befogged

Last week meant a much-needed week off work and, courtesy of Al’s parents’ very generous 30th birthdays gift to us both, went to Ullswater in the Lake District:

Beautiful. Really beautiful. These are the views from the B&B and the hotel we stayed in, at different ends of the lake.

A gorgeous week, in all. The weather was lovely at the start of it in particular, so we managed to squeeze in some of this:

Including around Grasmere:

The timing was down to Al’s birthday more than anything, but although I’m not an especial Wordsworth fan it was rather pleasing to be in the Lakes when the daffs were in bloom! Tremendously touristy in Grasmere itself, as I suppose is to be expected, but one of the great things about that area is that you don’t have to go very far before you escape all of that and find yourself in one of the most wild and beautiful landscapes in the country.

While we were there, we walked up to see Long Meg and her Daughters (If you ever venture that way, I highly recommend The Watermill for a delicious organic lunch. Proper leaf tea and rarebit on home-bakedbread and with several different types of salad. Yum. And especially appreciated since we managed to go a bit astray from our directions and walk about twice the distance we’d intended!), and went along to visit Castlerigg stone circle:

We didn’t manage to get any photos from our two hour horse ride through the fells, largely because that was on Thursday. When it was absolutely lashing it down! We did wrap up and don waterproofs, but it was still… bracing. Fabulous views, though, even if they were somewhat misty.

We tend to spend our holidays out and about in the daytime and then only really venture out in the evening for food, plus I’m always up an hour or two before breakfast, so in the downtime I made a start on a diamond fantasy scarf, too. Really, though, I was so enjoying the scenery and the uninterrupted reading opportunities that I didn’t get especially far.

I am still on it. Honest.

Not entirely sure what happened there, other than that of work, knitting, reading and blogging, the latter always seems to be the first thing to slip. Er. Sorry about that. Must Do Better.
Since I last wrote, I’ve turned 30 with a predictable level of fanfare (i.e. barely any), although we did tour the Galleries of Justice (Reputedly one of the most haunted places in the country. It would certainly be a rather spooky place to find yourself in the evening, I must admit!) and see Nottingham from on high (we’ve temporarily acquired a stonking great big wheel in the town centre, which gives amazing views across the city) on the day itself.

I’m still knitting, of course - I’ll spare you the multiple upload (you’ll have to find me on ravelry.com for that), but here’s a couple of recent projects:

Yarn: Hipknits Merino Sock in “Chocolate Cherries”, Pattern: ‘Yarn Over Cable’ from Sensational Knitted Socks.
So soft. Sooo soft. Between the raspberry ripple colours and the softness of the yarn, this has proved rather like knitting with and wearing warm ice cream, if that makes sense. It does to me, anyway!

Yarn: Sublime Kid Mohair in “Vellum”. Pattern: ‘Muse’ from the Very Gorgeous Sublime Kid Mohair Book

Yesterday, myself and a few friends went here:

And relived our childhoods with the aid of:

Hee! Granted, not everyone will immediately recognise that when they see it, but those of us who saw and read Moondial by Helen Cresswell when we were at school should remember it well. Belton House, where both book and series were set, is only a few miles from Grantham, where we all went to school, and since not a lot of note happens there it was quite exciting to have a book and tv series based in that neck of the woods. Tom-short-for-Edward’s gravestone is in the nearby church, too - makes you wonder…

It’s a great place to visit - the house itself feels somehow friendlier than stately homes often do, and we’d somehow timed it so that we visited on an open week where more rooms were open than is typically the case (Complete fluke - we’d arranged to go elsewhere, but when looking at the website for the address in the morning I realised it was closed that day and rapidly cast around for other places we could go in the same general vicinity!). The grounds, too, are well worth a visit - Sarah’s formed the intention of whisking her family off to enjoy them, as to be honest there’s plenty to enjoy without even venturing in the house if you don’t want to/have small children who wouldn’t be remotely interested. Plus National Trust properties always do really nice lunch (carrot and orange soup - yum!), which after several hours of wandering around is not to be sneezed at!

Today has been all about the garden, however, with much appreciated (and needed!) advice and help from Al’s granny and aunty plus two garden centre visits resulting in a bootful of shrubs which have now been planted. Fingers crossed for their survival! We’ve got a bit of a variety for the borders, plus some jasmine (always had a soft spot for that, there having been lots in the garden of the house in which I grew up) for the trellis.

We worked out that a climber for the pergola does have access to non-container soil if we train them up the left hand side of the trellis and then over the front of the pergola, so for now I’ve succumbed to the temptation of the showy and gone for a wisteria. It’s already quite vigorous, so we’ll see. Either way, it’s under strict instructions to behave itself or it will be replaced, since the only real reason that it got picked over clematis in the first place was that the wisteria plants were already quite large and therefore provided more immediate cover. Depending how that works out, though, I’m tempted to try something else, with a different flowering season, in a container towards the back of the pergola.

There are still plenty of gaps to fill with smaller plants, but it’s a bit easier to see where they are and what sorts of things we’ll need now that we’ve a few shrubs in place and have got the saplings planted, and will be easier to fill once the lawn has established and can cope with foot traffic.

One of the nice things about a garden is you don’t have to do it all at once - for a naturally impatient person, it’s probably a good thing that it forces a certain amount of patience!

This weekend, I was here:

That being a picture of a rather damp Sudbury Hall, to which I ventured with a friend on Saturday. We were slightly perturbed to discover a rather sodden wedding party hanging around outside when we got there, but were assured that the hall would open in half an hour and in the meantime the tea shop was open for lunch, so that was ok. Perhaps not so much for the bedraggled bridal party, though!

The hall itself I really enjoyed - considering it’s such a grand-looking place, it actually felt quite intimate inside. None of the rooms were huge, and most of them seemed rather familyish and quite cosy, albeit with decidedly impressive views of landscaped gardens and lake and rather posh furniture! It was nice to have a nosey below stairs at the kitchen, too, though it was the 1920s/1930s version - for some reason, quite a few stately homes only seem to let you look around the bits in which the posh people lived, and I always want to see where everyone else was put. You’re only seeing half the story, otherwise. The hall has also been used in a few productions of Austen novels, and has costumes from Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice dotted around the place, which was quite interesting. And made made me wonder afresh what on earth all the fuss was about Kate Winslet’s weight - I wouldn’t have been surprised if you’d told me these were original Regency gowns, they were all so little!

Then when we got back, we drank some of this:

If you can’t read the hastily scribbled label, that would be Al’s Simple Mead. Is very nice. A good time had by all, and all that.

Before all that, though, I finally finished the sewing up for this:

Having a cropped shorter sleeved cotton cardi to hand has not really been a clothing priority lately, but it’s finally finished off anyway!

It’s the Eyelet Cardigan by Blue Sky Alpacas, done in their Dyed cotton in Aloe. I’m not completely sold on it, but it was quick and easy and will no doubt get plenty of wear. The yarn is extremely soft for cotton, although it does disintegrate into cotton-wool puffs if you try separating the plies. I have yet to experience a desire to play he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not whilst perched on a bench, though

Damn. It’s mostly too warm to wear socks which involve cashmere. Which is a shame, because I’ve just finished these:

Pattern: From here - modified to add the pattern to the instep and to fit my tension.

Yarn: Posh Yarn Lucia (30% cashmere, 70% merino) in “Starboard”. Fab stuff - the colours are gorgeous and the yarn itself is soft but feeling fairly sturdy so far. Here, just for the hell of it, it is just in (unblocked!) stocking stitch:

See you at the next Sunday sale…

Energy! I have energy! Lots of it!*

I’ve walked, weeded, knitted, sewn, dug, visited, read several books, cleared, explored, dug some more, planted, and the only reason I’ve temporarily stopped doing stuff to the garden for the moment is because there is no more room in the garden waste bin so efficiently supplied by the council on Saturday morning, after I’d requested it on Thursday afternoon. And I’m still wide awake every evening instead of being drained.

It’s faintly surprising how much energy, both physical and mental, there seems to be to go around when you’re not spending 37.5hrs per week mostly sitting down and battling through the inevitable politics and bureaucracy of the working world to either make other people money or try to save it for them. Now that they’ve had a bit of a break from both normal working life and the rather more draining weirdness that is an office full of people facing either redundancy or relocation, it’s like both brain and body have woken up again. Particularly my shoulders after all that digging, as it happens. Ow.

Too early in life with my current set of circumstances to make this a feasible permanent state of affairs without an extremely eccentric wealthy elderly person taking a shine to me, but something to work towards overall, perhaps…

* I am going to try and prevent these unexpected reserves inducing excessive exclamation mark use, however, or I shall start to remind myself of a former boss. And that would be scary.

Am I unusual in not being a particular fan of cut flowers?

It’s not that I dislike the blooms themselves - beauty I can fully appreciate. I like striking flowers in place in the garden - they can be a brilliant cross between art and architecture, arranged well. For myself, though, I prefer trees, herbs, veg & fruit, especially to grow. And I’ve never really been one for vases full of floral arrangements. The thought, the gesture, is always appreciated and the prettiness very much admired, but for me there’s something slightly… misplaced about big vases of flowers in my house, and it’s sad to see them eventually die. Much more satisfaction in getting something to grow.

And anyway, I’ve no idea which plants are and aren’t poisonous to cockatiels but do know that some are and you never know what chemicals they’re treated with, and with three winged menaces and a fairly imperfect flower knowledge I’d rather not take the chance!

If you’re a chocolate chip cookie sort of person, I don’t think it’s actually possible to recommend this recipe highly enough:

http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2004/09/ultimate_chocolate_chip_cookie.html#more

Mmm. Cookies.

Actually, have a rummage on there anyway, if you haven’t already. I can vouch for the oatmeal and raisin cookies, too…