lot o time at the weekend smelling other people's purchases and generally swooning with delight over the beautiful scents. Oh well, next year. 

We browsed some of the other shops and somehow I found myself buying some new ear rings. We had time to kill while the exact pair I wanted was put together so we had a cup of coffee in the coffee shop. This was surely a first as we both decided against having cake with it! Not sure why we were so abstemious. Perhaps it was because it was still too close to breakfast time. 

There was a pretty courtyard and it was very warm so we sat outside which is also quite unusual for us to be honest. . 

After I'd collected the ear rings we went to a print makers place. She had some beautiful pictures, but as I was very conscious that we had still to start picture hanging in the new house and that we possibly had more pictures than wall space I contented myself with buying some cards from her and not a framed picture. Maybe next year ....

After that we went for  walk along the canal which was lovely

and then we had lunch out.

Mine was the Chinese beef ( quite adventurous for me) and the OH had a burger. I spent a lot of time deliberating over what to have for dessert but as we waited 20 minutes and they didn't come and offer us any we gave up. We went back to our temporary home, via a small supermarket where we bought a cake and then relaxed. 

The book was a charity shop buy in Ludlow; they had two by the same author so I bought them both. I was going to say 'Scottish crime, what's not to like?' but then I thought 'Denzil Meyrick' and didn't.  This one was very good; the other one I've only just started. 

On Thursday we had arranged to meet up with a Facebook friend and her husband at Attingham Park and we had a great time - hadn't met them before but it didn't matter. we got on very well. None of us were terribly bothered about seeing the inside of Attingham Park (sorry NT!) but we were keen to see the walled garden, which is amazing. Mainly fruit and veg with a few edible flowers and herbs. We did also visit the second hand book stall run by volunteers in the old stable block and  I picked up another three books there. I've been patting myself on the back for months and months about how I so rarely buy books these days and restrict myself to the occasional purchase and borrowing from the library but I think one of the lessons this brief break taught me was that it was lack of access to cheap second hand books more than anything else that kept me so restrained. A lowering thought. 

Naturally I took lots of photographs in the garden and here are a few, finishing with one of me and the  friend we went to meet. 

 

And that was the end of the week. We went back to the flat, and packed up and the next day we were on the road home. Had a great time though and made lots of happy memories. 

A Few Days in Shropshire - Part 1

I meant to do this post yesterday but we had a bit of an issue with transferring the photos from my phone to the laptop. By bit of an issue what I mean is that for a while we thought they had disappeared into the ether. This was not a happy half hour. They were finally tracked down to somewhere strange and unlikely. and moved, but by then I had lost the will to blog, so today it is! 

So, we arrived on Friday, I did my dyeing retreat thing on Saturday and Sunday and on Monday we went to Ludlow. It's a really interesting and picturesque little town with lots and lots of buildings from different eras. There were also some lovely independent shops and a market. We spent a lot of our time there having a walk along the river Teme, which was rather steeper in parts and generally longer than I had anticipated, the walk not the river! but that said I did enjoy it. By an amazing coincidence the OH's brother was travelling through Ludlow by train that very day so he hopped off it and we had about 40 minutes to chat to him  at the station before the next train came and he hoped back on.

There was a dearth of the usual advertising flyer things that you normally find in our self catering place but there was one for a large bookshop and coffee shop called Aardvark Books that wasn't that far away, in a 'let's have a day out' way. We went there on Tuesday, combining it with a trip to a large cross stitch shop I had fond on the web which was near Oswestry. It was a scenic drive, I'll say that much , although some of the roads were quite hair raising and I don't think poor old Evie, the car, will recover for a while. The Satnav appeared to have developed a fetish for single track roads with high hedges, sharp bends and very few passing places whihc she manifested all holiday long. Possibly she had wanted to go to Devon and was sulking because we hadn't take her there. 

I found the book shop not very exciting to be honest. Can't deny it was huge, but the dog that featured heavily on the flyer was nowhere to be seen. It specialised in Art and Architecture books which should have been a slice of heaven for me, but as I hadn't got the impression that was what if did from the leaflet I wasn't prepared and there were just too many books to browse properly. I'm sure I could have found lots and lots that I would have liked to buy, and was indeed very tempted by one on Burne-Jones but it was £25 so I gave it a miss. The children's section was laughable, and the other fiction was upstairs in a way that suggested it was some sort of shameful secret that they really would have preferred to have done away with altogether. That said I came away with two hardback biographies of Agatha Christie and Charles Dickens, and a sci-fi/fantasy paperback by someone called Sheri S Tepper. I went through a phase of reading Tepper when she was really popular in the 1990s, but as sometimes happens I read a lot in a short space of time and got a bit fed up. I haven't read one for years and I hadn't even heard of this one so I bought it for the princely sum of £1. 

have to say the coffee was lovely but I wouldn't rush back. 

The cross stitch place was  a wee bit of a disappointment too. It advertises itself as a major importer of American cross stitch charts and kits, and I can't deny there were 100s, if not 1000s of charts to browse. Kits though were in shorter supply, and the ones I saw were not American. Nevertheless we had a nice chat to the proprietor, admired many of the samples she had hanging up, I bought a skein of thread I needed for my Earthdancer's hair, picked up  a couple of free charts and bought a few others. Just in case I run out of things to cross stich before I'm 110. We got introduced to the weaver upstairs who was really nice and had some gorgeous wraps and scarves for sale. She goes by Loomin' Marvellous on Facebook if you want to check her out. It  was  a lovely setting too for a collection of vaguely related craft workshops. 

Purchases

It was a good day, but longer than anticipated, due to the aforementioned shenanigans of the satnav and we decided to stay closer to home the next day. Of which more anon ...

Stash Enhancement, wool stats for June and project progress.

 Yes I thought I'd lump all these in together this month as none would really make a worthwhile post on its own. 

Stats first; in 620, out 155, net increase for the month therefore 465g. This reduces the net decrease for the year to 5832.

I'm not going to moan. I knew when I went to the Lay Family yarn thing that I was bound to buy some in addition to the yarn we got as a result of our dyeing endeavours. I have plans for everything I bought so it's not as though I bought blind. 

here's the bundle! 

at the back is the skein I dyed together with the bunch of 16 minis, one from each attendee. In the middle from l to r; Christmas sock set, self striping sock set no 1, skein of sock yarn in the colour toffee apple, bundle of autumnal minis to use with toffee apple skein, self striping sock set no 2. In the front a skein of coral coloured sock yarn that I couldn't resist, the colour is just so beautiful.  

Finished projects, or actually that should be finished project singular, a pair of socks for the OH. This is the Yarn Unique  Starry Night colourway, the March instalment of her Art Gallery club. 

They're very nice, but it's a puny total! I did have shingles and I did go away and I was still unpacking and I did work on other things, but even so. A shockingly non-productive month. 

here's the Japanese scarf as at the end of June.

I am 28 rows away from the half way point. and looking at it there I'm thinking it had better block well length wise as well as width wise or it will be a kerchief. It is lovely though, 

I didn't take  a progress photo of the lavender cross stitch this time as I don't think I actually did any work on it in June, but I did take one of the Earthdancer and she's come on a treat since the end of May. 

There's no denying that cross stitch is slow and even when I've finished the figure I have a forest to put in (I exaggerate slightly), but there are trees to come and a moon. That assumes that I ever finish her hair; she has more of it than is at all reasonable. 

I am full of good resolutions about being more productive in July; the unpacking is almost done - we are at the 'get out the pictures and put them on the wall' stage and I finished sorting the books earlier this week. Also we are not going away for a week. So there's that! Who thinks I can do four pairs of socks in a month? 

Playing in the Dye Pots

So we're not long back from a lovely week in Shropshire. The reason for going was a dyeing workshop/craft retreat at Lay Family Yarn who are based in Ironbridge. I've though about going on one of these several times, last year I decided to go but wasn't quick enough to book, so this year I was sitting poised over a hot screen ready to stab at it the moment the retreats appeared on the website. 

I'm not sure really why I was so keen. I'm generally not good in large groups of people, particularly when I don;t know any of them, I have had a bad experience with a previous knitting retreat ( I cane home early!) and generally I've tried out knitting groups both in person and on-line and then given up. Whatever the reason I did want to go to this and so I booked it. At the time we didn't know whether we would be travelling from Orkney or the Central Belt but either way it was a long way to go for a weekend and so that was why we booked a self catering place nearby for a week. 

Despite being a bit stressed by the prospect I have to say that I had a lovely time ( apart form missing the first morning because I was ill). Here's a photo of some of the participants

Everybody gets to dye some yarn in the colours they want and at the end you take  away 100g of your 'own' yarn and a 10g mini of each of them. There were 16 people there on this occasion so that's 260 g of yarn, plus of course there is plenty of time to browse the Lay Family Yarn Shop. And yes, the wool stats for this month are going to be a bit of a sorry tale, but that's for another day! 

Meanwhile here's  my yarn in the dye pan

and here's the finished skein together with the inspiration picture ( Waterhouse's Destiny )

It cam out paler than I would have liked ideally, but I still loved it. There's not much of the blue on show but that's mainly to do with how it was skeined. 

Anyway I must have really enjoyed it because I have booked to go again next year! 

Opera x 2

 Yes we have already been to the opera twice since we moved, which is pretty good going I think. 

First up was a matinee of the Merry Widow at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh. It's not our favourite venue because the stage is a bit weird, not very deep but very wide, so sometimes productions look a bit odd when accommodating to it, but as far as that goes the Merry Widow fitted quite well. 

I liked the sets and costumes, and the music is lovely in an 'I'm almost a musical rather than an operetta' kind of a way. Further than that I won't go. The director had updated the action to 1950s New York ad set it amongst a collection of gangster families; Mafia, Eastern European, something else which escapes me. Leaving aside the horrific cacophony of, not always successful, accents this led to, I don't find the mafia a fit subject for mirth and hilarity.  Setting an act in a Sicilian lemon grove with every farcical trope you can think of just annoyed me when compared with the brutal killing of Michael Corleone's young wife in The Godfather. Lots of people loved it, but I'm sorry, I just don't find the mafia funny. Basically because they.re not. 

Obviously you can't take pictures during the performance but here's a photo of the curtain call

The other 'opera experience' was a pop up at the Falkirk Wheel last Sunday. They were doing two performances; a family show with a story about the Scottish canals and the boats that used to use them and a cut down version of The Pirates of Penzance. We're not huge G and S fans but we thought the other one might be fun and the Falkirk wheel isn't far and the weather was nice so we went. 

here's the wheel; for those who don't know, it's actually a boat lift to take boats from one section of  the canal to the other; the height differential is huge at this point. 

A little representation by the Visitor Centre of life on the canals once upon a time.

And the three singers and two instrumentalists who performed Puffy McPuffer and the Crabbit Canals. The children in the audience loved it, joining in with the singing and generally leaping and squirming about with great joy and it was huge fun for the adults as well. The performers were all fantastic. 

We have done lots of other things as well since moving in despite the shingles and the ongoing BT saga and I will get caught up eventually, although we are actually going away for a just over a week tomorrow so when I get back there will be even more to catch up with. I think that's a good thing though. 

The Move - A Retrospective

 Well, it was bloomin' hard work, I can tell you that. 

Moving out day was awful; not because I was sentimental about leaving though. The removal people weren't very good; they were young lads who had no respect for other people's property, I had to keep away from them a lot of the time because I winced every time they tried to get  a piece of furniture  out of a door. I don't know how long they had been with the firm but I hope not long, because otherwise they were obviously unable to learn from experience. It took ages for them to get everything out and then we had to clean. After about two hours of the cleaning I had gone from 'gosh I'm breathing heavily, I know I'm unfit but really this is ridiculous' to ' this is much harder than I expected and I feel a bit sick and light headed' to ' I can't breathe properly and that's quite frightening'. I'd been spending a lot of time on my hands and knees washing skirting boards, and whether it was dust, or carpet mites or cleaning fluid, I was definitely not in a good place. So then I had to sit by an open window and take deep breaths and after about half an hour I felt better. 

Then we locked up and took ourselves off to the ferry as we were doing a bed and breakfast on it and I took a last photo of the house. 

And when we got to the boat I took a last picture of Stromness too, because I knew I wasn't going to be up and about when we set sail the next morning to take it them. 

The following week is  a bit of a blur as we officially spent it in Glasgow but there were so many mornings when we had to be at the new house at the crack of dawn that twice we stayed in a Premier Inn near Stirling just so we didn't have to get up really early and drive from Glasgow to Alloa for 8 o' clock. We did, while in Glasgow, go to M and S and get the OH several new pairs of trousers, since the ones he had had all suffered from ingrained coal dust from the solid fuel stove and now, thanks to the marvel that is central heating, that will no longer be the case. We had various travails with BT, which have already been briefly alluded to and I have no intention of re-visiting that particular annoyance, but we've spent far too much time explaining and re-explaining various tings to BT in an effort to stop them trying to hit us for a cancellation charge we don't owe them. Sky were great though; the woman turned up on time, discussed whereto put the dish, installed it and buried all the cables neatly, and all in the blink of an eye. Well -ish. 

The worst bit was fielding a phone call from the manager of the Orkney branch of the removal firm who was ringing with the news that my beautiful ceramic figure, despite dire warnings from us about how fragile she was, and instructions from him to his workforce to triple blanket wrap her and take extra care, was in fact now in several pieces. He did says his wife was 'quite crafty and had offered to have a go at mending it if I would like'. I would not like. 

Photo of said ceramic for those who might not have ben around when I bought it 

I know not everyone thinks she's beautiful, but I loved her and she meant a lot to me in several different ways and I just cried. I'm still crying inside about it because she was part of a limited edition and there is no way I can replace her, a fact which the insurance company for the removal men seemed quite unwilling or unable to take on board. I am going to be recompensed but there was a bit of an elongated exchange of e-mails. We were also claiming for some damaged bookcases because when the van was unloaded at this end they discovered that something in the the stuff at the front of the van, which belonged to someone else they were delivering to later that day had leaked a thin odourless but very black liquid which was now covering the bottom few inches of some of our bookcases. I was not amused. (possibly printer ink. we still don't know).

I think that's all the worst of it,. I don't regret the move, but I wish the logistics had been calmer and more smooth and that we hadn't  got exhausted from the early starts and the 3/4 days when we seemed to do nothing but unpack boxes and I definitely wish I hadn't developed shingles. I did at one point think that if I had to do ti again I would sell everything at the leaving end and start anew at the destination, but I'm not intending to move again in the foreseeable future. 

Upcoming over the next few days; some of the exciting things we've been doing since we got here - because yes,  we did get past spending all day every day unpacking eventually, although this doesn't mean that we don't still have a few boxes waiting to be dealt with. 

In Which I am Poorly Sick

 I have been poorly sick for a while now; and what I have mainly been poorly sick with is Stress.

This is annoying because, although moving was stressful, that is now behind us and  I feel I should be 'over' it. Sadly, the signs are that I am not. 

I am prone to stress and it has various ways of manifesting itself, but generally it chooses one way and does that to the nth degree, then gets bored and moves out for a while. Obviously the whole moving thing threw it into a whirl of confusion and it decided just to go for gold and hit me with everything. 

So I have very  red itchy palms just now. This is a genetic thing that my mother  and at least one female cousin of mine suffered from ; the cousin concerned is a doctor and she did tell me the medical name for red itchy palms. I can't remember what it is, but I do know it's a pain. 

I have a patch of something nasty and itchy  on the sole of my right foot. I'm not aware that this is genetic, but it is stress triggered and I need to start treating it with a steroid cream soon or it will just spread.

My restless leg syndrome is very present just now, especially at night, and to add to the joy of nations it has been joined by restless hand syndrome. The latter tends to kick in at about 8.00 in the evening and settles down at about 11.00, when the legs take over. I literally cannot describe the feeling of either of these things, except to say that it's basically an irresistible urge to move the leg or hand affected, which sounds like nothing but is in fact extremely unpleasant. Especially since moving the affected part does not in fact take away the sensation of needing to move it. 

All of these I have had off and on for years ( although never more than one at a time until now ) but 10 days ago they were joined by shingles. This is a first for me and I sincerely hope it is also a last because it is not fun. A very  sore and itchy rash, which occasionally prickles,  accompanied by pain in places the rash doesn't reach. It was diagnosed in time for me to be given antivirals - 10 pills a day for 7 days, which was horrible in itself as I hate the physical process of taking tablets - but I still felt rubbish. The best thing to do apparently is to rest and relax until it's all over, but no-one tells you how you rest and relax when you've just moved house and are surrounded by a multitude of unpacked boxes. Nice trick if you can work it. 

So that sort of explains why there hasn't been a blog post for a while, because I really haven't had the energy, but possibly I am really on the mend now because here I am typing away. 

I don't suppose anyone wants to see a picture of the truly horrible shingles rash that I had on my back, because why would they, so instead here is a photo of one of the recently purchased  lavenders at the front door. Because lavender is supposed to have soothing properties, yes?  

May - Wool Stats and Project Progress

Yes, I know, I hear you. I've got lots to say about the move and here I am faffing about with project updates. But I just thought I would get this one out of the way, and do move and recent activity stuff over the next few days.

I am delighted to say that the BT Engineer did turn up this morning as arranged. He then had rather more trouble than anticipated getting our internet to work, as apparently there was a broken cable and this necessitated him summoning a colleague, lifting up a man hole cover and standing in a hole for some length of time. The good news is that we now have stable (so far) working internet. I'm told on the ground floor this is via Ethernet and that upstairs uses wi-fi.  I have no idea what this means, but as long as I can get back on my laptop in a meaningful way, it's all fine by me.

Anyway, to the craft update. Wool in was 200g, wool out was 3164g. V-e-r-y pleasing. The large out figure was for a couple of main reasons. One was that I finished a huge project (see below) and the other was that I finally looked out my very oldest wool, most of it inherited from  my mother and squatting under the guest room bed almost since we moved to Orkney. Most of that went to a charity shop, some of it was thrown away. I also sent quite a lot of my own leftovers to someone I know who makes things on a very old knitting machine in a museum; the things she makes are then sold to raise funds for the museum upkeep. 

So net decrease for this month was 2964g and the running decrease for the year is 6297g. This is all excellent, but on the other hand I still seem to have an awful lot of wool. 

Finished projects. First up a pair of socks 

These are from the Skein and the Stitch weekly advent from last Christmas which means I've done three weeks out of the four. Not entirely sure where the wool from week 4 is just now ..... It will turn up. 

The big project was this

a huge blanket. This was part done and I picked it up at the beginning of April, realising that it would be easier to pack as a single blanket than 5 sets of squares/mini skeins in 5 separate project bags. I hadn't actually done all of the squares at that stage, I think I had about 24 to do, and then they almost all needed edging, before being put together and then bordered. It was a Big Ask, but I managedto get it all done before we moved, bar some of the weaving in of the ends, but I finished that after we got here. I call it my Inkling Blanket, because the squares are made from an Advent themed on The Lion and the Witch and The Wardrobe, and a mini-skein club based on the Lord of the Rings. The square edging was done in a colourway called the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and all the wool came from Giddy Yarns. Sorry the colour is a bit washed out in some parts of the photograph but it was a bright day when I took it. 

That's it for finished things, but not bad considering I moved house in May and my crafting time was severely limited. 

Progress reports on other things. At the end of May the Japanese scarf looked like this

so it had grown quite well, considering I don;t like to do too much in a day otherwise I start to make mistakes. 

The earth dancer cross stitch looked like this at the end of the month

which is very little different to how she looked at the end of April which was disappointing. The only real change was that there was more done of her medicine bag. However there will be lots of progress visible by the end of June. 

And the lavender sampler also didn't grow by much but there's lots more tree and a bit more lavender field, compared to the previous month

So there you go. That was May, as far as crafting went. 

Well, we're in.

Apologies for the lack of a picture but I'm too tired to source one. 

I'm pleased to say that we are in the new house and so far we are loving it, even though there are a few things that need/(ed) sorting very quickly.

However we are plagued with minor frustrations of the sort which I suppose attend every house move, but knowing that doesn't make them any easier to cope with when they are happening. 

Today has been the first day I've had access to my laptop because BT/Openreach are useless and although they promised that an engineer would come last Friday to set up our internet he didn't appear, and the next available slot is not until 8th June. They sent us a temporary battery powered hub to tide us over but the battery doesn't hold a  lot of charge and we won't leave it charging overnight so it has to start almost from scratch every morning. 

More details to come over the coming days; and I'll try to balance the annoyances out with some of the good stuff. 

Moving Out!

Tomorrow is moving out day. Everything is almost all packed and some of it has already been taken away. The house feels odd, with no books, no pictures and no ornaments; it is a house, and not a home.

That said we were looking around today and remembering all the things we have changed in it. Major stuff like the new kitchen and bathroom and building on the sunroom. Reroofing the byre. Painting the outside walls and getting a nice front door. And the almost invisible stuff like new windows, and upgraded insulation and new lighting. Smaller things like removing and replacing internal doors and handles, new carpets and curtains and windowsills and shelving and redecoration. Twenty years of our life have been spent in this house, and we've put care and effort into turning it from a rather ghastly unloved house into a lovely much loved home. 

Of course I'm excited about the new house and the new life we will lead down in the Central Belt.  But today was a day for remembering because even though I don't regret that we're going, I should remember the good things that Orkney and the house have given us over the last two decades. 

Today was for looking back. Tomorrow will be too busy for anything. The day after is for looking forward. 

Some 'last time' things

 So there were a few things we wanted to do 'for the last time' before we moved.

One was a final trip to Geri's Ice Cream parlour where, in honour of the occasion I had an ice cream  dessert and not just a cone,

Mine's the top one, a raspberry ripple and the OH had a Salted Caramel. In the event I might have enjoyed a cone more, but there was nothing wrong with the raspberry ripple really.

Then there was a trip to Celina Rupp's. This was partly a last visit  to her Barrier View Cafe 

and partly to buy a piece of jewellery. Celina is the last major Orkney jeweller who didn't feature in my jewellery box so we felt that needed to be remedied, sort of a farewell present to myself really. After much deliberation this is what I chose

It's from her Harvest Moon collection and I love it. 

Another one was catching the primula scotica. This was going to be a More Walks (2) post but time has gotten the better of me. We saw a post on Facebook a couple of weeks ago which said the primula scotica was out. It seemed a bit early but we decided to give it a go as it would be nice to see it once more before we leave. It only grows in Orkney and Caithness, and as it's very tiny and very low growing it's hard to spot. Once you've found your first one and got your eye in you see loads and we were lucky.

they may be small but they are lovely

thumbnail for size reference!

After we'd had our fill of the flowers we had a wander along the cliff tops at Yesnaby ( which are very close to where the P S grows). I love this stretch of Orkney's coast and have many photos to prove it. here are a couple more from that recent visit

We are still packing but fast approaching the stage where we will only have the last minute things to do which can obviously only be done at the last minute. That doesn't necessarily mean I will have the time, the energy or the means to blog again until after we are in the new house. We'll see. But I'll be back when I can.