Out and about, part 1

What did I say the other day about being a more regular blogger?  Anyhow, we'll gloss over that and get back to the business at hand.  With the return of the sunshine of the last few weeks, we've been able to get out and about and what better thing to do that introduce one of your old childhood haunts to your own munchkin?  So the other weekend on the way to visit my grandparents, we stopped off at Hylands Park.  These days it's probably best known as one of the venues of the V festival but when I grew up, it was my local park and where we went most weeks to walk the dog. 

 There are acres and acres of grounds to walk round and apart from around the main house, it's allowed to stay pretty wild.  What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than wandering through all the wildflowers?  When I was little, the house was just a wreck although the formal gardens were always kept up and they're still beautiful now.

 The house looks fab since they've done it up, the white stone really glows in the sunshine.  Nice cafe in the stableblock too, secondhand book stall, obigatory plant stall and touristy shop.  In fact, you'd be forgiven for thinking you were at a National Trust property.  Still, the cake was nice, the tea pot was huge, the sun was shining....


Found some rather cool art work in the grounds too with little animals and plants carved into all the nooks and crannies.  We were all very impressed. It's by a local artist Michael Barter, you can check out his website too.

Do you have enough fibre in your diet?

Now if i can just find an end....

It's all in a dyes work

Sock yarns for saturday

A friendly postman

Always brings treats!

Life is...... good, I think.

I'm generally not a great one for writing long introspective posts, this is primarily a craft blog after all.  However, until about a year or so ago, it also included odd snippets of my life with my little man as they so often influence the direction my projects take.  Events as always overtake us and while angry and disillusioned with certain members of my extended family, I made the conscious decision to exclude those parts of our life and make this a purely craft blog.  As always when you make decisions like that they invariably have an unintended side effect and I found that rather than blogging being a fun thing anymore, it had become a chore.  Hence the sporadic posting of recent months.

Anyhow, I digress, back to the present day.  Sometimes unexpected events happen to make you reevaluate your life and the way you look at things.  I've had a fantastic Easter away in Manchester, most of it spent decorating my sister's house but I also got a glorious reminder of what my life was like before responsibility kicked in and grounded me - I got to spend a completely child free weekend away with the "grown ups".  As much as I love my little man and wouldn't be without him, it also reminded me what I've been missing out on.  Don't get me wrong, my life is pretty full but I hadn't realised quite how much I'd allowed parenthood to define me rather than being my own person.  I've spent most of the last few days working out in the garden catching up on all the spring jobs.  Manual labour is great but it also gives your mind far too much free time to wander and dwell on things that have happened.  

So what to do now?  I have some wonderful friends here, in fact I have more female friends at this stage than I have ever had in my life.  They've provided so much support and encouragement over the last couple of years and I have definately grown as a result because of it, I am now designing more and have built a good foundation for my little yarny business.  I've also realised, I'm not angry any more and that I can be the bigger person, that I don't need to allow someone else's bad behaviour to affect how I view the world.  However, there's still something missing and I obviously need to get a better balance in my personal life. 

I need to make some changes and while they may not happen all that quickly, I've an idea where I need to be going and I think of how to get there.  That has to be a good thing right?  In the meantime, I'm going to make the most of everything going on here and look forward to a fun weekend with my knitty friends.  I can make random postings of things that have caught my eye and hopefully return to loving my blog again.  Has it helped to get all this off my chest?  I think so but I guess we'll find out over the next few weeks.

Mutant crochet?

I think i have tension issues!

Water, water everywhere