taking a snow day

 Well, I would if I was still working as there are no buses running down the valley. We had the first snow of winter last night, a surprising five inch worth of snow although its thawing out now. To put the excitement in context, we had two reasonable falls of snow last winter and we missed both of them due to being a different part of the country.

I ventured out early as far as the garden., this was my washing line at 6.30am

As I was putting the kettle on for my second cuppa of the day I spotted this visitor at the top of the tree.

Being up early meant a quick chat with assorted people on line before they went to bed whilst working on mitt no 1 which is now complete except for sewing in the ends. I have now remembered how much I hate knitting thumbs.

later in the day I cast on the second mitt

and spun some boring white yarn

finally finished

 I managed to knuckle down and finish the sampler ! That's one off the finishing pile.

I also cast on a mitten with the black and white yarn, not quite got the sizing right but I will add a few more row of random checks to lengthen the hand parts. My yarn has proved to be too thin but since these are to replace my house mittens I'm not too disappointed plus will design my own next time. This was a useful lesson on how to design the thumb with a pattern on it.

you can see my tension issues with the yarn. Pattern by Traci Scott

Its that time of year again

 Krampus Day !!!

At Papplewick Pumping Station yesterday

nearly finished

Its been a slow day, some spinning, the white just needed skeining, the brown needed a bobbin spinning then plying. They both need a wash

dark brown shetland,white bowmont

Just for comparison, the green bobbin is off my nano which you often see in my photos when I'm out and about. There is the the same amount of fibre on each bobbin but the green one holds 50gm and the larger one 200gm.

My editing programme is hiccupping, sorry about the placement of some of the text , I've tried all sorts but it won't behave properly.

The nearly finished object it the sampler. I'm just too tired to count correctly so I'll finish it in the morning.

For anyone who wants to see the box of doom contents, please remember that I buy from charity shops and started to stock up for my retirement stitching a while back. I may sell the tapestries just haven't decided yet as I do have a large bag of the wools as well and may be tempted in the future.

Who am I kidding? I'm never going to stitch all of these but I'll give it a good go. Mostly cross stitch but a few embroidery and blackwork ones in there as well.

Anyway, more tomorrow (Sunday)

cross stitch basket of horror

 My knitting skills were definitely lacking last night so my knitting project is in sin bin for the time being.

It's time to start sorting out the cross stitch/embroidery pile starting with the project basket.

This basket should only contain current projects but it looks like much more has been crammed in over the last year. Current projects (that I may or maynot finish) are...

As you can see, a severe case of startitis haha I do pick them up from time to time and I would like to see a couple of them finished next year.

At least they fit neatly into the basket now, I just need to see if I can get all the excess bits and bobs into the BIG BOX OF STITCHING DOOM

I'll let you know x

unexpected sunny day

 I was expecting it to be cloudy today but when I opened the curtains, the sun streamed in. Wrapped up warm I headed into town and then out to Gedling Country Park.

The park is built on the site of the old colliery which closed in 1991

There are signposted walks and importantly a cafe,  Admittedly I did end the visit with a coffee but had a walk around with my camera first.

The park is dotted around with wooden sculptures, information boards and signs indicating the species of tree that has been planted.

Some of the local wildlife was still a bit sleepy.

and the autumn leaves had mainly fallen although there were plenty of teasels around

The park is also dotted with memorials, to the holocaust and the miners

I eventually followed the paths back to the cafe for that drink.

The rest of the day was shopping and knitting, sadly not a lot to show as I undid most of it !!

WIP update

 Todays been mainly housework, washing, sorting out the stuff from the van but I did get to finish a jacob yarn hat that I cast on sometime last week.

This together with yesterdays stitching

and tonight's new hat cast on

is pretty much all I've worked on since we got back.

Lighthouses in glass

 I forgot to include this in the Cromer post, Cromer Parish church has some beautiful stained glass, this time I took photos of the light houses.

and that's it, no more travels planned at the moment so its time to start on the big sort out although I'm really good at finding excuses not to do it.

Another day out and a charity shop find

 I've not had chance to unpack properly from the weekend and we are already jumping into the car to head north. Ian's bike boots are getting old and leaking a little so we headed back to the Altberg factory to see if they can be mended or whether its a case of biting the bullet and ordering some new ones,.

After a close inspection it was decided that new soles and a seal round them would do the job so they have been left there for repair.

We took ourselves off into town to do our usual trawl of the charity shops and grab some breakfast.

Richmond ( Yorkshire) is a market town built on wool and the lead mining industry.

Small alleyways lead back up to the market place that has shops on all four sides

The castle that you can see in the distance is closed during the week at this time of year so we will return sometime to explore further;'

Taking a walkdown to the river you come across Richmond falls, a pleasant spot to stop and eat our sandwiches.

I managed to take a terrible pic of the castle as we left, another good reason to go back !

unexpected delight was the coffee cup printed with Yorkshire dialect.

and the charity shop find of the day was this lace book

it also has an assortment of lace patterns in it.