Celebration

Over the past 12 months we've been celebrating the start of Guiding. We've had lots of events over the year for girls, but today was chance to say thank you to the adults who run all the units. I've just got back from a garden party where it was most strange to see all these ladies who normally you only ever see in uniform dressed in their best. The weather was little chilly so I was very glad to be able to wear my Aeolian shawl (for only the second time!) for some much needed warmth.
I showed you the finished photos last year but I don't think I ever showed you me wearing it, and it's very nearly guiding blue!


Happy birthday Girlguiding, here's to another 100 years!

Mary, Mary how does your garden grow?

Well not quite with silver bells and cockle shells but certainly it's growing at a great rate of knots.
While I was away riding the weather was sunny and warm and this last week it's rained a bit and the plants have gone crazy! Some of them a bit too crazy as some of the salad leaves have started flowering!

My tomatoes are flowering like crazy, and even the pepper which has clung to life for the last month has put on an inch. The courgettes are starting to show signs of flowering and I had my first mange tout for lunch on Friday. To think, this time last year I hadn't even moved in yet so nothing was growing!

Up hills and down dales

We went for a walk with boyfriends parents yesterday in the Derbyshire Dales, it was one of those damp misty days, that eventually turned to rain.

Very sensibly the cows were lying down.



It's stil raining today so I've been busy catching up on my knitting!

Success

Finally a joyous post. I have a job for next year. It's at one of my old placement schools, and I couldn't be happier! It won't be without it's challenges, but it will be somewhere I an be me, and not feel guilty about it!

I think the cows would approve!

Lots of hills

I've spent the week riding in Mid Wales, the area just north of Hay-On-Wye. None of the hills round there are very big, but they are beautiful swathes of open land where we saw no one all day. Beautiful wide grassy tracks to ride on, and of course the sunny weather all helped to make for a memorable week.



This picture was taken from the top of The Begwns at a place called The Roundabout, which I can't find any information about. It's a circular stone structure on top of the hill, with trees, the sort of thing that there must a history to, and if it was in snowdonia you'd have no trouble, but in this less visited part of the country you struggle!

Return

I've just got back from a week's riding in Mid-Wales. The photos are still on the memory card, but I will put some up later. Knitting has been going well, and Mum and I returned home to find more progress had been made on the house. It's actually starting to look finished which means attention is turning to renovating the garden....

Goodies!

This week I received a parcel from across the Atlantic. Over in the Teachers Who Knit group on Ravelry we tend to organise a swap for this time of year to help us make it through the last little bit of the year.
The parcel I got this year was fantastic!



Two skeins of Alpaca yarn from Knitpicks, a bag of dried apples, a crocheted snowflake, some coloured pencils, some stitch markers and best of all, a whole pack of Black Jack chewing gum. Someone sent me some in the last teacher swap, and I became a little bit addicted. I love all things aniseed and liquorice and this was just perfect!

Thank You swap partner!