Creative

Our monthly madness and mayhem was held at Amanda's again and we were all in hysterics from the start.  This was Mum's first time in the group, but I dont think it will be the last.  There were just six of us, but we made enough noise for twenty! 

Shirley is still working on her dog and he grew quite a lot during the evening.  Shirley even managed to put right a dropped stitch which she kept very quiet about until later.  Progress is definitely being made!  

Michele is back on the purple top for Alicia - it's so pretty, a really beautiful colour.   We were all very impressed that Michele had taken her knitting on holiday to Portugal with her, especially given the conversations we had about the local wine and port!  

The big news though ..... is that Mo has finished the hat and scarf combination and I really like it, although I'm not sure that Mo is convinced.   Sadly, the only photo I got of the combination was rather soft focus - I really need to re-set my camera settings back to normal after I've been arsing about with it! 

Mo spent the rest of the evening going through all Amanda's patterns and eventually cast on one row, although there were expletives uttered when she discovered she wasn't loose enough!   This was contradictory to earlier statements when she announced that she was TOO loose - I'm not even sure we were talking about knitting at the time!

At one point in the evening, we were ALL knitting.  This is a first and probably will never be repeated.  We did have quite a lot of serious discussion though - we have planned the venues for the meetings up to Christmas - we are moving them around a bit from now on so we can snoop at each other's wool stashes.  (Or at least that's what I'll be doing!)  We've organised ourselves - or at least TALKED about organising ourselves - with a knitting Secret Santa for Christmas, and we've lined Mum up to sew all our little projects up.  Mum, of course, is delighted.  Oh, and we've got a couple of new members who will shortly be joining us - it's all very exciting.

We also had lots of not-so-serious discussion - including Strictly Come Dancing, The Great British Bake Off, a new product line of socks for amputees, and sparkly balls. 

And Sid?  Well, Sid loved all the attention ..... as usual!

Hevingham

About a week before the August bank holiday, Amanda decided we should go camping for the weekend.  This did somewhat fill me with despair - how on earth would we find a tent big enough to take us two plus the dogs?; and where would we find a campsite that wouldn't charge the earth, bearing in mind Bank Holidays are always really busy and very expensive?   Mum and Dad stepped into the breach and let us use their trailer tent, which filled me with more misgivings - I've never towed anything in my life!  And then the lovely Sarah at Hevingham Lakes said we could have a pitch for just twenty quid for the weekend.  All set then!  Oh, and then Marti said she'd like to come along too and then Mum and Dad invited themselves along for a barbecue.   So much for a quiet weekend!  

We had a barbecue on the Saturday evening also and got through half of our wine supply.   We lit the citronella candles and, for once, I didn't get any mossie bites.  Hurrah!  

Sunday dawned fine and sunny - and we had a lovely day doing not very much really.  Quick trip to Aylsham (three miles up the road) to get another disposable barbecue and enough food for all of us; sitting around reading the Sunday papers; taking the dogs for a walk through the woods and over the heath; giving Finn a bath because he rolled in something disgusting; and then Mum and Dad turned up for a barbecue.  

Monday came round far too quickly for our liking.  We had to wait around for Mum and Dad to come and supervise the taking down of the trailer tent.  But I think we did a good job of doing it on our own - so much so that Dad has said we can borrow it again.  Hurrah!

Stanwell Moor

In the middle of August, Andy and I had a weekend together, minus Finn, who wasn't very happy with the arrangement.  I always have to try and pack without Finn noticing because he gets a bit moody!

Andy's birthday had coincided with Mum and Dad's birthday celebrations, and he was in Croatia while I had my birthday, so we decided to have a weekend together, shopping, sightseeing, eating out ..... in fact, doing all the things we can't do when we have Finn with us.  I feel like a really bad person when I leave Finn behind, but it pretty much is only once a year, so not too bad.  

However, Andy ended up working so we couldn't do too much anyway - because he was working Saturday night, Andy had to sleep on Saturday during the day and then again on Sunday when he got back from work.  It's a good job I take my knitting everywhere!   Still, on the Sunday, we headed off to the pub for an hour or so - The Anchor in Stanwell Moor, followed by the Five Bells at Poyle - before going for a curry. 

So, a lovely weekend in all and hopefully we'll get a chance to fulfil our plans another time!

Minions

This month's  KwA meeting moved to Amanda's house - Sid has been a bit poorly lately and had to have an operation and Amanda didn't want to leave him alone for the evening so soon afterwards.  So we moved the madness and mayhem to a different venue this time.

First off was a tour of the garden - although not much is happening out there at the moment, paving slabs have been delivered and I can confirm that work is in hand to sort out wood for the pergola.  So Amanda explained the grand plan for the garden to us and showed us where everything would be happening and what plants would be procured.   Shirley immediately said she'd also like a rampant vicar (the rose Amanda is getting is called a Rambling Rector) and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the evening.  Nicholas was so distressed that he even ran away for the evening!

We excelled ourselves at this meeting - only Amanda bothered to do any work at all, the rest of us ate, laughed, told questionable jokes and made no pretence of doing any knitting!   We did all do a show and tell with our work, but it all promptly went back in the bags so we could carry on with the more important task of eating cake.  

Shirley is making a puppy now.   To make things easier, she is using the English instructions, but we noticed that you could also make a chien and then possibly venture on to a Dachshund afterwards. 

Marti had kidnapped her friend's meerkats to show us her handiwork - I can't believe the detail in it, I just wouldn't have the patience.  They are very lovely though - considering they're meerkats! 

Mo was still working on the scarf - although we've had post-meeting confirmation that the scarf is finished - hurrah!  Mo has now started working on the hat which we will look forward to seeing.  As a lovely surprise for my birthday, Mo had made the most gorgeous cake - wool inspired obviously, with Gromit resting on the top.  Just gorgeous and so clever.

The other Ninnies promptly gave their birthday dates to Mo, and are fully expecting cakes too - cheeky lot!   Not sure of the context, but I think Amanda might be getting a Titanic cake - I can't for the life of me remember why? - and this then inspired a lot of inappropriate jokes about icy dead people.   (I really ought to write up the minutes in a more timely manner - although I'm still not sure they'd make any sense!)

Shannon has been very busy lately organising her move.   She is moving away from the delights of Carrow Road to the John Lewis car park apparently, and will be building a pergola on Level 5.  I've a feeling she might be living in some packaging, although, again, I can't remember why Marti wanted the dimensions of Shannon's box!! 

Amanda at one point declared that she was winning the lottery AND the euromillions later in the week - rather greedy I thought - and that she was going to open a wool shop/ book shop/ tea rooms and needed minions to run this enterprise for her.  We all thought it was a fab idea and, although we didn't discuss our specific roles and responsibilities, I would like to suggest the following:

Marti - Creative minion - organiser of madness and mayhem and decor
Mo - Baking minion - obviously!
Shannon - Operational minion - being in charge of day to day operations and generally organising and terrorising us into doing some work
Shirley - Decoration minion - Shirley can make the cake bands for all Mo's creations.   Provided of course, that Mo's creations are all mince pie sized!
Me - Strategic minion - in charge of shopping lists and excel spreadsheets

So, another brilliant evening - other topics discussed included crochet bikinis - again, this is becoming another agenda favourite, chiens under the table, food (another favourite), and the possibility of a weekend away.  We discounted this though because of logistical problems of packing - one bag of knitting and five bags of food each.   Not to mention the amount of rennies that would be needed - laughing and eating at the same time are not good for the digestive system.

Looking forward to the next episode.   I love this group - it's a real tonic to sit and talk nonsense with like-minded people.  I love it!  

Friends

I've only known Lori for two years now - we worked together at Colman Hospital and, in fact, we only worked together for six months.  But sometimes you meet someone with whom you share so much in common, that you very easily and naturally become friends.   We only stopped working together as Lori moved back to North Essex and went to work for an Essex NHS Trust - but we have kept in touch and meet occasionally to walk the dogs - Lori has three! - and have lunch and a catch up.  Our usual meeting spot is Dedham and we take the dogs for a run over Dedham Vale. 

This time, however, Lori invited me to her home and I must admit I was really keen to have a snoop!  I had seen some photos on Facebook and it just looked so inviting, that I couldn't resist.   Lori's back garden has a fence which opens out onto farm fields and there is a river running through it.  When you loop back round to the road, there is a ford to cross and then you walk up to the pub before heading up the main street to Lori's house again.  Just perfect.  

It was such a hot day that we had a good old paddle in the ford while the dogs played around and splashed us.  It was so refreshing - just what we needed in those temperatures.

After our walk, we headed back to Lori's back garden for tea and cake - how I managed it, I don't know, as we'd already had the most enormous barbecue lunch!   A really lovely day and I hope we didn't cause too much disruption - although Lori did lock the hens away before we got there because we didn't want Finn to eat any!