Away day

Lovely Shirley hosted our first Knitters with Attitude away day down at Carleton Rode, down near Wymondham and Attleborough.  It was a beautiful day - lovely and sunny and autumnal - just gorgeous, so we got to sit in the garden and knit for a while.  

Although to be fair we didn't actually start knitting until 12.45 pm.  We had far more important things to do first - drinking coffee and eating cheese scones!   We did a lot of chatting and laughing - and we have since had Shirley tell us that we kept her neighbours entertained with all the laughing and noise we were producing! 

We all admired the garden although some of us were more horticulturally minded than others - Shannon thought that a foxglove was something that you danced on Strictly Come Dancing for a start!   And Sid did his best to scarify every bit of the lawn, after he'd pissed all over it!   Shirley was really very taken with Sid, although Ken, Shirley's husband and now forever known as Mellors, was adamant that, if they ever got a doggy companion for Duke, then he definitely didn't want it to be Sid! 

And speaking of Duke, a very handsome and gentle boy, he moved around so much that this is the best photo I got of him all day!  He moves too quickly for my poor old camera to capture!

Shannon was on very good form - and even did some knitting. We have given her a pattern and some wool to make some wrist warmers, but I seem to recall Amanda and Mum righting the wrongs a few times.   Shannon was especially pleased when she had the same number of stitches at the end of two consecutive rows.   Amanda carried on with her blanket; Shirley did some more work on her dog; Mum was making granny squares, but assisting the rest of us with items from her Mary Poppins bag; I carried on with my shawl which takes so long as there were 500 odd stitches on the needles at the time; and Michele was knitting her beautiful purple top but had to stop because we weren't sure of the length needed. 

Shirley and Mellors have a beautiful house and garden and were so welcoming to us all - despite us running around causing chaos - Shannon was after some furniture; I was threatening to move into the garden room; Amanda was after moving into the library upstairs!   We never did get to see Shirley's stock of cross stitch kits, but this provoked quite a lot of discussion about our various stashes.  

Following lunch - jacket potatoes with every kind of filling imaginable, including tuna-bleurgh, followed by lemon and chocolate tarts - we sat inside and continued the nonsense conversations.   At one point we wondered what Shannon and Michele were talking about - apparently Michele likes to keep hers under her arm and Shannon prefers hers between her legs.  Knitting needles, in case you were wondering!   Shirley then came out with the gem - not unrelated as we were actually discussing Body Shop parties - that she likes to put body butter on last thing at night so she just slides into bed!  Classic! 

So an absolutely brilliant day - I loved it!  And thank you to Shirley for putting up with all our shenanigans and nonsense.  So it was just left for us to negotiate the ditch and reverse out of the drive without running Ken over and we were on our way home, chuckling as we travelled along the country lanes and back into Norwich.  I'm sad we left it so late to have an away day but hope we get to have some more - such a tonic to talk rubbish and laugh hysterically.  Let's do it again!