Little Dorrit does...: October 2021

Day 1: An hour's walk (there and back) along the beach at Beadnell, taking advantage of the 'first hour is free' parking before checking in to the cottage. Kite surfers, in the distance, were making the most of the wind and waves just after high tide.

Day 2: Back at my beloved St. Aiden's beach, with such joy in my heart. We walked almost to Bamburgh and back, whilst I collected photos of lapis-and-turquoise-lined crab shells. This beach is truly a magical place. I took the bottom left crab shell back to the cottage and by the time it had dried, the intense blue lining had faded to a pale whitish-grey...

Day 3: We drove to Craster and walked along the coast to Dunstanburgh Castle, then spent a happy hour amongst the rockpools and seaweed on the shoreline.

Day 4: Back at Beadnell beach for a 'proper' walk (to the rockpools at the end and back). This ticked all my beach boxes - mother of pearl reflections of sky on the sand, seaweed hieroglyphics, colour, texture, and fairy-tale forest sandscapes. Pure bliss.

Afterwards, a visit to the harbour in Seahouses at high tide - huge rainbow-tinged waves crashing over the breakwater...

...and an accidental Rothko on the hull of a boat.

Day 5: We had to be up and out of the cottage by 9am (Covid rules) and it was pouring with rain. Rather than risk a 3 hour drive in soaking wet clothes we opted to cut our losses and set off for home, knowing that we will be back again next year.

Au revoir Seahouses!

Last month I broke my self-imposed rule of 'Trying Not To Buy More Yarn' and bought two skeins of Lana Grossa self striping 'Gioia' - partly because they were reduced and I had birthday money to spend, but mostly because (like Alison Moyet) I go weak in the presence of beauty. One skein in vivid rainbow brights, and one in all the blues, just begging to be made into a ZickZack scarf, full of random/serendipitous stripey juxtapositions. This was a joyous thing to knit - with a visual symphony of colour flowing from my needles, and an easily memorised pattern making it perfect for 'TV knitting'. A bad case of 'One More Row' Syndrome soon set in, and it was finished in a matter of days. It's turned out to be a joyous thing to wear too - cosy and warm around my neck in the chilly Autumn weather. The joyousness of this scarf has even been independently verified by a young lad with learning disabilities, who approached me out of the blue in the chemist's to ask for a hug (we settled for an elbow bump, what with Covid and all). Having thus introduced himself, he then gestured enthusiatically at the scarf, and exclaimed "You look so smart!". His Mum came rushing over to retrieve him, a bit flustered and apologetic, but I thought it was a lovely moment. It's always nice to meet a kindred spirit from the Scarf Appreciation community.

The only fly in the ointment of my joy is that I really don't 'need' another scarf...especially not another rainbow/blue stripey scarf...

...or even another ZickZack scarf, come to that.

I can tell myself they're all (~~ever so~~ slightly) different, and that I do 'need' plenty of scarves now that my hair is so short and my neck is always so cold, but the truth is that some of them are going to have to be rehomed in the very near future, because not knitting is not an option, and neither is ignoring the problem. Fortunately I do have Christmas-present-knitting to keep me occupied for the next month or two, and I'm also pondering a make-it-up-as-I-go-along-crazy-stripey-jumper to use up a chunk of my stash, so the cull doesn't have to happen immediately. I just have to stick to the 'Trying Not To Buy More Yarn' rule and introduce a very strict 'One Out One In' scarf rule in the meantime.

In other news, they mowed all the long meadow grass at the park a few weeks ago and turned it into two big hay bales, which have been left at the bottom of one of the fields. The XXSCat dog was very grumpy about this to begin with, as she hates to see anything out of the ordinary on her daily perambulations (this includes workmen on ladders, fallen trees, anything blocking the pavement, and (obviously) postmen). She barked her head off the first time she encountered them, and gave them an extremely wide berth.

The following day, after a lot of chuntering and swearing under her breath, she got close enough for a cautious sniff, and reluctantly conceded that they were "probably harmless". Now she just ignores them. I, on the other hand, am obsessed by them, because beautiful little hare's foot inkcap mushrooms (according to Google Lens) have started pushing through the surface of the wet hay.

They have a very short life-span, going from fluffy hare's foot...