Happy Mail

I don't get a lot of happy mail, bar the Middle Earth Minis that arrive once a month for my Inkling Blanket project, but I had some recently. One of the Indie Dyers I follow was closing down the business  and so had a sale on. I succumbed. 

I wouldn't have got any of these things had they not been reduced but since they were ... the stitch markers are not for me but for a Christmas swap I'm doing in a Ravelry group. The pastel DK is for a large very relaxed, no pressure project that I have on the go which may well not be finished for several years. It's designed to use up random skeins of DK wool; stash finds, gifts, wool from treat boxes and sale items. I have no excuse for the project bag except that I find that size exceptionally useful and I don't have very many of them. Also, I just loved it. 

Gaskell Society Conference - Plas Penryn and Porthmadog

Plas Penryn is a beautiful house in an even more beautiful setting, on a hillside overlooking the Porthmadog estuary.  It was inhabited on a long lease by Gaskell's cousin Samuel Holland, who made a lot of money from the local slate quarries. Gaskell was a frequent visitor there a both before and after her marriage, and I could quite see why. 

The house is currently owned by a Welsh architect who lives in London but bought the house with the intention of refurbishing it quite some time ago. We had not therefore expected to be allowed inside it, just to walk around the grounds, but the person who keeps an eye on it for the owner was happy to let us all in and have a good look round. If I had a million pounds to spend on buying and refurbishing a house I'd have this one in a heartbeat; it has lots of space and oodles of charm. In deference to the fact that it is a private hoe I didn't take many pictures inside but there are a couple, although most of these are of the garden. 

 I note that, in the same way that Orkney is a place for hebe and fuchsia, North Wales appears to be a place for hydrangeas and we were there at just the right time of year to see them. 

View from the dining room window over the estuary to Porthmadog

If I could paint, I'd have a go at this ....

The wooden structure on the left is a greenhouse in which were growing  ....

....yes, yer actual grapes

I was saying about the hydrangeas...

two general views of the outside of the house 

and blackberry blossom, lining the road we walked up to get to the house. I had many attempts to catch this,and this was the best one , although its still not very good. 

After we'd seen the house the coach took us into Portmadog where we were a served our choice of tea or coffee and cake, at a very efficient cafe who coped with us all magnificently. They did know we  were coming and had sorted themselves out a system accordingly, we were impressed. I had the standard Gaskell Society Conference scone with cream and jam. A bit of a risk given my current status as a low fat eater, but all was well, despite the gargantuan size of the scone!

Baking Subscription August

 

Pear and Pecan Squares. This one got off to a bad start because the first thing you needed to do was make brown butter which I am rubbish at. So my heart had sunk even before I got going. 

It has three layers, a sponge, the cooked pear, and a crumble topping. 

I have to say I' a bit sick of this combination. Make a cake or make a crumble , combining the two isn't that brilliant an idea.  

At least I didn't have to faff about doing three different things to finish it off; it was supposed to be sprinkled with icing sugar but it was so sweet already I didn't bother. 

Probably just as well I only have three more to come. 

Gaskell Society Conference - Bedd Gelert

 The Conference, when I finally got there, was being held at the Royal Celtic Hotel in Caernafon and that was a much nicer experience than I had expected. My room was large, the bed was comfortable and there was a window seat with a curtain across it, so you could shut off the rest of the room, stretch out on  the window seat and look out at the sea. Not that I had a lot of time for dong that, but it was fun when I did. I didn't take many pictures of the inside of the hotel because, well, why would you? But I did take this one. I was intrigued by this when I first caught sight of it during the first set of talks on Saturday morning, changing my mind several times about whether it was a picture or a window onto a real patch of garden. In the event it turned out to be etched glass, and there were a few other examples of it dotted about the ground floor too. 

So one of the really good thigs about the GS conferences are the afternoon trips and the first one this time was to Bedd Gelert. A very pretty village, and the weather was wonderful  so cue lots of photos.

I thought this was a rather splendid fellow ....

who knew this? Not me. Saw the film on TV when I was about six! I think her autobiography is on the book poster too 

General valley view of the valley, on the walk to Gelert's grave. While I was doing this the narrow gauge train on which OH and brother were disporting themselves that afternoon went past behind that building. In the daft way people have, I waved, even though the train was too far away for anyone in it to see me, even had they been primed to look. 

Memorial stone recording the story 

Gelert. As kitsch statues of semi-mythical dogs go, I thought this wasn't bad. A huge improvement on Greyfriars Bobby anyway.

Oh yes, me trying to be David Bailey or some such

and yes, it really was warm enough for people to be swimming in the river. 

and in true Dorling Kindersley style, here's a picture of a gate! 

It's a pretty little village and there were plenty of cafes for tea and cake after the walk to the grave site.  Possibly the time allotted was a trifle too generous, but it was a warm relaxing afternoon, with interesting conversations, a pleasant stroll along a river and a cappucino with a piece of carrot cake. What's not to like? 

This one's for my sister (sorta)

 

On my sister's recent visit here we took the opportunity to go through my large stash of cross stitch kits. My cross stitching has been very neglected over recent years, first because of my studies, then because of the problems with my vision.  And it also had to war with the fact that, however you cut it, knitting produces faster results. 

It was a bitter sweet process for me as I unearthed some beautiful  kits and projects that  had all but been forgotten. My sister delivered herself of the opinion that, although it was possible I might manage to knit up my wool stash in my lifetime, with the proviso that I didn't actually buy any more (ha! like that's happening) she was very doubtful that I would manage to stitch all the kits as well, which was harsh but probably true.

One  result of this was that I gave way four pieces; three to her and one to a local charity shop and put five kits and a couple of charts up for sale. Three of the kits and one of the charts got bought which was great. This leaves me with the problem of what I will do with  the two kits that didn't sell, but let's park that for now.   

Another result was the rekindling of my enthusiasm for cross stitch and a determination to do it more regularly again. So last week all my craft time was dedicated to it. I've decided to do things from the smallest to the largest, because goodness knows even the smallest piece of stitching takes ages, but last week's result, as per the photo was quite pleasing. One small banner, which now graces the noticeboard in my study and greets me every morning, two larger pieces that ae destined to become cards (in my paper crafting week) and some part-completed gift tags. Not bad going. 

This week? I'm back to knitting. 

A Week in North Wales (Part 1)

We had a fabulous week in North Wales in June. Due to his younger brother's  obsession with steam railways the OH spent many many holidays there when he was younger. Our family didn't go to Wales, possibly due to my grandmother's strong, and transmitted, prejudice against the Welsh as a nation. I've managed to rid myself of that, mainly due to having a Welsh brother-in-law these days! So although I have been a few times since I got married, I don't know the country so very well. 

As it happened the Gaskell Society Conference this year was being held in Caernarfon, so we booked a cottage nearby. We asked the OH's younger brother if he would like to join us and he was keen to be there all week. However between booking and arriving he had started a new job where they weren't keen for him to disappear for a week so he came for the Monday to the Friday and actually this suited us very well because those were the days of the conference which meant that the OH wouldn't need to mooch abut on his own while I was away being interleckshual. 

In the event I caught Covid some time between going to Prague and departing for Wales and I had to miss the first night of the Conference. This was no huge loss as its just registration, dinner and a general talk from a local person about literary connections in the area. No doubt I would have leaned something had I been there, but if I had to miss anything this was probably the one. 

So I was unexpectedly at the cottage on the Friday. It was lovely. 

Big garden ....

patio for coffee n warm days ....

updated interior, lots of light and space , very comfortable, lovely pictures, and lots of original feature which had bucket loads of charm. 

The only small fly in the ointment was a strange arrangement of shallow steps   in the living room and sunroom. Presumably these had been incorporated so that the construction of the sunroom complied with building regulations, The sad side effect was the number of times the OH fell down the step in the living room having forgotten it was there and then banged his head on the doorframe into the sunroom because it was so low. 

But that'a  tiny niggle. (well he might see it as a somewhat larger niggle to be fair ) It was a beautiful cottage  and very well situated for the things we wanted to do (although that being said North Wales isn't a huge area, so probably anywhere in the brochure marked North Wales would have been similarly well placed. )

Upcoming posts warning - I took very very many photographs in Wales. Subsequent posts about it are likely to be picture heavy. 

TT:DNR

 I've only recently become acquainted with the meaning of the common social media acronym TL:DNR which apparently stands for Too Long, Do Not Read, or in some cases Did Not Read. I think it's a bit useless really; if you didn't read it why are you flagging it up/commenting on it, and if you've read it, was it really too long? 

Be that as it may, it does open itself up to snappy summaries for book reviews, for example 

TG: DNR (gory)

TB: DNR (boring)

TS: DNR (sentimental. Or silly)

ad infinitum I suppose. 

And in my title the second T is for tedious which is what this book was.

Someone presented on it in Prague and I was quite intrigued so ordered it from the library when I got back. 

It takes up where Shelley's Frankenstein left off and is the story of the woman who is made to be the monster's wife (it says on the back). 

It's a debut novel and suffers a lot from general debut novel problems. Overwritten. Gaps in the  narrative where presumably the writer has forgotten that they haven't told the reader things. Characters that aren't fully drawn. Far too much generic  description. Repetitive and long drawn out climax. cf Peter Jackson, LOTR:TRotK

There are also some specific problems. It's supposedly set on Hoy, but if you weren't told that you'd never know. It could be any small  island with a tiny and isolated  population. There is nothing in the book that is specific to Hoy except perhaps an attempt to describe the Old Man, and it's only a perhaps.  In fact there is nothing specific even to Orkney in general and one glaring error, as the writer describes one of the characters as seeing a stoat. Many many LOLS at that, as there were no stoats in Orkney until very recently (within the last five years)  and the poor animals are the subject of a vicious and systematic attempt by Scottish Heritage and the RSPB to exterminate them. And it's such a live issue here that Horsley could have found it out very easily and altered her mammal description accordingly. 

The man problem though is that I just don't have the mind set for this sort of book. It's very Gothic which means no-one ever cleans anything properly and the characters do stupid things, chiefly not telling each other what's going on. The man protagonist in this book has that last fault in spades. A timely and heeded call to 'Run away, run away, as fast as you can', or even confiding in her grandmother or the Minister  would have helped her avoid a lot of unpleasantness and misunderstanding. 

But then I suppose there would have been no book. 

Do not by the way let me tell you not to read it if it sounds like your sort of thing. It just isn't mine. 

A Little Bit of Whimsy

I'm not generally a whimsical knitter. I think the most whimsical thing I ever knitted was a toy dinosaur when Son No. 2 was small and he asked me to do it. There was of course the gnome,  but to be honest I have so little faith in my ability to knit three dimensional things, or indeed anything outside of the strictly practical, that generally I avoid it. 

However a wee while ago I was asked to contribute to a group project which involved knitting flowers or leaves that could be sewn onto something to make a present for someone's special birthday and of course I said yes without really thinking about it and then we had the Mad Busy Summer and it all went completely out of my head. 

Luckily I happened to catch sight of the original message asking me to take part last week, and thought 'Yikes, I had forgotten all about that', so this weekend I had a rummage through some of my wool and produced these

And do you know what? For all that I am not a whimsical knitter and thought throughout the time I was making them  that they would be rubbish, I'm really rather pleased with them.

 

Un embarras des framboises

 I mentioned we had a lot of raspberries on our bushes this year. And I mean a lot. 

We have several kilos in the freezer, and no more room,  a big bowl in the fridge, we have made jam (lots) and ice cream (lots). yesterday I made a raspberry and apple crumble (it was delicious), the builders who have been working on our byre ate them almost constantly fresh from the cane last week, we gave them a big bag to take home with them  and there are still many many ripening. 

In normal times I would make a pavlova, a fool, a trifle - but between one person in the house who is trying to eat a very low fat diet and another who is supposed to keep off sugar none of those are a good idea. 

At least the birds will be happy because I think all we can do now is leave the fruit on the bushes for them  to eat. 

Baking Subscription July

 

Chocolate and Raspberry Macaroons. Or macarons. Whichever floats your boat. 

I made these while my sister was here, partly so that she could read out the recipe and partly so she could help us eat them. I was dreading it really, because the OH has tried his hand at them and it took him several tries to get them right. I on the other hand hit the jackpot at the first time of trying. No-one more surprised than me and all down to the recipe I suspect. 

They are very uneven as my attempts at piping are still very hit and miss, and some of them have cracked. On the other hand they have the lovely shine they should have and the texture was just right; crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside. 

They were delicious and as a bonus the raspberries I used for the jam were from our own bushes. After some very low yielding years, this year they have produced a bumper crop. 

Done and Done

I'm sure I must have used that as the title for a blog post before, but I've got a bad head and I can;t be bothered to try and think up anything more original. 

I suppose I could have used 'Who dunnit? I dunnit' because the first thing is this. It's a jigsaw of Agatha Christie showing her in her study at Greenway, which we visited last summer. It's full of nods to her life and books, 90 in total, There's a crib sheet included, I found the first 45 this morning before deciding I needed to go and do something a bit more useful since my sister is arriving tomorrow evening for a few days stay. I'll do the other 45 later today. This wasn't the easiest puzzle I have ever done but it wasn't  too difficult either; I enjoyed it. 

And the other project I finally finished, after several fits and starts since May (!!) was these socks. 

The pattern is called Rivendell and I saw them years ago on a knitters blog and wanted to knit them so badly. So badly indeed hat I taught myself to knit socks so that I could make them. Well we all know what a rabbit hole learning to knit socks was for me. I bought the pattern a long time ago and then a got the wool in a swap, also years ago, and I thought it was ideal for these, being autumnal like Rivendell is in the books. Back in the spring I looked out yarn and pattern  and cast on. 

Wot a let down! I can't remember the last time I encountered such a badly written pattern. Honestly if I hadn't knitted more socks than I've had hot dinners I would have been totally lost, and as it was I went hunting through the notes other people have made on the project on Ravelry just to convince myself it wasn't me and everyone else had swanned through them. It wasn't just me and I was very grateful to the other knitters who had said what a pain the pattern was and especially to those who hade made modifications to the pattern so that it worked and wrote them down so other people could use them. They're nice on, but it's not a pattern I will repeat!