Tour de Fleece day Seventeen and Eighteen , Argonaut takes a trip to Southwell

Day 17, Monday was my usual knit group meeting so no photos but I did take my Argonaut and carried on spinning the Polwarth as I really want to finish it by the weekend.

Once back home I carried on with the Romney, finished the second bobbin and plied them

                                      

                                                     I then did the same with the blue fluff

Both of these were washed and dried on Tuesday and are now in the bag awaiting labels.

both are darker in real life, the camera isn't reading the light very well as its so bright even with the blinds shut.

On Tuesday I went over to Southwell, mainly to visit the sweet shop so you can imagine my shock when I found that it had closed down. It was our nearest place for buying Dutch salted liquorice so it looks like I may have to buy on line in the future :-(

Breakfast was in the cafe at the Minster although its under temporary management at the moment and I'm not a fan of paper/plastic cups for coffee especially when they make your coffee taste sort of plastic. Hopefully new owners will be in place before my next visit.

as usual, I can't resist taking a few photos

Ooops, nearly forgot, another four bobbins of Texel ready to be plied in the morning.

and the sun came out

 After days and weeks of dull wet weather we suddenly had a sunny day, cold but so, so good to be out in.

I was up early, jumped on the bus on our road and decided to take advantage of the capped fare that allows use of the bus outside the city limits on a couple of the routes. It ws still below freezing and the car had some interesting ice patterns.

                                       

First stop was Nottingham where I resisted the temptation to grab a coffee.

I love the quality of the light in winter especially early in the morning. However I headed off to the next bus to Burton Joyce so I could have a walk down by the river..

This track proved to be a bit problematical. Although most of the flooding is receding it became obvious very quickly that this was not the way to go.

The main walkway had reopened so I had a happy hour walking followed by a quick visit to the craft fair and a cup of tea.

Since I now had my bus ticket, I jumped on the next one out to Southwell in hunt of a proper sweet shop.

and i found the sweet shop!! we are big fans of Dutch salted liquorice but its not easy to find locally. I may have bought a big mixed bag :-)

and the cost of five bus journeys ? just £8.00, bargain.

Magical Mystery Tour

Yesterday, after a rather leisurely breakfast with the weekend papers, Ian told me to grab my camera, purse and coat as we were going out on a mystery tour. Not one to pass up a chance getting out of the house, I was dressed and ready at the door before he was.
Our short drive took us to Southwell, about 15 miles from where we live and a small market town.


The object of the visit was the Quaker Tapestry Exhibition which is being held at Southwell Minster until the end of February and consists of 39 of the 77 panels that make up this modern tapestry charting three centuries of social history.


The panels are 25 by 21 inch and were stitched by over 4000 men and women between 1981 and 1996 in crewel work on specially woven wool cloth.

We followed our visit to the Minster with a wander round the shops, especially the second hand book shop and of course the sweet shop.




On a different note, Photos from the Giant Patchwork Exhibtion in Langres, France 2004 can been seen here on Biker Teds blog and if you are NOT Squeamish, you can see the update photo of my arm here- I did warn you !!!!

News Flash, its just starting to snow- I always get excited at the propect of snow as we don't often see it here so Ian has just dashed out to feed the birds.