A Lovely Start to October

 We've had a good few days, I thought I'd write them up before I did any more of Florence. 

First off we have a 'good grief, how long has that been hanging about unfinished?' craft project, which is now finished.

a day and night stuffed hare. I machined round this when I was having my sewing lessons a couple of years ago but then they stopped, at which point all it really needed was stuffing. However I have absolutely no faith in my ability to stuff anything, so it had languished in a drawer. Until about four days ago when I told myself to just get on with it, on the grounds that my stuffing expertise was not going to magically improve while the thing lay there untouched. So I got it out, stuffed it and then sewed up the gap. It does actually stand (?sit) on its own and I'm really pleased with it because 

1) it's a finished project

2) not only did I finish a project but I used up a lot of stuffing 

3) it's really nice

Next up - Happy Mail

It is a Christmas Bunting Knitting Kit from Debbie Abrahams. If you're not a long term reader you might like to check out my previous posts concerning my conversion to knitted Christmas Bunting which are here and  here . I was sort of vaguely aware that there were bunting kits other than the one I had already done,  and as I had enjoyed knitting the first one, and as I really liked this one, and as I got an e-mail offering me 10% off which came to just over the postage cost, I succumbed. 

And before anyone rolls their eyes heavenwards, can I just say I have already made a start!

Sunday was a lovely day and we decided to try another walk from one of our local walk books. Happily this one did not take us through a dank and dark canal tunnel partly excavated by the body snatchers Burke and Hare, but much more pleasantly around Loch Airthrey, which lies at the heart of the University of Stirling campus. The weather was glorious, as were the views. 

As when we went to Gartmorn Dam, there was a heron

Yesterday we went to lunch with some friends which was lovely and I got to look at someone else's wool stash which was fun. It wasn't really an occasion for photos. I'd hoped, since we were going into Perthshire aka Big Tree Country, for swathes of autumn colours on the trees, but it was still maybe a mite too early and possibly we weren't quite far enough north. Another couple of weeks maybe. 

Today we went to Dunfermline, mainly to catch The Lost Words exhibition; words by Robert Macfarlane and images by Jackie Morris. I'm a fan of Morris, Macfarlane not so much. That said, I will admit, albeit through gritted teeth, that I found his words on this occasion to be mainly very well done; hugely evocative and, unlike his books, he hadn't put himself at the centre of them. Sadly, and oddly I thought,  taking pictures at the exhibition was  expressly forbidden, which I found doubly irritating as there were no cards or postcards of the artwork to be had in the shop where there were various other things related to the exhibition for sale. So here's a picture of the really nice cafe in the Dunfermline Library and Gallery where we had a light lunch after visiting the exhibition.

Dunfermline has a very splendid abbey, not that we went in, and a very steep set of streets with lovely views towards the hills.

There was also a very nice craft shop, mainly sewing, but with some wool as well. I didn't buy anything, as they didn't have the specific thing I went in search of, but I'm sure I'll be back - to both the shop and to the town as there was lots more to it that seemed worth exploring than we had time for today.