Homeward bound

There are some days I can’t even listen to the lyrics of Sovereign Light Cafe without a big lump forming in my throat. The song takes artistic licence by treating Hastings and Bexhill as one, but the video was certainly filmed in Bexhill. It’s not a sad song it just reminds me, in more ways than one, of the great distance between there and here. We used every bit of the south coast when I was a child. Our childhood dog was the most walked dog on the planet. Unlike H and R she absolutely hated water so we never had any fear that she would get carried away with the tide. When we take Riley to the coast we have to be much more careful, he doesn’t have any sense of fear despite the power of the waves.

This past week E packed her books and caught a train from Leeds To Hastings, quite a long trek. I think she had plans to have a coffee or two at the SLC on Bexhill seafront but there were a succession of days where she described the rain as horizontal, so she kept warm and dry and probably did more studying than she would have if the weather had been more favourable.

Our visits overlap by just a day and then M will travel back with E and leave me down there. I’ll miss my faithful four legged friends but I’m sure Archie will be up for cuddles and long walks too. H and R will be miffed if he starts appearing on my blog but I can’t resist photos of spaniels, they are such happy dogs. Archie isn’t a Springer, he’s a Cocker, but in my opinion he’s ten times more bouncy than H and R, he’s full of beans and loves company.

I’ve packed a generous amount of yarn, two books and my kindle. When I was a child my biggest fear was running out of things to read! This seems amusing now because I certainly wasn’t one of those kids that did nothing but read. I was outside in all weathers, running, cycling, making dens, doing all kinds of sport, so I guess this must have been an evening activity only. We never really did get on with regular trips to the library, our lives had too much else going on. There was no internet, no Amazon, and no kindles. Mum has always worked full time so trips to book shops were rare. I got most of my reading material as gifts and the Puffin Club at school when I was primary school age. I still can’t think of anything worse than running out of yarn or books.

Tomorrow M will pack the car and remark on the amount of luggage I am bringing. He does this despite the fact that I am an expert on travelling light. He’s also good at travelling light but the difference is that he forgets vital things and ends up buying them on holiday, like the year he didn’t pack socks, or the year he took two shirts for two weeks!

There will be some tense moments as my much tested patience begins to wear thin. In the ten years we’ve been married we’ve overcome a lot of differences and laugh about some of those now. Some of the things I used to find highly irritating I actually find quite endearing now, the ability of the human being to adapt is a constant source of amazement to me! However, giving a constant verbal commentary of how dreadful other drivers are is not something I find endearing at all. Not only that but I don’t find the comments to be very accurate either. Furthermore the one giving the commentary often performs the very manoeuvre that he was, just seconds ago, criticising. Insert a few choice swear words here if you are so inclined. I certainly do, usually under my breath, and then threaten to plug my phone into the car stereo and select music that I know he hates.

When the kids were small I found it was hugely successful to outline the behaviour I expected from them before we entered a ‘challenging’ social situation for instance. You can’t expect children to know what is expected from them, you have to tell them. I tried to apply this theory to M but unfortunately it didn’t work. I’ve also tried appealing to his sense of survival by suggesting he might cause a stress related illness if he carried on this way. That didn’t work either. So if you see a rather fed up woman staring out of the passenger window on the A1 singing along to The Greatest Hits of Glen Campbell you’ll know it’s me!

Men

All these business trips with M away are doing me the world of good in some respects. My car is out of action while M faffs around trying to fit fuel filters by himself (he will end up taking it to the garage or ‘phoning a friend’ eventually). I borrowed E’s little car and it does surprise me that despite driving it at the same speed as I would my larger jeep, a lot of drivers seem to see ‘small’ and think ‘slow’ and try and overtake in the most dangerous and inappropriate places. Something to do with ego’s is all I can assume this is to do with. Anyway I hurtled down the bypass and did a weekly shop in our new M&S. Ordinary stuff for most people but quite an event for me to do on my own these days. Having sussed it out with M once or twice quite early on a Monday morning I was sure it was going to be very quiet, alas it was not. Nonetheless I gathered easy to cook meals for J and I for a week including considerably healthier choices than when M is in charge of the trolley. I even treated myself to a takeout coffee for the journey back. Such a shame E’s car is not suitable for muddy dogs because there’s a choice of two lovely country parks on the way home.

I will be so pleased to have my car in working order again. I’ve missed our nature reserve walks even though it’s hugely boggy there at the moment. The village walks just haven’t been the same. Harvey has been a pain in the side quite literally with his pulling, I’ve never been able to train him to walk nicely on a lead and I’ve been able to train all my dogs to some degree. I think it been three showers with them both this week. Two occasions where Riley rolled in something nasty and the rest just because the sink just wouldn’t have coped with that much mud. I swear if we win the lottery my first priority will be a dog shower, a blow dry booth and a kennel maid! The dogs would love it! They already hold each paw up in turn for the shower jet nozzle!

I’m usually very pleased with the whole iPad and iPhone set up. It’s nothing flashy, my iPad is quite old and my phone has been handed down from m to e and then to me but is perfectly ok for my needs. Just lately though the phone has stopped communicating with the iPad and I can’t work out why. It’s baffling because sometimes it will send photos via photo stream and sometimes it decides to only send a few. There are ways round this but it’s time consuming. I usually find that updates solve problems but currently that’s not happening. I found this last photo of our flight home from Jersey on my phone that hadn’t been sent to my iPad. You can see how beautiful the place is, the plastic sheeting is to do with their famous potatoes apparently. M will be going back on his own next time but for his third trip I will join him again. On that occasion we are hoping to have a whole extra day just to explore. It won’t be for a little while so I’m hoping some spring like weather will happen too!

I finished my diamonds and bobbles jumper late one night and tried it on straight away. I ended up adding five more rows to the bottom and also some of the back loop dc rows to match the sleeve cuffs. It’s no longer a boxy sweater but I like my jumpers much longer so I liked the fact that was so easy to adjust. The wool was a bad choice in some ways because it’s a little dense but I took the risk of chucking it in the washing machine in the wool cycle knowing that the blanket I made with the same yarn didn’t shrink or felt. I already had 900g of this yarn in my stash and cannot remember for the life of me what I bought it for, I’m using up lots of stash these days and giving lots away too. Anyway, the jumper survived and is already softer after just one wash. I love 3/4 sleeves on sweaters because I can’t have sleeves getting in the way of crocheting! As well as the extra length I also omitted the neck rows which would have made the neck fit more closely. I like boat necks and feel a bit suffocated with round necks so it was perfect without that detail for me.

After a late night online chat with E she chose the colour ‘oak’ from the range of Wendy aran yarn. I’m not sure how many students get emails with wool warehouse links in them asking them to choose a colour for a sweater. I think it’ll look great on her. One striking feature she has and one which plenty of people stopped me to comment on when she was a baby, is her very dark brown eyes. Mine are brown but hers are a much deeper brown. She also has naturally dark brown almost black hair with auburn highlights and after years of experimenting with dye I have finally got her to appreciate her natural colour and convinced her that it’s what people pay good money to achieve from a box of dye! When J was small, and again it was the golden age of people approaching you to comment on your child, he had ash blonde hair and those dark chocolate coloured eyes again. People kept telling me that it was unusual and that with blonde hair he should have blue eyes. Helpful eh?

The Wendy aran has 25% wool in it which makes it a lot softer than my grey yarn. It’s going to drape so much better and I’m already wondering what colour to choose for a third version of this jumper so that I can have a nice soft one too. I may well end up being able to make that one without having to refer to the pattern!

In between lots of rows of trebles for the jumper I made a pair of mittens in chunky merino and mohair from John Lewis. It has a similar feel to Rowan’s Cocoon. I tried quite a few other yarns as you’ll know if you follow me on Instagram. I used the same stitch as for the honeycomb hat pattern I published on my old blog. It’s a side to side construction which meant that I could start out with the exact length I wanted. For this I had to message E again and ask her to photograph her hand against an A4 sheet since she didn’t have a ruler to hand. The wonders of modern technology! Between the red bobble hat and these mittens I think I have solved all her getting chilled to the bone problems. She’s spending half term in Sussex with my parents so it’s probably a few degrees warmer down there at least.

Sussex is on the cards for me soon too. I can’t wait. It’s always special to spend time with my Grandad and I also get to walk a different dog in a different place. Archie is a cocker spaniel and a big old furry fluff ball. The best part about walking him on the beach is…. no M U D! Oh happy days! I know there will be a crap coming home afterwards kind of feeling when I leave the place where I was born and come away from the coast and the Downs to somewhere flat. I just need to work on how to avoid that feeling. Quite possibly a big DIY project might be just the thing. The dining room needs a new coat of paint! That will involve moving a trillion books. Busy is good.

Half term is now upon is and I am feeling the balance of male to female is off-kilter in this household. Since M got back I have heard the word football mentioned more than a few times. The father/son short sentence communication is once more in action. One will say a city followed by a number, then the other will nod or grunt and then say another city and a number. Sometimes interspersed with the odd naughty word. I believe this is called discussing the football scores. Not only that but music has been turned up a fraction louder (I am clearly the most feared disciplinarian despite the fact that he could get away with far more decibels with just me at home) and in the living room the tv has started to mysteriously switch over to How It’s Made at random moments. I will survive. I have coffee, crochet and dogs. Not necessarily in that order. (Gin too but only when things get really manly round here!)

Jersey

With two days notice we packed and flew out to Jersey at the beginning of this week. I can’t say too much about the work reasons but I can say that it’s not very often that M is offered work in such a nice location. Expenses were such that we only needed to pay for my flight which was a remarkably cheap £75 so it made sense for me to come along and have a mini break albeit by myself for most of the time.

I don’t know why I’ve never hopped on a boat or plane and visited any of the Channel Islands before. Jersey is part of the British Isles but it is not part of the United Kingdom. It is only nine miles wide by five miles and has a population of about a hundred thousand. According to our chatty taxi driver there are more cars on the island than people and yet the fastest you can drive anywhere on the island is 40mph. They have their own currency but it is compatible with British Pounds. We were told to take anything we received in change to a bank to exchange back to British notes on our last day because UK shops can be ‘funny’ about them. In fact we didn’t need to because we only ended up with a small amount of Jersey cash and we might be returning in a month or two.

We were a bit spoilt with a lovely hotel right on the bay overlooking the harbour in St. Helier. I couldn’t take my eyes off the changing sky, the way the castle lit up, boats coming and going, the tide going in and out. If you look carefully at the top picture you’ll notice a red lcd display to the left. There were two figures, one in meters and one most likely in fathoms, it went from 0.0 to over 8 metres at high tide. At low tide there is a narrow path across the wet sand to the castle. Even in quite severe wet and windy weather there were one or two brave locals walking out that way with dogs. It’s such a beautiful spot I think I’d probably do the same on a daily basis if I lived there with Harvey and Riley.

In the same photograph you can see there are one or two tiny figures on the harbour wall. We walked along to the end on our final morning and then took the lower path where the arches are on our way back so that M could take a closer look at the boats. Typically it was a bright and sunny morning on that day with only hours to go until our flight.

I didn’t take very many photos at all despite covering what seemed like very square inch of St Helier itself. The weather was pretty awful on the first day and due to get worse in the second. I tucked my phone deep into my pocket and largely forgot to take it out for photographs. I visited the indoor market and swung by some of the museums but mainly I had coffee here and there and watched the world go by. There was a noticeable French look about some of the residents which makes sense when you think it’s only 14 miles from France and about 100 miles from mainland Britain.

There’s a lot of history to the island and I watched a great film the night before we flew. It was on Netflix and called Another Mother’s Son. It gave a taste of what life was like under German Occupation during the Second World War. I walked past a hotel called Pomme D’Or which was used as the German Naval HQ during that time. It faces a square which is now called Liberation Square.

We managed to fit in one small, quick excursion when M had a few hours one afternoon. We caught a bus and enjoyed the scenery on the way to St Aubins Bay which we could see from our hotel. I love the way that in Madrid you can go anywhere on a bus or metro for €1.50 and in Jersey you can take any single trip for £2.00. It makes life so much easier. We live just six or seven miles from our nearest main town and it costs an arm and a leg to get there by bus. In St Aubins Bay there are some lovely smart looking seafood restaurants and a place called The Harbour Gallery which is wedged in between what would probably have all been fishermen’s cottages at one point. It’s very higgeldy piggeldy inside with lots of beams and stone walls and a mixture of craft supplies, art gallery, small yarn store and cafe. There’s also workshop space for art. M overheard a Mum having a chat about home schooling and bringing her daughters there for art lessons. What might have been a very quiet trade in the winter seemed to be a thriving little multi purpose venue.

Obviously I’d have been happy to have returned from our trip without any yarn at all but M quite literally shoved me into the yarn area and said, buy something! I didn’t put up much of a fight after spotting some Italian yarns that are harder to find on UK websites let alone in stores. I bought just a single ball of sock yarn since I have now discovered my ‘go to’ crochet sock pattern. I bought two hanks of a merino and bamboo mix yarn in shades that remind of the coast for a possible wrap or shawl. Finally I bought a fun super chunky Italian ball that came with two wooden buttons and that will definitely be a cowl. Quite a modest selection I thought. They have a knit and natter type get together on a Tuesday evening there. Given the size of the island it’s probably the only one too!

I think we ate seafood of some kind for every meal, apart from breakfast of course, though salmon was available. I haven’t always been the biggest seafood eater but these days I like to try new things so we had quite a variety for one week. Seared scallops were probably my favourite.

I took my new forest green project bag for this trip. I took the yarn and pattern for the second sock pictured above but didn’t get round to even starting it. As a last minute thought I threw in a chunky ball of pure wool and that ended up being crocheted into a warm hat on our one night stay in London before flying. My previous favourite hat was looking worse for wear so I thought, no problem, I’ll make a new one. I made a pattern up as I went and added a few popcorn bobbles for interest. It was ideal for the weather conditions. I also packed some pure wool aran and downloaded the pattern I had in mind for that onto my iPad. That was the project I was most in the mood for when we actually got to Jersey. I had two very rainy afternoons in the hotel room with that wonderful view (after I’d made use of the lovely pool and steam room!) and with our own Krupps coffee machine and fresh Jersey milk in the mini fridge I managed to stay awake long enough to get this hat finished by the last day.

Naturally as soon as E saw a photo of the finished hat, she wondered if I might post it to her! I’m always glad to have made something she likes and she does deep red so much better than I do! Besides it gives me chance to be the boring neutrals nerd I’ve always been and make another in oatmeal! The pattern is on the website Yarnspirations. This might be an overlooked gem of a site. Everything I’ve made with their patterns has worked out very well. This red hat for instance is just a classic cable twist design but sometimes the best things are the simplest. I will be adding it to my list of reliable go to patterns. It has worked up so lovely and thick using a soft merino aran weight yarn and yet it has a lot of give due to the post trebles which means it fits like a glove. I’ll be honest and admit that I only twigged that I’d never made a proper cable twist hat in crochet when I saw an old woman wearing one in the classic aran off white shade. Hers was knitted but that’s beside the point, what struck me was how smartly dressed she was and how classic it looked despite being just a woolly hat and incongruous with her tailored suit. You’ve heard of the expression, ‘you should get out more’, well this is what happens when I do get out more! I sit in a coffee shop and spot great hand knitted items!

I hope we get the opportunity to return to Jersey. It looked beautiful in terrible weather so I’d welcome the chance to walk along the miles of promenade in good weather! For now though it’s back to reality. Lots of laundry, dog walking, dog bathing, dog trimming, dogs under my feet, dogs being rather clingy because I’ve been away… you get the gist.