Photo Scavenger Hunt – June

Hello there

I am posting this a bit early as I will be away for the weekend – hurrah!

I took some of these pics in Spain, some at our last event at Tatton and some at home, I have had lots of fun trying to think of unusual ways to meet some of the words and am very pleased with my ideas for a couple of them. The kids have now got used to me saying ‘oh that will be brilliant for the Scavenger Hunt’ as I dash off to take a pic.

Thank you so much to Kathy for continuing to post words for the hunt, I am still really enjoying it and it makes me think about photography in a whole new way.

photo-scavenger-hunt

As always click on the pic above to see the other pics at Kathy’s blog.

At night

This is the painted ceiling of Valencia Cathedral but on my second visit there I bought some posters of the angels so last thing at night what I see is this beautiful artwork on my bedroom walls.

At night

Before

These two were taken at Tatton medieval event – here is the leg of lamb on the spit before it was cooked …..

Before

After

And here it is fully cooked some 5 hours later. Literally 30 seconds after this pic was taken the wind blew a huge deluge off the roof of the canvas awning over the fire, soaking the lamb and putting out the fire! Luckily the group managed to rescue their dinner, we saw them later in the evening and everything was fine.

After

On the edge

Of the pool outside the Science Museum  in Valencia – it was so hot that day,  33 degrees that I did manage a sneaky feet in the water!

On the edge

Out of reach

The Angora sheep we fed at Tatton Home Farm trying to get their noses into bags of food which are just out of their reach.

Out of reach

Close

Right up close to the door of Elche cathedral – what a wonderful door knocker!

Close

Crown

There is a new group of bronze statues outside Elche cathedral, one is of the Virgin with this beautiful halo / crown.

Crown

 Diamond

Not quite the Koh – I- Nor but a big sparkly stone on my summer sandals.

Diamond

Bunting

On a truck at Tatton Home Farm

Bunting

Majesty

To me nothing beats the majesty of medieval religious art – this pic shows a Bishop from the museum at Valencia cathedral

Majesty

Sleep

This month old foal was dozing next to his Mum at Tatton Home Farm – so sweet!

Sleep

Symmetry

The beautiful symmetry of Spanish ironwork – taken in Valencia

Symmetry

Part of history

As you know I love history, spend much of my non-working life immersed in it one way or another but today like many other people in my town I got to be part of it.

The Olympic Torch relay came through  just near where I live. At the end of my road was this coach loaded up with some special torches in a very snazzy holder along with lots of very nervous looking torch bearers!

Olympic torch 1

Olympic torch 2

About half an hour later the procession arrived with various vans from the sponsoring organisations. There were lots of flags waving as you can imagine and then the runners appeared.

Olympic torch 3

By this point I was too far back in the crowd to get a good pic of the actual torch but I got a lovely pic of some of the ladies from my local yarn shop who were there with their knitted patriotic Olympic rings! Isn’t that brilliant.

Olympic torch 4

Hope you have all had a lovely week, I have been very busy at work, the weather has been pretty wet here and I am so looking forward to next weekend when I will be camping! For my birthday – in my new little one person tent for the first time (the kids are busy so I am camping alone) at the beautiful Harewood House.

Will let you know how it went (and whether the new tent is waterproof!)

Take care and thanks for visiting.

Tatton birthday to you!

Or more precisely to Jake who as usual celebrated his birthday at the Tatton re-enactment event this weekend. He has been having birthdays in a field for the last 10 years but this was of course a special one as he was 18 on Sunday!

This is a big year for birthdays in our family as we all have special ones to celebrate and of course now he can buy us all beer!

We had a really lovely weekend – great event as always and despite the fairly constant rain Fri eve and Saturday (which meant planned BBQs became in tent with frying pan) we had a fab time meeting up with old friends.

Sunday was lovely and sunny and we visited the Home Farm to see the animals – in 10 years of doing events there we had never made it there before and had great fun feeding the goats and seeing the massive horses and sows. Reminded me of all the things we used to do when the kids were little.

The pics below shows him and Ellie with one of the beautiful shire horses and of his birthday cake round the campfire on Friday night. He had dinosaur candles on his cake in a tribute to the one I made him when he was two!

Jake's 18th 1

Jake's 18th 2

His friend Sammy joined us for the weekend so Jake did not dress up. As he was not in medieval kit he had the chance to take lots of pics so here are some lovely ones of the encampment showing the guns used in the gun display, the tournament, the blacksmith and his forge and the battle.

Tatton -authentic camp

Tatton 2 - gun

Tatton 3 - tournament

Tatton 4 - forge 1

Tatton 5 - forge 2

Tatton 6 - forge 3

Tatton 7 - forge 4

Tatton 10 - guns

Tatton 11 - guns

Tatton - battle

What you don’t see in the last pic is the wonderfully heavy rain – the drops from my helmet looked like I was in the shower!

There was also a bit of textileliciousness in the form of the Mulberry Dyer  stall, I treated myself to a couple of skeins of hand dyed embroidery wool.

Tatton 8 - silks 1

Tatton 9 - silks 2

A brilliant weekend, thanks to Kerry for the trips to the station and for being a fab friend in all respects! Roll on the Harewood House event  in two weeks – conveniently on my birthday!

Thanks for visiting and see you soon.

Valencia

Hello and hope that you are all well and happy. I have had a busy and mainly wet week though today has been lovely and sunny so we have been gardening. Unfortunately it rained later on which scuppered any chance of a BBQ but as we are away at a re-enactment event next weekend we will be having two BBQs to make up for that!

Next weekend is (unbelievably) my little baby Jake’s 18th birthday and we will be at Tatton Park  in Cheshire where he has celebrated the last 10 birthdays. Ellie is coming to meet us which will be lovely, she is so enjoying her new job and is very, very happy. So good times all round!

As promised I have sorted some pics of Valencia for you, it is the third largest city in Spain and this was my third visit but I have not been for nearly five years. The old town and cathedral are beautiful but there is also an amazing modern development called the City of Arts and Sciences with museums and galleries and an Oceanographic centre which is well worth a visit – we love the Beluga whales there.

Valencia cathedral is one of my favourites in Spain – it has a beautiful tower and the most amazing ceiling painting of musical angels.

Spain June - Valencia cathedral

And a wonderful carved doorway of course!

Spain June - Valencia cathedral 2

The cathedral museum, which is located inside, has a breathtaking collection of religious art so I was a very happy bunny!

Near the cathedral was a wonderful shop selling icons, paintings and all manner of church regalia, robes, chalices, candlesticks galore. Sadly I couldn’t afford anything but my friend Kerry and I had fun window shopping!

Spain June - Valencia 7

Spain June - Valencia 6

This was the bell tower of another church in the city.

Spain June - Valencia 3

And below is the town hall which had a gorgeous pillared hall.

Spain June - Valencia 4

The pic below shows the Imax cinema with the Museum of Modern Art behind it. 

Spain June - Valencia 1

We had a very lovely day out and I hope that you enjoyed the pics.

I am halfway through another set of the Inverness Diamond wristwarmers as well as my baby gift stitching, I loved knitting them so much last time as they were really relaxing.

Will take some event pics next week and post when I get back, really, really looking forward to being in a field with my family and friends – magic!

Thanks for visiting.

My knitting mojo is back!

Hello everyone – hope you are all well, just back from a very hot week in Spain – is raining here now just to make me feel very at home!

I have been very busy knitting- had not picked up my needles for a very long time but got back in the mood in the last couple of weeks and have finished two pairs of wristwarmers.

The first are these lilac and purple pair for Ellie, not certain what the wool was as bought it so long ago but the pattern is by Julie from Little Cotton Rabbits  and has my favourite moss stitch.The link will take you to her Ravelry site with some lovely free patterns but you ought to go and visit her blog  as well if you have not done so.

Ellie's purple wristwarmers

This other pair is knitted with Artesano yarn in a lovely variegated green that I bought from my friend Lydia’s shop Spun a while ago – it knitted up beautifully. The pattern is one I got from Ravelry and had been putting off trying it as it looked a bit complex but it was really easy to do. It is a freebie pattern called Inverness Diamonds  and is by a designer called Creative Yarn.

green wristwarmers 1

My teaching year has nearly finished and I have been saying goodbye to this year’s students. One of them gave me these gorgeous Lantern Moon needles – they are so fine and will knit really beautifully, I am determined to master sock knitting this summer so these will be very useful as well as for knitting some of Julie’s cute little Xmas stocking ornies for my tree this year.

Lantern Moon needles

I have just got my latest order from The Silk Mill  as well from their recent 10th anniversary sale – look at this lovely pink and blue silkiness!

Pink and Blue silks

I have started on some stitching for a baby gift as we have had a new addition to the family. Regular readers will know that my grandmother will be 100 in July and she has just had her eighth great-grandchild – a baby girl born to my cousins, they have named the baby Alice Evelyn as my grandmother is called  Evelyn Alice so she is very pleased about that. Big congratulations to them all.

In other exciting family news Ellie has moved to Wales to start her new job, she is now living at the castle (as befits a Princess!) – in a house in the grounds that overlooks the beautiful Italianate gardens and starts work today. I am so proud of her, she is going to have such a fantastic year and really deserves it after all her hard work at Uni. Turns out there were over 80 applicants for the post so she did brilliantly to get it. I am hoping to visit her very soon so will be able to post some pics of her new abode!

Will be back at the end of the week with some pics from Spain for you – meanwhile enjoy yourselves and thanks for visiting.