A Crafty Thing

 

Many many years ago a friend in Canada gave me instructions for making a fabric wreath after I had admired one she had made herself. It was so long ago that I had no idea where in the UK I would get the fundamental item necessary to make it - a Styrofoam wreath base. I suspect at the time I wouldn't have been able to find one here for love nor money. 

Fast forward a couple of decades and I am somewhere with my sister and I see a Styrofoam wreath and I buy it, thinking, at last! I can make one of those fabric wreath things. And the wreath has stayed in my miscellaneous craft materials box ever since. because somehow I never got around to giving it  a go.  

Recently I saw the new Tilde fabric Christmas range and thought I'd like to make a Christmas wreath, with that but Tilde fabric is Not Cheap and I was put off buying it by the thought that I might make a mess of it which would be a waste of money. And then - a lightbulb moment. Somewhere in my small fabric stash I thought I might have a Tilde charm pack that had come free with a magazine a long time ago .... I went for a rootle. 

I found the wreath, I found the charm pack, I found the time and voilà! a fabric wreath. I'm so pleased with it. It is so very pretty. So now I can buy the fabric and embark on making a Christmas wreath without worry. There's just one small problem - I cannot find a Styrofoam wreath to buy in a sensible size! However I suspect Mr Amazon can be relied upon to have one if I have a look,  and possibly the local craft places will have more suitable sizes nearer to Christmas.  

Meanwhile this one needs a ribbon and a hook to hang it from. 

A Couple of Cheery Things for a Grey Day

 I had some happy mail last week. This was the 2nd 2025 quarter for the Little Grey Cells Club from Henny Penny Makes.

That's not at all true to the colour of the one on the left! Due to the nature of the long term project these are going into, half of these are now used up, which is pleasing.

We also had a visit from some friends who we now live much nearer to, which is a good thing, and they brought us a lovely bunch of sunflowers. 

It's a bit of a cool grey day here and I'm a tad under the weather so the cheerful colours are a nice bright spot! 

Doon the Watter

 

Last Christmas the OH's brother bought him a voucher for a cruise on the Waverley, the world's last remaining working paddle steamer. It was good for the whole year, but time was ticking on and it doesn't stay to cruise from Glasgow all year round, so we got ourselves focussed and booked a trip for Sunday just gone. We opted for a Full Day and not getting off at either of the two ports of call, and both of those are decisions which we would not make again, but then hindsight is a wonderful thing. 

It was an early start, too early for us to get there in time if  combined with a reasonable getting up time in Alloa, so we went over to Glasgow on Saturday, caught up with an academic friend in the afternoon and spent the night at the Glasgow flat. One of the good things about the move, amongst multifarious others, is that we get to see a lot more of son no. 2 who lives there. Even being so close, the next morning was an early-ish start to get to the Glasgow Science Centre from where Waverley departs. (I was going to say sails, but obviously that wouldn't be right, unless sails is an acceptable generic term for the movement of all boats, however powered, Which it may well be. ) Anyway, we got there, and there she was. 

And there also was a piper. To be fair he wasn't provided by the Waverley people to pipe us on board, he was just a young lad taking the chance to earn some pocket money and he didn't stay long. Although long enough to give us a quick swirl of Highland Cathedral, which, don't get me wrong, is a lovely tune, but it does tend to stay with you all day. To that extent it was much less embarrassing than when we boarded The Ghan all those years ago and were greeted as we arrived on the platform with a trumpet fanfare. So embarrassing. 

So the cruise went all along the Clyde, into the Clyde estuary and then turned right ( yes, I know) along the coast, past a couple of islands called the Cumbraes, along the east shore of Arran and through the Kyles of Bute into Loch Scriven. It was impossible to take good photographs of the wonderful scenery because the boat was super full, and there were just too many heads, and bodies, always in the way. Here however is a photo of the entry to Loch Scriven just as we turned around to leave it, with a few arms and bits of boat tubing cropped off. I risked life and limb, not to mention losing my phone, to take this picture, leaning out over the side of the boat as far as I dared so I hope it's appreciated! 

Overall, it was beautiful, a lot of the time it was relaxing, most of the time we had really good weather, warm but overcast so the sun didn't get too hot. It was fascinating to sail down the Clyde estuary and think of my PH D subject dong the same decades ago, first as a student when he used to charter yachts in his vacations and later as he stood on a troopship and glided down the Clyde at the start of the long journey to the North African coast. 

On the downside we were 10 hours on the boat which is a long time to be on a smallish boat with a lot  of other people especially when there are slightly too few seats to accommodate everyone. The seats, except in the eating places, are hard and you really felt them after the first 90 minutes. Rather than the whole day we could have bought a ticket that would have allowed us to get off and then back on at either Rothesay or Largs and in retrospect a few hours in Rothesay might have been fun. But we didn't know that when we booked and I don't think either of us had actually got our heads round quite how small the boat is so that the reality of of ten hours on it wasn't something we had properly internalised. 

Overall though, although I wouldn't do it again, I'm glad we've done it once. 

A Nice Thing to do on a Wednesday ...

 is to go to a fundraising strawberry tea. Which is what we did this week. 

I'd had a flyer about it from someone at the knitting group last Friday, and it was only in Dollar which is a large village not very far away, so we thought we would go. Show support, browse the stalls, buy a raffle ticket, enjoy the strawberries. 

Dollar is lovely, lots of beautiful old stone houses and there's a river running through it - (not something you can say about any village in Orkney). It is also an absolute pain for parking so we walked quite a long way up the river to get to the venue. Not a hardship as it was a warm afternoon and it's very scenic. it also has a very picturesque bridge. 

The venue was absolutely packed; it's obviously a very popular (annual) event, raising money for the local museum. There were nice flower arrangements on the tables - this was ours

and the tea was very nice too. well actually, the tea was a bit weak, but the scone was very good! And you can;t go wrong with strawberries.

On the way out I said hello to the person who gave me the flier and it was patently obvious she hadn't a clue who I was which was  a bit of a downer actually, but there you go. It will be that 'seeing people out of context thing' which to be fair was quite a feature of Orkney life. We missed the raffle table as it was on the other side of the hall to the way we entered and exited, and the ravening hordes had hit the cake stall before we got to it, so we didn't buy anything extra. It was fun, but I don't know whether we'll go again next year, if only because  of the parking thing. 

Exhibition in Edinburgh

 The trip to Shropshire rather knocked off accounts of other things we had done in Alloa before we went away so here's the first of two catch ups, a trip to the Dovecote Studio in Edinburgh for an exhibition. 

We went up on the train using our new senior railcards and here's a bit of the famous Edinburgh skyline seen from the road bridge by the station and yes, we did have to walk all the way up. 

The exhibition  was the Scottish Colourists in their European Context, and I'd wanted to see it as soon as it was announced.  As our moving day got pushed further and further back I had become reconciled to not seeing it, which was a bit of a downer, as I'm a big fan of the Colourists, but in the event we managed to see it in its final days. Hoorah! 

To be honest there was rather too much 'context' and not enough Colourists for me, plus we had to keep hanging back as we had arrived at about the same time as a guided tour was starting, and it was very distracting trying to look at the pictures and not be half hearing the tour leader who spoke with a distractingly heavy french accent. 

Having got the grumbles out of the way, I have to say  it was a fantastic exhibition. As always none of the pictures I really liked had associated postcards on sale except for one, and that was this one. And it's even by one of the Colourists ( S J Peploe)  and not one of the context painters. 

Luckily I had taken a couple of photos of others that really appealed 

and this was my favourite of them all, which was by the English painter Duncan Grant

not my usual sort of style, but it fascinated me. 

ION, it is still very hot but we are promised rain tomorrow. Also, after a huge push my study and craft room are both now organised enough for me to relax and actually use them which is a massive leap forward in the settling down stakes. 

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!