Scotland Trip

Hello there - We have recently returned from a trip to Scotland.  We went on a coach tour which was a long journey and we had several stops on the way to eventually arrive, after a very early start, at our hotel which is situated on Loch Achray in the Trossachs

 

 

It was around a fourteen hour journey because of a couple of accidents on the motorway on our way up.  We left Cosham at 05.40 am and arrived at Loch Achray at 7 pm.  We had our evening meal and then had an early night. 

 

 

The next day after breakfast we headed off out towards Stirling and did a tour of the local distillery

 

 

 

 

 

 

Towser the famous cat who kept the distillery mouse free for 24 years

 

 

Hubby with his wee dram next to the largest bottle of whiskey in the world

 

 

 

 

 

We passed Gleneagles golf course on a day trip out

 

 

 

 

Heading towards Stirling Castle for a walk about to stretch our legs

 

 

Statue of Robert the Bruce

 

 

War Memorial of past Battles

 

 

 

View from the top of Stirling Castle

 

 

A trip to Largs and a stroll along the promenade

 

 

 

 

Recognising their Viking past

 

 

Railway Bridge built over the River Forth in 1890

 

 

Forth road bridge - finished in 1964

 

 

New bridge under construction and hopefully to be opened later this year

 

 

A wander around Edinburgh

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

A damp dreary day - just the day for a boat trip on Loch Lomond

 

 

 

Rob Roy used to hide in the caves on the banks of Loch Lomond from the

red coats and this is where his hide out was - the place marked

'CAVE' - hilarious!!

 

 

 

 

The Kelpies Statues in Scotland

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you have enjoyed our trip around parts of Scotland on our coach tour

and of course there was a bit of knitting and crocheting going

on whilst travelling around

 

 

Day 1 - Cosham to Loch Achray

 

 

Day 2

 

 

Day 3

 

 

Day 4

 

 

Day 5

 

So we got back home at the weekend after having a lovely week away and this week has found me tidying and finishing off some of the bits that I had knitted and crocheted whilst away

 

 

These needed pom poms making

 

 

 

 



 

 

These need the buttons sewing on

 

 

Buttons done

and the

next few to do

Can't wait!!

 

 

 

At the end of the week we have these!!

 

Thanks for popping by

 

Xx Joy Xx

 

PS

 

Before going on holiday I left this little something to be given to Liz when she completed her 100th parkrun, which unfortunately I missed as I was away - yay she did her 100th run - brilliant

 

 

 

I made this for Abigail

 

 

Julie has been selling her raffle tickets at £1 a go at parkrun for

four weeks and so far she has raised £224 - brilliant

 

 

Mary's (first) blanket squares have been sewn together

and the border has been done and we are going

to raffle this for Parkinson UK on Tuesday

Mary is still knitting squares and I will be starting on her (second) blanket soon

 

xx ttfn xx

E x c i t i n g

Hello there - for a few weeks the knit n natter ladies have had a project underway that they have all been working on.  Every Saturday morning at 9 am we meet up in the local park and do our 5k Medina IOW parkrun event.  A few of us most weeks then go for a cuppa and a chat and take along our crochet.  Well we came across the idea of making a double bed size blanket with each of us crocheting some squares. We decided on the colours and off  I went to Rainbows (our local haberdashery shop) and got the wool and handed it out to the ladies.

We used stylecraft double knitting in the colours of the harmony blanket see here the same as I had used when I started my harmony blanket months ago (that is now finished and I will tell you about it another time). We got meadow, pale rose, bluebell, raspberry, violet, lavender, clematis, lime, sage, turquoise, cloud blue, petrol, plum and storm blue all to be joined together with parma violet

 

 

Parma Violet for joining

 

We were going to do plain granny squares with six rounds of crochet and we needed to make 110 squares - so we had 14 colours so that would be 12 x 8 squares of each colour and 2 x 7 squares of the other colours which would give us our 110 squares.  Some of the ladies did all 8 squares in a particular colour and some chopped and changed.  Holly joined in and did 3 squares too.  I opted to join the squares and construct  the border, so no square making for me (although I did do two to get the blanket started)

 

 

and so the squares started to come in

 

 

and more

 

 

and of course some ends

(not as many as there have been in he past because the squares were just one colour)

 

 

 

 

After four weeks all squares were in and it was all joined

and then I needed to start the border

 

 

Four rounds of border done so almost there

 

 

Six rounds of border done so we are nearly finished

 

 

We added a heart in the bottom right hand corner together with a label

 

'HAND MADE WITH LOVE'

 

 

We have had raffle tickets donated to us and we are going to be selling these at £1 a ticket on Saturday mornings for a few weeks at 'our parkrun'.  One of our running ladies who doesn't crochet but is a super speedy runner is going to be taking care of the raffle ticket selling for us.  We have advertised on our parkrun facebook page that tickets will be available for our blanket and that the draw will take place on our anniversary birthday run of five years on the 7th May.  We hope to raise some funds for 'our parkrun' and we have so enjoyed making this blanket.

 

 

Ta-dah!!

 

 

No matter which angle you look at it from

 

I T  I S  S T U N N I N G

 

We hope the winner of our raffle will love it as much as we do!!

 

Thanks for popping by

 

Xx Joy Xx

 

PS

 

Some other bits and pieces I have been doing in between the joining and border

 

 

 

A pair of fingerless mitts

 

 

This heart and put it on a post at parkrun last week for Valentine weekend

 

 

A young lad became the youngest at just 10 years old to do his 100th parkrun, so I made him a mug hug to celebrate this and put some hearts instead of O's on it (well it was Valentine weekend)

 

 

His Dad had one too!!

 

 

I made this little toadstool too

Just because I liked it

 

 

 

 

We met for knit n natter yesterday and we had a new lady come along

who made this

 

 

and another starting to learn

 

 

Sam came along for the natter and a bit of flower making on a loom

 

Holly came too and I asked her if she had finished Stuart the Minion

"No I can't find his arm it is somewhere in my bedroom"

No Holly it is somewhere in your yarn bag - underneath that tangled mess!!!

 

xx ttfn xx