It was all good fun. I arrived nice and early (I was the first person to park my car at my designated spot – I had picked a place which isn’t too close to where people live so it was quite nice and quiet), set up my chair and my knitting, and sat down to knit a couple of rows while I waited for the action. Here is my little encampment, the yellow bag contains the knitting:

As you can see from the view up the road:

And the view down the road:

I pretty much had the place to myself when I arrived. A few more people did come later, but it wasn’t exactly crowded.

After a bit of a wait, in which a couple of safety cars went by, and then an info car telling us a bit about how the race was going, the leading motorbikes arrived:

Shortly followed by the breakaway 2 riders, and first section of peloton:

Then the second section of peloton:

And the third section of peloton:

Followed by a little bunch of stragglers (you can hear the people up the road cheering them on):

Then came a couple of groups of cyclists who I don’t think had race numbers on, and they weren’t followed by hoards of cars, so I think they were keen amateurs:

Then came some more amateurs, and a couple of lorries collecting up any rubbish that had been thrown by the cyclists:

My camera isn’t actually a video camera so the videos aren’t terribly good, you can’t zoom while you are in video mode, but I enjoyed making them A fun day out, and I managed to knit about 3 rows

We will be playing the first half, with the Swiss doing the second half, and then we will join together at the end. We are playing a variety of fairly recent music, not particularly well known stuff, but a good variety of classical style and big band style, and they have nice tunes I’m not sure about the Swiss band’s program but think there are doing several marches, and some songs from the shows. We are playing the Liberty Bell for our joint piece (if I am remembering rightly that was the Monty Python music).

The weather was a bit variable, but in general pretty good for the time of year, although it did rain on us horribly while we walked up Roseberry Topping whilst visiting my parents. You can see the wall of rain approaching from the distance in this photo. We had high winds and hail too! Luckily we also had somewhere to dry out and warm up once we had finished our walk, and that makes all the difference

One of the fields we could see from the top of the hill was full of fairly recent hay bales, and rather reminded me of beads on garter stitch, or possibly rib.

Up in Scotland we stayed in a lovely B&B in Castle Douglas. We had a lovely holiday, pottering around, taking nice walks, going to a few second hand bookshops, and visiting lots of Historic Scotland sites.

This is Sweetheart Abbey:

and this is Dundrennan Abbey:

We also looked round the gardens at Castle Kennedy, and saw this fantastic lichen, which made me think of Rosie

On the way back to my parents we stopped at Jedburgh Abbey, another spectacular building.

Then with my parents we went to Rievaulx Abbey.

Quite a cultured holiday

With all those busy days I needed some nice restful knitting for the evenings, so started a baby blanket for the new niece.

I am using Sirdar Snuggly 4ply and 4mm needles. It will be a hap shawl style, like the mini one we did in Chris’s Lace class, but square this time rather than triangular. The centre square is all garter stitch, knitted on the diagonal, and was excellent holiday knitting. Especially when it was small it was easy to pull in and out of a bag and work a row or two of even when I was a bit tired and brain dead. Since taking that photo it has grown a bit, I shall photograph it again when it finally stops raining! Around the garter stitch centre, there will be a feather and fan border, and then a simple zigzag edging. It is a very enjoyable project to knit, but progress has slowed now that it has got a bit big to drag around everywhere. Still I am hopeful I will get it finished soon, particularly since I am hoping to send it out to my new niece with my parents when they go to visit in a couple of weeks. Nothing like a deadling to give one a spot of motivation

Continuing on the theme of sometimes inclement weather we had a rather cold and wet day out last Sunday demonstrating spinning with the West Surrey Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers at Loseley Park, for their country fair.

Luckily Rosemary was a life-saver and dashed out for hot chocolate half way through the afternoon which did well to defrost us.

Due to the weather there were definitely a lot fewer people than there had been at the same event last year. Although one bonus of this was that we had more time to talk to the people who were there. I am trundling along with spinning the merino / silk. The end is definitely in sight!

The pattern is a free one and is available from here, but I am doing icord edging and ties. I am using 2.5mm needles and KnitPicks Comfy Fingering, 75% cotton, 25% acrylic. The main colour is Hollyberry, with icord trim in Ivory. I am making the 1 – 3 month size just in case she is big and doesn’t fit the newborn size at all, or I am slow and miss the newborn size! I decided to do some of the edging before embarking on the sleeves to check how it would come out. I had a bit of a moment earlier this week when I got a bit clever for myself with the front shaping and had to undo it all, but apart from that it is coming along well

I had better get a move on with it, it feels like a bit of a race whether my niece will arrive before I can finish her cardi and get it posted! I have already sent her an elephant though so I am not a total failure of an auntie

I love the flexible wire loop on these which goes over the needle. I find them easier to use than the jump ring sort, and am inspired to have a go at making some of my own soon.

It has been a good day so far. New knitting books, before 8am! A bit of chocolate in the afternoon, and I think a birthday curry from the takeaway down the road this evening.

I am hoping to get back to a bit more frequent and regular blogging. My parents got stuck in the US with all the ash business, but are home now, they stayed with us on Wednesday after flying in to Heathrow. I have been doing a bit of knitting and spinning. Several samples and experiments have been done for my next City and Guilds project, which is going to be a cushion cover. I am currently washing them so I will know their proper tension, then I can plan out the real thing and get started on it. I have even (shockingly!) finished a couple of projects which I must photograph and waffle on about. More soon, I have some serious curry decisions to make right now.

The travelling was also the reason behind the hastily cast-on portable projects. I didn’t take the jumper with me as I didn’t want to risk it being either confiscated or lost by the airline. We were staying in New Jersey, a 1 hour train ride from New York, so that gave me a good bit of knitting time on the journeys into and out of the city on the days I went to see Annie.

While we were there we did a mix of typical touristy visiting, and helping Annie and her husband Andy move into their new appartment and generally hanging out with them.

On the tourist front we went down to Brooklyn and walked back to Manhattan over the Brooklyn bridge, you can see the bridge in the background here behind Paul, Annie and Andy.

And we went to Thomas Edison’s factory and house in Orange, New Jersey (this is his house).

The house was interesting, and the factory definitely worth visiting. Edison was a man with many interests.

On my last day going in to the city Annie and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I have been once before about 12 years ago, and was keen to see it again. It is a fascinating museum and I am looking forward to going again next time we go out to visit them.

As well as all the wonderful exhibits (including a whole temple from what is now the site of the Aswan dam) they have fantastic tiled mosaics on the floors in the Greek and Roman art section. There are 8 different mosaics, 4 circular, and 4 square. I love symmetrical patterns like these, particularly tiling patterns. I am hoping to do something on symmetry for my City and Guilds Diploma course (the Diploma is the course after the Certificate course I am currently doing), and so am collecting inspiring images.

As you can spot here one of the mosaics is in twice to make a nice grid.

We had a great time visiting the city and seeing Annie and Andy again, and were really lucky with the weather at the start of the week. It was colder than home, but warmer than New York had been the previous week, and lovely and sunny. Unfortunately after the first three days the rain started, and on the day I was due to come home it snowed all day and then there were high winds in the evening, so finally after attempting to take off once my plane was cancelled and we were all rescheduled to the day after. The next day was much better weather-wise and although we were a bit delayed it all went fairly smoothly, and I even managed about three hours sleep on the plane (this is quite good for me, I am not a very good traveller).

My travel socks are motoring along, although they have been abandoned now I am home in favour of the jumper. Pictures of knitting will come soon!