January 2022

There was a moment recently when M found me almost buried under a mound of spaniels. I had one on my lap and one under each arm, all vying for attention, whilst I was actually trying to see over/through them to watch a film. ‘Well that looks cosy’ he said. ‘I’m in spaniel heaven!’ I replied with a big grin on my face. Given a few minutes more and he’d have found all three snoring in unison, once they’ve established who is sitting where they respond nicely to a film by late afternoon. Woe betide I should need to move though, the rigmarole has to begin all over again.

It’s a wonder that I ever manage to crochet with this much adoration going on. They do climb down for a stretch, the puppies in particular like to stretch full length alongside a sofa. Arthur will often twist over so that he’s belly up and baring all. Despite relaxed appearances they are up and on their feet in a split second if the need arises, machinery, dogs barking nearby or someone at the door for example. If I’ve put the oven timer on for natural dyeing purposes and they let me know I heap praise upon them and give them a small biscuit, though I think they are just pleased I’ve put a stop to the noise.

It’s quite the VW Campervan parts shop here at the moment. We’ve handed over the two new doors that came with the van, along with new metal panels that go across the middle of the sliding door. The dining room is full of smaller parts that will generally improve and maintain the van. It’s often the details that make a difference, last summer we finally fitted the glove compartment door and I’m incredibly happy that all our bits and bobs like masks, travel sweets, a first aid kit, tissues, small change for toll bridges and so on, are no longer on display. Likewise I’m looking forward to having the little black cog fitted on the triangular side window so that I can finally open it. It sounds like a simple job but it isn’t. The child/dog hammock has arrived but we won’t fit that until the work has been done. It’s an art form making the most of a small campervan for modern lives (not to mention 3 dogs) but it’s a challenge I’m always up for.

We took the van to a quiet spot near woodland recently. I packed a wooden crate with all the pots and pans and sieves and spoons I thought I’d need for an al fresco dye session. It was intended as a trial run to see if I needed to tweak my kit at all so that M can make a tailor made box/cupboard/table type thing to hold it all as well as provide the raised surface to put our Kelly Kettle on for the heat source. We bought the cooking attachment a couple of years ago and we’ve since used it so much more, often boiling the water for coffee or tea first and then putting the attachment on to cook a simple lunch. We also changed the standard orange stopper with the green whistling one, a totally useless bit of kit for me unless the dogs react to it or M is nearby to listen. For reasons I can’t quite fathom M insists on being the chief fire lighter, we often wait for 45 minutes or more for a kettle of water due to fire starting problems. As kids we had the luxury of being allowed to light a campfire in the garden whenever we fancied one, you soon learn what works and what doesn’t.

Winter really is a challenging time of year for natural dye plant material. I used bracken this weekend but I’d probably have been better off with brambles. In Spring the bracken would have yielded a brighter yellow/green colour and modified to a brighter green with a touch of iron. I stuck with the warm caramel tone this experiment achieved, thankful that it had even resulted in that because the ratio of material to wool wasn’t as high as I would have liked. I need to choose a deeper pot for future ‘on the road’ dye sessions. I also need to add ‘small stool’ to my kit list, there was a lot of standing around and bending over for me while M sat in the doorway of the van. Near to where we parked for this dye session (on the edge of the woodland) was a perfect clear running stream. Not only did it wash the dogs feet nicely prior to their re-entry to the van, I was able to rinse out and cool down all the pots and pans. It added that touch of dyeing in the wild and making use of what is around you. It’s that element that I like. A return to basics.

Although I must also confess that coming home to central heating and a hot shower is also pretty good. The older I get the longer it takes to actually warm up properly again. Even if we’ve departed van life with a hot drink I always make a hot chocolate on our return. After dyeing on a Kelly Kettle fire all afternoon we did stink of smoke and even after hot showers I could still smell it. Two days on and I finally twigged, it was my glasses! Somehow they’ve absorbed the smell, I think it’ll fade eventually. I don’t mind, it’s a nice reminder of a fun afternoon.

It’ll be a while before we can go on a proper van trip, due to both the work and the holiday time available. The latter isn’t as flexible as it used to be but I’m learning to use the waiting time to get things done before we go. France is top of our wish list but Scotland has so much to offer too. Going outside midge season is imperative. Last time we went to Scotland we had the majority of our trip midge free but as soon as June 1st hit, so did the midges, meaning we needed to be in the van with every single window closed by 8pm or so. Given that M devotes a large portion of his life to watching cookery programmes I’ve subtly suggested that we might up our game when it comes to meals on our road trips. I’ve purchased several books that could potentially inspire him to move beyond the soup and tinned chilli con carne. To be fair we did have sausages in baps quite a few times in Scotland but I feel the potential of one pot cooking hasn’t been explored much yet. As with home meals I think I might need to contribute firm ideas and then leave him to enjoy the actual process, he really does seem to enjoy the cooking part of putting together of a meal, a concept which is totally beyond me. I’d probably live on soup and toast if left to my own devices.

One of the activities we both do much more of on a road trip is read. M is very easily pleased when it comes to books and we’ve acquired some of his reading matter from those ‘leave one, take one’ free libraries we seem to sniff out along the way. We know a few good bookstores in places we’ve been before or pass through and can’t resist visiting over and over again. Both of us fear running out of reading matter! The van could really do with a book shelf but at the moment that is still potential chewing material for the puppies so that’ll have to wait. I’ve started a reading challenge with E. we both purchased ‘100 Top Books’ scratch off posters and with no set deadline in mind we are going to work our way through them. E has kicked off with Crime and Punishment and I’m about to start with Moby Dick. I’ve added to my reading challenge with a related crochet make for some too, hence the white whale who I feel really needs to hang from somewhere to give the impression of being suspended in water. Not all the books are old classics, some are newer, some are even children’s classics etc ting pu like ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’. Although I’ve read some of the titles I’m looking forward to revisiting some.

Somehow I’ve managed yet again to leave a half written blog post in my drafts folder! I usually update them before I press ‘publish’ but on this occasion I will just mention it was written months ago! The less said about the van not being ready the better. We now have a valuable bank of work free days and no van to go away in. It looks like the wild garden might get a bit of a hacking down and the shed (equally wild) might have a sort out. My outdoor dye kitchen has already been dusted off and seen some action. Random warm days have been truly seized and made use of. As usual I can’t sit still for long and I’m always trying new things. This week I have returned to washing a sheep fleece and preparing it for spinning. I can’t repeat what the men have said about the appearance and smell of the soaking Jacob’s fleece but it looks fabulous and I can’t wait to try it on my wheel.

Goodbye 2021

Goodbye 2021! Instagram and blogging certainly help record the good bits to look back upon. Journals and diaries could also achieve this but I never stick at those. Perhaps it’s the ease of the keyboard or more than likely it’s the graphic designer in me making columns of words and pictures neater and faster than I could by hand. I don’t make resolutions these days but I do spend this time of year deep in reflective thought, looking at parts I could have handled better, things I did achieve, things I learnt, directions I might want to take.

We were so glad that we’d had that last holiday in Scotland with Harvey and Riley before having to say goodbye to Harvey. Despite his aches and pains he swam in lochs, enjoyed the woodland smells and generally loved life on the road. I thought we’d relish the close bond with Riley as our only dog for a while but it became clear he was pining and waiting for Harvey to walk back through the door. No amount of spoiling him rotten and lovely long walks seemed to lift his spirits. I’ve not really had a dog that noticeably grieved before but when the puppies arrived Riley was back to his usual playful self instantly. He taught us that some dogs are happy enough with their human companions and others like to have four legged ones too. He barks at them a lot, we think to keep them in line but he also stands in the middle of a room with a toy in his mouth and waits until they come along and try and swing from it. Riley even allows Woody to sleep with his head on top of his back which is how we usually find them in the morning if we tiptoe into the kitchen.

All the hard work involved in fencing off our garden is long forgotten now. It was open all along the side which has a stream and despite knowing that they could easily hop over to the other side Harvey and Riley never did. Woody and Arthur, however, discovered the partially dried up stream in the first week or so. Our garden has never been so securely fenced in all the time we’ve lived here. Arthur even found the tiniest little hole leading through to our neighbour and there were a few mornings he was doing his excited wiggly bum dance on her driveway whilst I shouted an apology over the fence still in my pyjamas. Luckily our neighbour is very nice and says she likes having dogs who bark when strangers come to our door or hers.

Acquiring two new puppies has not been without drama. We mistakenly thought Woody had something of a collision injury but it failed to get any better and eventually he was limping quite badly. X-rays revealed a suspicious looking black line that wasn’t conclusive so we were referred to a specialist in Leeds for CT scans. By then we’d been warned that it could be an inherited defect in the elbow where the bones had failed to fuse before he was born but it still came as a massive blow when they gave us the results of the scan the same day and said they’d operate the following day. We’d arrived with a beautiful trusting little puppy and we were driving home without him. Three days later we went back and he greeted us with only love and joy despite his huge ordeal. He’d had lots of hair shaved off, a huge cone, stitches in his elbow and he reeked of disinfectant and wee (he’s a bit of a nervous or excited widdler). I was just so relieved he still knew us and trusted us enough to come home with us. Recovery was tricky, no running, no jumping, no playing, no stairs, no walks, no playmates. We had to divide the house in two and keep the pups apart. It felt incredibly cruel and therefore kinder to send Arthur to Ella’s for weekend sleepovers which he didn’t mind at all! That’s Arthur on weekend guard dog duty at Ella’s cottage in the first photo.

We are finally returning to normal life now but obviously with a niggling worry that Woody will overdo things. He has a screw in his elbow that should last a lifetime but with no guarantees. You’d never know he’d had such a major procedure so it’s fingers crossed now and hope it stays that way.

With van travel and new puppies I’ve had a lot less time to myself. There are a few more crochet makes than pictured here but generally speaking I’ve walked more miles than I have stitched yarn. The hat above was a gift for M’s work colleague. The Gryffindor scarf for my niece, to get her started as a Harry Potter fan (which would please one of her cousins very much). The mittens were a stash busting exercise to see if I could still wing a pair of mittens as I went. The crochet light bulbs took my fancy one evening when I needed a simple project to do whilst watching a film. Likewise the blanket ended up being made during various films with a recovering puppy by my side, it was the only way to get him to sit still for any length of time. My Instagram account probably has many more makes that I’ve long forgotten about. I think there were one or two that were a major effort but finally got finished, a naturally dyed log cabin blanket and a granny square tweedy cardigan come to mind.

On that note, I really must blog more to record even our shortest van trips. We find some great places on our travels and then struggle to remember exactly where they were. Some are more memorable for their connections, for example Grassingham in Yorkshire, it’s where they filmed some of the new series of All Creatures Great and Small. I don’t usually go in for fan stuff like this but it was one of M’s ‘surprise’ destinations and quite frankly I’m happy just to be in the van and driving anywhere so I indulged his ‘let’s treat my wife like a five year old’ ways on this occasion. A good time was had by all. We parked right in the central square a few metres from the main house they use the exterior of for filming. They add columns and steps for the series but in real life it has neither. We went in to the Drovers Arms, the pub featured in the programmes. We had a little walk around Grassingham but the highlight was probably good coffee and local award winning brownies. Using a well known app we found a farmer’s field to park for the night nearby. In a neighbouring village there was a huge sweeping mown field with a shallow wide stream running alongside which made the perfect day pitch for picnics and dog swimming. With sketchy phone signal in the area and not spending very much time looking at our phones anyway, let alone the news, we were a bit puzzled when friends and family started saying, oh Yorkshire looks lovely, I hope you’ve got enough fuel to get home. It was a whole two days before we realised there was a bit of a fuel buying panic going on. I really wouldn’t have minded being stranded for a few extra days but we found a small rural garage with only two cars in front of us and filled Bert up without any issues. It was only on the way home, driving past major petrol stations that we realised there was indeed a bit of a situation.

Our trip to Oxford was, as with all of our trips, a last minute thing. It was a combined birthday and anniversary treat with E and B being able to travel down with us in the van and stay in a Travelodge. In fact we ended up cancelling our campsite booking and staying somewhere warm too, it just happened to be a below freezing cold Friday night when we arrived. Although I didn’t live in Oxford for as long as I lived in Sussex it still feels like a second home to me. Lots of lovely memories and it’s handy knowing where everything is for a change, though it is a city that seems to change quite a lot between every visit. For my birthday night out we booked a table at The Rickety Press in Jericho, I love that area of Oxford and this particular pub is dog friendly. Wood fired pizza and cocktails, the perfect night out.

Sherwood Forest is another gem on our doorstep that we visited with Bert. I used to take the children there with bikes and picnics, we’ve also camped there. Robin Hood hats and bow and arrows were of course essential and it really made me smile to see children still running around with green felt triangles on their heads. The winter all day parking rate is more than reasonable and for families it’s even better value because there’s so much more there now. A bigger cafe, Go Ape, cycle hire, new and incredible play areas up in the trees, frisbee golf (we had to hold the dogs back from fetching a few frisbees when our walk crossed paths!) Routes for dogs off leads were clearly marked and even at a peak time it was a great day out. Once back at the van for soup and bread amongst the pine trees in a quiet corner to ourselves it really could have been in the middle of nowhere.

As I write the van is booked in for structural repairs. Across the back of the tailgate there’s a section of gutter rail missing and a small crack on the corner of the roof. The missing rail lets water in and our temporary fix hasn’t lasted long so it’s time to repair that properly along with the crack. I’m hoping they don’t find anything too horrifying underneath, there’s already a suspicion that it’s been previously patched up with fibreglass. I use the van daily for dog walks so it’ll be a nuisance not having it for a while but I guess that’s classic vehicles for you. To console myself I plan to obtain a suitable map for studying our next possible trip. We are itching to return to Scotland and maybe stick to more of the coast this time. We’ve already managed to squeeze three dogs and ourselves in for overnight trips but the pups have grown quite a bit since then and it’s time to try a bit of kit that was available for these vans in the seventies – the front cab hammock! It sits above steering wheel height and is essentially just two poles and a piece of canvas. The pups love climbing, tunnels, platforms and burrowing so I know they won’t mind making themselves comfy on a hammock, it’s just persuading them that our bed is a no go that’ll take a few false starts. If all else fails it will make an excellent luggage shelf for all the loose bits that seem to get in the way when the bed is up.

Here’s to continuing adventures. I’ve eased myself gently into the new year with plenty of small crochet projects, lots of coffee and hot chocolate and walks that have been only very gradually getting longer for Woody. There’s even been a spot of natural dyeing in the wild but that’s for another post. Happy New Year!