Weekend in Cropton.

Well, we're back home safe and sound after our lovely weekend away.  It was just what we needed, relaxation!  The cottage was beautiful and the owner Mike, couldn't have been more helpful.  Even down to getting his 4x4 out to tow us off the yard on Monday morning when our car was stuck in the very deep snow.  There was a wood burning stove in the inglenook fireplace and we made great use of that all weekend.  Very cosy and romantic :-).

We took books to read and I had plenty of knitting with me, oh and biscuits and chocolates of course :-)

My dream holiday

Now, coincidentally this happened to be the weekend of the Cropton Beer Festival.  We didn't know this when we booked the cottage - no one believes us of course but it's true.  Naturally, we were very happy to discover it, but we genuinely didn't know about it when we chose that weekend. Our plan, as such, was that we would just chill out and relax, pop to the pub a couple of times and stay in and cook one of the three nights we would be there.

So, after staying in with a bottle of wine and a beef casserole on the Friday night, on Saturday, after a hearty full English breakfast, we set off for a walk in the snow around the village.  It really was a winter wonderland, so beautiful.

The view from the Cottage window

Sheep in a field

The New Inn, Cropton

Naturally, after all the exercise, we felt we had earned a couple of beers so it was off to the beer festival.  We got there just as it had opened for the day so had the run of the bar in the marquee specially set up for the purpose.  Just take a look at all those pumps!  That's only half of the bar in the picture.

"We'll just start at one end and work our way down shall we?"]

I'm not going to bore you by listing all the beers we had over the weekend, suffice to say we tried a fair few between us!  My particular favourite was Cropton's Blackout.  A fabulous rich Porter which is produced from a 1930's recipe.  It's like chocolate in a glass....yum yum.  There was also a Biker's Rally on over the weekend and about 50 motorcylists had braved the elements for the event and many were camped in the field behind the pub.  Yes, that's right, camped!  As in tents and sleeping bags!  I was astounded that people would even consider camping in that weather but the ones we spoke to assured us that they were snug and warm.  I'll take their word for it I think.  We were also surprised to see how many other visitors there were from Hull.  We met people we know and saw quite a few others who we know by sight from The Wellington Inn in Hull.

On Sunday, we had a very lazy day and actually didn't move from in front of the fire all day.  I enjoyed some knitting and finally finished my Woolly Wormhead mystery hat B, just in time for the end of November!  I also made a dent in my Red 'jeans cardigan and am pleased with they way that's coming along now.  I'll blog about and put pictures of my hat up when I can get some nice ones.

On Monday lunchtime when we came to leave, we found the car well and truly stuck in deep snow.

There's a car under there!

I had to sweep the snow off!

Mike the cottage owner got his 4x4 out to try to tow us out but it was a struggle.  We had to dig more snow from under the wheels and try several times.  Eventually we got moving and once we were on the road, it was fine.  Fine, until we got within spitting distance of home.  Part of the road to Beverley was closed and we had to take a diversion, through little villages and country roads.  It got a bit hairy at one point when we couldn't actually tell where the road ended and the ditches began!  I would have taken a photo but I was too scared.  I also thought it might piss Patrick off since he was the one trying to keep us on the road at the time.  I know if I'd been driving and he'd got his camera out, I'd have felt like ramming it down his throat. :-D.  We were very relieved to see the main road in front of us, relatively clear of snow, leading to the main Beverley bypass.  We stopped in Beverley at The Green Dragon, for some lunch and then made our way home for a quiet night in.

A truly lovely weekend break.  Why are they always over too quickly though?

Cropton in the snow.

We are having a weekend away in the village of Cropton in North Yorkshire and I think we're in real danger of being snowed in! I mean, just look at it.     :-) :-)

New Phone

I've got a new phone, it's a HTC Wildfire  which is an Android phone and I'm loving it.  Patrick had got the HTC Desire a while back and the Wildfire is basically the same phone on the outside, apart from a slightly smaller screen.  On the inside, it does the same as the Desire but a little slower, it has a 584mb processor instead of the 1Gb on the Desire.

I'm not usually a gadget geek and never got excited about the iPhone/Smartphone revolution but Patrick's phone was just a complete revelation to me, these things are in essence, pocket computers and I just never realised you could do so much with them.  Everything you can do on your computer, you can do with these phones.  As per the previous post, when I tested it out, I can take a picture and at the click of a button, post it either here on my blog, on facebook, twitter, to my Flickr stream as well as the usual MMS, Bluetooth etc.  My emails are automatically sent to my phone, I have access to the whole internet in the palm of my hand and then there are the Apps!  Thousands of them, ranging from the downright silly Who Farted to the useful 3G Watchdog which keeps track of your internet usage for those with a limit on their account.  I'm really enjoying getting to know my phone and it's capabilities, I suspect I never will use it to it's full potential though.  I'm hoping to blog a little more frequently too now that it is so easy to make short posts whilst on the move.  Sometimes it's difficult to find the time to sit at the computer, upload photos from the camera and create a post.

In knitting news, I went to my knitting group last night.  Lesley the owner of Babes in The Wool, who runs the group always brings in bargain yarn for us to buy.  Last night was Debbie Bliss Rialto Aran, absolutely lovely at £1 a ball.  I managed to resist it although I was very tempted to buy some small quantities for hats and scarfs.  So the yarn diet is still underway.  I'm rather proud of myself :-)

Yarnaholics not so anonymous

I'm on a yarn diet.  Yeah, yeah sure you are Jill!!   No, really, this time I really am.  Manda, one of the ladies who posts on the Phoenix Knitting Forums  has set herself a challenge, started a blog about it and invited us to join her.  I'm certainly in.  I have lots of yarn, as seen here (oh and there's been much more bought since that picture )and I have lots of things I want to knit with it.  Here are the rules copied from Manda's Blog :

1. if I knit then it must be from my stash unless it is a gift for someone (even then it should be stash if possible)


2. if some one asks me to knit for them they must buy the yarn (I don't often knit for others as a rule)


3. I can ask for and receive gifts of yarn (or money for yarn)


4. I can give gifts of yarn


5. I can swap or sell yarn (the money made can go in my yarn fund)


6. I can buy yarn but it must come out of my yarn fund.


7. I can earn yarn fund by knitting 1 pence for every meter of yarn I knit.  This is per finished item, UFOs do not count. If I finish a current WIP I can count this for my fund.

UFO = Unfinished Object, something you started to knit and it's not looking likely that you will finish it anytime soon.

WIP - Work in Progress

So, As a starter, I've been through my Rav queue and assigned stash yarn to most of the projects in there.  If I can't knit it from stash, it will have to be at the bottom of the queue for a while.  Apart from the hat I'm knitting for the Woolly Wormhead KAL, which I bought the yarn for before, everything I have in progress at the moment is using stashed yarn so I feel justified in saying I can add that meterage to my yarn fund when I finish them (eventually!).

So, wish me luck avoiding bargains and other temptations.  Yarn can employ very devious methods of ambush if you're not careful so I'll have to be super vigilant in my quest.

It's arrived.....

..and I love it :-)

Manos Del Uruguay Silk Blend in shade Arctic

Knitting

I've been a bit disillusioned with my knitting lately.  I can't seem to get very enthusiastic about anything, I keep starting things and either leaving them or frogging after only a few inches because it's just not working for me.  I started Mr Greenjeans in some Patons Jet in a lovely bright red, this was after frogging the Central Park Hoodie I had started and decided I wouldn't like!  I also started, with enthusiasm, a February Lady  in Debbie Bliss Rialto Aran in Navy.  I've been wanting a navy blue cardi and can't find anything in the shops so I was quite happy to be starting this and really looking forward to wearing it in a few weeks.  However, I'm struggling with it.  The yarn is quite...well, I don't know how to explain it really, just that it is difficult to knit with.  It doesn't seem to slide along the needles, I'm working on a circular and I've tried both metal tips and the knit pro wooden ones but it is such hardwork!  I have to stop every few stitches to drag the rest of the stitches along and it makes it slow going.   At this rate, it will be winter 2012 before I am wearing this cardi!!  I bought some of the very lovely Ethical Twist DK from Kemps and planned to knit Coraline, I swatched and then washed the swatch and..... have had nothing else to do with the project since, haven't even measured the gauge of the washed swatch.  No idea why because I was buzzing about that cardi whilst winding the wool and thought I wouldn't even be able to wait for the swatch to be washed before starting to knit. I frogged the lovely Clothilde because the Ranco Multy was doing nothing for the delicate pattern of the lace, I may start another one in some solid 4ply I have in stash but I've lost my appetite for it just at the moment.  In short, nothing has made me want to rush to cast on lately and the cardigans I have OTN have felt a bit like a chore, so it gives me great pleasure to announce that I received a little squishy parcel today which has got me a wee bit excited :-).  It's a skein of Manos Del Uruguay Silk Blend in shade Arctic which is a lovely green, and with it I'm going to join in the Woolly Wormhead Mystery KAL.  I've never done a mystery KAL before so am really looking forward to getting started with this.  Oh please let this be my mojo coming back, I hate being so lethargic and disinterested.

This week I have....

I saw my eldest son off to University on Saturday so it was a bit emotional for me but made much easier by the fact that he was looking forward to it enormously and settled in really well immediately.  He's gone to York to study Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence.  We had a time slot to arrive in, between 9.30 and 12.30, I was tremendously impressed with how smoothly things ran, considering around 600 students would have been arriving that morning.  Upon arrival at around 11am, we were directed to where we could park and unload, a lovely young lady who was a second year student came to meet our car as soon as we had parked up and introduced herself and offered her help.  Michael was taken to where he needed to be to collect his key and she helped unload the car and took us to the flat he will be living in for the next year.  The accommodation is all brand new having only opened last year.  Michael is in a flat for 12 people, all rooms are en-suite and the shared kitchen is huge!  After helping him to unpack and make his bed (his priority was his computer - no surprise there), we asked if he wanted to come and have lunch or if he wanted us to leave him to meet his flat-mates and get on with things.  He opted for the latter which, although I was a teensy bit disappointed at, I was also very happy that he felt confident enough to be alone in this new environment.  From subsequent chats on facebook etc, I'm happy to report that he is settled and enjoying his new life.  Michael will not be a party animal, that's not his bag but I have no doubt that he will embrace all opportunities that appeal to him and will enjoy a full and satistfying life over the next four years.  I'm very proud of him.

By coincidence, I'm going to be in York this Saturday too.  I am doing a Rowan knitting workshop on finishing techniques at Poppys, a beautiful yarn shop on Colliergate in the City.  I'm looking forward to this greatly, it is a workshop I have wanted to do for some time now as I feel it is often the sewing up and other finishing bits and bobs that let my knitted garments down.  I'm looking forward to learning how to finish more professionally as well as a good old natter with like-minded souls.

I always enjoy going to my knit group each month for the same reason.  I don't have any knitting friends that I see regularly, so it is always a joy to be among a room full of other women, all knitting and chatting, comparing our projects and sharing tips and techniques.  Last night at knit group, my lovely friend Shona had given me a ball of Merino so that I could knit the squares we need to take with us to the workshop on Saturday, so that's what I was doing last night and I've almost finished all four of them now.  In other knitting news, I finished my Ishbel and I am so pleased with it, it is really beautiful.

Ishbel for me

I've started Mr Greenjeans in red and frogged the February Lady in the Adriafil Soffio, I also frogged one of the summer tops, I needed the needles and when I tried to transer the stitches over to spare yarn, I got in a muddle and lost some.  I hadn't done much of it and couldn't quite remember where I was up to in the pattern either so it's no great loss.   I also started Clothilde in Arauncania Ranco Multy and have wound the yarn for Propello.

I have quite a busy weekend ahead what with the Rowan workshop on Saturday and then on Sunday, we have having a family party for my mum who will be 90 next week.  More on that next week.