Good news on the creative front

 Hi,

My wrist is beginning to feel a lot better and I have spun a couple of skeins of lleyn as I suddenly realised that I am going to be short of yarn to knit with during our upcoming road trip.

I've started on the lace edging and made some small amount of progress on the cross stitch however on the very hot days I've not felt like doing anything really constructive.

On the cooler days I have picked up my needles and knitted a pair of mitts as I'm still aiming to use up as much of my hand spun oddments as possible.

 This weekend we've pitched up at Ferry Meadows camp site just outside Nene country park, one of our regular sites.

The main reason for this trip is to make sure that everything is ok with the van .It's been serviced, new timing chain in the engine and new gas pipes around the living area. Even the aircon has been regassed but since we've never used it we were completely unaware that it needed doing.

We emptied the van before the service, giving me chance to check through all the trash that had accumulated during the year and now I'm making sure that everything has gone back in. Nothing worse than setting off and forgetting the oven shelves or pillows.

We've been into Peterborough this morning on the Nene Valley Railway which was running diesel rather than steam today ( maybe because of the fire risk ?) and now we are back at the van. I'm thinking about doing some spinning until tea time..

Whilst in Peterborough we visited the Cathedral which turned out to be quite surreal as there was a visiting dinosaur exhibition so rather than quiet choral or organ music, we had the roar of dinosaurs!

We spent an hour or so wandering round the town before heading back for the train.

The rest of the afternoon was spent spinning with some cute visitors.

An early evening walk in the park followed, a look at the Roman ruins and the wild life spotting board.

We had seen an quick flash of green and the board confirmed a rather unusual visitor to the park.

Did you spot it? Ring Necked Parakeet, not usually amongst our regular birds here in Cambridgeshire.

We are now back home, looking at a pile of stuff to sort out, and a few things to order before the next trip. Next weekend is a Bank Holiday so I'm not sure where I will get to whilst Ian is away on his bike.

Speak soon x

touch of punk and a temporary change in direction.

 Hi

Last weekend saw us out and about again in the van, this time heading towards Shrewsbury for Shrewkfest. This is an ukulele festival held on a farm with the stage in a cowshed ( a very clean cowshed )

This was the last event that we had planned to go to in 2020 that we actually retained the tickets for, others were either cancelled for good or we requested our money back.

We set up camp, flew the flag ad reconnected with friends not seen for some years.

Admittedly we spent a ridiculous amount of time sleeping, didn't get to see many bands ( we had seen some before) but at 10pm on Saturday we made our way down to the stage for 2 hours of punk music from Not Quite Dead Yet. Excellent set as usual :-)

We enjoy these small festivals, local bands and not too expensive.

Knitting update

I have noticed that I'm getting some pain in my right wrist and I'm not sure if I've pulled or strained something or whether previous injury is making itself known.  I've made the decision not to knit for a couple of weeks and see what happens, I've finished the last of the latest batch of hats but will not process any more fibre as the wool combs may cause problems as well.

My main aim is to be fit for the next holiday !! and I can't imagine not having knitting with me.

To keep me busy, I have started a stitch project that I've been itching to do for a while. Some time last year I bought an old rolling pin from a charity shop, the kind where you hold the handle and it rolls freely., for the princely sum of £1.99. 

My idea is to do an ongoing band sampler and keep it wrapped round the centre. I want to include more than cross stitch and use a couple of bags of threads that I've had handing around for maybe 25 years, and the cross stitch fabrics picked up from charity shops together with some linen and cotton in my stash. Hopefully it will become a stitched scrapbook or similar.

I'm starting with some 32? count fabric and a band from a magazine that I have on a cd.

Hopefully this will let me continue to be creative but not put too much pressure on the wrist and maybe  try out some of the small cross stitch patterns that I have stashed away. The plan is to keep the same width, sew fabrics together into a log roll and make a lace edging. Sharon from Pintangle has made one of these sampling different stitches and I have seen Dutch? sample rolls that include different technique and roll up so I admit that this is by no means a unique idea but I like the idea of wrapping it round the rolling pin so it looks like a scroll.