No Boats or Planes just plenty of Trains!!

The last month has been crazy and I have spent much of it away from home and thus parted from my PC. OK the laptop is fine for keeping up to date with emails and the like, but I never seem to have enough time to blog in the caravan. We did have a lovely week staying on our favourite CL which did both of us the world of good - unhurried and no pressures - great, we also were lucky enough to see Tornado go through the local station and were nearly witness to what could have been a nasty accident and two idiots stood right on the edge of the platform with arms out-stretched to take a photo as several tons of steam train hurtled towards them at around 50 miles per hour - this pic isn't very clear but you can see that they are well beyond the safety marker on the platform!!!
Bureaucracy requires us to have the car and the caravan serviced yearly. As the local KIA dealership has all the charisma of a lump of lard, and the efficiency of monkeys (for the last two years they have failed to collect the car on the agreed day, never billed me correctly and been generally disinterested in any form of customer satisfaction) we decided to have the car serviced in Stoke on Trent - why - well back in May when we visited Macclesfield 's silk mills, we had a minor problem with the car electrics - Ken Jervis (the dealership from whom we bought the car) sorted things out, provided a courtesy car and couldn't have been more helpful - so why suffer inferior service when you can have the best? Plus our very special caravan has to be serviced in Driffield - so a northern holiday was arranged - and it happened to co-incide with two (yes two) model railway exhibitions - well you do have to keep the man in your life content, don't you??


The second of these exhibitions saw the first proper public showing of Yate Rocks Tramway and gave me the opportunity to spin for a whole day without being moaned at - could get used to this. This meant that I got a whole morning at the Threshing Barn in recompense - not a bad exchange (and Mr S got to hear about shenanigans of the local preserved railway which were upsetting the locals). What's more I got a pair of the new Knit Pro Cubics to try - I have to say I might have been more impressed if I hadn't got a splinter in my finger! Stupidly I pulled - rather than sticking it back so I have a rough surface - but they do seem to fit into the hand very nicely and are cheaper than the other square needles on the market.

On the crafting front - I have been spinning my lovely Polwarth and am determined to fill the bobbin on my Hansen MiniSpinner - I have also been making various prototype bags - particularly a case for all my Knitpro tips. After searching the web I couldn't find anything that I couldn't make myself cheaper and possibly better. I finally settled on a clutch bag format and have come up with this




And inside
I am not happy with the zipped pocket, but this can and will be bettered for the final version!

But back to trains and Saturday just gone - which again saw me spinning for the whole day - uninterrupted while Mr S talked model railways with fellow nuts - life could be so much worse....