Where did the days go?

I can't believe we are in the last few days of the school holidays.  Where did the days go?  It was going so slowly to begin with.  In a good way too - we just had so much going on.  We had holiday club for a week, the Olympics, holidays in North Wales, footie matches for the boys, visiting friends and Car Fest last weekend. Now half way through our final week and nothing else to look forward to, the time is rushing away.

It makes me quite sad really.  My elder son is just about to start year 8.  6 more years and he will have done both his GCSEs and A levels and will hopefully, be heading off to university and won't want to be spending the holidays with us.  Maybe.  When he started school, the years of summer holidays stretched out before us and now they are more than half gone as far as he is concerned. I say maybe because he as mild Aspergers and so maybe he will spend more time with us than the average child but who knows.  I am sure he will change a lot in 6 years.  6 more years will also see the younger one at the end of Yr 9 and just about to start his GCSE years.  He won't want to hang around with his ageing parents much by then either.  It all goes in a blink of an eye doesn't it?

So, I am not much looking forward to the start of term and I will miss them, but on the other hand, I have done next to no crafting this holiday.  There isn't the time or the space.  I need to sew on the dining room table and with the Playstation in the same room and in use for a fair few hours a day there isn't the opportunity.  Plus I need to feed the boys and we need the table for that too.  It hasn't really been picnic weather a lot of the time.  It is such a faff to unpack and then repack every time the table is needed or the sound of racing cars/football games gets too much to bear.

It will be good, not to say vital to get on with my course work when the boys do go back to school.  I will be in serious trouble if I don't have a few more things finished. I have been buying gorgeous silks for my quilted bowl which is going to be a challenge.  I don't want to mess it up having spent so much on the fabric.  Thankfully I have lots of old sheets to practice the design on first!

The only thing I have done in recent weeks apart from plan what I am going to do is a knitted square for another Mumsnet Woolly Hugs blanket, this time for a family who lost a little girl to cancer.  I can't imagine the pain they must feel so knitting a square is the least I can do.  I might have posted it before but if you are interested in having a look at what we have created, with an especially big shout out to the wonderful ladies who put the blankets together, this is the website - http://www.woollyhugs.com/about/ .

And this is my square.  Can't have a blog post without a photo even if it was very quickly taken on my phone.

It was knitted with Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK so it is lovely to work with and very soft.  I bet a whole blanket would give a very lovely woolly hug.

Thanks for reading.  Please come back soon.

Planning time

I've  not done much crafting recently.  Mostly that is because it has been the school holidays and I just haven't had the opportunity.  I knitted a couple of square for the Mumsnet Woolly Hugs project but rather foolishly forgoet to take any photos so I can't even show those.  This week though, we have been away in N Wales.  My parents in law live here but don't have room to put us up so we rent a house.  This time it is a real get away being up the top of a hill, more or less alone except for a farm which is further down the drive and a whole lot of sheep plus a cow or 2.  The road up to this place, a public road too, is single track and is so little used that grass is growing up through the tarmac down the middle of the road.

This is the view from the front of the cottage.  Stunning isn't it? 

I haven't managed to go to any craft shops this time - it has been a very boy orientated holiday with a trip to Liverpool to watch some footie - Liverpool FC, the team of choice in our house, played Bayer Leverkusen in a friendly so  we took the opportunity to go and watch.  Not only that but my husband got to fulfil a childhood dream of standing in the famous Kop to watch  (The Kop being the stand for dyed in the wool, serious fan) and my boys were over joyed too because this sort of devotion to a team appears to be genetic (who knew)  and they are as devoted as their father! In between footie and dog walking and ice cream it has been a real boy week.  Thankfully the weather has been OK and I have been able to play with the settings on my camera properly for the first time since I got it a year ago. 

Anyway, I might have found a way of redressing the balance and I am hoping to go to the Festival Quilts this weekend.  The NEC is on our way home so I might bail out and take my opportunity to have a look at some lovely quilts, oogle beautiful fabrics and stroke gorgeous threads.  I have never been before but apparently you need a weekend to see everything.  I won't be able to manage that but a few hours of stitchy magic and a bit of retail therapy should be a good reward for my selfless commitment to all things boy.  Perhaps I should make them all come with me? ..........On second thoughts a few hours peace might be worth having to get the train ride home instead of riding home in the car. Hopefully I will be able to share some of my photos with you in a few days.

In the meantime, thanks for reading.

Olympic Fever

This isn't really a crafty post but since my blog name is Passing the Time, I didn't think that it would be too out of place to post a few pictures of what we did with our time yesterday.

Now goodness knows I am not a sporty person.  My idea of exercise is walking to the local craft shop and wandering round a shopping centre.  However, once every 4 years even I get interested in sport for those 2 weeks in the summer when the Olympics is on.  That is doubly true this time around because it is in my home town, not far from where I was born.

5 years ago when London won the games Mr S and I decided that we would definitely try and go to something just to say we had been.  As I am sure you know, the ticketing was a bit a lottery but we applied for a few things, some of them for the less popular sports in the hope that we would get to go to something.  Sure enough, we have tickets.  Yay!!  And not just one set but tickets for fencing and rowing for all four of us.  Mr S also has a ticket for the centre court at Wimbledon and the male contingent of the family have tickets to the Olympic footie next week at Wembley.  All very exciting.

Anyway, our first outing was yesterday to the ExCeL Centre in London.  We had to get up early for a Sunday (an Olympic sized effort was required for that, let me tell you) and caught the train and then the Tube and the DLR to the Excel centre.

I'd never been to the Excel Centre before and it is massive.  Fencing wasn't the only sport going on there.

I have always liked the look of fencing but I didn't know much about it other that what I gleaned from films like The Three Muskateers. Basically, it is the first one to score 15 points and in the sabre the fencers can use the point or the side of the blade to make contact with any part of the body above the waist.  It is fast and furious and each point can be over in a flash.  It is all electronically scored with a referee to control the match which is just as well as I can't see how anybody could accurately award points without the aid of electronics.

There were 4 matches on at a time and we saw the last 64 (altough there were some byes in that so not as many matches as you would imagine), the last 32, the last 16 and the quarter finals.  We had tickets for the morning and the semis and the final were in the evening but we were home in time to watch them on the telly.

There was quite a bit of showmanship and it made me laugh that there would be this furious burst of activity for a few seconds and then the lights would come on and invariably both fencers would raise a hand and claim the point.  Sometimes, there was no point to claim but other times it was awarded to one or the other.  See what I mean about the electronics being necessary.  If the fencers don't even know who won the point it isn't easy to score the aid of wires and computers!

The eventual gold medalist, Aron Szilagyi from Hungary, is on the right of this picture, in the quarter finals I think.  

You know if I was 20 or even 10 years younger and a bit bit lighter on my feet (well lighter in every way really) I would love to have a go at this.  It looks a lot of fun and if you get the chance to watch or even have a go at fencing I recommend it.

After it was all over we went to see a few of the sights of London although it rained and spoilt it a bit but it did clear up enough for a quick walk across the river and an ice cream whilst admiring a few of the more famous sights.

Look at the colour of the sky!  We were dodging rain all afternoon.

We were walking back to Waterloo station and saw this on the side of the Hayward Gallery which wasn't what we expected to see on the side of the building.  Very clever although it makes you wander what they were running away from!

Tomorrow we are off to see the rowing at Eton Dorney which is an even earlier start than yesterday and we are sitting in a stand which is open to the elements when the forecast is for rain.  This could be pretty grim and I think an extra set of clothing might not go amiss.  If the rain holds off and we can see the rowing, it should be a good morning!

Thanks for reading.  I have some knitting on the go at the moment (although the WIP from Hell - see previous post - is still a WIP and I still haven't done anything with it).  Hopefully, I shall have a few photos of soft woolly things to show you.