October | 2010 | Heather Knits

For anyone in the Barnes (South-West London) area who would like to hear some fun music for free on Friday (8th October), the band I play in, Barnes Concert Band (I play 2nd trombone), will be doing a joint concert with a Swiss brass band called Fanfare de Gryon at 7.30pm at St Michael and All Angels Church, Elm Bank Gardens, Barnes, London. More information here. We would love to see you, and if you do come, then come up and say hello.

We will be playing the first half, with the Swiss doing the second half, and then we will join together at the end. We are playing a variety of fairly recent music, not particularly well known stuff, but a good variety of classical style and big band style, and they have nice tunes 🙂 I’m not sure about the Swiss band’s program but think there are doing several marches, and some songs from the shows. We are playing the Liberty Bell for our joint piece (if I am remembering rightly that was the Monty Python music).

Back at the beginning of September we had a lovely week’s holiday in south west Scotland, with a few days staying with my parents in North Yorkshire on our way up and back again. I have finally got round to downloading the photos from the camera and having a sort through.

The weather was a bit variable, but in general pretty good for the time of year, although it did rain on us horribly while we walked up Roseberry Topping whilst visiting my parents. You can see the wall of rain approaching from the distance in this photo. We had high winds and hail too! Luckily we also had somewhere to dry out and warm up once we had finished our walk, and that makes all the difference 🙂

One of the fields we could see from the top of the hill was full of fairly recent hay bales, and rather reminded me of beads on garter stitch, or possibly rib.

Up in Scotland we stayed in a lovely B&B in Castle Douglas. We had a lovely holiday, pottering around, taking nice walks, going to a few second hand bookshops, and visiting lots of Historic Scotland sites.

This is Sweetheart Abbey:

and this is Dundrennan Abbey:

We also looked round the gardens at Castle Kennedy, and saw this fantastic lichen, which made me think of Rosie 🙂

On the way back to my parents we stopped at Jedburgh Abbey, another spectacular building.

Then with my parents we went to Rievaulx Abbey.

Quite a cultured holiday 🙂

With all those busy days I needed some nice restful knitting for the evenings, so started a baby blanket for the new niece.

I am using Sirdar Snuggly 4ply and 4mm needles. It will be a hap shawl style, like the mini one we did in Chris’s Lace class, but square this time rather than triangular. The centre square is all garter stitch, knitted on the diagonal, and was excellent holiday knitting. Especially when it was small it was easy to pull in and out of a bag and work a row or two of even when I was a bit tired and brain dead. Since taking that photo it has grown a bit, I shall photograph it again when it finally stops raining! Around the garter stitch centre, there will be a feather and fan border, and then a simple zigzag edging. It is a very enjoyable project to knit, but progress has slowed now that it has got a bit big to drag around everywhere. Still I am hopeful I will get it finished soon, particularly since I am hoping to send it out to my new niece with my parents when they go to visit in a couple of weeks. Nothing like a deadling to give one a spot of motivation 🙂

Continuing on the theme of sometimes inclement weather we had a rather cold and wet day out last Sunday demonstrating spinning with the West Surrey Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers at Loseley Park, for their country fair.

Luckily Rosemary was a life-saver and dashed out for hot chocolate half way through the afternoon which did well to defrost us.

Due to the weather there were definitely a lot fewer people than there had been at the same event last year. Although one bonus of this was that we had more time to talk to the people who were there. I am trundling along with spinning the merino / silk. The end is definitely in sight!