Ticced Off

Well, it has come round to that time again. One that cannot be put off no matter how hard I try not to think about it.

Eden and Lily had their booster jabs yesterday* and whilest I was in the surgery, the receptionist, an old school friend of mine, pretty much forced to make an appointment for an essential examination.**

It is not so very bad but my doctor has Tourette's Syndrome. No, I am not kidding.
Now all power to my doctor for actually getting to be a doctor, inflicted as she is by one of the most outrageous of mental tics, but you try lying there trying to relax*** while your doctor has a funny five minutes...


* They are fine. Not a twitch from either of them and you name it - they are now immune to it.
**Yes, the girl kind, say no more.
** "Just try to relax" - surely one of the most worthless pieces of advice the medical profession has ever come out with.

What's in a Name

I have been tagged by Dizzy to do a name meme. She did not specify a name so I did not travel far for inspiration...

There is V for Vendetta

Star Wars V - The Empire Strikes Back

A V of geese

V for Valentine - which is why I call him V actually
( he was born on 14th February)

and V for Van Helsing (Thanks Jessica!)

If you fancy doing this for one of your loved ones then let me know and I'll pop over and see how it has turned out. As far as I know, this is a brand new meme, so now's your chance to be at the cutting edge!

A Book Thingy

Lifted from Kitchen Witch, I thought I had done one of these but apparently I have deleted it. I am a bit embarrassed at how few of these I have heard of let alone read. I regret to say that I will not be changing my reading habits any time soon though.

CODE:
I've read it
I started but didn't finish it
Not my thing :(
Intend to read it someday*
Never heard of it ?

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell :(
Anna Karenina :(
Crime and Punishment :(
One Hundred Years of Solitude ?
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A Novel
The Name of the Rose :( - enjoyed the film though
Don Quixote * maybe
Moby Dick
Ulysses :( Dubliners was bad enough
Madame Bovary:(
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
Tale of Two Cities :(
The Brothers Karamazov :(
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies ? Sounds a barrel of laughs tho
War and Peace :(
Vanity Fair every page was agony
The Time Traveler’s Wife *
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin ?
The Kite Runner* (maybe)
Mrs. Dalloway ? I think I've heard of it but I could be imagining it
Great Expectations arrrrrgh!
American Gods ?
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius ? Wuh?
Atlas Shrugged ?
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books?
Memoirs of a Geisha* I like to think I will read this, but I probably won't
Middlesex ? I mean I've heard of the county but a book?....
Quicksilver ? This is getting a bit embarrassing now
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West ? but it sounds good...
The Canterbury Tales amazingly fabulous
The Historian ?
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man :(
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World*
The Fountainhead?
Foucault’s Pendulum?
Middlemarch dire, Silas Marner was a thousand times better
Frankenstein :(
The Count of Monte Cristo :( Another one that I would like to read but know I probably won't
Dracula :(
A Clockwork Orange :(
Anansi Boys?
The Once and Future King wonderful story
The Grapes of Wrath - my English professor made me read this at gunpoint. Foul.
The Poisonwood Bible *
1984 :( - I am allergic to Orwell
Angels & Demons? Sounds good though, but I bet you it probably isn't.
The Inferno - this was astonishingly good, really, I could not put it down, which was a shame as it weighed a flipping tonne!
The Satanic Verses :(
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray :( which is odd because I like Oscar Wilde's stories very much
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest :( - I would rather watch I Am Legend
To the Lighthouse - Is that Virginia Woolf? No thank you
Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Hardy at his most depressing and that is saying something
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels :(
Les Misérables :(
The Corrections ?
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay ?
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune pretentious poo, at least the film had style
The Prince * If this is Machiavelli then I would like to give it a go, but try ordering Machiavelli from Resolven library...
The Sound and the Fury?
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir :( Lord, no
The God of Small Things? - At first I thought, what is Terry Pratchett doing on this list? Then I realised - he wrote Small Gods (which is excellent by the way)
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present? Sorry
Cryptonomicon? Never heard of it but it sounds great!
Neverwhere?
A Confederacy of Dunces?
A Short History of Nearly Everything*
Dubliners - dull, why is this a classic? It completely passed me by.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being :(
Beloved?
Slaughterhouse-Five :(
The Scarlet Letter?
Eats, Shoots & Leaves* Just what every pedant needs..
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake ?
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed?
Cloud Atlas?
The Confusion ?
Lolita :(
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye - can't remember a thing about it though...weird
On the Road - never seen so many swear words on one page - and I've read some pretty pungent stuff let me tell you
The Hunchback of Notre Dame :( but enjoyed the film very much
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything :(
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance :(
The Aeneid :(
Watership Down - excellent
Gravity’s Rainbow ?
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood?
White Teeth ?
Treasure Island :(
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers :(

Soooo...that's me. How about you?

A Piece of Bottom

It is late (for me) and I cannot think clearly enough to write much. Busy day today at Scallywags, an indoor play gym for kids. The girls got home and flopped out, only to wake refreshed for a long evening's squawking. So I simply do not have the will to live.

So I will leave you with Eddie and Ritchie from Bottom. Two of my favourites. This is hilariously funny if you have really dodgy sense of humour. There is quite a bit of (play) violence and probably some swearing too. But this is one of my favourite clips. Enjoy.

Margam Castle

Bank holiday Monday in May - tradition dictates that the weather be beyond foul and tradition did not let us down. So what did we do? Stay inside, tucked up nice and warm, watching movies and eating choccies? Of course not. We did a character building romp round Margam Castle in gale force winds.

They closed the park due to falling trees, which meant that a visit to the Iron Age fort and farm was right out, which was a shame as there are darling pigs there - iron age breed hogs (bristles, tusks and at least a quarter of a ton of pork ambling around their enclosure, peacefully eating acorns and anything else unfortunate enough to come their way). So we went round the castle and found not only a craft fair going on but also a clown festival. The kids loved it. I stayed in the background 'cos nothing freaks me out quicker than a clown. I don't mind spiders, I quite like snakes, I swear long and loud at cockroaches, but clowns make me very quiet and shuddery indeed. Not something to admit to the children, so I lurked behind V whenever one got too close and just waited them out really.

Architecture took my mind off clowns. I love this place. The land has been farmed since the Iron Age initially by the Silures who fought the Roman legions fiercely for two generations until they were finally beaten in AD 70. There was an abbey here until Henry VIII got them all and finally the castle we have today, built in the late 1700's by one of the wealthiest families in Wales and chock full of architectural quirks and oddities. No gargoyles alas but a few dragons can be found if one looks carefully. This place puts me in mind of Hogwarts, I can just imagine a basilisk in the basement, dragons in the surrounding hills and centaurs in these woods.

While I was taking these photos, yes, I was lying down on the main staircase, a chap came up to us and asked us if we would like a tour. The upper floors were destroyed by fire in the late 1970's and it is not usually accesible by the public but apparently he was the secretary of the Friends of Margam Castle and off we went. It was a treat.

Just to finish off he took us to the haunted room, up in the nursery wing. They have filmed Britain's Most Haunted up there. I found it very peaceful.

It is only the start of whitsun holidays of course, but I wouldn't mind a nursery wing sometimes.

For now we are watching The Golden Compass and eating sweet popcorn. Not a great film, the book, though I disliked its premise intensely, was never the less a brilliant piece of literature. The costume design however is a pleasure to stare at*, has anyone else noticed the knitwear in this movie? Or am I being strange?

* As is a certain Lord Asriel...ahem...

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

I know, an oldie but still useful - especially when Eden swipes my super sharp embroidery scissors from my work basket and gives Lily a little light trim.

Lily now looks like a patchwork monk.
And ask me when school photos are due... that's right. Next week.

First Challenge

As promised, here is the first response to the prompts that you so kindly gave me back here. I will be taking each in turn but in no particular order and here is the first.

Patois prompt was to take a news story that affected me deeply and write about it from the view point of a person that was there. Written in the first person. Challenging on more than one level as firstly, I do not watch, listen or read the news. It is just too deeply distressing to me, rather like I Am Legend, the images are just too horrific for me to shake off, but what is worse is of course that the monsters are real. And that I cannot cope with.
Secondly. apart from blogging, the first person is not my natural form. Third person is generally more descriptive and easier to manipulate. First person has an immediacy which I do not always find easy to handle. So that too was challenging for me.

So... I have written a story, in the first person and it is about a story that affected me deeply. But in no way can it be called new.
It is rather long so I have put it further back and on its own as it is quite a blodge of text. But that is stories for you. And here it is - Patois story

Thank You!

Every one who left a prompt. They are all fabulous and I will take them in turn. So it is either a mega long post for me on Sunday or bits and bobs through the week.

Really, you have got me thinking and pushing boundaries again and that is vital to writing of any kind isn't it?

It is a beautiful morning here, warm, and softly hazy. An excellent gardening day. I cleared two big sacks worth of weeds and stuff in my very neglected top patch and made not a jots worth of difference. It still looks like Satan's nostrils up there.
So a bit of breakfast now and have at it until it gets too warm and then some more spinning I think. All the while mulling over poetry and stories that I plan on writing this evening while pretending to work at the reception desk.
That's all from life here in the salt mines.

Hope you have a beautiful day too.

Update 2pm:

Well, rain stopped play in the garden. (I am a fair weather gardener. Actually, it is probably stretching the truth beyond all recognition to call me a gardener at all) But then my diz arrived in the post. Hurrah! It is so pretty. I got it from etsy which is fast becoming an addiction btw.

V: What's a diz?
S: Dis is a diz (sorry couldn't resizt)
V:What does it do?
S: Well you get a batt of fibre, pull it through the diz and then it turns into a roving
V: Ah.
S: It's pretty amazing actually (getting all enthusiastic)
V: What's for lunch?

The latest silk roving

The latest wool roving

I'm off etsying again. See you later!

Challenges

I have a spinning day tomorrow so it will be unlikely that I get to a computer until late tomorrow night.But I wanted to post this up as soon as I thought of it.
It has been bothering me that writing about spinning and yarny stuff is rather less fun that it has been in the past. It is a bad sign when one starts to find one's own blog boring...
But I think I have a solution to this hopefully temporary glitch.

I challenge you, my few but faithful readers...

I have been looking at the regular writing prompts that I use. Sunday Scribblings and One Single Impression and I must say that they have not grabbed me for the past few weeks.
So
If you have an idea for me to write about: a short story, a haiku or a poem then leave a comment suggesting a prompt and I will aim to get it done by Sunday.

Do leave a suggestion now won't you? Don't leave me hanging, looking like an utter prat.
Hope you have a richly imaginative day

Bedtime Stories

Not a good day for Lucifer really...

It has been a long held ambition of mine to read Paradise Lost. I own a teeny little copy, published before the war, with miniscule print and tissue thin paper. I bought it in a charity store, just because I loved the feel of the book and the crackly smell of the leather binding. I never read it, not only because of said tiny print, but because the poetry is pretty stiff going too.
However
Sitting there in Borders this morning I picked up a copy. Roughly the size of an atlas with terrific etching style illustrations. And it just spoke to me Read me aloud, it said. Don't keep me locked in the confines of a skull. Make a noise.
So I did.
Just in case you are wondering, I did not stand on a chair and declaim it or anything, I just read it quite softly to V who lounged back in his comfy chair, sipping his hot chocolate and humoured me. And do you know? There is something truly wonderful about this poem when it is read out loud. It rolls off the tongue in a flood of polysyllables, the cadence, the sheer flipping beauty of it! And so we floated for a while on a sea of words. There must have been something about it because when it was time to go he said "Do you want that?"
(Like I'd turn down the offer of a book)
"You can read it to me some more if you like."
That's this months bedtime stories sorted out...

Where Lies Sleep?

Half an hour past midnight and I have a sleepy Lily on my lap but there is little chance of me finding sleep for some time to come yet I feel.
Every time I close my eyes I see a particular scene from the latest film on my list of "Films I Wish I Had Not Watched". I don't know why I do this to myself, really I don't but if you have not yet watched I Am Legend, then try and keep it that way. Yuk. And that is all I am saying on the matter.

On the plus side and far more pleasant, one of my favourite things in the world is happening right now as I am writing. A blackbird is singing outside in the dark. Who knows why they do that but really, it feels like a blessing. There is a poem I believe...hang on... Yes here it is. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird - by Wallace Stevens. My favourite being the fifth stanza

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

Haiku like in its spareness and simple beauty. I think I might try and go to sleep and dream of blackbirds.
Nos da cariad, sleep well.

Fun

There are those who can manage to keep their work space clear, tidy and organised...

Obviously I am not one of them
I have however had a simply wonderful afternoon carding and blending and coming up with super concoctions. How about...

Fairy Godmother - a blend of merino wool, mohair and angora with a frosting of rose coloured silk. I had tremendous fun with this one.
And...
Wildflowers - wool and alpaca blend in soft herby shades dashed through with some poppy. I bet you this felts up a treat.

I am off now to put these up in me shop which is fun all on its own 'cos then I get to wax really lyrical about how lovely these things are. I have reigned myself in here cos I don't want you to think I am a fibre nut or anything crazy like that...

What do you mean "too late"?
Hope you have a soft and fluffy day

Promises Promises

I have bogged off to the Guild in Ponty today and swiped a drum carder, a swift and a warping board. As you do.
So I am carding and playing with yarn in an even more than usually intense burst cos I have to get these things back before anyone notices they are gone! (Though Deb sometimes reads this blog so I could be found out any second really) If you are reading this Deb I'll bring them back on Monday promise.
It was indeed a beautiful day yesterday and I got plenty of roving and a little yarn painted up. They dried a treat too so pics later on promise.
For now, the eye candy will have to consist of this little darling...

Is it not stunning? It can be seen here Diva Divine 777 with other beauties of its kind. V has almost promised to let me buy it. A little more beguiling needed ( I have promised a yarn famine) and my work will be done.

New Day

It is a rose gold morning here. It was warm last night and I slept with the window open - to be woken by our robin telling all the girls how fab he is. The sparrows joined in with the chorus and by the time the blackbird gave his two pennorth I gave sleep up as a bad job and enjoyed the concert.

There is a lot to be said for sitting on a broad windowsill with a nice hot cup of tea listening to the birds, watching the sky turn from aqua to rose to gold and feeling the earth wake up. It seems it is going to be another beautiful day. I might paint some roving in the garden while the children are in nursery. Six am and the day all untouched. A blank page...

As I have no photos of the sky which is now a pale crystalline blue - I am getting a good show this morning - I thought I would give you my wrapping from etsy. A spinning wheel threading hook is probably boarding the plane to California right now. I'll never get rich with this and perhaps the novelty will wear off eventually but I am still pretty chuffed with this.

May your day be both bright and beautiful.

Okay, so now I know

Haven't done one of these in months...that's cos I haven't had insomnia in a good long while. There we are, hope you are sleeping well...

What These Daisies Say About You

You have a spirit of pure optimism. Your view of the world is eternally cheerful. You are bold and vibrant. Incredibly striking, you always stand out in a crowd. You are adaptable and flexible. You can thrive in almost any situation.

What Do The Flowers You Pick Say About You?

and another one

Mocha Frappuccino

Hyper and driven, you'll take your caffeine any way you can get it. Frappuccinos are good, but you'd probably chew coffee beans in a crunch!

What Flavor Frappuccino Are You?

I would like to say for the record that caffeine has had nothing to do with tonight's bout of insomnia.

Sugar and Spice

A mother of girls has all the opportunity she ever needs to access her inner child. This morning Rose pulled a sickie. She was really quite convincing at half seven but now at lunch time she is like a button. So we have been whistling while we work in the true Disney tradition and I thought I would pass on our favourite Disney sing-along. It really does make the chores fly by, especially when one's daughters have the dance routine down pat. I particularly like the dumpy little muse who can still keep up with all the others. Go girl!



Then, just to keep it interesting - I was putting laundry away (does that flippin' stuff ever end?) when the three of them wandered into the room. They had little sticks in their hands (my dancing banners actually, but they had detached the banners and now only God knows where they are.*) As you might know, anything can become a wand in the hand of an expert, so there they were gently brushing their "wands" over my ankles making gentle zzzzzz ing noises.
"Ah, there's nice" I thought. "They are casting all sorts of happy spells on my feet."
...Not!
Rose, after supervising her sisters for a little while, decided that she had other stuff to attend to and told her minions " Keep electrocuting Mummy" and exited with panache.

In other news...the winner of the goodie bag is...

So this afternoon I pack it up and tomorrow it hits the road. I love doing goodie bags.
Oh! And I had my first customer on etsy last night! I was stupidly elated...really I was. I'll tell you another time, I'm probably still a bit daft about it.

Hope you are having a beautifully happy day too.


*I am not blaspheming. He really is the only one who knows where they are

Backdated

I wrote the meme yesterday and then our electricity went off. So...
I was going to do the Sunday Scribblings but telephones don't do much for me really. Instead, I shall mull over the haiku prompt for One Single Impression: warm is a nice thing to think about...ginger, cinnamon, soup,thick fluffy towels, duvets, the nape of a neck...mmmm....
See you tomorrow.
Hope you are having a pleasant weekend.

Saturday:
I have been tagged by The Sheriff, ta love! So here is another one all about me

The rules: Are posted at the beginning. At the end of the post, the player then tags 6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blog and leaves a comment, letting them know they've been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Let the person who tagged you know when you've posted your answer.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
Not much really! No kids, all the time in the world and no appreciation what so ever of how much I could do. I was a sheltered housing warden - looking after old biddies, gardening and potching around really.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today- not in any particular order?
Tidy up upstairs; check out Zoars Ark to see if I can get chicken feed easily in town and if so what kind; finish spinning up the Black Welsh wool; visit mum and dad and get ready to go out for a meal tonight in a local pub with Dizzy and Daisy. A pleasant day in store really.

3. Snacks I enjoy.
cashew nuts, sweet popcorn, grapes, fresh pineapple

4. Places I've lived- Africa, Wales, England and Scotland.

5. Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Buy my parents a dream home and a Bentley (with a chauffeur cos it would be madness to put my dad behind the wheel of a car at this time of his life.)
A small holding for me with everything that should be on a smallholding plus out buildings for studios and all kinds of things.
Choose a small charity to support and really make a difference there.
Travel: The Arctic, Japan, Italy, America, Canada, Scandinavia.
Spend the rest of my life studying the widest variety of subjects that I could get hold of. Science, history, astronomy, biology, etc etc.

6. 6 Peeps I want to know more about: Technodoll, Pippa, Dizzy, Kati, Robin, Kim

Another Bite*

It was a pretty long time ago, but I wonder if you remember this?

Click on it, go on, you know you want to...

I can honestly say that it has taken me a hell of a long time to get over that wretched virus but at last I am properly back and have been for the last week really. Spinning, hurtling around the countryside with V, even light gardening duties can now all be undertaken without having to pay for it with two days of dashed inconvenient exhaustion. So while I had not forgotten at all, I did not really have any enthusiasm to put into it. But over the last week I have had good fun putting a goodie bag together and so far we have *deep breath*

Greg, POD, Jessica, Dizzy, Technodoll, The Sheriff, Pilgrim, Nicole, Patois, Pippa and Cyril.

Now I have picked up one or two new readers since then and have arbitrarily decided to allow them a whack too. So, it is Thursday now... leave a comment on this post by Saturday and on Sunday one of the sproglets will pull a name from a hat. I'll contact you via e mail asking you for your land address and the goodie bag will be posted Monday!


Oh and because I love you, take a look at this little gem of a blog. It really is one of the most delightful I have ever found: We Three

*at the cherry

Craig y Nos

Off to Craig y Nos today for a spinning demonstration, or so I thought! No one else from the guild turned up! But I had packed my wheel and a lovely picnic, V and the girls were happy to bumble around under the trees, so I had a pleasant afternoon spinning in the sunshine. There were hardly any people there but I did speak to two nice ladies who took some information on the guild and on Ffald Y Brenin. I should get a commission from that place I tell you.

I was not actually chewing a wasp when this was taken,
the sun was right in my eyes
and I did not realise how fearsome I look when I squint.

We are not keeping still for a photo when there is blossom to catch!

The castle was once a home to the opera singer Adelina Patti and later it became a hospital for soldiers wounded in World War II. It is now a hotel, but the grounds are now part of the National Park which has some of the most dramatic scenery in the local area. The mountain rock is an unrelenting grey, which never looks anything other than bleak even under such a pretty sun as we had today. Winter suits it well though, if you like that kind of harshness, which I do - but today we stuck to the gardens and the cherry blossom.
Lily and Eden were enchanted by the falling petals and chased around like a pair of demented kittens trying to catch them. Sometimes they are just so flippin' cute I can hardly think straight when I look at them.

The Car Show

Getting there was quite easy. Bank holiday traffic or no, it was not the horrific crush that I imagined it would be - that said there were plenty of people there, couldn't say how many thousands, but probably hitting the tens. It was a lovely sunny day and we got there quite early. There is something so delightful about classic cars and proud owners. Many of them had picnic baskets and some had barbecues. There was just a gentle happiness about it.
While the girls were pretty much left cold by the cars - no matter how hard I tried to get Rose excited about the Spitfire we saw - they enjoyed the parkland and the stroll. Now that I look at the pics, there is hardly any of the actual park... I'll stop now and you can look for yourselves...

V's favourite I think. He says that he preferred the TR6 which I found so ugly I would not take a picture of it.But what chap of a certain age does not remember Starsky and Hutch with fondness?

I didn't really have eyes for anything else. V dragged me away before I got too embarrassing.
It's a Triumph Spitfire mark 2 if you did not already know. Should have been red in order to be absolutely perfect,but British Racing Green is the next best thing.

These were The Real Deal - men in love with the internal combustion engine. They had their own little roped off section for the Ancient Order of Things That Backfire and this guy is the King of the Petrol Heads...

...and here are his courtiers

Okay, I know I loved the Spitfire, but for me this was the highlight of the show. A 1950's picnic basket in mint condition with the sweetest little porcelain cups and saucers, silver teaspoons and room for the dinkiest bottle of champagne that I had ever seen. I so want one of these.
"You are such a girl" V said.
"QED" I replied.

So we had a lot of fun. On the way home we stopped for a Joe's ice cream and we watched the boats leave the Marina using the whopping great sea locks. And V cooked tea when we got home.

One Single Impression - Deserted

Last night as I was getting ready for bed I was mulling over the haiku prompt for this week - desert or deserted and before I knew it, these lyrics popped into my head.

You left my heart empty as a vacant lot
for any
spirit to haunt

U2 at their best (and that is saying something) on Achtung Baby

As I switched off the lamp, I thought I would never be able to write anything about being deserted that was better than that. I love Bono's voice, so raw and passionate.

We are off out today to a classic car show in Singleton, braving bank holiday traffic. So, if we survive the crush, I will tell you all about it later. Have a beautiful, passionate day.

Rose in Jewel Hat

Remember that roving that I bought in March I think, gorgeous stuff from etsy (in fact the header of this blog is made from the pic I took of it). Well I spun it up a day or two ago and last night, quite late, I played with some free form crochet and made this rather unusual hat.

You'd need nerves of steel to wear it out I daresay, but it would do for a music festival. If I decide to keep it then Woolfest is the place where it would get a good airing - I suppose there are going to be plenty of wild and wooly types there. But I have also been thinking about putting it in the shop. I don't know.

That said, I think Rose looks delightful in it, though she is not so sure. Her pronouncement?
"I look mad"
I can see the jury is still out...

I'm Dying

I wonder how often I can say this before it starts to get old?

Mulberry silk roving and lace weight yarn. This is great, the old etsy is really giving me a sense of focus. Anyway, I haven't really got time to write more now, the angora needs to come out.

Hope you are having a productive day!

The Brecon Beacons

There is something to be said for being awake at four am, you get a lot done by seven: two loads of laundry, a finished bobbin of yarn and a batch of cakes. Unfortunately, by the time nine o' clock comes round you are no good for anything much, so despite a free morning for V, there will be no morning jaunt for us as I am cwtched up under a fluffy blanket, surfing and toying with the idea of making a hat (with the latest silk yarn in a bewitching shade of kiwi fruit green). V has sweetly made me a cup of hot blackcurrant and has disappeared off to his shed to do man things. A quiet morning for me I think.

So here are a few pictures of the last jaunt we went on a few days ago. The Brecon Beacons are not so far from us. A beautiful spot where children can run wild in summer but gets so harsh in the winter that the SAS chaps risk their lives training there. The mountain centre does a beautiful cup of hot chocolate and you can sit outside in the biting wind and listen to skylarks pouring song from the clouds. Breathe deep and feel the clean air doing you good.

Hope you have a beautiful day.