Back from the Lakes

I'm back from a wonderful week in the lake district, had such a wonderful (and mostly relaxing time). This has been my home for the last week. and very comfortable it was too. We stayed at this campsite next to the lovely Brotherswater. Here we are happily squinting into the sun!This was taken just after Mark finished a mighty trek up Scafell Pike the tallest peak in England, I have to confess I stayed at the bottom this would have been way beyond me but I had a great time stitching in the sun instead!

We had all extremes of weather mostly dry and fine but on the day we arrived and the day we left there was heavy rain all day. Look at the difference between this beautiful blue sky on Sunday over Tarn Hows and our poor flooded campsite when we left at the end of the weekIf you can make out that tent in the background I met the poor campers in that one and they had to evacuate at 2am when the tent flooded. Luckily we were pitched on some higher ground.

I have plenty more things to share about the trip but for now I have a mound of washing and catch up housework to get stuck into :( If you are interested in our trip I think Mark is going to put a day by day account on his blog highlighting all the ups and downs in technicolour glory.

Packing

Tomorrow we are off to the Lakes for a week, the weather forecast seems to be rain and cold nights so if you can send some sun our way as we're camping :)

Of course one of the most important things about camping is making sure everything is packed (remind me to tell you about the time we managed to leave the tent pegs behind). I have no idea how much time I will have for stitching but let me tell you I'm going well prepared.I have this little tub which doesn't take up much room.
but now it's packed to the gills with 12 postcard tops waiting for some hand stitched embellishment, plenty of threads

My little UFO cross stitch that I told you about a couple of weeks ago

this cute little embroidery design (I'll find the blog link for you when I get back)and there are a few more surprises besides.

I've also stocked up with a few new magazines

and this great book that I picked up the other day.

It will be interesting to see just how much (or little) of this I will have done when I get back.

Hope you have a lovely week, I'll look forward to catching up on my blog reading when I get back. Before I sign off I thought I'd share this picture of Hector sitting on top of the cupboard door, he used to do this when he was little seems like he's having a second kittenhood!

See you in a week!

Birdwatching at Brownsea

I've been a bit quiet this last couple of days as I've been off on a camping trip over the weekend. We stayed down in Dorset as we wanted to visit Brownsea island, autumn is a great time of year to see the red squirrels.I can't believe how messy we managed to make the tent after only a few short hours!

We were fortunate with the weather and had perfect conditions for the short ferry ride to the island from Poole Quay.

We were on the first ferry so plenty of time for us to stroll amongst the woodland on the island squirrel spotting. There were a few round to see but they were very skittish so no chance of me getting a snap on my little camera.
We have been to the island quite a few times before but have never ventured into the Dorset Wildlife Trust Nature Reserve before, I for one thoroughly enjoyed spending a few hours in the purpose built hides watching the birds and other wildlife.

Unfortunately my little camera doesn't zoom enough to get any proper shots, so you'll just have to trust me when I say there was plenty to see.
Hopefully Mark had some better luck with his camera but he hasn't had time to download the pics yet so we'll have to wait and see.

No time for stitching as I was too busy enjoying the sunshine. I think posts from me will be few and far between as we are off on vacation for a week from next weekend and as I'm working all week I think my evenings will be mostly taken with making sure everything gets packed and planned for, but I will try and get in a few before we leave next Saturday.

Camping in the rain

In my excitement over finishing the birds and introducing the next tiger I haven't really blogged anything about my few days away. On a whim we decided to take a trip to North Wales, somewhere I've never been before.

To celebrate my 32nd birthday we had hoped to hike it up the mighty Snowdon, but sadly the weather was against us. We arrived on Saturday and left on Wednesday and it must have rained for about 80% of the time we were there. Still we didn't let a few drops of rain dampen our spirits, even though for the first time ever a pool of water formed in one corner of the tent just from the sheer volume of rain!

We stayed at this campsite which was a lot of fun. The facilities were pretty basic but we had all that we needed and with it being a working farm there was the added fun of not knowing what was going to turn up where. One night there was a sheep in the toilet block and another I had the bejeezers scared out of me by a chicken hiding in a corner of the laundry room.
We did spend a bit more time in the tent than we usually would but honestly I wasn't this grumpy all the time and apart from the Snowdon thing we didn't let the weather deter us. This view of Llyn Padarn, near Llanberis captures the sort of weather we had, grey skies, low cloud and rain. We didn't get to see the top of Snowdon all the while we were there even though we camped right below it! But hey we didn't let a gallon of rain or two stop us and still got in a couple of decent 5 mile walks. Look here is proof that we had smiles and lots of fun even whilst soaked through!
Here is a shot of the wonderful Aber falls. Having never been before I don't know what it's usually like but I'm sure all the rain made the many waterfalls around gush and roar more than usual, spectacular! We didn't spend much time in the towns but we did a whistle stop tour of Conwy, this is a shot of the harbour.
As much as we enjoyed wandering round Conwy it wasn't long before we heard the call of the rollings hills and valleys again.

I had a great trip and hope to go back again next year (hopefully we can arrange some better weather!)

Cornwall Revisited

I've been meaning to get round to posting some more pictures from my holiday. I actually didn't end up taking that many, I think I was just so relaxed I spent most of the time not thinking about it but wandering around in a happy daze.

Mark has some lovely pics on his blog, but here are a few of mine. Mousehole Harbour. You can read about the famous mousehole cat legend here.

Levant mine at sunset
Sunset silhouette Me chilling out and waiting to watch the sunset.
Me and Mark at St Michael's mount at sunrise. Can you believe that I actually got up at 4:30 am while on holiday?!!! I must be insane.

And of course my holiday staple some more cider :)

Artful Blogging

While I was away I managed to get in a little bit of reading. Somehow there is nothing quite as cosy as snuggling in a sleeping bag under canvas and reading by torchlight. We were so busy through the days though I only ever managed a few pages before the eyelids started drooping.

One of the things that I took with me to read was this.

I know I'm a bit out of date as this has been around for ages, but it's pretty expensive to buy here in the UK so I was uming and ahhing for a while as to whether it would be worth it, after all I spend a good deal of time looking at blogs anyway did I really need a magazine telling me all about them too?

I'm glad I took the plunge and bought it as I really enjoyed reading it. There are lots of great artworks and photographs in the magazine for inspiration and I found it really interesting to read about different artists visions for their blogs and their motivations for starting etc.

I found alot of stuff in the articles made sense to me and reminded me why I started blogging in the first place. Before I went away I was worried that I'd gotten stuck in a blogging rut and things had become a bit boring. Now I realise that I was worrying more about what others were thinking of my blog rather than concentrating on my own reasons for posting. Reading the magazine has reminded me that the reason I wanted to blog in the first place was really as a form of journalling and a way that I can look back on the progress (or not) that I've made on my creative journey, and of course if people stick with me, drop by and leave comments from time to time that's all an amazing bonus.

After a couple of days back at work and back into the caring routine with MIL the chilled out holiday feeling is starting to wear off so just for me I'm posting another snap from my hols as a reminder to relax and breath from time to time.

(If you can believe it these dirty beat up sandles were pretty much new at the start of the week, here they are almost worn through, a testament to how much roaming we did!)

Happy days

I'm back from my holiday and feeling a lot less harassed and definitely more chilled out than when I left which has got to be a good thing, right?


I just want to thank everyone who left such positive and supportive comments on my last post, I've tried to reply individually to all who I can but not everyone has a public email address so I wanted to say thank you here too. As you all guessed I was pretty low before I went away and felt like I was stuck in a bit of a blogging rut as well as having lots of work and family drama to deal with. It really means a lot to me to have such supportive network of cyber friends.


We had a lovely week camping in Cornwall and stayed at a couple of great campsites here and here. We've been to St Ives Bay before and always go back for the views if nothing else, here is dh sitting outside the tent, who wouldn't enjoy waking up to a view like this every morning? (of course I mean the lighthouse and the dunes not dh, though of course I'm biased and think he's pretty cute too!)

Although I did take somethings with me we just had such a busy week drinking this ...

and eating these....

;) that I didn't get a chance to even think about picking up needle and thread let alone actually doing it. Of course we did lots of walking and sightseeing as well but I'm not sure that will have counteracted all the food and drink so I may be in for a shock at Weight watchers on Wednesday!

I'm feeling recharged and can't wait to get back to creating again. Hopefully I'll be back with another couple of posts later this week to share some more holiday pics and also some new projects that I want to get started on, and an update on where I'm at with the first of Mums cross stitch projects.

PS I just realised that this is my 400TH post. Wow I can't quite believe that I've been waffling away on my blog for such a long time. I think a celebration might be in order, watch this space.....

Pembrokeshire

I'm back.....

Sadly I've made very little in roads on my to do list this last week. After a busy few days at work I just didn't have the energy to do anything in the evenings, and then this weekend we went to Wales for a couple of days.

Over to Pembrokeshire one of my favourite parts of the country. Sadly I didn't realise before we left that my camera was totally out of charge so I was unable to take any pictures while we were there, so all I have to share from our adventure is this postcards picture of Carew Castle one of the many places we stopped by.

Mark has a couple more pictures on his blog but he hasn't put them all up yet.