On the first we went to nearby Aldbury for their May Day celebration. It seemed that a lot of the things going on in it were to support the local primary school, so there were lots and lots of small children around, thus we didn’t stay very long. It’s not that I have anything against children, I really don’t, but if I want to get my face painted I’ll do it at home with chocolate:-) Anyway, here are a few photos that are mostly of the village that we caught before we left (it was too crowded in the celebrations to get any good photos).
On the eve of The wedding, the hubby and I went to Ashridge to take some pictures of the bluebells in full bloom.
The sheep in the neighboring field got into the patriotic spirit of the weekend
The ground around the bluebell wood is covered in this, a soft layer of dried, dead bluebell flowers. It helps to dampen sounds making it a very quiet place to visit even when it is quite crowded.
The next day the hubby and I wandered next door to the neighbor’s house to watch The wedding. We don’t have any tv reception, thus couldn’t watch it live at home. Luckily, we have lovely, lovely neighbors who let us watch with them. This was the view from where I sat:
There were vows
There were bored dogs on laps
There were trumpets
There was tea, champagne, hot cross buns and venison sausages for the eating and drinking
There were two golden retrievers hanging about
Oh, and there was a wedding in all of this!
So, for all of you wondering if I went into the city to be a part of the insanity that was going on there the short answer is, “no”. I thought about it for about 2 minutes thinking that I really should go in as this is a historic blah-blah-blah. Then I remembered that I’m not a big fan of crowds and there was a good chance it was supposed to rain….. I stayed home and was all the happier for it.
I love this collection of tote tutorials (I personally need another tote bag like I need a baby chimp with diarrhea, but if you have some spare fabric lying around…)
So, in the past month I have been to both The Netherlands and Wales.
And I’ve blogged about neither of them.
Part of this is that I was total crap about photography on both trips. On the trip to Wales, I’m pretty sure that my camera never even came out of my backpack! I don’t know why I was so negligent about taking photos, but it felt wrong at the time. That and on the Wales trip, I did all of the driving (not that that always stops me, but in the UK, it DOES!).
Anyway, I had a great time in The Netherlands staying with Marleen and her family. She fed me many, many great meals…
…I slept under a starry sky each night…
and I got to help her with her workshops and stand at Breidag, which was a blast.
My pack mistressing skills put to the test!
Stall set-up is sooooo glamorous!
Done!
This was what the stall floor looked like most of the time.
Marleen’s stand had some lovely neighbors to the back. Malia (on the left) has just opened a new craft/knitting store in Amsterdam called Penelope Craft. The next time that I am over there, I am going to totally check it out! She had a thorough selection of Knitpro needles and accessories as well as books and yarn and I expect great things from her bricks and mortar store!
It wasn’t all just yarn and knitting, there were a few windmills too…
And there was shopping and fun and watching kids do insanely acrobatic things on trampolines and at gymnastics practice and a little knitting and yarn and stuff. Here’s a look at my suitcase on the way home.
What you are not seeing in this picture is the 1.5 Kilo box of chocolate sprinkles that I brought home with me!!! Also, almost the entire right hand side of the suitcase is goodies:-)
On the way home, I “figured-out” a way to get the knitpro interchangeable needles off the wires to go through security without having to find the little caps for the ends (which I didn’t have handy) for my wip (which is Marleen’s kaleidoscope vest just so you know) by using a simple little safety-pin.
Here’s a closer picture:
I’m sure that someone else has figured this out by now, but it came to me independently as I was using the safety-pin to unscrew the needles. Yet another reason to have a couple of safety pins floating around in your baggage!
A few days after I got home, I received this in the mail:
I got #81 out of 1000 of the Fyberspates Limited Edition Royal Wedding Yarn! This is super cool because, as Veronica explained to me while at Wonderwool Wales, 1981 is the year that Charles and Diana got married. She managed to score #429 (4/29 aka April 29th, the big day!). So yeah, we were/are pretty dorky, but it is still cool! And, it’s a super pretty yarn to boot! I’m not sure if I am actually going to knit with it or just keep it as a souvenir of the wedding. Way nicer than a mug in my opinion:-)
I was home for about 4 days before I took off again (and this time with the car!) for Wonderwool Wales. Had a great time. I do enjoy this show a lot as it is spread-out. There is space in the aisles between the stalls for people to walk, and space for the event to grow too. It’s held at the Royal Welsh Showgrounds in Builth Wells which has a LOT of other buildings and space for the event to grow. I didn’t take a single picture of the whole weekend or of any of the goodies that I bought (not a lot btw). Veronica and I had a lovely weekend. Our B&B was in a wonderful village full of restaurants that were a little higher class (and cost) than we were looking for. We ended-up going low-brow with some pretty decent pub grub from a pub just down the street. We escaped prior to the Karaoke starting. The next day we drove over to Stratford-upon-Avon and visited a bunch of the Shakespeare properties. One I hadn’t yet been to was the Mary Arden’s house, which purported to have sheep(!) and other animals. It did, indeed, have sheep and other animals and it was a perfect day to see them.
Since then, I’ve been keeping busy. I’ve finally gotten around to washing the collection of greasy fleeces that I had marinating in the attic. I started with the Shetland fleeces, moved through a really, really rank Leicester Longwool, and have been playing with a fun colored BFL. It takes a lot longer than it did in the States for a few reasons. In the states, I had a top loading washer and a BIG hot water heater. Here, I have a not-very-practical front-loader with no good “spin-only” cycle and a teeny-tiny hot water heater. It’s so teeny-tiny, it makes the lovely jacuzzi tub that we have upstairs sort of silly as you can’t get it filled-up with hot water before it runs out and starts giving you straight cold water. Anyway, I’ve been doing it in a group of garden trugs that I bought specifically for this purpose in that great big tub upstairs and, now that it is warm and sunny, I’ve been drying them outside on some mesh driers out of the reach of Malcolm, the fleece lover. This has made for a rather stinky upstairs at times though luckily it was nice enough to open the windows for the worst of it.
For some reason that I cannot figure out, we have a large dog bed in this bathroom. For a reason that I do know, the dog bed has become the defacto fleece sorting pen. Some of these fleeces have been sandy/peaty and there is white carpet in the bathroom. Weezy likes to sort of bury herself amongst the fleeces while I am working on them.
See, very professional! The net bags are mostly from the US, but I picked-up a couple here too. I’m not sure that I will ever take a bath in that tub again….
Another thing that I’ve been working on in conjunction with the hubby is a pair of baby blankets for the neighbor. Her niece just had twins this morning and she asked if I would make blankets for them. I took a big pile of books over for her to look at and she picked-out the pattern that she liked and the yarn and then I made them. I used stash yarn and they were pretty standard crochet squares. The hubby sewed them all together for me as I made them and then I crocheted the border on. They went quite fast, I think we worked on them for about a week and a half total. Good thing too as I finished them yesterday afternoon!
I couldn’t have gotten them done so quickly if the hubby hadn’t done the sewing-up. That’s the part of all projects that I detest and usually the reason that the project takes so very long….
When I was in my early 20’s, my mother made a joke about the fact that my dog, Micheal, was the best form of birth control* she could have ever wished upon me. It was probably closer to the mark than even she realized at the time. I mean, think about it. I was already working full-time plus (averaging around 60 hours a week for YEARS) and having a dog, well, having a dog settled me in so many ways. I bought a house because I had trouble finding a decent place that would allow pets. This house came complete with super nosey older neighbors (so not a lot of “sleepovers” if-you-know-what-I-mean). No partying all night for me, he needed to go out to pee pretty regularly. However, Micheal’s biggest claim to birth-control status was his ability to act like an obnoxious teenager at the absolute worst possible times. His favorite trick (and only trick outside of sitting) was to check every single square inch of the fence to find weak points, which he would then push and push at until he was able to escape. This is a very annoying trick, sort of like the teenager that escapes out the bedroom window in the middle of the night. He would then run around the neighborhood getting into trouble. Pretty much everybody within a 6 or 7 block radius knew both of us, usually because I’d wave at them as I chased Micheal through their backyards cursing him out in every language that I knew.
Micheal pulled some pretty cute stunts in his time. Once, he snuck into a neighbor’s house via their dog door. I knocked on the front door to ask them if I could come in and get my dog and they said, “we don’t have your dog!” while Micheal wagged his tail right behind them.
However, most of the time it was a lot less cute and a whole lot more annoying. Many times I chased him around the neighborhood for hours in the dark only to give up to go to bed exhausted at midnight and he would start barking and howling in the middle of the street right outside my house. This is sort of a doggie equivalent for getting a call in the middle of the night from the cops that your kid was found drunk at a party outside of town. If this is how much trouble and expense a DOG is, then I wanted nothing to do with a baby.
Today I had a very bad walk with the dogs. Meara found some seriously nasty poo to roll in and when I threw her in the ditch to rinse her off (as I usually do when she rolls in poo) she swam to the other side and wouldn’t swim back. When she finally did after much cajoling, she promptly ran away from me like I was the devil, making me feel like shit. Then Malcolm did a very bad thing which I won’t elaborate on (he didn’t hurt a sheep) but by the end of it I was nearly crying and out of breath and so angry and screaming that he went to the other person on the walk as he was scared by me.
I came home, still very, very upset and one of my first thoughts was, “I would make a terrible mother.”
My next thought was, “Ohshutthefuckupwiththatlineofthought he’s a dog!!!“.
I don’t know why I, so often, find myself extrapolating experiences out and finding fault with my ability to mother children that I do not have. I mean, I know people who have the best behaved dogs on the planet that I would never in a million years want to have children (and visa versa, but that’s another story altogether!). A friend of mine once told me that kids were, in some ways, a little easier than dogs (she had 4 kids and 4 dogs). Eventually, the kids grew-up, but dogs stop at around 3 years old (when compared to children). You cannot reason with a dog like you can with an older child. Dogs do not have an extremely good sense of cause and effect (except, for some reason, when treats are involved, then they become bloody geniuses!). Dogs are centuries of breeding for specific tasks (usually some sort of hunting or herding) and we anthropomorphize them into becoming substitute humans. They are animals with their own agendas, not always in sync with ours, and usually fueled by instincts that they can no more control than we can control our need for oxygen.
Still. Pretty decent birth control if I say so myself. Having pets has made me think, perhaps more than I should, about the level of responsibility that comes along with being fully accountable for another life. And dealing with the messes that that other life can create.
*Micheal would also kick all men who entered the house in the nads as a way of greeting. This is also a pretty effective birth control come to think of it!
I am trying to avoid housework. This has taken me to such a level that I decided to catalog all the different breeds of sheep fleece that I have currently, both processed and raw. It wasn’t as big of a list as I had thought it would be…
Blue Faced Leicester (colored)-Raw Fleece
Cheviot-Both raw and tops
Corriedale (black)- tops
Falkland- Tops
Finnish Landrace (asst. colors)-Cleaned wool
Hebridian- Tops
Jacob (asst. colors)-Cleaned Wool
Leicester Longwool- Raw Fleece
Merino-Processed every way imaginable
Navajo Churro- Cleaned Wool
Shetland-Raw Wool and Tops
Wensleydale Longwool-Tops
Remind me if you see me at Wonderwool Wales trying to get any of these breeds please:-)
(BTW, plan on washing the raw fleeces next week! Should be fun!)
Spindle from industrial spinning machines used as art
Bike parking near the main train station
More bike parking near the station, only now on a repurposed barge.
Conversation... Me: Are those dog toys or sex toys? Hubby: I think that they are people toys. Me: Huh? Hubby: Like stoned-out-of-your-head toys. Me: Ok, that makes sense I guess!
For when you need an extra pocket during you bondage rituals. (You gotta have a place for your Chap Stick!)
I loved this grocery that was in what must have been a very grand house. They kept the chandelier and the ceilings.
So, I travel a fair amount. More than some, less than others. I almost always travel for leisure, in fact I think that I have only ever been on one business trip ever! Anyway, I’ve decided to compile this list of tips and tricks that I have learned so that you don’t have to! If you have a great travel tip, please let everyone know about it in the comments section!
Things to Pack
*Travel Panties (and socks): When you have worn-out panties (or socks) that have holes in them, or worn-out elastic, or whatever, set them aside. I quite often toss them in the empty suitcase. When you travel the next time, just throw them away after you have worn them. It’s not a lot of weight or space, but it does keep you from having to haul back dirty underwear (and socks).
*Thrift store clothes: Buy some clothes at a local thrift store in your size (and that you would actually wear). When you are done wearing them, leave them at the hotel on the bed, preferably with a note saying (in the local language) that whoever would like these clothes can have them. This saves a LOT of space on the way back if you are a big shopper. It is especially good for jeans, sweaters, sweatshirts, bulky items that take up a lot of space in a suitcase.
*Soak sample packs: This is a great rinse-less delicates wash that can be really useful when on the go. It’s sold in little sample packs that are great for one or two loads if you don’t do the whole “travel panties” thing.
*Purex 3-in-1 laundry sheets: My mom found these before our big Alaska trip and they work great. If you are going to be on a longer trip where you are going to be doing laundry, these are the ticket! You just toss one of the sheets in and it has the detergent, fabric softener and anti-static for the load already embedded in sheet. Genius! No more detergent getting spilled and making a mess of the car!
*No Whites: This one I got from my friend Malin at KC last year. Don’t pack any whites, then you don’t have to do a load of whites! So simple yet so easily not thought of!
*You get what you pay for: If you are going to be doing a LOT of traveling, invest in a good bag for goodness sake! The Hubby’s folks bought him a good TravelPro roll-aboard a few years before we were married. If that bag got frequent flier miles, it would be in the pilots seat! It’s still in really good shape, you couldn’t tell that it’s over 6 years old at this point (and used to get lived out-of for probably 45 weeks of the year for years!). I also have a TravelPro and am really pleased with it. Another bag that I have that has stood the test of time really well is a Boyt bag that my mother gave me when I was 12. You read that right, 12. It still looks really new. If you are going to travel any significant amount, just get a good bag. If nothing else, it’s better than shleping a busted bag around a foreign city! (Ask me how I know that one:-)) Another bag company that we’ve really liked is Reisenthel.
*Personal Med Kit: Take a zippered bag and put in it a selection of OTC drugs for sicknesses that you get. I get sinus infections, thus I have a sheet of Sudafed pills in mine. Also, antacids, sleeping pills, ibuprofen, etc. I also throw in a little tiny sewing kit for good measure. It sucks to get sick when you are traveling. It really sucks if you can’t get any meds. A few packs of pills are light and will save your bacon if you do get ill!
*A light wrap: I usually carry a light pashmina-type wrap with me on the airplane. It can be used as a scarf sure, but it is great as a little blanket if you get chilly. Plus they are usually really light.
*Underwear, Socks and toothpaste: Put a pair of socks a pair of underwear and your toothbrush and paste in your carry-on. If your bag gets lost, you’ll thank me!
*Print-outs: Print out the details of hotels, flights, etc that you have booked prior to your trip. You may not be able to easily get to the info on your computer or smartphone once you get in the cab from the airport… Also, a copy of the front page of your passport is a good thing to have on hand in case it gets stolen or lost.
*TP: I always carry a little plastic clam-shell that contains a mini-roll of TP. It’s Charmin to go, but other companies do similar things. It’s saved my ass many a time! (Yes, pun intended!)
*Plastic Baggies: Just throw a few extra Ziplocs in the suitcase when you leave. I really love the Jumbo Hefty zipper bags (2.5 gallon!!). They are good for putting that bottle of exotic booze, perfume, or whatever it is that you want into. I’ve saved myself a damaged suitcase and clothes many, many times by doing this. They don’t take any space, and when you get home, just leave them in the suitcase for the next trip!
*A flashlight: This one I’m a little OCD about. I usually have 2 or 3 of them in my purse on a normal day (including a headlamp, yes I know I am a serious dork!). As good as the LED technology is now, there is no excuse not to have at least a little key chain light in your bag. This is more for safety than anything, dark streets, dark hotel rooms are all a great way to trip and fall. In a power outage, you’ll be the most popular person around!
*A Collapsible shopping bag: Handy to have when you hit the markets in a new city. Carrying a crappy, ripping plastic bag with something breakable in it as you are sightseeing around a city is NO FUN.
*Scale: If you are staying at a hotel while you are traveling, a luggage scale can save you a lot of money at the airport. Especially if you like to shop:-)
(I know that this sounds like a ton of stuff, but most of it is quite small and a lot of it you wouldn’t take on every trip.)
Tips
*Hotel: Take a matchbook, business card, whatever with you when you leave the hotel. If the crap hits the fan and you cannot, for whatever reason, remember where you are staying (believe it or not, it’s easy to happen) you have a name and address. However, do not keep it in the same place as your room key in case of pick-pockets.
*Carry-on packing: Remember to pack for how long you are going to be traveling for. A flight of a couple of hours doesn’t need as much stuff to keep you entertained as an over-seas flight. Don’t pack 3 books, a 2 knitting projects and a selection of magazines for a 2 hour flight!!!
*Allergies: If you have an allergy, make sure that your travel companions know about it. If you are unconscious in a foreign hospital, you want someone other than you knowing that you are allergic to morphine.
*Sleep: If you don’t sleep well on planes (I don’t) , don’t try to force yourself with sleeping pills unless you absolutely have a serious meeting the next morning. Otherwise you will end-up cranky and feeling unwell.
*Sleep Part II: Take a 3 hour nap after a red-eye flight then get up and have a full day. Your clock will be pretty much reset.
*Driving: Don’t drive in the UK if you’ve taken the red-eye and have never driven here before. It’s dangerous. Trust me. I would be wary of driving in Europe in general (cannot say for anywhere other than N. America and Europe) as the laws are quite a bit different from the US. Spend a day on foot or public transit before hitting the road.
Tips for Knitters
*Needles on Airplanes: You can, you can’t…. who the heck knows?!?!? Here in the UK it is different from airport to airport and even airline to airline in the same airport. So, take your knitting, but don’t take your favorite needles, don’t take metal needles and don’t make a big deal of it.
*Don’t take big, long, straight needles. They freak people out. Take dpn’s or circulars.
*Leave the knitting in the bag during take-off and landing. That sometimes freaks out the flight attendants. I think that they are afraid that you will stab yourself if there is an accident during take-off.
*Have knitting on the needles when you go through security. That makes them freak out less:-)
*If you are really worried about having needles taken away, put them in with a bunch of pens and pencils. They look more or less the same.
*Only carry-on the needles that you need for the project. Put the rest of them in your checked-baggage.
*If you’re still really nervous about knitting on the plane, take up crochet!
Please feel free to add your favorite travel tips and hints in the comments! I’ll hopefully blog tomorrow about Amsterdam…..
Sarah Jane Humke 
