Walking in Wirksworth...

Perfect place for a lunchtime stop.

A couple of weeks ago I headed off to Derbyshire to spend a few days with my two inspirational gal pals... We've done this for the last few years - getting together in the depths of winter to stay somewhere interesting, and to do a bit of creative thinking, doing, and exploring. This year we stayed in Wirksworth, and we all took wool, crochet hooks and knitting needles, with the intention of doing a bit of wooly creating in the evenings.

This has been ripped out and started again three times now... I'm not very good at knitting!

We rented a house through Airbnb, which came complete with a resident, three-legged, fluffy ginger cat who required feeding, and attention, and who probably couldn't believe his big, fat, jammy luck that Karen was staying - the softest of soft softies when it comes to cats. She always obliged by scratching those 'hard-to-reach, right there, under my chin', places for him, made particularly tricky without one of his back legs... I do believe she'd have been happy to pop him in her commodious, floral shopping-bag, and whisk him off to join all the others she'd left behind at home!

Of course, the reason we go away for a few days is because it's lovely being somewhere new, and seeing everything with fresh eyes. Within moments of stepping out to explore, the morning after arriving, we were noticing all sorts of interesting things.

A piece of fencing just round the corner from where we were staying - great colours.

A father and daughter we met en route into town...!

Lovely Delicatessen filled with bread, cheese, olives and other tempting stuff.

Proper shops.

Great name for a chemist shop - B. Payne & Son!

Better-than-usual barber.

A junk shop so crammed with stuff we left for fear of causing damage!

The houses are sturdy, stone-built affairs, piled up higgledy-piggledy on the slopes of the town. In the distance the hills are topped with the skeletons of trees waiting to be clothed in the new season's green.

Pretty little house squeezed into a gap - I wonder how far back it goes?

...and Helen made us each a little wreath as we wandered around the cobbled streets.

Voulez-vous crochet avec moi, ce soir?

Oh, now - it's not that rude really, is it?

Having finally, finally finished a blanket that I felt okay about (third time lucky...) I have found myself with even tinier balls of cotton yarn left over. I'm thinking tiny little granny squares, perhaps?

I finally settled on this one (above) for the GG's new baby sister after doing one of Lucy's (Attic24) patterns in cotton (below right), messing up the finish, then doing a second (better!) version in acrylic (below left). After all that, with the baby already born, I decided it just wasn't soft enough for a new born, and started again.  Bonkers, I know.

Luckily, this third attempt was quicker (straight lines) and used up the remains of the good stuff (cotton, cotton bamboo, etc) and just felt more appropriate for the new baby's mum, who is not into all the baby pink stuff. I like the apparent randomness of the odd lines of colour (like the hot pink stripe through the red at the bottom of the picture). I've also decided that, like lovely Lucy's creations, it really should have a name. So I'm calling it the Baby Barcode Blanket. There. You read it here first! In an ideal world it would have the wee yin's date of birth/weight, etc, in numbers along the end, like a proper barcode. And be in charcoal grey and white. Hmmmm. I feel another blanket coming on...

I gave both cotton/bamboo blankets to the GG's mum in the end, which means I have the acrylic blanket left over. Any ideas of what to do with it?

Wibbling Wools...

Helen told me last weekend that she'd discovered a new yarn shop in Bury St Edmunds, so I had to visit for myself... Wibbling Wools is a lovely little place on Churchgate Street, with a big, light-filled interior and a great cafe - incidentally, it's just a couple of doors along from Painted Country who run great classes on how to use Annie Sloan paints.

As well as shelves filled with colourful yarns, high quality knitting/crochet books and all the usual paraphernalia, the shop runs classes every third Thursday of the month, held in this dedicated space (below). A granny square hippopotamus - why on earth not?

If I lived a little bit closer I'd definitely go along - I met a couple of charming women there the other day who were enthusiastic and interesting, and I bet there are some lively conversations over the knitting needles! The whole place sweeps away the slightly fusty, old-fashioned look that you can sometimes find in some older, long-established, yarn shops, whilst here there is even space to sit and flick through some of the pattern books, perhaps on this beautiful 'rescued' chair, re-covered using a couple of very stylish, and covetable, fabrics.

If your other half isn't quite so enthusiastic about all things wooly, they can always have a cup of tea and read a book whilst you wander round, slightly dazed, murmouring soft 'ooh's and 'aaaah's. The cafe is good value, although for perfection I'd like just a couple of extra veggie options on the menu - although their brie and avocado sandwiches are really delicious. Selling sandwiches from a sawn-off VW van parked in the middle of the shop is quite a show-stopper, and the rest of the cafe is filled with other quirky details, like needle-felted sheep for the table numbers, arrangements of tea cosies and bunches of colourful knitting needles instead of flowers in a vase.

The hand-made cushions, casually strewn on the big leather couch, are things of beauty.

It's clearly the owner's very particular, and joyful, vision and I'm sure the atmosphere of the place would help enthuse a lot of younger knitters and crafters. I will definitely be back, although I might have to wait until I've made a dent in the stack of yarn I already have before I buy any more... Or, as one of the women I spoke to said, 'Naaah. Just buy some more...' Meanwhile, C, who has the attention span of a gnat when it comes to stuff like this, declared that anytime he is in Bury this will be 'his' cafe. Quite a compliment!

ps Just found a very funny blog post which mentions Wibbling Wools - and judging from the picture it was written when they were still at their old location. 

Suffolk Safari...

Although I didn't manage to finish my blanket in time (so close, but not quite!) I did take my banana cake down to the Horticultural show on Saturday before we headed off to the meadows for a guided walk. These particular meadows are now a managed habitat for wildlife and some less common wetland plant life. It was a great chance to see an area that isn't normally open to the public.

With the cows safely corralled into one field we explored rather tinier beasties that swam, hopped and flew around us. Damselflies, both azure and common (the differences to the untrained eye pretty nigh impossible to spot!), Four-spotted Chasers (a kind of dragonfly), and Banded Demoiselles were all around us. Whirligig beetles glinted in the river and, when our guide took a river sample to show us, we saw the tadpoles of toads, along with a miniscule froglet, and this tiny thing, a kind of cocoon made of shells 'glued' together.

I missed the snake, and the duck chasing a kingfisher down the river - but saw a heron patiently sitting by the side of the water on the other side of the field, then taking off, like something held on strings, flapping slowly as it lifted into the air.

Traditional summer cattle grazing, combined with winter flooding, means that these water meadows are seeing the return of plants that were in decline, such as the Tubular Water-dropwort, and the Pyramidal Orchid. Starting with just 15 of them on the site, they now expect to count between 900 and 1,000 this year.

Wild Arum or Cuckoo Pint, Marsh Thistle, and various grasses, all demonstrated the need for occasionally slowing down and looking a little bit more closely at what is around us.

What a day for it, tho'. It was blisteringly hot, so there were no lizards or snakes to be found hiding underneath the lengths of corrugated tin left out for them - they'd clearly escaped to cooler, damper spots. The Scouts were out on the river, people were having picnics in the fields, and after a couple of hours baking in the sun the cows needed to be let back into the meadows and the shade of the trees. So we headed back for lunch and to check the results of the Horticultural show..

Well, talk about a bad loser... My banana and chocolate cake came third of three entries! I was so grumpy about it - especially because I had to leave it there for the next 24 hours, festering in the heat, not even able to eat it as compensation for my disappointment! When I got it back next day (C left me in front of the telly with a tall glass of Pimms, cheering Andy Murray on like a mad thing, while he went to collect it) I found out it was a bit dry and not up to my usual standard. Must've been the chocolate I added at the last minute. C said if there had been any other entries I wouldn't even have come third...

I'm glad I didn't enter my blanket, as the winner for the crochet/tapestry/embroidery category was a piece of crocheted lace - I can't compete with that! Entries in other categories included...

...and finally, the winner for 'a handicraft open to all types of craft except crochet/ tapestry/ embroidery/ knitting, etc.' I know when I'm beaten.

A winter's day in July...

A friend had suggested that we should get involved in the local Horticultural Society's summer show - they stormed the wine section last year, taking first, second and third prizes, and are clearly keen to continue this runaway success! As well as all the fruit, flowers and veggie stuff there are craft categories, and this gave me the push to begin a crocheted blanket, which I wanted to finish in time for the arrival of the Gorgeous Girl's new baby sister sometime in the next few weeks. I don't envy the GG's mum in this heat...

I used one of the talented Lucy's patterns, and began by using up the cotton and bamboo yarns that I had left over from other projects, but soon had to top up with new stuff. Unfortunately, the local yarn shops don't stock huge amounts of natural fibres and the colours weren't quite what I wanted. But, make do and mend, and all that - although that did mean that at one point it all went a bit Argos catalogue (at the bottom of pic)! So, there I was on Friday afternoon (deadline was first thing Saturday) blanket on my lap, feverishly crocheting away, with a chocolate and banana cake in the oven (for the 'naughty but nice exhibitor's choice' category), watching the tennis on telly. A perfect way to spend a wintery afternoon, but not ideal on the hottest day of the year so far! Someone had suggested working outside, but I know that I'd have had sweaty fingers, a passing bird would have pooped with fright at the vibrant colours and, in any case, I'd have missed a brilliant match between Djokovic and Del Potro. I only had to unravel a few mistakes...

I do like crocheting. My mum was a hopeless knitter (she told me she was asked not to knit socks for the soldiers as part of the WWII effort, but just to stick to making scarves!) but she could crochet up a storm, and there are a few crocheted blankets still hanging around in the family. There are many more in far flung places - she was a long-serving volunteer for Oxfam and at home she crocheted dozens of blankets to be sent abroad as part of their relief efforts. In her last years I bought her some wool (rather than the acrylic she usually used) and tried to coax her into making a blanket for me, but she couldn't manage it. Before it was too late, I also tried to learn how to crochet, hunkered down by her knee while she showed me the steps....but I never quite grasped it.

After she died, with the inspiration of Jane Brocket's Yarnstorm, and the help of a lovely woman called Edwina at Peter Jones' free classes, I finally got it. Now when I sit, crocheting contentedly, I'm sometimes aware of my hands making exactly the same movements my mum's used to make - the shapes of my fingers, the pause to do a quick check that I haven't gone wrong, the hoiking up of the yarn with my left arm. She would have been tickled by what I've managed to do. I am!

for my niece

one for a little friend and one for the GG's cousin

and for another little friend...