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Tuesday, August 11, 2015

'Staycation' 1

Sorry for the radio silence. We've had 10 days of staying at home holiday or 'staycation' as it's called these days. I don't know why, but when we have a holiday at home we seem to be out and about doing something all the time. I think it's because if you're on holiday and you have a relaxing day at home it's easy to do stuff (like work when you work from home) and feel like you're not on holiday. Or maybe it's just us! We tend to cram our 'stacations' full of activity. As a result I'm exhausted today. It's my first day back at work and I've spent the morning writing up a new pattern and I feel like I need a holiday to recover. Fortunately we've only got two weeks of work and then we're off to Spain for two weeks.

I started working on this blog post last week but I didn't get any further than adding photos. As we did so much on this holiday I thought I'd tell you about it in two blog posts.

We love cycling but we haven't been out on our bikes since end of May. June and July were just so busy and every weekend we were either busy with other stuff or the weather was bad. I like to cycle in dry weather on cycle paths. I hate cycling around town because of the traffic. And I don't like getting wet.


So on the first day of our holiday we headed to the Camel Trail and cycled 13.5 miles in total. The weather was warm and sunny but not hot which was perfect for cycling.


The next day it was a bit more overcast and despite being sore from the day before we headed up to Dartmoor and cycled the Granite Way from Lydford, which is a lovely village on Dartmoor, to Okehampton.



There is some beautiful scenery along the way. On the way to Okehampton we had dry, overcast weather but I didn't take any photos. On the way back we stopped at a bridge to take a couple of photos. Soon after it started raining, so we cycled as fast as we could so we would get back to Lydford without getting too wet. The rain stopped before we got back to Lydford and we dried out a bit. We ended our ride with a light lunch at the pub in Lydford.


Creationfest is a week long Christian event held in Cornwall every August. As it's fairly local to us, we usually take this week off and attend a few days. You can camp on site but as it's so close to our home, we don't camp. Also, I HATE camping and the site is the windiest place in Cornwall.

Creationfest got off to a great start this year. We spend most of the Sunday there. Went home for dinner then went back in the evening to see Martin Smith. If you're a Christian you may have heard of Delirious which was a very well known rock band on the Christian scene. Martin Smith was their lead singer. His set was amazing and we really enjoyed seeing him. Taking a photo of a lit up stage in the distance is not easy but below is Martin Smith in action.


We had planned to go to Creationfest 2-3 days but we enjoyed it so much we went for 4 days in total. In between the worship and talks we managed to sit outside and enjoy the sunshine. I finished two shawls last week.


Pandora (below) has been on the needles for most of this year and I finished it once and realised I'd gotten the shaping wrong and ripped out 80% of it. I've been working on it between other projects but it's finally finished and waiting to be blocked. I'm hoping to publish this pattern in about 2 weeks time. Pandora will be the fifth and final design in the Between The Lines collection. You can purchase the collection now at a discounted price of £8. Once I publish Pandora the collection will be £10.


I also finished my Crème Caramel socks which is my basic toe up sock pattern with extra info for toe up socks newbies. Kate posted a progress picture of her Creme Caramel socks on my Facebook page last week and said: 'I'm on my second pair, I tried a few other patterns but abandoned them, came back to this one and it's lots easier than any of the others!!'


I also started the second Fab Funky Fibres sock. I'm using Creme Caramel as the basics for these socks but I'm adding an afterthought heel instead of the standard gusset and heel flap included in the Creme Caramel pattern. 

Tomorrow I'll share the second half of our 'staycation' which included a trip to Cardiff and a day at the Bristol Balloon Fiesta.

What have you been up to lately?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I meant to say that, in my comment on your previous post, in my experience there appear to be very few specialist yarn shops in Spain, unlike Britain. However, if you keep a look out for a Mercería you will be able to find a small selection of yarn, mainly Katia. El Corte Inglés, the department store, usually has a small selection as well; and, if you have knitted through every project you take and are truly desperate for yarn (been there, many times) then a trip to the local Chinese shop can often unearth some hidden treasure (cheap t-shirt yarn). If you do come across a specialist, independent, yarn store please post the address as, whilst internet shopping is great but sometimes one needs to squeeze and cuddle the yarn before committing to buy it! BTW the festival looked fantastic fun!

Anonymous said...

Thank you Lily. I've been in El Corte Ingles in Murcia before and bought yarn there once many years ago. I've been told there is a yarn shop in Alicante but I couldn't find it last year but I didn't look that hard. But I will try to look for it this year. Good tip about the Chinese shop. There is a big one near where we stay. Never been in it. But if I find a proper yarn shop, I'll mention it on my blog and social media.