Vroooom!

I've actually been doing a bit of crocheting recently. It's simple and mindless but that's what I need since it gets picked up and put down several times a day.

It's a racetrack rug (Ravelry Link) for Emmett's first birthday. I'm pretty damned proud of myself because I had the feeling when I started it that there was no way I could stick with it. Five thousand plus single crochets later and I'm halfway through the road with only the one row of loopy grass and two green rows to go after that! 

I'm also going to crochet a couple of cars to go with it using the Steve the Car (Ravelry Link) pattern, minus the buttons for eyes and hubcaps. I think he'll be old enough to play with it at one year old. If not, it'll keep!

I started it at knit group during my very last minute trip to Ohio last month. Last minute as in "bought a ticket on Thursday, left on Friday". It was expensive and stupid but things were bad and I needed to go. Travelling alone with Emmett wasn't as hard as I expected it to be but I can say I will never, ever fly through O'Hare again. That was a nightmare. NIGHT. MARE.

Unfortunately, I managed to leave without downloading Dad's photos and I used his camera for the most part since I didn't travel with the laptop and couldn't download from my camera to his laptop without buying an SD card reader. I did end up with photos from our trip to the Columbus Zoo, though.

This kid loves to eat and he really enjoyed his first Dippin Dots experience!

This is my favorite part of going to the zoo - feeding the lorikeets.

He really enjoyed playing on a blanket in Granny and Paw Paw's backyard. He can't go five minutes without climbing into Mommy's lap when I'm around but since I was inside, he played on his own for over an hour!

I miss the sleeveless weather. Here it's the end of July and most days I'm in jeans and a jacket. I know it's in the nineties in Ohio and that's not ideal but I'd gladly trade temperatures for a least a day or two.

We took Emmett to the beach at the end of last month...in sweatershirts and long pants. He loved it, though.

The Ohio trip did help with the depression and homesickness...for a bit. England and I are having a hard time learning to love one another. I'm trying, though. Each day is a little battle - thank goodness for my blue-eyed men.

I'll end this ridiculously long, Emmett photo filled update with a bit of book. My friend Delly sent me a link to this article about the Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones books. I watched the first couple of episiodes of the series based on the first book but even though I really enjoyed it, I couldn't keep up. Babies do that. I wasn't sure I would really enjoy the books, though - I was afraid thay might be...too sci-fi fantasy to put it simply. When I read the words "historical fiction" in the article, though, I was sold and walked into town immediately to buy it. I'm a mere (the first book is over 700 pages, after all) two hundred pages in and already look forward to picking it up every time I have to put it down. I find the characters a little unweildy and have to consult the appendix every once in awhile but I'm really enjoying it and am thinking about taking advantage of Waterstones 3 for 2 sale to get the next three in the series....

Lots of Photos and A Little News

Ack, it's been three weeks since I've updated!  Mom and Dad's visit was fantastic.  We did a million things yet there were a million more things we didn't get to (just to name a few - Oxford, London and the Isle of Wight) that will just have to wait until the next visit.  

Strangely, I didn't take many photos but here are a few from our days out...

This was probably my favorite day - a warm, sunny afternoon in Brighton.

 

It was even warm enough to have chips and a cold beverage on the beach.

 

We also spent a cold, rainy day in Bath where we started out at the Fashion Museum where Matt's sister, Ruth, works. 

And, of course, the Roman baths.  And, yes, that's a duck over there on the right!

 

Of course, we took a trip to Stonehenge.  I'd never been even though it's only about twenty minutes away from Salisbury.  I'd had heard you couldn't get close to the stones any more and was expecting them to be so far away you'd need binoculars but was pleased to find that they were only about a hundred yards away or so. 

 

On the windiest day of all we drove to Old Sarum where the remains of the original cathedral stand. 

From the top of the fort ruins, even on a cloudy day, the view of the "new" cathedral was beautiful.  

We also had lunch out at my mother-in-law's farm where we not only said hello to the alpacas...

...but we also got to see the twin lambs that were born a couple of days earlier!

Actually, when I say "we" I really mean "everyone but me" because while they all went to ooh and ah, I had to hang out on the porch. Why, you ask?  Because lambs can potentially carry diseases that could be harmful to pregnant women....

And I'm pregnant!  That's right, Matt and I are expecting a little acorn of our own in November!  I'd like to talk about it a little bit more but, honestly, that little acorn is getting hungry and if I don't eat something soon, I'll regret it.  I've been lucky enough to avoid morning sickness but I do start to feel a little nauseous, cranky and headache-y if I don't have a bite of something every couple of hours.   So more on our great news a bit later!

Oh and my cold beverage on the beach in Bristol?  My daily diet Coke! 

Bournemouth & Christchurch

The original plan for yesterday was to do a little more unpacking and cleaning but, since Matt was taking the day off, the plan turned in to a trip to the Oceanarium in Bournemouth which is about a half hour away. 

The fact that the wind broke my new Monet umbrella on its first venture out, before we could even get from the car park to the aquarium, was an unfortunate sign of things to come: there had been a power cut at the aquarium and it was closed for the day.   Argh. 

Instead we went for a walk on a very windy beach.

 

We thought about doing a little shopping in Bournemouth but, after walking around for a little while, we decided to drive a few miles away to Christchurch.  We stopped for lunch at Costa...

 

..and then walked around town a bit, stopping at a great book store called Bookends and stumbling across a yarn shop called Honora Wool Specialists.  It was small but, literally, packed floor to ceiling with yarn - woo hoo!  I left with a set of needles for the Gooseberry Cardigan because I can't find my size 6 needles (note to self: carry a conversion chart of English to metric sizes in your wallet to save yourself some embarrassment), a skein of Manos in shades of blue and green, some Rowan Alpaca Cotton and a skein of Spirit (I had tried to get this online awhile ago but I think it's discontinued) to make a meerkat that actually looks like the pattern (because my first three attempts at meerkat heads weren't quite meerkatty enough).  

Then we walked around the beautiful priory. 

The volunteers should ask you what language you speak when you first go inside, not where you're from.  After my lengthy answer of, "I'm from the United States but just moved to Salisbury last week," he grinned, said, "We don't have it in United States so you'll have to take it in English," and handed me a little guide.  Embarrassing.  

There were lots of magpies on the grounds surrounding the priory.  I am obsessed with magpies and tried desperately to get a good photo (but didn't really).  Before I came here, magpies were just something from a nursery rhyme so the multitude of magpies (and pheasants!) fascinates me.  Imagine how excited I'll be if I ever get to see a hedgehog in the wild....

Lastly, I got a kick out of this sign.  Christchurch is obviously budget conscious as it was, of course, much cheaper to paint over the "West" on this sign than to build a new one after the unification of Germany.  

 

In other news, Matt is working two days in Oxford so he'll be staying overnight which means I have the house to myself until late tomorrow.  I know this kind of opportunity will be kind of exciting eventually but now, since I've only been here for, nearly at this moment, exactly a week, it's kind of weird.  But good, too.  There's still lots of unpacking and cleaning to do.  Plus I might venture in to town again to do a little knitting at Starbucks or maybe take the new book I'm reading, Olive Kitteridge (very good so far), to the Mill for tea and a flapjack (yum).  Or I might just lounge in front of the television watching British cooking shows....