Five on Friday....London

Hello

Once again I'm joining in with Amy's Five on Friday - please do visit her 

blog 'Love Made My Home' if you haven't yet, but I think lots of us know 

Amy and her blog already!  

So my Five on Friday is all about last Friday - the best day of the Easter weekend for us 

in terms of the weather forecast. Planning ahead I decided that Good Friday was the day 

for our planned day trip. It was a one-day break from revision for the young people from 

AS levels and University exams. 

At 7.44 am we boarded a deserted train to London. Once in London we headed for the 

Docklands Light Railway to make our way to Greenwich Park and more specifically to 

the Royal Observatory.

And here we are on the Meridian Line. Arriving at a relatively early hour it was still fairly 

quiet but there were still plenty of shadows. We then visited the Planetarium for a very

 interesting talk on identifying the more common stars and constellations. 

It was my first visit to Greenwich Park. The views from the Observatory over London and 

the Thames were stunning, especially in the spring sun. 

From Greenwich Park we walked to Greenwich village, home of the Cutty Sark.  

There was a great atmosphere in Greenwich, it felt almost like a carnival with the carousel, the food stalls, the pub and cafes around the Cutty Sark. And always that blue sky....

Back on the Docklands Light Railway we caught glimpses of restored docks and 

smart new apartments blocks built into old warehouses yet retaining the dockside old 

cranes for loading boats.  

A visit to London for me is hardly complete without a walk along the Thames.

And we finished the day with a meal at Pizza Express opposite St Paul's Cathedral.

 The sun accentuated the architectural details of the Cathedral. 

PS I'm finishing off with 2 sneaky extras photos:

my glorious pizza...

....and very welcome beer!

Sorry for cheating with 2 extra photos, but a great day with the family!

Have a great weekend

xXx

Five on Friday

Hello,

I'm delighted to be joining in with Amy's Five on Friday. 

I'm keeping this simple. Five photos and a few words.

The sun broke through the early thick fog to reveal a beautiful day. It was just too lovely 

to stay indoors so husband and I ventured out for a walk, heading for the wood at the 

back of our house. 

After trudging along the very mud path which mostly follows the perimeter of the wood we 

headed out towards the university playing fields. The groundsmen were out aerating the 

football pitches. The pitches are always immaculate.

After coffee in the cafe at the business park, we headed home, taking yet another

 photo of these gorgeous daffodils....

 past the water....

and back into the wood, almost home. 

Hope you enjoyed that walk. 

Thank you Amy at love made my home for hosting Five on Friday. 

Please head over to Amy's blog and see more Five on Friday's.  

Best wishes

xXx

Yarn along!

Hello

Joining in with Ginny's yarn along this week. 

So I'm reading 'The Nazis: A Warning From History'. I wonder how many of you remember 

this as a BBC TV series back in the late 1990s. I have read this before but as part of my 

mission to de-clutter I decided this was one book I would read once again and then pass
on. I am making slow progress though as I get distracted by facts and find myself
continually stopping to look up lots of extra details on Wikipedia. Still, it is quite nice
to be distracted in such a way. 

In the introduction there is a quote from Karl Jaspers, a German-born philosopher

"That which has happened is a warning. To forget it is guilt. It must be continually 

remembered. It was possible for this to happen, and it remains possible for it to happen 

again at any minute. Only in knowledge can it be prevented."

I'd like to think that was true but sadly I am not wholly convinced. 

As for these socks, oh boy they are taking me an age to knit. I've been suffering with that 

awful cold/cough bug that is going round and I haven't even had the energy to knit. 

Instead I have sat and read.... not a bad substitute.

Happy reading/knitting!

xXx

Starting with a night in York...

Hello

Well, I think it is just a quick round up for this blog post. 

Half term has been and gone. We offered daughter a choice of activities/short breaks but 

she chose a staycation - for her at least. Husband and I had a night in York while she had 

friends (all female!) round for a sleepover. 

Husband and I travelled by train to York, my favourite mode of travel, offering the 

chance  for a coffee, a read of my book and a few rows knitted on my socks. 

We have visited York several times but this was the first occasion in a long time for us to 

visit without children, an indication of how our life is changing as the children grow up. 

We felt in need of exercise and despite the rather grey skies and occasional 

shower of rain we decided to shun the museums and just walk. 

And we walked the city walls - something I have not done before but the walk took 

us through some interesting parts of the city and the heights of the wall gave a slightly 

different perspective of the city too. 

On the way home from York we stopped in Sheffield and had lunch with 2 sons and one girlfriend. The meal wasn't great but the company was fantastic which is the main thing isn't it? 

I didn't take lots of photos while away as I just wanted to walk and enjoy a wind down. 

York was a bit of a welcome break from this.....

Umm.... stripping wallpaper from the hall, stairs and landing. We haven't decorated these 

rooms since we moved in 15 years ago - we always knew it would be a big job and so 

kept postponing it but we decided we could do this no more!!

Underneath we have revealed a variety of paints and I quite like the rustic look we have

on some parts of the wall. What do you think? I have tried to persuade the family that 

maybe we don't need to decorate, we can leave the walls like this but I'm not sure they 

are so convinced!!

And please don't expect a "ta-dah" revealing a beautifully decorated halls, stairs and 

landing any day soon - it all needs a lot of preparation so this is definitely 

a slow-burn project. 

(The picture is one I cross stitched years ago for younger son.)

The weather has been bright recently here in the Midlands and I have made the 

most of it in between stripping!

  

These photos were taken on a now-regular walk of mine round the wood at the 

back of our house and across to the science park. 

I have made a few of these recently - yes toss-in-fruitcake, mainly for daughter. These are

 so easy to make. As the name suggests you literally toss everything in a bowl and mix! 

A friend recently gave us a typewriter.

Only a few weeks ago I had mentioned in passing how I thought daughter would like one. 

It was very kind of her to remember my words when she found one in the back of a 

wardrobe while having a sort out. Daughter thinks "it is sick!" and has even been typing 

up her physics notes.

 The rhythmic sound of the keys tapping, the ping of the bell as the feed roller 

passes the margin and the sliding back of the feed roller is almost musical. 

We have been watching more ladies football matches. Brrr, it was cold yesterday but boy

 was it a nail biting cup match. Sadly our local team lost 2-1 in extra time. But the crowd of approximately 100 was testament to how far the team have come this year.

And the chilliness continued this morning, a very sharp frost with a hazy sun filtering

 through the mist gave the hill behind our house a  warm glow. 

So nothing very exciting to report. Just a round up of recent events. 

Has the sun been shining for your recently?

Do you feel like spring is on its way?

Wishing you a good week

xXx

PS. Thank you for the lovely comments on my socks in my last post!

Sock knitting and sock supplies!

Hello,

Today I'm coming clean about my love of sock knitting!

I know there is a whole community out there of keen sock knitters, and I am proud to be one of them. As many have said before, and in fact as I have also said here and here, socks are a great knitting project for taking with you when space may be at a premium. 

So train rides, weekend breaks, or even day trips all offer me the chance to get a 

few rows done. 

This is the first pair I knitted - smartly commandeered by daughter and as you can see, well used. 

I started off with some Regia 4 ply yarn and followed the pattern supplied with the yarn.

More Regia yarn followed. As you can probably guess, I like this yarn. It is hard-wearing but also comes in a great range of colours and patterns such as this latest one by 

Arne and Carlos. 

Other designers for Regia sock yarn include Erika Knight and Kaffe Fassett. 

So besides a healthy stash of sock yarn (all will soon be revealed!) I have also accumulated a few sets of DPNs (double pointed needles), small circular needles 

(which I absolutely love!) and er, one or 2 books.  

Well, actually 4 books in total which I feel is pretty restrained. 

But I do find all the lovely sock yarns hard to resist.  

Such gorgeous self-striping, self-patterning yarns. 

But also for a diversion I have some charming plain yarn waited to be knitted up too!

And some gorgeous yarn from West Yorkshire Spinners that I received as a 

Christmas present. This was sold as a Christmas special and the yarns are called 

Holly Berry and Cherry Drop. I am aiming to get two pairs of sock from these balls, 

using for each pair one ball as the main colour and using the second ball as a 

contrast for the cuffs, heels, and toes.  

And finally some old balls of Regia that I bought several years ago when it was 

on  offer - this yarn is at last on my needles and I'm trying a different pattern this 

time, one with an after-thought heel as I used this method on my Osen Christmas

 stocking and found it very easy to do.

 (This photo really doesn't capture the true colour of the yarn at all).  

And here is my sock yarn stash in all it's glory 

(well at least as it was yesterday).

So quite a few "pairs of socks" worth of yarn there, but alas, there are just

so many tempting sock yarns. I posted recently about how I was desperately 

resisting the urge to purchase more but as many of you guessed 

correctly, I eventually caved in to temptation. 

Let me introduce you to Delphinium (left) and Frost (right). 

Definitely a 'blue' theme going on here don't you think?

And finally, this pair of socks have just come off my needles and need to be finished. 

Clearly these have been on my needle a while as I was knitting them on this day trip to Matlock in May 2015! 

Well, with all that sock yarn in the house I'd better get knitting. 

And if you are on Ravelry please pop in and see me - I'm Caz3, and here is the link to see more of my projects. 

Are you a sock knitter? Do you have a favourite pattern? Do you knit cuff-down or toe-up?

So many choices....

Wishing you an enjoyable half term!

xXx

A walk in the woods

Hello,

I am stripping very old wall paper from our hall today. I am really quite ashamed of our 

hall. We have lived in the house 15 years and we have yet to decorate the hall. 

Sadly, the hall looked pretty shabby when we moved in, badly applied wallpaper, which 

overlapped in places and painted a dirty beige. Over the years we have even stuck photos 

and Christmas decorations up using blue tac which then took away some of the paper 

when we tried to remove them!! So you can imagine how bad it looks.

Anyway, this morning while stripping paper the sun just kept calling me to go outside, 

to go outside and enjoy the bright day. So that is what I did!

We live in a town in  the Midlands: our house is almost at the top of a hill. 

The hedge at the bottom of our garden marks the boundary for the town. 

This is the view of our back garden (goals, rebound nets and washing lines included!). 

My destination was the wood at the top of the picture. You can just make out a greenish
path working its way diagonally across the field from bottom left.

 So I'll take you with me on my walk into the wood.

This area will be a carpet of blue once the bluebells are in bloom. 

I'm pretty sure this tree must be home to some of the woodpeckers we see in the garden 

(green and lesser spotted). They are such shy birds. 

For some reason we always walk round this wood anti-clockwise, 

today we 'branched out' and walked it clockwise! 

We can't be accused of not being adventurous!

Reminders that we are not far from urban life. 

A short diversion into the science park. 

I must come back when the daffodils are in bloom.

What a super place to sit in the summer at lunchtime and contemplate...

Back into the woods. 

The sight of this tree brings back memories of the children and how they used to love to climb on it and make the horizontal branches wobble.  

Tiny homes for tiny woodland folk.  

We are very lucky to have such a beautiful wood so close to explore and enjoy.

And for completeness, here is the view from the front of the house. 

We can see right across the roof tops of town to the countryside beyond. 

It always feels like we live in a house which has its front in town 

and its back in the country!

I hope you enjoyed that short walk, making the most 

of the winter sun and our local wood. 

Wishing you an enjoyable weekend.

Has it been sunny with you too? 

xXx