Scenic loveliness

Posted on August 13, 2012 by The Little Room of Rachell

I have some scenic piccys of North Wales for you to, hopefully, enjoy. What a stunning country!

I’ve put them into a gallery setting, so click on the first picture and view them at your own pace.

: Barmouth

: Spot the missing letter? Missing for at least 3 years I might add. I think they’ve decided to go with it!

: The view from our cottage of lake Trawsfyndd and Snowdonia national park

: Do you think I resisted, or bought this crochet pattern?

: Llandudno Victorian pier which is half a mile long. I could have stared at it for hours, I certainly took a lot of photographs of it!

: Boat trips, singing and tug of war on the beach for the children, drippy ice creams and independent shops to browse, not to mention drinks and a delicious meal with our lovely friend Lucy in a gorgeous pub called The Cottage Loaf – this is a seaside town to revisit.

: At the end of pier

: Typical view, shame about the wire but I didn’t want to cut the turbulent sky by editing the photo

: Castles everywhere! This is at Criccieth

: Some Welsh for you on a cafe board in Pwllheli

: Treats for me!

: Pecan pie batter cheesecake with a pot of earl grey. Simply yum.

: The lake at the beginning of sunset

: A walk on Barmouth beach the same evening, it was funny watching waggy tailed small dogs swim with big sticks!

: Birthday presents to open! I LOVED the knitted design.

: Progress report on my holiday cross stitch. It’s very relaxing especially with a G&T!

: Slightly closer up. It’s completed now, apart from adding the tassell and felt backing. This was a bargain charity shop find last year for 95p. I’ve bought my next cross stitch project today….

We had such a lovely relaxing time away that it’s hard not to wander about in a daze now I’m home.

As it was my birthday I was treated to a night at a nice hotel in Cardiff at the end of the holiday. There we saw plenty of purple and orange clad London 2012 volunteers who had stayed in the hotel to help at the last Olympic football match in Cardiff Stadium. There was a real festive air in the city with a big screen showing live events. The only visible security was X-ray machines at the hotel entrance which was presumably to check the players’ bags and equipment.

I’m glad the Olympics went so well and were enjoyed by so many. I was glued to lots of the events and found that I cried when athletes won, when they lost, at the reactions of their supporters and the audience. A fortnight of teary eyes is enough for anyone and I can stop for a few weeks now, until the Paralympics anyway.

I’ll be back to show you some crafty purchases I treated myself to today and a surprise I received in the mail. I hope to show you my winnings shortly too, when they arrive, as I entered a giveaway last weekend and WON!

HURRAY!!!!

What have you been up to lately? Any trips planned?

::Thank you for all your encouraging comments about Prachi’s bag, it hasn’t arrived yet but I’ll keep you posted.

Red White & Blue London

Posted on May 27, 2012 by The Little Room of Rachell

Yesterday I met a group of friends to share some books, have a few drinks, some lunch and a wander by the Thames.

It was a perfectly sunny day as you’ll see, so I walked from Baker Street (Sherlock Holmes lived there you know, at least in lots of our imaginations!) grabbed some breakfast from M&S in Oxford street and walked down to Trafalgar Square to sit by a fountain to picnic and watch the world go by (and the minutes tick down to the Olympics) until a friend, G, came to meet me…

A perfect day full of laughing and fun.

Happy weekend to you all wherever you are. :-D

Red White & Blue

Posted on May 23, 2012 by The Little Room of Rachell

The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee (60 years! What a woman!) and London 2012 Olympic Games are rushing towards us now. Currently the torch is travelling around the country, being passed from hand to hand. This morning I’ve heard that it’s in Wiltshire, and was being carried part of the way by a woman who has raised a lot of money for charity. It’s really good that non-celebs/sports-people are having a turn and are honoured for their service to the community or whose talents are recognised.

For the past while I’ve been taking a few of these types of pictures…

This is a road in Oxford in case you’re wondering.

And, the next one made me smile!

Creative display methods reflecting the times eh?

So the shops are getting well on board, selling anything and everything red, white and blue. With a fair few Jubilee biscuit tins etc. Good for them! I like to see it.

On another track, I walked (a 3.3m round trip – loving Endomondo sports tracker!) to a library on Monday and discovered they have a host of craft books on all sorts of the topics including: quilting, patchwork, jewellery, knitting, cake decorating….and crochet…a reallllly good selection of crochet books. So I grabbed five randomly and took them outside to sit in the sun (yes! we have sun now…hurrah!!!!!) in the quite beautiful library garden. Next time I go maybe I’ll take some photos, it’s full of clever planting, with benches placed at intervals in the quiet corners behind plants, trees and sculptures. The benches are painted a lovely blue, you can see the colour behind the books in the photos, which really works with the setting.

The Dudes book has some very nice jumpers in it with a variety of sizes. I ‘might’ have a try at something wearable later in the year. And no; I’m not ‘a dude’ but I did like the look of the solid, chunky clothes unlike lots of crocheted items for women which are often all holey and not really flattering to actually wear. Unless you’re a willowy model IMHO. The male models are pretty yummy too in this book – some of them – so that’s definitely a recommmeded ‘book to browse’ from me!

I made some notes on which patterns I liked in the books as I went, so I can go back and borrow a few at some point. There are even more to go and peruse some other time too.

Thanks to blogger Jill from Nice Piece of Work for commenting on my charity shop book at the weekend. She prompted me have a look for craft books when I was returning a novel (Lost Lady -Willa Cather, recommended read particularly if you like classic American fiction.)

I’m off to walk around the grounds of a Palace now, will post some pics soon.

Enjoy the sun, if you have some wherever you are. :-D

Saltburn, North Yorkshire

Posted on April 18, 2012 by The Little Room of Rachell

It seems ages since I last posted. Life has been very busy, but the fun kind of busy. No work!

I really wanted to post my pictures of the Olympic yarn bombing since they show the amazing knitting in detail. To be honest when we went to Saltburn (my first ever visit) I had forgotten that was where it was, and to I suppose if I had remembered I would have imagined none of was still there. During the time we walked from one end of the pier to the other the caneoist had been taken…I wonder how much is left a week and a half on?

I have many photos to share; you might want to make a cup of tea or a G&T!

Aren’t they amazing? Sooo much work and skill went into making this collection. Now you can see why I just found it hard to select a couple!

After lots of looking, exclaiming and photographing we went for a long walk and found more of this for my collection….

I really thought there might be a message in it. S thought the message was “…buy more whisky!”

…he stayed on for a while after this, it was impressive.

I have pictures from Scarborough and Whitby, and then there’s trip #2 which was Dublin, that was a really, really good week. Suffice to say I slept for 9.5 hrs when I came home after all the shenanigans!

BUT I’ll probably get back to the crochet focus soon instead. :-)