Recent Ramblings

As a seamstress, my creativity was a bonus as I am able to turn a picture or drawing of an idea, into a garment. This became my job, I worked from home until last year when I decided to 'retire' as my time was to be taken up with the dressmaking and embroidery for Lesley and Adunaans' wedding.

Patchwork and quilting were a natural progression of sewing and creativity but I have to confess to preferring the challenge of the patchwork to the actual quilting, which is why I have quite a few UFOs lurking about. My mother had tried to teach me to embroider as a child, but I couldn't do satin stitch and so was not very enamored of 'proper' embroidery. I started doing cross stitch in 1986 and then some candlewicking and silk ribbon embroidery, along with various other crafts, toy-making etc. I tried my hand at most things, but having mastered them and lacking a challenge I'd go on to something else. I then fell prey to severe clinical depression and withdrew into myself, abandoning all my crafts.

It was only last year that I began to conquer my depression and take an interest in life and crafts again. I joined an embroidery group and discovered among other things needle-painting and stumpwork. These pose enough of a challenge to keep my interest. Having learnt the techniques, I can now apply them to the "I wonder if I can do a ...." I'm busy working on an arrangement of South African flowers that I've had to design myself as there is nothing like that available. There are so many things I want to try, that I'll be busy for years to come!

Along with my renewed interest in life and embroidery a reawakened 'travel bug' began to murmur. I began to plan a trip to the United Kingdom to do and see everything I've always wanted to do.

On our brief visit to England in 1977 I had wanted to visit Stonehenge but for various reasons wasn't able to. As I've always regretted this, it was the one non-negotiable thing in my planning of this latest trip. Despite DH and various friends telling me that I was wasting my time as it was just 'A heap of stones in the middle of nowhere.' I was determined to go and judge for myself.

As I approached along the road, it looked an awful lot smaller than I'd imagined, but its influence is a great deal more than I thought it'd be. I really can't explain what I felt. By the time I got up to the henge the stones seemed to have grown in stature, far more immense than they'd appeared from the parking area a few hundred yards away.
A sense of awe, yes, excitement even, but it was a lot more than that, it felt as if I was vibrating inside,
which settled down to a comfortable sort of hum after a while. The atmosphere there was really comfortable and comforting. It was an exciting, amazing, almost inspiring experience. Two of my friends had stressed that they'd been there and it had done absolutely nothing for them, being just a heap of old stones in the middle of
nowhere, but to me it was far, far more than that. I hadn't wanted to go alone but found I didn't want to leave so it was far better that I was unaccompanied. I eventually dragged myself away and found when I got back under the subway, that I'd been standing there for about two hours, which for just 'a heap of stones' also wasn't logical.

	I visited Hartfield, which is the village A.A.Milne lived in when he wrote Winnie the Pooh. All the familiar places from the book are in the local countryside, but I was only able to drive through the 100 Aker wood as the Foot & Mouth epidemic put paid to walking about.
I wandered around Dorset, which is Thomas Hardy country, Bath was the setting for some of Jane Austens' books. I went to the Abbey in Shrewsbury on the trail of Brother Cadfael and to the Lakes after Beatrix Potter.
	Glastonbury was on the list because of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table and of course, Sherwood Forest, famous as the home of Robin Hood.

On my arrival ..... straight from a hot, dry, arid African Summer to the beginnings of an English Spring ... the first thing that I noticed was how green everything was. The next was the flowers that I'd forgotten about, like grape hyacinth and then seeing daffodils and tulips growing wild along the roadside.

I drove and was driven miles around the country, seeing some breath-taking scenery. The contrasts between the four countries that make up the United Kingdom are very marked.

I was staying in Youth Hostels which are mostly "out in the bundu" as they say here, so saw far more of the countryside than I would have by sticking to main roads which suited me better and I also revisited old haunts like The New Forest in Hampshire.

My base was in Newark-on-Trent with my brother and his family. Although I'd been there as a child, (the first 10 years of my life were spent in England) I enjoyed exploring it as an adult. Some of the oddities of history that remain are the bear-baiting post next to the Town Pump in the Market Place and the Hole in the church steeple, reputed to have been made by a Cromwellian cannon ball fired from Beacon Hill in the Civil War

On two occasions I was able to see Morris Dancers perform, another old custom that has it's origins in the mists of time.

My visit to Cornwall was like returning to my long lost home. I've often commented on my lavish helping of Celtic blood but it really came to the fore here. Gnarled, lichen covered trees often growing next to rushing streams were easily imagined as the homes of fairies. After crossing the Tamar, we got deeper and deeper into Cornwall and I got an overwhelming feeling that this was 'right', I belonged here. Lands End struck a chord, I could happily live there on the barren moors, within sound of the Atlantic, in one of the stone cottages surrounded by windswept trees. St Ives where we were based was full of little streets that led off in different directions, so you never ended up in the same place twice! In Penzance I found the Admiral Benbow Inn in Chapel Street, yet another literary reference as it was made famous by Treasure Island. St Michaels Mount has had a chequered history but was a monastery at the same time as Mont St Michel, but it's not as large or as important as it was a 'daughter' church. It was strange to walk on the sea bed of the harbour and know that within hours that would be all be deep underwater.

Besides all the 'touristy' things in London, visiting the Victoria and Albert Museum was a highlight. I spent most of my time in the Textile section and still didn't see everything that they had to offer. The feast of exquisite embroidery, much of it done centuries ago was a joy to behold. Most of the churches and cathedrals that I visited had beautifully embroidered altar clothes, but very frustratingly were roped off so you couldn't get close enough to really study the work. I also tried to buy threads from every place I visited, but this wasn't always easy as there aren't many 'local' threads around. I did have a very pleasant two hours buying everything I wanted in a wonderful needlework shop in Bakewell and later [too late] found that a building I'd stopped to admire and photograph in Penzance, housed an excellent needlework shop!

Then there were the literary related sites that I stumbled upon! Driving out of London I went down Baker Street, Gloucester has a 'Tailor of Gloucester' shop. Cockermouth in the Lake District is the birthplace of William Wordsworth. Malham Tarn in the Yorkshire Dales was the setting for Charles Kingsleys Waterbabies and the churchyard of St Mary's Church in Whitby was the inspirational setting for Bram Stokers Dracula. Near Ayr is the birthplace of Robbie Burns and he's buried in Dumfries. I passed the bridge that was made famous by Robbie Burns in a poem and Loch Doone. Near the foot of Bulboben in Ireland is the burial site of Yeats, Kells and the list goes on and on.

When I was in the Lake district at the Cockermouth hostel, a young Scot had told me about an oddity called the 'Electric Brae'... Croy Brae to the locals. It's on the coastal road South of Ayr, so of course I had to check it
out. It works both ways and is very weird. Traveling towards Ayr, you are traveling up a hill. You can see the hill going up in front of you, but put the car into neutral and let down the handbrake and you start to roll UP the
hill! It's even more disconcerting to be looking down the hill, to then release the handbrake and roll backwards! It's an optical illusion, it runs for a quarter of a mile and I certainly wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't experienced it.

I spent a wonderful two months covering the length and breadth of the British Isles and a bit of Eire. I was called love, pet, duck and darlin' depending on the area, by some of the friendliest people I've ever met and I made a lot of new friends and put faces to some old ones. I have a lot of wonderful memories to treasure for decades to come.