Weekend away

I spent last weekend away visiting my best friend who lives in the beautiful Scottish Borders.

There is something quite nice about going away by yourself for the weekend. It's not something that I do very often, in fact hardly ever, but when I do I find the whole experience very enjoyable indeed. The very fact that you can completely do what you want to, when you want to, without having to stop for a minute to consider the needs of others is quite wonderful! Of course I did miss my little family very much ~ but I made up for that with lots of cuddles when I returned back to the fold on Sunday morning.

My friend and I had arranged a little bit of retail therapy for ourselves, and as we were in the Borders we headed off to the Gretna Green Outlet Village. Before we went shopping we decided to stop and have a look at the Blacksmith's Shop at Gretna Green, which is famous for marriages and for the place where Scotland and England meet.

We had a stroll around the sculpture garden and stopped to admire this lovely sculpture of two hands clasping. The sculpture was designed and created by County Durham artist Ray Lonsdale. It only took two months to create and is made from weathering steel and standing at 13 feet tall it is rather impressive to look at.

It can be interpreted in lots of different ways ~ are the hands coming together? Parting? Meeting up or saying Goodbye? Is it a happy or sad embrace? Are the hands joining in friendship or is it an embrace of love? Personally I like to think that it is an embrace of love.

There was also a wedding taking place at the Blacksmith's shop whilst we were there and as is often the tradition at Scottish weddings there was a lone piper playing his bagpipes. There is nothing quite like the sound of the music which comes out of the pipes. I really do love it!

Which is quite fortunate really ~ because for the last few months my little boy has been learning to play. He started out learning on an instrument called a chanter and he has now progressed rather quickly onto his first set of bagpipes ~ he is aiming to get his full set of pipes complete with drones, which are the really noisy part sometime very soon. I think the reason he loves his music so much is the very fact that he is allowed to do something noisy without getting told off for making a noise!!

I hope you all had a lovely weekend too  :O)xx

Thirteen

I am now the very proud owner of a Teenager!

My beautiful little girl was thirteen yesterday. Thirteen!! I am not sure how that happened quite so quickly ~  I really don't feel old enough to be a Mother of a teenager, but that's what I am.  It doesn't seem like all that long ago since she was born and whisked away to Intensive Care in the Special Care Baby Unit where I sat holding her tiny little hand through a little door in the incubator and didn't even dare to dream about birthdays. However! Here we are celebrating her thirteenth birthday and what a lovely day we all had too.

The present of choice this year was an ipod touch.

Yesterday was an extra special day for our family as it was also our wedding anniversary. I have been married to my wonderful husband for twelve years!  All those years ago we thought that it would be a lovely idea to get married and have our daughter christened on her first birthday. A little unconventional perhaps ~ but something that is very special to us as a family.

We tend not to do very much to celebrate our anniversary as birthday celebrations are obviously much more important in the minds of children. Our anniversary night out was a trip to The Handmade Burger Co. accompanied by the birthday girl, her little brother and her best friend. All very romantic I must say, but very enjoyable none the less :O)xx

It's been a while!

But I think that I'm just about ready to get back to blogging again.

Life just kind of took over in the summer months ~ what with school holidays, family trips away and trying to keep the small people entertained. And to tell the truth, whilst there really wasn't that much time available for any woolly stuff I really didn't have much inclination to put wool to hook or sticks either.

I am even more ashamed to say that I haven't done anything remotely hooky or even picked up the knitting sticks once since my last post which was WAY back in the middle of June.

I'm not quite sure why! I think that perhaps I had just become a bit bored with all of my WIP's and that maybe all I needed a new project to kick start my motivation again. The project I eventually decided on was this one ~

A lacy scarf designed by Debbie Bliss ~ which I decided to knit in double knitting wool ~ namely Sublime extra fine cashmerino wool in a lovely blue shade called Clipper. This wool is an absolute dream to knit with and very snuggly too which will be just right to keep me cosy in the winter months.

I have also signed myself up to take part in this wonderful Advent swap which is being organised by the very lovely Hookin' with Laalaa.

The idea of this swap is that you buy, make, thrift or share 24 little gifts for your partner to open each day of Advent and then one larger present for her to open on Christmas day. Sounds like amazing fun and I am really looking forward to taking part. There is still time to join in if you like the idea ~ although the closing date is today so you'll need to be quick! :O)xx

Sock ~ tastrophe!

I had been getting on so well with my Jubilee socks ~ in fact I had nearly finished the first one ~ when disaster struck and I noticed I had a dropped stitch!



No problem I thought! I'll just unravel the offending sock until I reach the dropped stitch, pick it back up again and then carry on my merry way.

Unfortunately, the knitting had other plans and that is not how it worked out at all! I did some unravelling and I did try to pick up the pesky little dropped stitch, but no matter how hard I tried I just could pick it up and it would slip further and further down the knitting. At one point I did think about ripping the whole sock out and starting all over again but I just couldn't bring myself to do that.

I think that I have now managed to catch that slippery little stitch up ~ but to be honest with you I'm not totally convinced that I've done it properly and I am really hoping that I don't spot any more ladders in my sock when I get my momentum going again.



Wish me luck and hopefully I'll be back with a fully formed pair of Jubilee Socks sometime soon :O)xx

Jubilee socks

Yesterday ~  I was sitting in the garden enjoying the lovely warm weather and adding a few more rows to my Jubilee socks. I am using a really simple sock pattern which involves absolutely no heel shaping and therefore, absolutely no thinking at all! Just simple knitting and purling (K6,P6 ribbing) in a tube like fashion ~ which is so easy to pick up and put down when my knitting mood dictates. The yarn is 4 ply Zig Zag by King Cole in Jubilee which gives lovely random stripes in red, white and blue. The other thing I loved about this pattern is that it needed 60 stitches to be cast on ~ which is very appropriate for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee too.

Today ~ I am back to sitting knitting inside as the weather has decided to turn a little cooler again and the sun has disappeared behind the clouds. I really do hope it decides to make a reappearance sometime very soon :O)xx

Seasidey homework

Goodness! Where is the time going to just now? It's very nearly the end of May and I haven't posted in absolutely ages ~ which is partly because I have been too busy to do very much hooky stuff and also, to tell the truth there hasn't been much else happening around these parts that seemed worthy of blogging about either.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago my little boy was set a homework task to produce a souvenir of our beautiful little seaside hometown. The souvenir he chose to produce was a calendar ~ which gave us a fabulous excuse to wander around in the recent sunshine and take some seasidey photographs for him to put in his calendar and I thought it might be quite nice to share some of them with you all too.

This is the view of the beautiful West Bay from the appropriately named Anchor Green::

Walking along the beach you can see the buildings surrounding the harbour and the harbour walls::

Going on past the beautiful old buildings and around the corner is the wonderful harbour ~ I just love seeing all the colourful little boats bobbing up and down on the water::

And just for good measure we decided to take another picture of the harbour from a different angle::

These were just some of the photos that my little boy wanted to have in his calendar ~ they really do sum up the beauty of our little seasidey town. Words can't really begin to tell you how lucky we feel to have this all on our doorstep to enjoy as and when we please.

The only downside of living so close to the sea is that the sea mist/haar has only just started to lift now and the sun is just starting to poke it's head through the clouds. It does look like it should warm up fairly quickly so I'm off to prepare a quick picnic lunch to enjoy in the garden when the small people get home from school ~ which should be any minute now!

I hope you all have a lovely weekend and enjoy the sun :O)xx

Ten

My beautiful baby boy is TEN today! Into double figures already!  I'm not quite sure how that happened as quickly ~ it really doesn't seem like ten years since he was born. Is it just me or does time really seem to speed up once you have children?

I can remember that moment when the midwife handed my newborn baby to me and said "it's a boy"! I wasn't really ready for that ~ I was expecting to have another girl. A BOY!! What on earth do I do with one of those! The answer is that I love him with all my heart and soul and I really wouldn't have it any other way ~ it is such a joy to have a boy.

He is a very typical boy! An absolute whirlwind of boy energy ~ is never still and never quiet, he literally talks from the minute he opens his eyes in the morning until he goes to sleep at night and sometimes even talks when he is asleep! He likes nothing better than running about outdoors up to his eyes in mud and all things mucky! He loves his guitar and can't wait for the day when we say YES you can get an electric one!

He really is a lovely boy and has a very compassionate nature and is very kind and loving too. He loves snuggling up with his mum for kisses and cuddles at home. And I LoVe that too!

Happy 10th Birthday to my gorgeous boy ~ I hope that you have a wonderful day :O)xxxxxxxxxx