By Helen

taking time out, part one…

Last week Si and I decided to take some time out and go on an adventure.  Or more to the point we decided to leave the builders to get on with it while we has some grand days out.  Can you guess where we went..?

No?  Here are some more clues…

That’s right, we went to London.  We spent a glorious weekend exploring the sites of our capital city.  We wondered the streets and visited Westminster Abbey (you might remember a small wedding took place their last year), Tate to look at the amazing Pre-Raphaelite exhibition and shopped at Liberty.  Wow!  What a shop.  The inside was as amazing as the out…

You might be able to guess my favourite department..?

And yes, I did buy some yarn…

After the busyness of London, we travelled out to Cornwall, to stay with Si’s Mum and Dad.  I’ll tell you about that another time.  At the moment I am quite tired.  The last ten days, haven’t been the easiest.  The river Ouse, in York, flooded (is still in flood) and lapped its way to the end of my street.  A massive, mass-IVE, MASSIVE tank you to everyone who kept their fingers crossed: it worked and fortunately the river didn’t actually make it into the street.  A massive thank you also goes out to the City of York Council workers who worked through the night sandbagging and pumping out, without them...well you can imagine what would have happened.  Plus, going away leaving builders in the house inevitably lead to phone calls!  I’ll let you all about it later…

grand days out in the Welsh Marches…

We’ve been away on holiday….

We’ve been to the Welsh Marches, having a wonderful time. The holiday was wonderful, just what we needed, a good mix of doing not-a-lot, visits to castles, cathedrals and abbeys, tea-rooms and pubs! We stayed in Hereford and used that as our base for exploring the lovely borders between England and Wales.  We visited cathedrals such as Worcester…

Abbeys such as Tintern…

And castles such as Chepstow…

I have to give a massive thank-you to Si at this point for allowing another man to join us on our holiday.  That man was William Marshall, a knight from the thirteenth century who I have been a little bit in love with since reading Elizabeth Chadwick's novels and then the translation of his auto-biography.  Poor Si had to put up with me declaring that William Marshall could have walked here every time we ascended or descended steps, or walked along any path – come to think of it!

Of course there was plenty to time for relaxing and  doing nothing.  I have to confess I didn’t crochet as much as I thought I would have, or would have liked to.  I went with the intention of crocheting lots and lots of granny-squares: something easy to crochet, but results in something really rather wonderful.  I only made ten…

Instead, I got lost in a book.  One of the best books I have read in a long-time A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness, even if the final few chapters were setting-up for the next book in the trilogy!

It was lovely just to spend the time mooching from place to place with no particular place to be or time to be there by.  Going where we felt like: influenced only by our whim, and a little by the weather.  The holiday wasn’t as far-flung as last year: visiting Florence, but sometimes English (or Welsh) strawberries and cream are just what you need…

no time for crochet...

...but I have got a really, really, really great excuse...

 
That's right, we have just returned from a glorious week in Florence.  We visited lots and lots and lots of museums, galleries and churches.  Ate lots and lots and lots of amazing food.  Drank lots and lots and lots of wine!  The weather was hot and the hotel wonderful (although Charlotte would not have approved: no view)!

I  managed to get Si to visit...

 
The museum of Salvetore Ferragamo which contains shoes, shoes and more shoes.  Some of you might remember the article about the museum in July's issue of Inside Crochet?

See, even on holiday crochet has not been totally forgotten about!

Here's some more picis for you to look at...

 The famous Porto-Vecchio over the Arno.

 Under the Tuscan sun, okay - moon!

Chianti of course!

I am still quite tired from the holiday, so today is a gentle day of pottering, apologising to the garden (looking very sad and neglected) and maybe some simple crocheting later on...