Laughing my way into Winterland

Chilling was all that was needed this week. That and tons of laughter. So much lovely heartfelt advice and care received from here, love and fun at home and me listening to my body and slowing it down for once. It's all been so very good for me and in turn my family too.

Now I've nearly been a whole week away from here so I thought I'd have a look and show you some of the things that have caught my attention lately.

I've been on the usual round-up of museum trips with my students which we love and they usually moan about. Now after two long years teaching on this course, I finally, yes finally - have a student who gets excited about history. What a thing to have someone actually interested in it.

In the 1950's and 1960's part of the museum I brought home a couple of images so I could show you some of the things I'd steal if I could.

This museum celebrates all the industries that made Norwich a wealthy city. Alongside weaving and choccy making (the city used to smell so sweet when Rowntree's Mackintosh was in full flow), Norwich was famous for shoe making. 

In the shoe bit we found a box. It was full of daft shoes, so we put on a pair each and had a race round. I didn't get too far.

After work we were so near the bookshop that it would have been wasteful not to pop in for a fine mocha chocca coffee and a browse.

There were a few books that interested me. I couldn't resist this new one by Ros Badger as there was so much in it to tempt me to get my needles clicking away.

Knitting thoughts were put on hold for a while as there were night-time netball matches to get to and nasty old car MOT's to sort out. Netball was a fabulous huge win, MOT was a big old fail. One thing was for Pink Dog who nods away on my dashboard. Apparently he would obstruct my vision if I was under four foot. 

Over the weekend we got another peek at the gorgeous sun again. Saturday was a whirlwind of netball and dance classes and then on Sunday we headed out for a forage.

Alfie Blue found the heat and two long walks in one day more than he could cope with so he got carried like a baby for a bit. 

After a good old hunt around we found enough damsons and sloes to make a generous slug of gin. All pricked this evening and pickling nicely in the dark dark cupboard.

Back from our walk it was finally time to get out my needles and start on some of the things in my new book.

I gathered up my yarn and a sleepy dog and set to.

I'm trying to get ahead of the winter by making a hat and some mittens before we need them. Little Bun asked for some mittens in purple and a plain colour (so that's just what I am a doing). These are super quick to knit up so I'm already thinking of making a pair in orange and pink for me.

At the opposite end of lovely chunky quick to knit yarn is this fairy fine gossamer 2ply. I'd bought it to knit up a cropped cardigan, but gave up when I couldn't work out one of the stitches. Now I'm turning it into a lace scarf. 

It's unbelievably slow to knit with this on such tiny needles so I may be some time with this one. My mum did ask which winter I was intending to wear it.

I've also got some cream aran weight yarn to have a go at this super beret to replace my favourite Noa Noa one. Miss Rosey borrowed it and left it somewhere. She feels very bad about this and I wish she didn't as it's only a hat.

This afternoon my head wasn't really on the teaching. Funnily enough the students heads were on other stuff too. As we had four spinny office chairs in the room we ended up with a spot of synchronised chair dancing before launching the Spinny Chair Strictly Competition. There were some beautiful movements around the room with a few high scores. Best of all we laughed so much that we nearly pee'd our pants. I much prefer teaching people to laugh and be silly.