There are fressias in my bathrooms, roses on my kitchen table, calla lillies on my mantle, and even a dinky little vase on my bedside table, crochet and knitting magazines on my couch, raspberries, balckberries and strawberries in my fridge, interesting drinks (cherry wine) in my drinks cabinet and a new crochet project already well on its way to comletion... I'm on holiday!! \o/ Yay! Three glorious weeks free from emails, crises, conference calls, IT and all the rest of the gubbins that goes with doing a demanding full time job!
My holiday actually started last Friday. I slept in, actually slept for 5 hours woke up and then dozed for another 2 and spent the day pottering around, ironing, cleaning, crocheting and relaxing. I repeated the same routine on Saturday, then on Sunday I got myself in gear and went and did the holiday shopping. That was where the raspberries and blackberries came from and of course the magazines...
I only ever buy magazines when I'm on holiday becasue I don't have time to read them any other time. There are some good patterns in these three and some excellent yarn sites I shall be visiting. It's thanks to a magazine that I discovered Easyknits and the lovely John, a splended source of some of the most wonderful yarn I have in my stash.
Yesterday I went to the opticians for an eye test and ordered two new pairs of glasses. Last time I had problems finding even one set of frames that I liked, this time, platsic frames are apparently back in fashion and before I knew it I had 8 frames in my hands to pick from. I finally managed to narrow it down to 2, a big bright one from Osiris and a wonderful quirky one from Gok Wan. My current frames are Gok's and they have been wonderfully comfortable and very hard wearing for the last 2 years. So that was that done, I managed some other errands in town too before driving home in my lovely new car...
My first ever brand new car! Never had a brand new car before, I've always bought second hand or ex-demonstrators so getting a totally new car has been kinda exciting. I got a brilliant deal from the garage, but, I was still incredibly sad to see the old car go. It was an excellent car, a Citroen Picasso, never once let me down, but it was 10 years old and had over ninety thousand miles on the clock and to be honest, it was starting to sound terribly rattley whenever we drove it. So I bought another Citroen, in the hopes that it will be just as reliable. A smaller car, diesel, with zero road tax, a 'special edition' with some great features, like bluetooth so that I can make calls directly from the car and listen to music from the iPhone/iPod, cruise control and a speed limiter which, in theory, should stop me getting done for speeding on the long drives up to see the folks. It is incredibly comfortable to drive but it just needed that little personal touch to make it entirely mine, so I set about making something...
Yes - even the car has become part of my quest to live inside my own personal rainbow!! I'll probably make more for it, seat covers etc in the coming months, but for now I'm happy with my new steering wheel cover!
Of course being on holiday there has to be new crochet and knitting projects on the go...
I have just one sleeve to go on a new crochet top, a couple of knitted face cloths underway and in the basket above the start of the Christmas knitting. Aren't those needles hilarious? 15mm needles, it's like knitting with a pair of pokers. I am using the Texere yarn I got at Wonderwool shown in my Wonderwool post here and one of their novelty scarf patterns. It's kinda fun in a wierd sort of way!
As the weather is pretty decent we are trying to get out and about this holiday and have already had a couple of outings which I will write about in the next post or so. Meanwhile here are more of my lovely flowers...