Friday, 4 May 2007

Waiting for wool...


Smokey in his now pretty regular position - sleeping on the terrace. We have waited all day for the removal men and I have been filling in a bit of time with photos as the weather has been quite kind today.

Wednesday, 2 May 2007

We have arrived en France

Well we’ve all made it to France!

After 711 road miles and the sea journey from Rosyth to Zeebrugge, we arrived pretty late last Wednesday night. The Zeebrugge to Gensac leg is not to be recommended without an overnight stop, but with poor Smokey as a long suffering passenger, we pressed on and pretty much fell into bed.

We have been taking a bit of time to rest up and recover from our travels and Smokey has converted his normal indoor day time rest activity to mostly being outdoors (he does seem to require his own chair though).

We have had our first Scottish visitor Gill pop in already, with delightful gifts including two vines to add to our mini orchard.We have already planted out tomatoes in the garden - what a novelty that will be! In Inverness, there were some years we struggled to get them ripe in a greenhouse.

The garden has been been enjoying the rain over the last two days - although we are a trifle jealous given the UK is basking in a heatwave. C'est la vie!

We have a resident hoopoe in the garden - how exotic. G has been trying to get a pic without success. Will keep trying and post one later.

The linen door curtain for my new office is growing slowly and might be finished by the time the desks are delivered on the 15th May.

Poetry reading


Isabel in full poetic

flow!

Tea Party



Smiles all round at my tea party.

Friday, 20 April 2007

Tea Party at NHS Highland







This has been a week of goodbyes. Although I finished work last week, Isabel had organised the traditional NHS tea party and all I had to do was make a guest appearance. Isabel's baking is the stuff of legends and lots of colleagues popped in for cake and so say au revoir.

These lovely flowers were a nice suprise, they and all the cards are cheering my rather bare lounge.


Isabel had also composed a poem which I will share with you:



For Joyce
April 2007

So Joyce is off to La Belle France;
I can’t believe it’s true.
We’ll make her cake and say ‘bonne chance’
and ‘bon voyage, adieu’.

The raison d’être of our work
remains, as she knows well.
Argyll & Bute drive us berserk
in déjà-vu-like hell.

We’ll miss her nicely timed bon mot,
her elegance and style.
A calm je ne sais quoi will go
(though Gill’s still in denial).

So merci for just being here;
we’ll rendezvous again
when Alba Yarns’ entrepreneur
is basking in her fame.

We won’t forget, when we’re bereft.
My gift - this epitaph:
‘She knitted us a PPF
and then she b*******d off.’


What a star!!!! What a talented lady you are Isabel.

Lamb flock


These cute little lambs all have their designer scarves and are ready to go off to their new owners.

It's public! We're off to La Belle Fance

The long talked about move to France is now happening extremely fast - and there is now a frenzy of clearing out, selling and giving away all sorts of things. As we will be trying to shove two houses in to one, this is quite a challenge.

Closing down the website and the Ebay shop leaves me at a bit of a loss - but I have been cheered by lots of messages of support and good wishes from customers.

Just Bamboo


I tried to resist...but I wanted to try out the Just Bamboo. I never knit in white - but given my now imminent departure for warmer climes -why not! I have to report it is very lovely to work with and results are quick. It may not be finished before we depart on Tuesday, but should not take long.

Saturday, 7 April 2007

Linen cotton door curtain


The long awaited linen cotton arrived from Russia last week. It took weeks to arrive and I was getting a bit anxious that it had gone missing. Anyway, it did arrive, it is lovely and I have deserted knitting for crochet for a time. Although it is fine (slightly less than 4 ply I would guess) it is progressing quite quickly. I plan a door curtain for the summer and am just 'winging it' on the design stakes. It may need to have a contast border depending on how far the yarn it goes. I had another delivery of pearl buttons this week and there are some gorgeous one hole buttons that I hope to work in round the edges.

There has been very little time for blogging recently, as there is so much going on - but more of that later.

Happy Easter!

Duck egg Bella finished


Tracy's little waistcoat is finished in time for Easter. The Debbie Bliss Pure Cotton is very soft to work with and has a lovely sheen. I had some Rowan shanked mother of pearl buttons which just finish it off perfectly. We plan to meet up on Tuesday to do a hand over.