This time of year

I love this time of year, the days are at their longest, the garden is starting to grow, and it's time for the Tour de France. Now I don't really do physical exertion of the kid that involves riding a bike, but I love watching other people push their bodies to extremes. I've managed to watch most of the coverage for the past couple of years, one year I managed to contract something that was suspected to be Swine Flu so was kept off work so I didn't contaminate the whole school, and last year I was off sick.
This year of course I can pick my own working hours, and I can definitely sit and drum card while following the early stages of the race. If we get some sprints like last year though all activity requiring concentration is definitely off the cards!

I also love this time of year as I can sign up for some different kinds of challenges, while the cyclists are travelling around France, I'll be trying to spin something for every day that they're riding. I want to see just how much of this Shetland fleece I can spin up. I've already washed it, but I'll be carding it as I go along, so I don't expect to get the whole thing done. Sounds like fun, the Tour de FleeceGroup is on Ravelry.



If you feel like really getting in to the spirit of Le Tour then maybe you might fancy the Tour de France jersey's in batt form. The winners of various competitions with in the race get to wear jersey's of various colours, Maillot Jaune for the race leader, Maillot Vert for the best sprinter, and Maillot a Pois Rouges for the best mountain climber. If you buy the Tour de France batt set from the Shop then you get free postage.

I'm also doing the Tour de France knitalong again. I started knitting a lovely blanket pattern back in February, but since then progress has stalled so I'm using this as incentive to try and finish it off. I've done 2 of the 7 panels, so again I might not finish it.

Nothing much

That about sums it up really, nothing much happening here.
I've finally finished marking GCSE exam papers, which wasn't a pleasant task, but paid well enough over the couple of weeks to mean I can survive with to other income for a while longer. It did however provide some comedy answers, my favourite one being "stem cells are omnipotent"
Meg our bouncy collie has been spayed. So much of the last few days has been spent trying to stop her haring round the house like usual. 24 hours after the operation she thought nothing was wrong with her, and is most upset that she's not getting any walks or her tennis ball thrown. To placate her Mum and I drove over to Llanidloes to see the Wool and Willow Festival, we also snuck in a cup of coffee. As an added bonus Meg thought she's been out somewhere, where as in reality all she did was walk 20 m down by the river to stretch her legs before we dove back home!

I'm now busy stoking the shop back up again, as it got rather empty while I was on a deadline exam marking, hopefully we'll get some better weather soon as well, it seems to have done nothing but rain recently.

Whales and Churches

Not two words that you often read in the same sentence, but on the walk this morning to post the shop parcels (most parcels get delivered to the local post office 2 miles away as we walk the dogs), we called in at our local church where the two things are definitely linked!

When they were doing work on the Mallwyd village church in the 1700's they found some old whale bones. Some claim they're a tusk and a patella, but dragging up my memories form Biology degree they look more like a rib and some other joint, but definitely not a patella. Either way they're pretty unusual objects, who knows how they got 10 miles inland?



The rest of the church is pretty unusual as well, the wood at the top of the bell tower has holes in it which spell out a phrase in Latin, unfortunately my GCSE latin is far too rusty to make a bash at translating it. There's also a lovely old gravestone, with a fantastic example of olde english.



Interestingly the older gravestones are in English and it's not until the 1800's that they start to be written in Welsh. We live in a very welsh speaking area, though nearly 50% of the population are incomers from England (mostly the West Midlands), so English is pretty commonly spoken as well.

Riding in Wales

Mum and I just got back from a weeks riding. We started at Hay-On-Wye and ended up nearly back at home on the beach at Ynyslas. We only got very wet on one day, and on the others we had a few showers, but some fantastic sunshine and beautiful views.

This photo in particular makes me smile so much.


The weather was rather cold for June though, I only rode in a T-Shirt on the first day.


By the end of the holiday going along the beach I was well wrapped up in my waterproof!



We go from hotel/B&B to hotel/B&B carrying everything in the saddle bags, it's amazing how little you can get away with taking when you really try. You ride in one set of clothes, and have another set for the evening, add in a couple of books and some knitting and you're all set!
The horses we ride belong to the company who organise the holiday, and are really fantastic, they're very hard to spook, forward going, and will go for miles (the longest we did was 25 miles).
Now I'm back home I'm finishing off marking exam papers and then it's back to stocking up the shop.

Everything in the garden was lovely...

After the hot spell in April, most of the plants in the garden were really struggling, we've then had a wet May (though not everywhere in the country was so lucky), and now June is warming up again and everything is bursting in to bloom.

Mum and I go off horseriding for a week tomorrow, and when we come back the garden will be awash with colour. All these foxgloves will definitely be out...


The poppies are starting to appear, and the Honeysuckle is just teasing us.



We're fully expecting the hedgerows to be beautiful as we ride along the country lanes. Speaking of Hedgerows I'm leaving the shop up while I'm away, anything sold will be sent out when I get back. Once I'm back I need to spend a few more days marking exam papers, then I'll be settling down with the fluff to create some brand new colours.

The Beach

I've not posted for a while, sorry about that...
I've been busy building up stock in the shop (I start exam marking in a week, and then go on holiday so will be too busy to play with fluff and sparkle for a while), and I went back to Sheffield for a weekend. BeforeI made the decision to leave work I booked my Rainbows to go on an overnight trip, and I felt like I couldn't let them down. I also got to catch up with some friends which was nice. The Rainbows were as lovely as ever, though I finished the weekend exhausted.
We made some gorgeous Fairy Houses though.





I spent the next few days catching up with things, and yesterday we took the dogs out for the morning. We went up to a place called The Blue Lagoon, which is a flooded slate mine above Fairbourne. The water is very very deep, and in the sunshne really is bright blue. The dogs had a lovely time fetching sticks, though Meg had a shock when she went out of her depth.



After that we went down to the beach, the dogs ran themselves ragged chasing after balls, and we waded through the streams trying not to go above welly height. Topped off by coffee and homemade jam tarts in the sand dune, and then chips at lunch it was a rather lovely day.

The Biggest Waterfall in Wales

We went for a walk yesterday up a beautiful valley to see a waterfall. apparently it's the biggest waterfall in Wales. We're not quite sure what makes it the biggest (is it most water, tallest biggest drop...) but it was certainly very impressive!



It was very very windy though, we ended up changing our route back down as the ridge we were trying to walk down was very unpleasant with the wind right in your face.
In a way that had it's own bonuses though as we found these pine cones. They're this years cones, and are a beautiful shade of maroon, which contrasts beautifully against the lime green needles. I'm tempted to use it as inspiration for the shop, but I fear that once spun up it would turn in to mucky sludge!

However, I think some roving in theses colours would produce some gorgeous yarn...



Mum and I have been watching these buds for the past week as we couldn't quite remember what colour they were... turns out they look like this!