Well, I'm back...

I haven't been around for a while! I just returned home from the long awaited trip back to the UK with my mother. We traveled around in northern England in York and Thirsk. For any of you Iowa Public Television nerds out there, Yorkshire is where the filmed "The Full Monty", "The Last of the Summer Wine", and "All Creatures Great and Small", otherwise known as James Herriot country. We then traveled by train up to Aberdeen, Scotland and took an overnight ferry to The Shetland Islands and stayed in a guest house in Lerwick. There we visited the Jamieson and Smith Wool Brokers and I got glorious yarn for a fairisle sweater that I am so excited about. I don't care if it takes me 20 years to knit it, but I shall attempt it. I also got yarn for a Shetland lace shawl pattern, another knitting Mount Everest! I bought two new drop spindles for myself, as well as one for Melissa and Summer along with 100 grams of real shetland wool roving! (If they catch the spinning bug, we will find them out of wool to spin, out of cotton balls because they tried to spin them, and in fact pulling the hair out of their brushes and trying to spin it! It truly happens!) I got 5 different shades of Shetland roving for myself for spinning. I don't know what I'm going to do with it or in fact what I have enough for. It is unspun and I'd have to kind of have a project in mind and spin for that guage. Hmmmm. I also got myself an Ashford niddy noddy. We also visited the fabulous Shetland Museum which was free of admission and absolutely excellent. While in the Shetland Islands, we were closer to Norway than we were Scotland so it never really got dark there, and if the islands didn't have stone walls, you'd swear you were in southwest Norway. It was just wonderful. We then flew to Edinburgh and toured the castle, Holyrood Palace, shopped along the Royal Mile and Princes Street, visited two period restored houses, and visited The Tartan Weaving Mills. We flew home with our luggage just under the weight restriction weight, but our carry on luggage was quite heavy, hmmmm, go figure. We ended up having to spend an extra night in a hotel because a flight was canceled on the last leg of our trip home, but it all worked out in the end. We had a great time but I am glad to be home.



We visited some beautiful buildings and churches and cathedrals. Saw the Stone of Destiny in Edinburgh. It is hard to believe that all the crowned heads had been crowned above that stone, starting back with William the Conqueror, isn't it? Somebody like that? And to marvel at how those beautiful windows were made how many hundreds of years ago with the tools and technology that they had and they have survived!

Saw a WWII era kitchen and pantry in the James Herriot house, and a Georgian kitchen in Edinburgh. I have a weakness for those kinds of displays! We walked along on top of medieval city walls along the perimeter of the old city. Learned all about Richard III and the mystery of the Princes in the tower.

And we goofed around and laughed a lot and took stupid pictures of us being stupid. You should see us at Christmas!