Cardiff, conferencing...and socks!

Can't believe blogland has been so busy! Its just taken me a very pleasant hour or so catching up with all your lovely blogs - I did read some via my iphone while I was away but the commenting is a bit fiddly so wanted to go back and leave some comments. Only I think I am truly going a bit senile, cos I couldn't quite remember who I had tried to leave comments on...so if I've repeated myself (or maybe worse, if I've changed my mind about which photos are my favourites...!) then sorry! Blame it on scatty brain and fickle mind!

And thanks so much for all your comments - I find it really encouraging to read your comments on the things I post, especially related to photos and crafty makes; gives me a bit more positive drive to do more!

Cardiff was great. The conference was inspiring in places - some great speakers that renewed my faith in what we can strive for in the NHS, in spite of the very best attempts of the powers that be to hamstring you with politics and beaurocracy! The company was fab - these things are always good for catching up with old friends and colleagues and there were some lovely people I hadn't seen in ages, so we laughed a lot, talked a lot and probably drank far too much (how does a bottle of wine disappear that fast???!!!). All of which was very restorative.

And I thought Cardiff was an interesting place - there are some stunning buildings, some beautiful park areas and some good shops.

What I didn't manage to do was take many photos! Because we were mainly walking around a few of us together, it wasn't easy to stop and take pics as I kept having to catch up with the others! So here are a few just to give you a flavour (and give me a reminder to look back at!):

My room in the hotel...

It wasn't the poshest of hotels (actually it was pretty much the cheapest I could find that didn't look dire!) - the room was really not much bigger than this! But it was clean and the bed was comfy enough - what else do you need really? And I'm a bit childish about hotels - I still get just a little bit of a buzz from the whole arriving, unpacking (even when I hardly took much for two days!!!) and investigating the mini toiletries thing! Is that a bit weird???!

When I arrived I had a bit of a wander round - partly to get my bearings and partly to stretch my legs after 5 1/2 hours on the train - this is one of the big shopping malls...

I loved all the topiary and the street sculptures (there are no end of interesting sculptures - didn't manage to get pics of them, another time maybe!).

Walking to the conference Thursday morning had to take a picture of this great man...

Well, I do work in the institution he set up!

The conference was in the City Hall which is a very grand building. I didn't manage to take a picture of the outside but couldn't resist a quick snap of the opulent staircase inside...

Its not a long walk down to the bay - the sun was shining and the sea looked lovely...

It was buzzing with people enjoying the early evening sunshine - and seagull! I didn't even notice this one on top of the lamp-post til I put it on the computer. (and the JD and coke I was sipping was going down very nicely...)

At the request insistence (!) of one of our group, we ate at the recently opened Jamie Oliver restaurant...

The surroundings were impressive and the food was pretty... but, if I'm honest, (even though I do quite like Jamie's take on cooking...) I thought it was a bit overpriced and I've had better meals. The food was nice but not spectacular and it was expensive. Anyway, been there, done that... the evening was made by the company not the restaurant!

The Cardiff Arms stadium is huge and the white framework is visible at various points around the city above the buildings...

The castle is impressive too - we didn't get time to visit but walked through the beautiful castle park...

Beautiful long flower beds (need some of this colour in my garden!)...

And the most enormous alliums...

Its difficult to get a sense of scale here but they must have been 6 inches across!

It was a lovely trip and I'd have liked a couple of days more just to explore the city properly - another place on the list of places to go back to!

So on to socks!

The advantage of all those hours on the train was lots of knitting time! So...

Ta dah! Pair of socks no 2 finished! I think these have only taken me about 10 days (including 2 long train trips...) and although I'm quite pleased with them I am still on a sock learning curve! I used a different pattern and method this time (same wool cos I just thought I might as well use it up) - this time I used this pattern which was pretty easy to follow once I'd sussed the US terms but I did a stupid thing with the shaping on the foot...

I don't know how well you can see it but I didn't read the pattern properly on the first sock! Dur! And didn't notice til I'd almost finished the second! So on the first one I decreased for the foot too fast without a plain knit row between decreasing rows. I feel very irritated by being so dumb but as they are only for me and it doesn't seem to make a huge difference to how they fit on the foot I couldn't face undoing them! Note to self - read the pattern properly next time!

And I have definitely got the sock bug cos now...

I am daring to get going with socks 3, using the 4 ply Opal yarn. These might take me a bit longer as it is so much finer and I am trying a 3rd pattern I found on ravelry to see if I think its more straightforward. We'll see!

Must follow Alice's link to master kitchener stitch for finishing the toes as I definitely haven't got that bit quite right yet...

Til next time then,

Sx

June photo scavenger hunt...

Its that time again, so thanks to Kathy for the inspiration, here are my efforts for this month...

Something with your town's name

For as long as I can remember this grandfather clock has been part of my life. I guess my parents must have acquired it not long after we came to Norfolk when I was a child. This was in the 70s when 'old' things were not at all in vogue and they picked up loads of antique furniture at auctions and 'junk' shops. I do mean loads...this was passed on to my when my father bought the fourth long case grandfather clock and my mother decided there was a bit of a space and chiming issue! Anyway I love it and it stands at the end of my hall. When I remember to wind it (or can get to it! at the moment the hall is full of son 2's clobber from uni!) it has a lovely soothing loud tick.

An elephant

I struggled a bit with this one! Thought it would be easy - Norwich is full of elephants! Including one at work which I pass every day and has a lovely glass and metal tree sculpture behind it. I will take a picture of that one of these days to show you but didn't manage it this month. Then last weekend I saw these two lads heading off down the street with their busking gear and they made me smile, so I whipped out my camera for a quick snap!

A wheel trim

Another acquired family antique! I think this came form somewhere in my Scottish family and I've had it since I was about 8, I should think. Its a Singer treadle sewing machine - I learnt to sew on this and used it until I got my electric sewing machine for my 21st birthday. Its a really beautiful thing although the wooden case is looking a bit the worse for wear now.

An architectural detail

This is the church I mentioned in yesterday's post. Parts of it are 900 years old and as well as local flint stones, it is built with reclaimed Roman red tiles from the Roman site it stands on. 

Cheese

Our local town had its first farmers market last weekend - lots of yummy food including this amazing chilli smoked cheddar, very more-ish!!

Night

I nearly didn't put this one is as its such a rubbish picture - but then decided what the heck, its the only night one I have. The sky was amazing one evening on the way home form work and this in no way does justice to it. My little camera just doesn't do night photos (I have tried honest!) - they just come out dark and grainy. (and no, although I got some lovely things for my birthday, camera wasn't one of them...:-()

Tree branches

A lovely old tree at Stinson Lock by the canal in Derbyshire.

Cutlery

I brought these back from Morocco. They are hand carved from a single piece each of lemon tree wood and are so lovely to touch. In the mountains we used spoons like this every day for porridge and soup.

A childhood memory

I was an incredibly accident prone child. I was always falling over, running into things, getting stung etc. We had a very spiny cactus just inside the front door and I managed to implant most of the spines in my wrist as I ran past! I must have been about 4 or 5 and I can remember being sat on the kitchen stool while my mum painstakingly pulled each spine out with tweezers! And I can still remember how much it stung!!

A farm animal

This was from one of my early morning bike rides early in the month. There were just these two friendly looking cows in the field and I thought they looked rather lovely with the early morning sun behind them!

Something beginning with Z...

I was struggling a bit with this one - until yesterday I had a fairly uninspiring photo of a piece of ginger (zingiber officinale?!). Then I looked up damselflies on t'internet when I was posting yesterday and yay! The 'proper' name for damselflies is Zygoptera! (Zygo - meaning paired or joined & ptera - meaning wings; in case you were wondering!)

The view from your front door

Crikey, doesn't this look flat! It doesn't really give you a sense of the view as actually it is countryside both sides of this section too - need a wide angle lens to capture it better, I suppose. But it is what greets me when I step out of the door each morning - could be worse!

I need to get my act  together and go and get packed - I'm off to Cardiff for a couple of days for a conference. Looking forward to seeing a new place - what does Cardiff have to offer I wonder?!

Til next time

Sx

feeling hot, hot, hot...

Yesterday was the first day of my two weeks "absolutely cannot faff about, must finish my assignment" spell...

But...it was sooo hot! The car temperature gauge said 31.5C and it did feel boiling! Gorgeous bright sunshine, a little bit of a breeze and blue, blue sky. Plus, the computer was with the nice people at apple for most of the day (yay! they seem to have fixed it - although it still seems to be getting a bit warm?) so I had to have quick divert outside... I have no self discipline at all!

Got very distracted by these...

...damselflies zipping about around the pond. They don't sit still for long so they were a bit difficult to catch in good focus but I love the sun glinting off their delicate wings and the brightness of their bodies. They look a bit prehistoric to me!

They seemed to like this particular leaf and I resorted to son 2's telephoto lens in the end to try to capture the detail.

The day lilies are flowering...

I went for a short walk round an old roman site near us. The pretty little church sits in the middle of the remaining earthworks...

The thistles were making dramatic silhouettes against the cobalt sky...

The brambles are covered in flowers and the beginnings of blackberries (note to self - come back here in the autumn!)...

I know the sun is not that good for you but I do love these hot sunny days! They just seem to make everything seem much more alive and vivid.

Now, back to that assignment...

Sx

days out...

Just a quick post in case the computer dies altogether and then I'll forget what I wanted to say!!!

Not so much a day out really as a trip to Derbyshire to help son 2 find a flat to live in while he's on his work placement year - so a whole load of driving in the space of 24 hours really! But amongst looking at the tiny overpriced flats we did manage to have a bit of a look round some pretty villages and came upon a little coffee shop by a canal lock. We just timed it right as two boats were going through the lock; I have always found the whole performance fascinating, from the cleverness of how the lock mechanism works to the characters on the boats. 

We have some lovely waterways in Norfolk but nothing you have to negotiate in a watery 'lift'!

The power of water pouring into the lock was quite impressive and it filled pretty quickly. The people on the first boat had been living on the water pretty much for 20 years and deftly negotiated the boat through the narrow gate...

before letting the water drop and heading through the next gate...

The whole thing took a very leisurely 15 or 20 minutes, during which there was plenty of time for chatting. It struck me this must be a very relaxed way to live, and a good lesson in compacting most of the 'stuff' we accumulate to fit it into a 60ft narrow boat! I'm not sure I'd fancy having to fetch water (especially in winter) or deal with the whole chemical toilet thing though.

For those of you who live near the canals I guess this is a familiar sight but I was quite excited by all this!

I feel when S is settled a proper trip to Derbyshire for a bit of exploring is on the cards!

Keep your fingers crossed for me that the nice people in the Apple shop can breathe new life into my laptop tomorrow...

Til next time

Sx

new colour this week...

I think my family are getting the message about my love of colour! (It has only taken a tonne of bright crochet cushions, blankets, mugs etc to make them realise neutral not realy my thing...!)

I was lucky to get some lovely things for my birthday last week...

These pretty little Marrakesh-inspired tea light holders were from my sister.

Cheerful stripes to match my charity shop mug from R - not that we're really posh enough to use a milk jug on a regular basis but I like the idea and its very cute. 

I had been wistfully eyeing up roses as I didn't have any in the garden at all and R came up trumps here too! This is a lovely, fragrant old fashioned shrub rose called 'Buff Beauty' which the label says flowers over a long period - now I just have to work out how you are supposed to look after a rose...  

And in the garden this week, the lobelia in the window box is flowering an electric blue...

The nasturtiums are fiery...

I found the first water lily hiding in the pond...

Then today I had a naughty yarn treat...

Yesterday was payday...which doesn't really make any difference, because its all accounted for already but I excused myself on the grounds that if I master the sock-knitting thing I might make some for pressies (I know, way too early to be thinking Christmas but it is entirely possible it will take me that long to knit them, how does Alice do it???!). This is Opal 4 ply sock yarn, which slightly scares me and slightly thrills me at the same time - I NEVER use 4 ply because it seems so thin after my usual yarn and I am worried I may get fed up before I ever finish anything! But... I think it might make better socks and I am determined to get at least one pair right! And it is pretty and lovely and squishy. So in my book that little splurge is ok...

I am still plugging away at my second pair of socks with the DK yarn...

I'm liking this top-down pattern on DPNs better (although I haven't got to the heel part yet!) and although I like the colours in this yarn (its not actually quite so orangey-bright in reality), I do thin its a bit chunky for socks really. But I had the yarn and I wanted to try to get the pattern sussed in my mind so am plugging away at it. I do quite like that its a portable little project that I can easily stop and start, I just might have to be disciplined to complete the second sock...!

Think my computer is about to go on melt-down - the fan seems to have stopped working and it is now too hot to keep on my lap, I'm sure this is not a good thing... so will call it a day here!

Til next time then,

Sx