New Year

Happy New Year to you all. A little belated, perhaps, but better late than never. It's taken a while to get back into the groove. In fact I didn't pick up a hooky hook until this weekend, although I managed to finish the hearts and flowers garland. More of that later, first a few pretty pictures of our relaxing and restorative holiday in north Devon with a big group of friends over the New Year. It was crisp and clear when we arrived, no snow but lots of frost and brrrrrrr it was cold. We had a lovely local walk on the first day, all sun and frost and a gentle 7.5 mile meander through the countryside, ending in the picturesque village of Chulmleigh - in the pub of course! A roaring fire, some liquid refreshment and a game of darts. Fortunately, the fact that I only ever play darts at New Year doesn't make me stand out as a complete idiot, as most of the rest of the crew usually only plays at New Year as well. On New Years day we went the seaside. Westward Ho! was the choice of seaside venue, mostly because it was big enough to have the chance of having a tea room open. We didn't get onto the beach as the tide was in, but we did see some porpoises in the bay, which was quite exciting. Incidentally, Westward Ho! is the only place name in the UK with an exclamation mark as part of the name. An interesting but useless fact. The final picture shows the wobbly eye competition entries. To explain, we were given a pair of wobbly eyes each and were tasked with coming up with something amusing and original, (or just amusing). My entry was the crochet spider which was a pebble from Westward Ho! dressed up in a woolly crochet coat. I brought it home and now I'm not sure what to do with it. I did pick up a few more pebbles from the beach with an idea of using them in a possible xmas present project although I don't think that they will be spiders......

After the holidays, I finally galvanised myself and finished the hearts and flowers garland. I don't have room to store bits of wool so wanted to use up the left overs from the giant doily rug and our little flat really needed  a bit of brightening up as well. I had finished all the hearts and just needed to join them together.  The finishing touch was some pretty buttons bought in a lovely little shop in Exeter, so I had no more excuses for not getting it finished and up on the wall. I don't know why it is, but I struggle to finish things. I think it might be because I'm already planning the next thing and am raring to get started! Incidentally, the 'next thing' is a basket/bag sort of thing. I'm still using up the rug wool, so am going to keep going round and round until it's all gone. Does that make sense? It will all become clear when I have a picture of it.