Age of Steam, prehistoric, Age of Sail

The day after Stonehenge, we decided to go to STEAM, a train museum in Swindon. Swindon is almost directly north of Salisbury, but we wanted to take the train, so we made two sides of a big triangle out to Bath and back to Swindon. This was kinda fun, taking the train for a little jaunt. And we got there and saw this locomotive on a flatbed truck! Imagine the glee amongst the 8-year-olds! Who's ever seen a locomotive on a truck!??
And that was just the beginning. This museum is built in the old GWR yard, where for more than a hundred years everything train-like was made. They made the steel for the engines, the brass handles and the upholstered cushions. There were 12,000 people working there at once! They made an engine named Mary, named for the boss's wife, and engines with 2-meter driving wheels. It was quite wild, with things to climb on and levers to pull, and we even got to walk under a train on the rails.
When it was time to head back, we decided to stop in Bath to look around for a bit and have dinner, and somehow we found ourselves taking a bus tour. We saw all the nice buildings, and on the last leg of the tour, passed the Postal Museum!
What a dummy, I'd never even thought of it! But there it was, a little storefront full of red things (models of post boxes and telephone boxes and mail trucks and all), and the last visitors leaving as the woman locked the door... "Bring the kids back tomorrow," she called, "It's all free." Argh. Well, I know where it is now, anyways!
There was some musical event going on in the abbey so we couldn't see that either! We had dinner and trained back to Salisbury.

The next day we went to Avebury. If you have a map, you will see that Avebury (that group of stones near Marlborough) is quite close to Swindon, north of Salisbury. One idea had been to see both in the same day on the bus, but for whatever reason, we didn't do it that way. So after our roundabout train ride (Bath is off the map, through Chippenham), we took the bus to Avebury.

It took forever! Every little town on that route has a bus stop, and so the 25 mile trip took 2 hours. And all the while, you can hear the BOOOM.......BOOOOM...... of the army practising with their big guns on Salisbury plain! There were signs at the side of the road warning of slow tanks crossing! But we eventually got there. The stones make a huge circle, so it's hard to get a picture that shows it all unless you are in an airplane... There were sheep keeping the grass neat, but Elaine, getting crabbier and more miserable day by day, complained that the field was too pooey and demanded to be carried again! The one excellent thing for the kids was the kites! We tied yarn (brought along for spool-knitting on trains) to plastic shopping bags, and the kids were endlessly amused. Arthur let go of his once and had to climb down into the encircling ditch to get it! They got to explain to all passers-by what they were doing, they got to disentangle string from thorn bushes -- it was a great idea!
We walked around the circle, went to the museum, which is in an old thatched barn with bats in the thatch, and walked out to Silbury Hill, a totally manufactured prehistoric hill sticking up out of the plain. There have been holes dug in the hill and nothing has been found inside it. No tomb, no buried treasure, just a hill. After all our exertions, we had an excellent plowman's lunch (for afternoon snack!) at the pub and headed back on our epic bus ride!

One rainy day, our B&B host had suggested going to Portsmouth. We had never thought of this, not realising how easy it is to get places on the train. The distances are not very great, and an hour on the train is so much better than any distance on the bus! So on our last day, we decided to see what was there. On our way, we passed the hugest container port we'd ever seen, with big gantry cranes and piles and piles of containers stacked up over acres, waiting for a ship or a train to take them somewhere. It was another thrill for the machine guys, lemme tell you! And this is what was awaiting us! At the historic Portsmouth dock, they have the remains of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's ship, and they have the Warrior, an iron-clad ship with both sails and a steam engine, and this baby, the Victory, the ship on which Lord Nelson died in the battle of Trafalgar! How circular, eh? We start in Trafalgar Square and end on Nelson's ship. Nice. This is still a ship in the British Navy, with a captain and crew, though I think it must be a rather cushy position, since the ship is bolted into drydock and is used mainly for large dinners in the captain's quarters. The queen had been aboard a few days earlier to celebrate the big anniversary! They've got all the cannon in position, and all the ropes hanging from the yardarms (or whatever they're called) and it's all beautifully kept. There's a little plaque on the deck to mark where Nelson fell, shot by a Spaniard, I believe. The anchor weighs 4 tons, it takes 8 men to hold the wheel in heavy weather, they carried 2 tons of butter (the last of which was rancid by the time they got to it) and there are 23 miles of ropes. Or was it 27? Anyways, lots of ropes. The kids enjoyed themselves, and Elaine consented to walk, as her head was at risk of bumping on those narrow, steep stairs!
Another trial to find some food, and we ended up at a Pizza Hut. They use some computer communications between the waiters and the cook, and our order went down the pipe just as they were changing the paper in the printer, so it never was received in the kitchen. When they finally realised that we had been sitting there for an hour with no food, they gave us our dinner for free, which was nice, but what a schmozzle...


Finally we bid farewell to the Holmhurst B&B, home to fried bread and other yummies, we got on the train for London and home. We meant to stop again in London for some fun, but we were all pooped out. Another quick look at the Embankment, underground to King's Cross, and home to bed.

And now I have to clean up the house, do laundry, wash dishes, get groceries and maybe even buy a new pair of shoes because I have to go out to a nice dinner on Sunday, all before 3 pm. I'll report in when Auntie Mary and Gramma Dee arrive!

Not prehistoric, prehistoric...

Fortified with our English breakfasts, we marched off to the cathedral Monday morning. This picture was taken the Sunday evening, in the clear sunshine, but next day, it was dreary and grey. We had a tour of the inside, and Stephen and Arthur then went up the tower, but they didn't let kids as small as Elaine on that tour, so she and I did the kid activity of "find the winged horse in the stained glass and the hedgehog on the big memorial" which was fun. The boys first saw the interior of the church, then Arthur had to pretend to be a worker from the 13th century and turn this big wheel, which was used to lift large loads of building stone. They used 4 men and could lift a ton in half an hour! Arthur had to do it alone, but only for a few minutes, and with
no load, so that was fine! Then when they reached the top of the tower (bottom of the spire) they went outside and looked at the view. Hmm, they say you can see Old Sarum in the distance!

We also saw the museum that day, which had lots of stuff about Stonehenge and its rocks, as well as old clothing (very fancy schmancy dresses and jewels, and the odd red coat for the soldiers) and ceramics and flintlocks and all that stuff!


On the way home we passed this lovely house, with stripes of brick and flint stones. Nice, eh? We saw a lot of brick and flint, but none quite so stripey as this!

Next day we headed off to Stonehenge. It was pretty efficient to go on the bus, and since it was a blustery day in October there were only about a quazillion people there, instead of the 20 quazillion there must be in the summer!

When I was little, we lived in England twice when my dad (my one loyal reader!) was on sabbatical, and we came to Stonehenge and just wandered among the stones, sitting on the flat ones! But alas, no more... The barrier is not too intrusive, but it would be great to get closer and mingle with the stones, if you know what I mean.
So here you have me and the kids (Elaine was starting to get sick, and the wind really was pretty outrageous, so I had to lug her around a lot!) and Stephen and Arthur trying to hear their audio guides. We took all the classic shots, and then some, but I think you've all seen pictures of big rocks before, and they are exactly the same as everyone else's shots, since we all walk around exactly the same route!

Now, being a knit-blogger, I knew it was my job to show my half-knitted sock a good time at this great photo op. So I had a sock ready... I've taken sock pictures at several places, but a sock on a flint wall is just not the same as a sock at Stonehenge... and I completely forgot about it in the wind and the kid-lugging.

I was crushed.

Obviously I had failed; I was not a true member of the knitting blogosphere, or blogiverse, or whatever... So, I tried to make up for it, by taking this picture of the sock and the grass and probably a sheep or two and junk in the background, when some bird flew in and made it a much more interesting picture! I hope it's some rare blue-crested walamazoo or something, but I think it's probably a crow.

And, where, you are asking, were all the post boxes? Well, I was quite disappointed in the post-box situation in town. You'd think a town so full of old buildings would have a bunch of Victorian post boxes, but I didn't find any.
Some George V, which I'll show you one day, and quite a few tiny little ones, including an Elizabeth II near Old Sarum. But the most odd, I thought, was this space-age (made in 1980, according to the Bath Postal Museum) EIIR at Stonehenge! (Sorry, I think Arthur is sticking his tongue out.) I like this style a lot, and especially at an ancient monument. The aliens must really have landed here, built Stonehenge, and left some bit of their spacecraft behind.

Let's see, the next day we advanced beyond prehistoric to the Age of Steam... Tune in tomorrow! Actually, tomorrow my mother-in-law and sister-in-law are coming from Victoria BC to visit, and it would be polite of me to get the dishes done and stuff, so I'll do my best, but can't promise. Elaine has been home from school for 2 days with hacky cough and fatigue, but she'll just have to be restored enough to go to school tomorrow!

Old Sarum

Our first full day at Salisbury was a Sunday, and lots of things were closed and we didn't feel like touristing around the cathedral on a Sunday, so we set off for Old Sarum. The bus schedule was typical Sunday -- a bus every hour or two -- so we walked the couple of miles, stopping at a pub for an enormous lunch!
Old Sarum was a hill fort for centuries and William the Conquerer had a castle here and even built a large cathedral. This is the big ditch around the central hill. Dug by hand, of course, in the chalky earth. In the 1200s, the church and castle were not getting along and the bishop decided to build a new church down the hill, where there was a better water supply anyways! So they built a new cathedral and the whole town just moved! Some time later a king let the new church take the stone from the old church to build itself a big wall to enclose the church and grounds, so one can see little carvings and decorative bits in the wall in town, although they're all jumbled up! This picture of Arthur in the ruins is almost unique, in that he is not sticking his tongue out. The sense of humour of the eight-year-old is a bit trying....

This outline is all that remains of the old church! It's outside the big ditch, on a huge grassy field that the kids enjoyed even more than the ruins, perhaps! Arthur got himself a slingshot (though I think it was called a catapult, to give it that historical edge) and Elaine got a helmet for jousting, and they rocketed around the cloister (a square piece of grass with a little ditch around it!) with big boys tossing a rugby ball, toddlers toddling, and a few parents catching their breath. We did manage to get a bus back into town, and we checked at the bus station about schedules for future expeditions.

The next day, after our B&B English Breakfast, including fried bread for Arthur, we went to the cathedral, which I'll tell you about tomorrow.

Our half-term trip

Like many epic journeys, ours included King's Cross station, where Elaine tried her best to get onto Platform 9 3/4, without success. You can see they provide you with a cart!

We planned to get to London early-ish last Saturday and see some things, maybe take a bus tour to give the kids an idea of the place, before getting the train to Salisbury, but we were slow getting out the door, just missed a train, and got to King's Cross at lunch time. So we ate, took a bus to Trafalgar Square, which was full of barriers, sound and light equipment, loud heroic music and a bazillion people, all celebrating the 200th anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar and the death of Lord Nelson.

We just wanted to look at pigeons and big statues of lions, so we avoided the large gang of navy recruiters and headed off towards Big Ben. We didn't end up at Big Ben, but we saw this post box, which I thought photo-worthy for the following reasons: it's graffiti'd, which ya don't see in Cambridge; it's Edward VII, which I hadn't seen in this style before; and it has the stickers above the two slots, one for 1st class and one for 2nd. Just a small delight on our way through town... "Stop, lemme find the camera... oooh, who wants a smushed banana from the bottom of my bag... wait, some kid come and stand here for scale..."

We got down to the Thames, but as we had gone on a bit of a diagonal, we didn't come out at the Westminster Bridge, but at a footbridge on the Embankment. The Embankment was built partly to disguise the new (in Victorian times) sewage pipes and drains, and there is a plaque there to Joseph William Bazalgette, the engineer who was finally able to get London's sewage going somewhere other than just into the river, after some cholera epidemics and something called The Big Stink.

We paid no attention to this enormous wonder of civil engineering, but crossed the river to a park where we saw these mime artists all painted silver who would bow slowly when anyone put money in their pot, and this escape artist who, after juggling in a capable but not stellar way, actually got someone to put him in a straightjacket and then wrap him up in a chain. He put on a piece of music that was three minutes long, shimmied and wriggled around, and managed his escape! Hooray! Not quite the sight-seeing we had planned, but the kids liked it fine, and we were now near Waterloo Station, where we got our train to Salisbury.



We got there in plenty of time for dinner, but had to wander all over town to find a place that was not too posh, allowed kids in, had food on Saturday night, and was not completely filled with smoke. This proved to be a recurring challenge! I don't know what it is with the smoking, but people smoke constantly, in train stations, in the park with the kids, even riding their bikes!

Anyways, Salisbury is a lovely old town with lots of half-timbered buildings, a market area with streets named Oatmeal Row and Butcher Row, and a cathedral with the highest spire in England. Also variable weather! Here is the cathedral in light evening cloud.

Well, I had thought this trip summary would be much shorter and quicker than the epic about Mull, but it looks like it'll take days and days to relate. At least my internet connection is fine and fully functional, so I can spend all my time doing this..... I waited for 5 hours today for a technician to come and plug in a new modem! Sheesh.

We're back home safe and sound

We made our epic journey to Salisbury, saw all the sights and made it home again. We'll get the photos sorted and so on and give you the whole scoop! Highlights include a 25-mile bus trip to Avebury, which took 2 hours; multiple pubs in Salisbury which didn't allow kids in, or didn't have food on weekends, leaving us to eat at Burger King and Pizza Hut; taking the sock to Stonehenge and then forgetting to take its picture among the stones; getting to the Postal Museum in Bath just as the woman was locking the door, and much more!
Now I have to get the kids off to school, do tons of laundry, and wonder what our neighbourhood here will do on Halloween!

It's Fall

The mornings are getting chilly and misty. The apples are ripe (unfortunately, these are not our apples, but we visited with them the other day, and brought home a bagful) and winter woollies will be needed soon!

So, I've started on a sweater in Summer Tweed for myself! This should take forever, perhaps till next spring, since I'm turning it into a faux Fassett and making diamonds of colour all over it. I've done almost two full rows of diamonds and have done enough funny things with my colour changes that I'm thinking of turning it into a Drunken Argyle. Here is an early and bad flash picture, with the colours looking rather gaudy and all, but you can see the tangle I'm getting myself into. And this is just the first piece, a measly few inches of sleeve! How long before I decide this is just a cuff design, and make the rest of the sweater horizontal stripes??

Next week we are off on holiday again. One thing I love about the British schools is their custom of a week off here and there for "half-term." So we will be in Salisbury, seeing the church and its spire, and Stonehenge and other old rocks, and since the whole area used to be home to wealthy wool merchants, perhaps we'll find a nice yarn shop or two. Certainly I expect sheep. Actually, we have a bundle of things planned, but are attempting to keep it simple and relaxed. Ha. But we may even go away without the Mac, if that's possible! So I may be out of touch till Halloween!

I'm not taking the new sweater on holiday, either!

FOs all over the place

Part of my preparation for the knitted wedding was of course to pick something to knit on the train ride to London. I had this handspun mohair/silk (if I remember correctly) which I bought at a craft market on Hornby Island a couple of summers ago. I was going to put it in The Sweater That Makes Me Sneeze, but then decided I'd like to use it on its own. I think it was not that expertly spun, as it kept twisting around itself, and I also think it was dyed first and then spun, leaving little candy-cane twists where the red meets the green. And that's all I can tell you about spinning! I started it days before I even got on the train (just to try it out, you know) and since there wasn't all that much yarn in the skein, finished it in time for Katherine to wear it to the wedding. It's my approximation of this scarf. Through the wonders of blocking, it now wraps cosily around my neck, but it's about the shortest scarf around!

The rest of the day I knit on this multidirectional scarf, in weirdo variegated 100% nylon. I like the faded-jeans look of it, but wonder what one will actually do with a nylon scarf! Just decorative, I suppose. We shall see. I think I'll just keep this around for future train knitting... It's quite fun so far to see the short rows actually work out. I have three balls of this yarn, so the scarf promises to be long enough!




And this cushion cover is from the yarn that I bought at Loop in London. Take three skeins of Colinette Point Five, make an envelope, shove a pillow form in. Three buttons and you're done. I really like the colours. Poopedy green is an old fave of mine, but I wouldn't have thought to add the peachy pinks in with it.

It is apparently Knitting Week here in the UK. The department store is having knitting classes and a knitathon tomorrow to knit squares for a charity blanket. And I've heard of a gang that gets together Thursday afternoons, so maybe I'll give that a try today.

I brought home Mary Poppins on DVD from the library the other day, and the kids have been downright reluctant to watch it for some reason, so I thought I'd watch it myself since I'd paid for it and all. This time I noticed that the family lives on a street with a hexagonal Victorian pillar box, and the bank the dad works in is surprisingly similar to Gringotts! I wonder if they were filmed in the same place, or if there is a plethora of big banks like that!
Our family lore says that when Mary Poppins first came out, my big sister took me to see it. She was maybe 18 and I was maybe 5. And at the end of the movie I just cried and cried and cried and cried and cried and cried and cried, because Mary Poppins goes away, you see. Well, since I was all alone here yesterday, no one need ever know what happened, but I tell ya, that's about the most dreadful ending in all cinema... just ... dreadful...

I did manage to pick out the great dance scenes and once the kids saw the chimneysweeps, they gladly watched other snippets. That Dick Van Dyke could sure dance, eh? Sigh.

Lotsa love and laughs in London

Ah, Sirdar Bubbly, 2005, a very fine wine... This was some of the spread at the knitted wedding I went to yesterday! It was a fantastic thing, a good time with a great bunch of people -- creative, thoughtful and friendly! I really wish Freddie and Ben all the best... I'd never laid eyes on these people before the wedding, but I had a great time and everyone seemed to be quite at ease with a bunch of knitters taking pictures and knitting through the ceremony and throwing pompoms around!

(I've made all the pictures small; just click to see a big version!)

Let's start at the beginning: I had to get up early-ish to catch a train. Usually when I travel I have gone by plane, which means that if you're leaving at 9:01, you have to be checking in at 7, get the cab at 6:15, so you have to be up with the sun. But in fact, if you get a train, you can run onto the platform at 8:56 and still get on and get a seat. Whatever, I got up way early, got out the door, found the bank machine and got to the bus stop about an hour before the train was to leave. Good thing, because after about 3 seconds I realised there are no buses running in Cambridge at 8 am on a Sunday! So I walked across town and actually just missed the 8:30 train! So all worked out just fine...

I met Katherine at Kings Cross, where I did find Platform 9 3/4, and a gaggle of muggles trying to get the cart through the wall. Katherine and I took a wee detour up to Loop, an amazing yarn store full of all sorts of wonders. I hemmed and hawed over this recycled cotton yarn from K1C2 but none of the colours did it for me. I finally came out with 3 hanks of Point Five in Castagna and two balls of Opal sock yarn. When in the store I overheard some people say they'd come down from Cambridge, and it turned out they were in town for the wedding, too! I wonder if I can meet up with them on one of their knitting nights, but it won't happen this week.

Barry drove us to Battersea Park, and we knew we were in the right place when we came upon this tombstone/recipe, and garlands of pompoms on the fence. The ushers had knitted bowties and pompoms in their buttonholes.
And when I got to the knitted glitter ball, I was *sure* I was in the right place. Must make one! The picture's not great, but it's knitted of silvery ribbony shiny stuff with little round mirrors stuck on. Splendid!

It was hard to get good pictures of all the decorations. The wedding was in a smallish square room, and there was a balcony around, where most of the hangers-on stood, and looked straight down on the proceedings. There were garlands of pompoms and knitted birds, there were little offerings of knitted vegetables and some mice and a hedgehog! There were three sets of rings, one of which was sitting on a little cushion that I had made and sent in. When I was thinking what to do, I saw some golden sparkly yarn and thought "I must knit shoes out of that!" but realised I couldn't do that... so I bought some nice colours of tapestry wool and made a little cushion with tiny mitered squares.
And here it is with two golden i-cord rings, along with some bouquets and another little case with very lovely silvery rings.

We all ooooh'd and aaaaah'd for a while, and knit, and chatted, and then the ceremony began. These people had been married before and were renewing their vows. I wonder if one of the toddlers in the crowd was theirs, as there was a distinct Dr Seuss element to the whole thing! "I will take her for my wife, I will love her all my life." "I will love him when we're rich, and when we're poor and in a ditch."

One of the bridesmaids continued to sew white squares to the bride's train during the ceremony.

The official photographer, I suppose, with his multiple cameras, one knitted!












And finally, outside for the pompom confetti, a quick beer in the sunshine, the cutting of the
cake and then a dance under the glitter ball! Here are the happy couple with their friendly chimneysweep, (and you can spot me and Kath in the crowd behind) and the marvellous cake, complete with knitted knife!

After all the fun and games, we did a bit of sight-seeing, crossing the Millennium Bridge and having a cuppa at the Tate Modern before heading back to the train.

This morning we realised there was no bread, so I had to go take my jar of jam to the store, buy bread and a banana, sit outside the school making a sandwich, and take it in to Elaine so she wouldn't starve at lunchtime! The troubles that happen when Mommy goes to town for a day!

It's done at last!

Hooray! It's a little shorter than perfect, but it's fine, it's comfy, and it's done. He has Somewhere To Go next week, so I made that a deadline, coz otherwise it could have sat around for another 6 months. I started this "quick, simple" cardigan in the spring of 2004, and missed a birthday, Xmas, and another birthday! Ah well, I'm glad to get it over with. And if things go the usual way, he'll wear it for years!
I ordered a pattern from Rowan yesterday, which they are supposed to e-mail to me, and it hasn't come yet. How long can it take for them to e-mail me a file? I was somewhat embarassed to buy a pattern for a simple raglan pullover, but I figure if someone else has figured out how many Summer Tweed stitches I need in the sleeves, I'm willing to pay, rather than spend the time anguishing about it.
Onward -- you'll see that pink cardigan finished in no time!

Something got finished!

I actually finished something! But wait, you say, that is not a pink cotton cardigan, nor is it a sweater for your husband! What's going on? Well, I am going to London this weekend and going to the Knitted Wedding, and when I e-mailed to say I was coming, I asked about hats, and was encouraged to have a wild hat. But I don't actually have a proper hat, so I made this headband from Kureyon scraps, and I hope it is the right mix of kooky and ... whatever else. It certainly is knitted, that I can tell you! I started with a white band, but once the flowers got going, I realized it was not right and got the grey/black out. What a fine thing to have a bag of tiny little bits of Kureyon... I might even make more doodads for it, who knows...
And about the husband-sweater... All the big pieces have been made for months. I'm sure I was stuck for several weeks wondering if boy buttonholes go on the left or the right. Now that I'm actually doing it, it's insanely boring, and I still have about a meter to go, with buttonholes now!
Mere days before we left Toronto, I was looking at this mostly-finished project and at my unused yarn. I had a bit of a ball and three full 100-g balls of Cotton Fleece, and I knew that was at least two and a half too many, but I couldn't be sure exactly. So I took back 2 balls to the yarn store (exchanging them, as a matter of fact, for the pink cotton!) and kept the third, just in case, and lo and behold, I will need it! Imagine if I'd got this far and then ran out! Phew, I say.
The other knitting in that picture is TSTMMS, or The Sweater That Makes Me Sneeze. I really want to knit it, but it really does make me ill. Maybe a dust mask... I just took it out to admire it, and maybe to knit just a few rows, to reward myself if I ever finish this dang buttonband!

Two old cars. Both Morrises, but the one on the right is a woody! A real woody-wagon with real wood trim! I love it, and we'd spotted it before, but on a camera-less day. I think I will not become a regular photographer of interesting cars, but will stick with post boxes! One eccentricity at a time.

Nor do I have ambitions to take pictures of wildlife, though I saw a bird I wanted to take a picture of the other day. It was lovely with black and white markings and very striking, and I now think it was a magpie. Not thrilling for a real bird enthusiast, I'm sure, but it was very pretty.

Steamin' and swimmin'

Sunday was a lovely sunny day and we went to the Museum of Technology, housed in the Victorian steam pump building. There are two enormous steam engines which used to power pumps, to get the town's sewage up the hill a bit! Cambridge was notorious for its stinky river and sewage-filled ditches, and this pumping station was working till the 1960s! Now the engines are all shiny and polished, but they weren't running because a boiler is being refurbished, and no one was very forthcoming about when it might be done. But, this weekend was a model railway weekend, and so there were things like this, a tiny steam-powered train. The water is boiled by burning butane/propane rather than coal, but
the steam actually pushes the wheels around! There were also people from the model bus collecting camp and the Meccano masterpieces camp, and people who had small working steam trains that they could actually ride. This fellow had a little train you can see in the background, and he sat on top of it and rode it back and forth along a small line, and the mini-truck in the foreground that he just stoked and polished and oiled, but it never moved, that we could tell. Lovingly looked after, these machines! There was also a full-sized truck, driven by steam. Because it is a technology museum and not just a steam museum, they also have an amazing collection of printing paraphanalia! Type of all sorts and sizes in wide flat type drawers, printing presses big and small, as well as old telephones, radios and whatever you could ask for! It's all volunteer run and so quite informal and chatty, and the people do seem to like showing these things off.

And speaking of collecting things and showing them off, here is my latest post box, and it has a sad tale! This George VI wall box is down on Mill Road, and the big ugly sign on it says it will be removed! Outrage! Do you suppose they auction them off or something? Look, dear, at the little souvenir I picked up!

We also finally checked out the local pool, which is fantastic! There is a wee shallow warm pool for the little ones, with slides and water jets and all sorts of fun things. Then they have a diving pool, which of course is very deep, but Arthur tells us that that is where his school has swimming lessons, because the floor is adjustable! Have you ever heard of such a thing? When we went it was 4 meters deep, but it must be about 1 meter when he goes. Maybe the floor is just a sort of mesh screen that goes up and down? Who knows? And there is a big pool for swimming lengths and fooling around, which was really too deep for the kids in most parts, but they had all sorts of kick boards and big floating mats. The drawback: over £10 for a family of 4 to go for a swim! That's more than $20! So we can't do that on a regular basis, though I will investigate season passes and such.

The knitting is proceding apace. I was so thrilled to make visible progress on the pink cardigan, but getting from 363 stitches to seventy-something is taking some time. I have decided I need to knit a hat for the knitted wedding, and so must come up with something for that, and Stephen will be needing his sweater next week, and really, if I sit down and do it, it'll get done, but somehow there is always something more fun to do than knit a buttonband...
The kids are getting creative, too. First we have Bread Man, made by Arthur with the help of black food colouring!

He was quite delicious, and so handsome, too. And we have the dog, courtesy of Elaine. If you click and see the big picture, you can see the little tail-wagging thingies!
And last but not least, my parents sent on my ribbon from the fair!

And now I have to unclog the sink so I can get back into the laundry groove!