People watching

Early Thursday morning............

Rain tears across the streaked windscreen. The wiper zips back and forth briefly providing a view before the glass becomes blotched and smudged again. It is cold and a quick glance at my watch tells me that I will have to wait another 40 - 50 minutes. 

To keep warm and busy - I  am knitting. 

I'd parked the car in a franchised roadside cafe and motel grounds while I wait for a colleague to meet me prior to setting off for a day's training. The only movement is the relentless stream of commuting cars on the bypass. Knit, k2tog, knit, turn, knit four, purl to end.

Eventually the rain lessens, almost to a stop, suddenly people appear. From other parked cars, from the motel, from the cafe. Travelling salesmen, sporting disheveled hair, walking with clipped time driven paces, dragging top-loader travelling cases, laptops and piles of samples. They climb into cars and drive off, joining the torrent of traffic. Click, click, time to change the colour of yarn, slip slip knit.

Workmen, in paint splashed work-wear, fluorescent trousers, blue boiler suits decamp from the cafe. Some quickly jumping into their vans and tearing off to their day's work, others clump down the steps in their heavy boots, still chewing the last bite of their breakfast as they wipe their faces with the back of a hand. 

A moment's quiet. Click click as my needles knit another row, slip slip knit. Then it starts again - only this time, a different sort of human activity. Trysts. Secret meetings. Women over dressed, ruffled hair and smudged faces, dash to their cars, some look rushed, others look smug. Couples drive up in one car then after affectionate goodbyes leave in separate vehicles. Men sprinting before the rain starts again, dressed for a good night out - at 8.15am?

Click, click, yarn over, knit knit knit slip slip knit.

My feet are cold.

The rain picks up again, my view gone, my entertainment reduced to the last few sleepy heads who try to run between the raindrops as they dash to their cars.

Suddenly my colleague arrives and is tapping at her window - signalling pointedly that she will drive to the event and I am to get out of my car. I switch off the radio, wrap up my knitting, collect up my car keys, leave.

Now it is my time to run through the rain.

The coffee and tea waiting at the venue is very welcome. We drink several cups before we felt ready for the day.

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This week has been like a 5 day spell in a high speed tumble drier and there will be no let up for the next couple of days either - we have an all weekend birthday bash to enjoy - wish me luck!

In which I need an antidote

I can't even begin to explain how whirlwind-like my day at work was and probably will be again tomorrow.

So as an antidote - pictures of knitting instead..........

Ah.. that's better.

And coz I know you will ask.

It is in alpaca - super soft and snuggly alpaca in chocolate, meadow, tangerine and (not shown) one other colour to be decided!!

And coz you'll want to know - it is a gift for a special friend. 

I am using one of the bamboo circular knitting needles my fav sis in law gave me for chrimbly - they are simply bliss to knit with :)

However, I can only snatch a row here and a row there between study and sleep .............. One I have an excess of and the other a dearth....

So nothing new there then!

Back to a quick row before off to bed x

Hebden Bridge 3 - expect the unexpected

• Centrally placed cast iron door handle and vertical letterbox.
• High rise bridge across a busy street - with the flooring removed a long long time ago.
• A triangular corner of a bank in typical brash and confident Victorian architecture.
• Wrought iron gate - still languishing in front of many shops - closed from last year's severe flooding.
• A cat in a window.
• A little acrylic bicycle quietly swinging above head height.
• A flood damaged decorative door now with added flood deterrent frames, half of the street had their flood doors in permanent position and the rest were having them installed.
• No time being told today - the sky was too leaden to give shadows. This huge slate sundial is dated 1835 and inscribed with the months and the calculations needed to make telling the time more accurate.
• I've eaten in this pub - soon after we arrived from Africa, and Eldest as a small small boy split my lip open with a toy car just outside this very door. Now closed and up for sale.
• We wondered if Rapunzel lived here, tossing her long golden locks down the side of the tower only to change her mind and retreat back inside to where it is warm and dry!
• Tattoo parlour insignia - beautiful.

What have you been up to this half term?

What have you seen through the eye of the lens of your camera?

What was your weather like?

We had a wonderful day here, the three of us, one we anticipate in repeating soon.

Hebden Bridge 2 - things that made me smile.

• Hand written sign - what you can not see is the remaining wording hidden by the stone wall - the full sign said 'BOMBFIRE WOOD AND DRY FIREWOOD DELIVERD'.
• Cafe latte and shortbread hearts as we sat in a warm cafe watching the rain lash against the windows.
• A lunch of BLTs, Welsh rarebits and salad - yum yum yum.
• A love message scribed 15 years ago, in the floor of a wonderfully quirky china shop.
• Rainbow coloured mugs, hand thrown pots, china, plates and bowls stacked high in teeteringly fragile towers. We walked through with elbows tucked in and breath held tight.
• We left clutching treasures - each choosing a little piece from that shop - Jules - a little taste of the Mediterranean. 

Such colour and jumbled creativity brightened our day in stark contrast of the driech wet weather outside. What jollity and vibrancy - a perfect antidote.

Hebden Bridge 1 - On the road.

• A bleak and winding road over wet and wild moors.
• For the first time in a long time - there were no stock on the road, they were all in the valleys sheltering against the icy rain and wind.
• Leaden sky reflected by the leaden reservoir.
• Cobbled narrow streets, we carefully drove through Heptonstall's tiny highway. Filled with hardly altered history.
• Hebden Bridge coming into view through winter thin trees and flashing by stone walls.

Half term and a request by the boys - please can we spend the day over in West Yorkshire. One I am happy to promise.

Look what he did!

On Friday morning, I awoke to these................

Oh be still my beating heart. Every year (and I do mean EVERY year) we have been together, I have received flowers - he never forgets.  

Me, on the other hand, can be found on the day rushing into a shop to find a suitable card and compensating with a quick baking or special evening meal...I always seemed to be surprised that the 14th has come round so quickly and I AM NOT READY!

Ooh I love him!

Talking of love.......just look what came in the post for me.........(ok ok - so I did order them but I still did a skip of glee and a squeal of delight when they arrived!) The smallest and neatest circular knitting pins my heart ever did desire - squeeeeeee!

Oh, and see that knitting abomination going on there?

Yup - talk of being so out of love of my project. It started well, but several froggings, scratching of head and many frowns later..... I have completely fallen out of love. In fact, I can feel the severe itch of a frogging session coming on. grrrrrr. The colour isn't really true in these pictures, in the 'real' the colours actually look rather good together. But - not enough to sway my decision. Goodbye disappointing glove - goodbye.

What has lifted you up this week?

What has made you frown?

Was your week as busy as mine?

Excuse me as I now sign out as I get myself ready to watch Salamander - my new subtitle weekend delight :)

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What happened this weekend?

Another dreadfully wet weekend.

Fortunately the arrival of a carpet kept Himself and I fully 'exercised' as we lifted, shifted, rolled and unrolled and cut to fit a HUGE 25 metre sq cream coloured adiposity.

All this activity was obviously put on purely for the entertainment of the cats who 'helped' as much as they could - bless 'em.....not.  How we did not stand on them, trip over them or cut their whiskers off as they inspected closely - a bit too closely, I will never know.

Then there was the small issue of moving all the furniture out of the room (the attic bedroom) down the narrow stairs and stashing it in Eldest's bedroom.

Then another small obstacle (well 12 obstacles)  were the 12 wooden structural uprights that are randomly arranged in a sort of vaguely straight (ish) line running down both sides of the room - entailing 12 cuts and fittings and an awful lot of cussing and swearing.

Oh, and the 'minor' inconvenience of two STONKING GREAT ROOF TRUSSES running at hip height that require you to take on a folded double stance. Even this scrunched up pose did not guarantee a pain free work zone as we both clunked our heads and our backs toiling beneath their unforgiving girth.

Then there was the squishing out the kinks and the fold marks and the cutting to fit round the quirkily shaped room.

But - when, at the end of the ' manoeuvres'  Youngest was happy, the cats were fully entertained, Eldest was relieved (to evict his brother's paraphernalia from his room) and Himself and I were exhausted - the carpet was down and looking like it should - phew.

Strangely enough, Sunday took on a slightly more sedate pace (apart from the rain which lashed and hailed and pelted on and off all day...) I pottered around tidying the house, dabbling in the kitchen and just appreciating a day at home with my boys.  

Himself decided to fill the house with a most delicious scent of baking fruit pies and Youngest baked biscuits entirely (AND cleaned up! gasp) on his own for the first time. 

 
 Yes, that tray of oat biscuits does have a smiley face made out of sultanas - Youngest was in a happy mood :)

Told you the cats were worn out by all the carpeting activities.......... think she has rather let herself go......!