I have just returned from Spain and as well as some knitting and stitching (no finishes to show yet!) I have been indulging in two of my other favourite pastimes, mountain biking and photography. I am hugely amateur at both of these but do love to do them and have spent a lot of time over the past week enjoying myself. I had the luxury of a week on my own (no children!) so as well of lots of sitting on my terrace in the sun reading and crafting it meant lots of cycling off-road and staring at the mountains and taking (hopefully) arty photos of the landscape.

Here are a couple of my bike ride locations.

I had great fun and this time managed not to injure myself (apart from a few minor scratches when I got a bit lost in the pine forest one day!) which is better than the last two times when I have come back hurt. It did me the world of good and now am raring to go (at least for the next six weeks till I go back at Easter!)

I don’t have a very good camera – mainly due to the fact that I keep breaking them so have never been able to justify spending a lot of money on one but I took what I thought were some nice landscape shots.

The sunsets in La Marina are amazing and I keep trying to get good pics but most of mine end up fuzzy or with houses (or telegraph poles) in the way. This one I took from my Mum’s back terrace one evening – the sky goes such lovely pinky orange colours.

We also went to visit an exhibition of costumes from 25 years of fiestas in the local town of Torrevieja which was very good – these are just a couple of pics from there –

As well as all the lovely me time there was lots of time with family and I got to meet the newest member of the family in person (this is one of the little girls I have knitted cardis for). Here is Avive, who is now 9 months old, with her lovely Mummy, my cousin Joanne, and her great – grandmother my Nana – who will be 99 this July! Avive is Nana’s 7th great-grandchild and her fourth great- grandaughter. Ellen was her first which means that there is 19 years between them all.

I have just finished a pair of aqua wristwarmers in the same moss stitch as the pink ones I made a while ago – have got to sew them up still and am half way through another one of the little JBW Xmas stockings. I have also cast on for a hat for me but am having a little trouble with the pattern (purely due to my incompetence!) so may have to start again with that.

I finished the black version of the beret for Ellie so that will be on the way to her this week. I did take some pics of that but they came out awfully (told you I was  a very amateur photographer!) so will have to get her to take a pic of her modelling it.

Hope you have enjoyed my pics and thanks again for visiting – off to cut out more quilt pieces next!