Scavenger Hunt

Saturday 30 July 2016

Holidays

The first week of the summer holidays has been a good one for me.  The last week at school was chaotic and stressful and I'm glad it's finished.  

Miss and Master Clicky went to a Greek Island with my brother and his family, leaving Mr Clicky and me at home.  I have pottered about, had some late lie-ins and we've gone out and about a few times, to the cinema to see Star Trek Beyond ~ absolutely amazing.   They arrived back late last night, bronzed and with lots of washing.  Two people, I discovered don't produce much washing at all.  Four, lots.

My Afmaeli sweater has come on.  I got to the very exciting bit of joining the body and arms and working on the yolk.  I am still loving this yarn and pattern and I've made such good progress I've started the ribbing at the neck in the cream.  Unfortunately I've run out of yarn!  
 I did a quick order to Wool Warehouse and whilst waiting for it to come started sewing in the ends.  I'm giving you a sneaky peak at the back, not showing the front until the proper Ta-Dah! which shouldn't be that long because....

my new ball arrived in the post this morning.  It's a different dye lot but I'm not concerned.  It even came in a dinky Wool Warehouse organza bag, I've only had H U G E bags before. :-) 
 Me and Mr Clicky are off to France to work on our little house tomorrow.  That leaves my Midwinter Yarns Linus on the Line shawl being the perfect car knitting.  Nothing like long rows to eat up those miles and miles of French motorway.
That's me for now, in France we're preparing walls and hopefully painting them too, but experience has taught us no job is ever as quick as it should be.

Have a great week, I'll see you next weekend.

Clicky Needles.

Thursday 28 July 2016

Tate Modern

Hello there.

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to go to Tate Modern on a school trip.  I say lucky, but I was not looking forward to this trip.  The thought of a three hour coach journey both ways from Gloucestershire to London and three hours in The Tate with a bunch of 10 and 11 year olds was not appealing.  As it turned out we had a lovely driver and the kids had brought games/colouring/cards to keep them occupied on the journey.  We had an early start 7.30am instead of 8.45am but it still only took 20 minutes before someone asked if they could eat their lunch.  When we reached the M40 flyover (Westway) the coach echoed with excited voices checking out the expensive shiny cars in the multi-storey car showrooms.  "I can see a Porsche!" "Look at that Lamborghini!"

We were dropped on the South Bank, walked past Shakespeare's Globe and were soon at what used to be Bankside Power Station.  When it finished generating power in 1981 it stood empty until 1993 when it became Tate Modern.
 
We grouped in the massive Turbine Hall ~ you can get 7 double decker busses on top of each other here.
This is The Turbine Hall from the glowy box thing viewing balcony you can see half way up.
One girl in my group said her Gran had told her look for Henri Matisse's The Snail.    It was the first thing we ran into.  What I hadn't appreciated was it was BIG.  2.7m by 2.8m. Wall sized.
One of Monet's Waterlilies, this was also wall sized.
It felt quite drab with it's greens and blues rather than the pinks and purples of some of his other work, but none the less impressive.  I loved seeing this.

We found some Mondrians ~ normal sized and


Picasso's Weeping Woman, she is certainly full of angst.  

One of Antony Gormley's statues.
We crossed the bridge over The Turbine Hall
looked down on a tree sculpture by Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist, made from lots of different types of trees  
into the new building only just opened.

I'm not sure who this was by but I really liked it ~ the grey bits perhaps.
Of course, not everything seemed like art to me and several times the kids came up to me and said "I don't get that."  "Me neither," I'd reply and we'd laugh and carry on.   The children got a lot from the visit, stopping, staring and really talking about what they saw, which I suppose is what it's all about.

Some things however, seemed pleasing to me, Stack By Tony Cragg for instance.  Dunno why, I just like it.
I couldn't work out what this town was made of, until one of the boys in my group told me it was couscous, he'd seen it on the news.  It's a model of Ghardaia, a town in Algeria.

It was made by museum staff and chefs with couscous and salt to stiffen it following the instructions of Kader Attia, a French-Algerian artist.  I liked this too, but art? I don't know.
Our 3 hours were soon up and we walked back to the bus.  The wobbly  Millennium Bridge
and The Shard, the tallest building in the UK.
Our lovely bus driver took us on a bit of a tour on the way back past 10 Downing Street, Houses of Parliament, Parliament Square, Buckingham Palace gardens and Oxford Street.  Commentary provided on the PA system by one of the teachers, who was stupefied to see a gold, yes gold, Land Rover Evoque in Sloane Square.  The boys at the back of the bus were impressed.

It was a long but very enjoyable day.  If you get the chance to go, do.  Go with an open mind, you're not going to like it all, some things are downright weird, but that's ok.  Worth it for the Monet alone for me.  I might go back, but without the gaggle of kids next time!

See you soon..............Clicky Needles.

Monday 25 July 2016

Cheltenham Cricket Festival T20 Blast.

Hi there.

Last Sunday Mr and Master Clicky and me went to the T20 Blast day of Cheltenham's Cricket Festival.  It takes place over 2 weeks with County Championship matches, tourist matches (Pakistan, Sri Lanka, England Lions) and my own favourite the T20 Blast.  In T20 you are encouraged to make lots of noise, music is played at the end of an over and it's a really fast game, not like a 5 day international ~ although I do like those too.

We met our friends with a picnic and sat in the stands and munched and chatted.  You do need to keep an eye on play ~ as you can see it's not a big ground.  Balls frequently come at the crowd we had three sixes in our stand, a bit too close for comfort.  I'm a complete wuss when it comes to catching a cricket ball and do everything to avoid it!   The speed of the fast bowlers is something to behold.
In the spirit of the day we blew up our clackers to make as much noise as we could, sang along to the music played and generally had a good time.


It was a cracking game, Gloucestershire got 212-1 for their 20 overs and Essex were 182-9,  Gloucestershire won and were the much stronger team.  

A super day out.

Thankfully, I'm now on Summer holidays, so time for relaxing.

See you soon...................Clicky Needles.

E.T.A. As this is a T20 Blast match the players wear team colours rather than "whites."  Essex in navy, Gloucestershire in yellow.  The two umpires wore a navy/yellow combination ~ very confusing!!!!















Sunday 10 July 2016

Today I am mostly working on......

Hello there.

I have two things that I am mostly working on at the moment.  (There are other things that are in the naughty corner next to the sofa but I'm not thinking about them.)

When I was sitting, people watching at the Festival last week I was adding more rows to my shawl, (not a teacosy busybusybeejay!)  I bought this yarn at Wonderwool, from Midwinter Yarns.    If you click through to their website you can see the cream/rainbow colourway of the shawl, it's a real beauty.   The colours are alternated, two rows each. Although the shawl grows the yarn balls seem to get no smaller.













Whilst watching Andy Murray win Wimbledon again ~ yay go Andy! ~ I joined the arms and body of my Afmaeli jumper so I have a few more rows of the beautiful charcoal grey and then the fun begins with the yoke colours.  I'm loving this so much.

Mr Clicky is away again, a week in Hong Kong and China so I should get lots of time on it and the TV remote all to me.

We've a week and a half left at school and things are getting manic.  Sports day, Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Move Up Day, Leavers Disco, Leavers Assembly, Book Archiving........  I'm trying hard not to be grumpy but it's so hard.

Right I'll see you soon.
Have a good week.............Clicky Needles.  



Friday 8 July 2016

Nibley Festival

Hi There!

I had the best time at Nibley Festival.  It was my first music festival but at only a forty minute drive from home and 5000 people it seemed a 'safe' option.  Miss Clicky and two of her friends came too.  When we arrived all the prime camping spots had gone and we were on a bit of a slope at the edge of the field.  We did however, have this fabulous view to look at.  

We could see all over South Gloucestershire with the Severn Bridges, Bristol and Wales in the distance.   The only drawback is the the wind comes in from the Bristol Channel and then hits the hill that we were half way up.  It was cold at night!  I wore many layers as I always get cold when camping and was toasty warm in my sleeping bag.


Above us on the top of the hill is the Tyndale Monument.  This was erected in honour of William Tyndale a local man, who translated the New Testament from Latin into English.  In 1535 he was convicted as a heretic and was strangled and burnt for his troubles.
On Friday night we ate hotdogs cooked for us by Nibley School PTA, boogied to several bands and singers

and then the silent disco began.  There are two DJs and two channels to hear through your headphones.   Press the button to switch channels.  It was one of the maddest things I've ever done but so much fun. We danced until the early hours and slept well.
On Saturday we took our chairs and picnic blanket to the festival field and got settled in.  The people who come for the day arrived and it soon filled up.   The girls went off around the stalls selling ponchos, hats, jewellery and lots of food while I sat and knitted.  A lady came up to me gave me a knowing look and said as soon as she sat down she'd be knitting too.  There was a Pimms tent and the beer tent sold local beer and cider to keep us refreshed.
The weather was kind and we had no rain, although it looked like we'd get some at one point.
The bands played from lunch time, through the sunset and into the night.

It looks like we were a long way from the stage but we really weren't. 
I was happy to watch Scouting for Girls from our seats but Miss Clicky and her friend managed to get right to the front.   They were great and Miss Clicky loved it!
Nibley Festival, we will return ~ although maybe with a trolly to carry all the camping gear from the car park to the camp field.