Happiness & playing like a tourist.

Like everywhere else in the UK it unbelievably hot here on Exmoor.
After last years rain its a welcome change to actually have a proper summer.
Lynton & Lynmouth are both really popular tourist places, it makes the whole area a really happy one, people come here to relax and enjoy themselves, its hard not to join in and enjoy it with them.
So last saturday I went on a boat trip with my girly friends and Tinks, all our men spend their weekends kayaking, fishing and playing at the allotment, so we thought it was time for us to stop working for a few hours and relax.
The boat goes from Lynmouth harbour along the coast for a few miles, past The Valley of Rocks and up to Lee Bay.
It was amazing and wonderful to see my home from the sea.
I didn't take many photo's as I was too busy enjoying the scenery, but thats ok because the view is 5 mins away from my front door and I can go again any time I feel like it.

My sea dog on her first trip, its not a very good photo, but you can see Lynmouth in the background, so I thought it was nice to include it.

And on Sunday it was the annual Lynmouth raft race, which is brilliant fun.
The raft's parade along the village street down to the harbour wall, then launched from the slipway, they make their way out of the harbour and up the Lyn river to the footbridge over the river.

Photo courtesy of Miles Trevelyan-Johnson

The race is to a buoy just outside the harbour wall and back, some of the rafts make it, so of the competitors take it very seriously, some just join in for fun including the Wayward Women ( Daisy and her house mates :-)

Photo courtesy of Miles Trevelyan-Johnson

For the entire duration of the race spectators line the beach, harbour wall and road throwing flour and water bombs.

I stupidly went to collect Daisy's shoes from her when she was on the raft parade and ended very wet and slightly floury.
Its made me think maybe next year I'll be part of the team, in fact I might of mentioned it to Dais and Jill her landlady, I suspect they might not let me forget :-)

And finally for those of you who used to read the old blog and remember the trauma's we suffered and Daisy's heartbreaking history
Here's an update photo - I'll let you make up your own minds as to what it mean's, but I will say life is so much happier here on Exmoor.

Serefina and Icarus

A few weeks ago I gave you some very small sneaky peak's of my 2 crochet club shawls.
The club ran from April to June 2013 and there were 2 variations, a 4 ply and a lace.

I really struggled with the design, but once I had allowed myself to use my trusty triangle it was easy.

I made the 4 ply version first and was limited to 3 colour's, 1 skein per month for the duration of the club. I really struggled with 3 colours, I kept wanting to add more, so I allowed myself to use as many colours as I wanted with the lace version.
Here are the final results, I'm afraid the photo's aren't very good, the 2 shawls need to go on a proper photo shoot.
Both of the patterns will be published in Madder Triangles, so I am afraid you will have to wait until then.
Icarus will be the only design in the book that doesn't contain orange triangles.

Icarus - named after the Greek mythological character.

And Serefina - named after a character in the Golden Compass trilogy

Incidently if any of my club members have finished their shawls I'd love to see some photos :-)

The Rising Sun - Ripple Blanket

The Rising Sun is the thrird blanket destined for my Madder Triangles book
I thought you might like to see my progress.

The blanket is named after The Rising Sun pub  (my "local"), at the bottom of the hill were I live.
Incidently its also a very good hotel and does amazing seafood - well worth a visit, especially if you want to watch the locals being idiots on a Friday night.

The pub faces east over the harbour wall in Lynmouth. If you get up early enough you can see the sun rising over Countisbury Hill.
The photo below was taken in the evening, but you will get the idea.

My blanket has waves of green and blue nestled in the bright pink and orange sun rise.
I've wanted to make a ripple blanket for ages, but struggle with crocheting straight rows, they involve counting stitches, which I never get right however hard I try, so I needed to make a ripple with motifs.

I've been crocheting for a couple of weeks.
You will have to excuse the photo's - they are taken with my iPhone.

This is what it look like before the Woolfest.

This is what it looked like after the Woolfest

And this is what it looked like yesterday morning.

I can't wait to finish the central panel so I can start the border, I think it will transform the whole blanket.
I am finding having to crochet 24 identical triangles (one row) really boring, but thats because I have a very low boredom thresehold.
I want to see something new happening with the colours every few motif's, so the Rising Sun is testing my patience.
Its almost there and every new row makes the anticipation more exciting.

After the Woolfest

Life has almost returned to its normal chaotic state, rather than warp speed chaos which is what we were going through this time last week.

We had an amazing Woolfest, our best ever, which is fantastic.
NDS has 2 homes, 1 business premises, 3 human mouths and 3 animal mouths to support and  feed, life isn't always easy so having such a brilliant show really helps.
In fact its helped so much we are thinking about having a few days off at the end of the month, so we can eat ice cream and be tourists in our own home.

And the Woolfest liked us as much as we liked it, we won first prize for the best double stand :-)

We were so busy that I didn't have time to take many photo's, but I did take these early Saturday morning before the lovely customers were allowed in.

The lovely Emily from John Arbon Textiles, buying back the wool she spun for us a few months ago.
Hopefully Phil gave her a big discount as she is almost family, she's Daisy's house mate and a lovely lovely person.
You might know her from her previous life, she was the dyer behind Viola Yarns

Daisy has written a much better blog post than me, but then she is a writer, so its to be expected.
She has far more photo's as she was allowed to sneak off and take them at the end of Saturday before breakdown.
She's also written about "Team NDS" and its journey to get where it is today.
Its well worth a read.
You can find her blog HERE