Leaving home...

It was very hard to leave Sussex this time. It's always hard to leave my Grandfather. What I wouldn't give to be able to just pop by every day and have a cup of tea and a chat. I had a quick chat with Nan this time too. It's been four years exactly but I still wasn't able to say very much without difficulty.

E and I intended to have a week of rest, study for her and knitting/crochet for me. It didn't really work out that way. She needed certain coastal photographs and that's what we went in search of. Hastings Old Town, Rye and Brighton. I'm still waiting for her to forward me some of the photo's.

We had a nice trip over to Rye, spent some time in the town, had great coffee in a rustic old coffee shop, stepped politely round the tourists. One American family rounded a bend and found themselves at the top of a cobbled street and exclaimed, 'Gee, it's just like the home ad'. Well we've no idea what the home ad is but I bet it was quintessentially English, Rye is like stepping back in time.

Later we drove down the harbour road and parked up at the nature reserve. This is my kind of place for walking. A lovely long circular walk alongside the harbour, along the beach with views over to Camber Sands and back round through the marshes where there were all sorts of sea birds including some rare ones (apparently!)

Brighton was a fun train ride through parts of the Sussex Downs. I'm not mad keen on cities but we had another great day. E liked the North Laines with all its quirky shops, vintage clothing, jewellery, art. A rustic coffee shop was found and more coffee and hot soup consumed; sweet potato and butternut squash this time (a close second to the Wild Mushroom soup in Hastings Old Town). We got silly and had b/w photo's taken in an old fashioned booth. I did find myself wishing my school friends and I had taken the train over to Brighton more often.

Then we came across Yak! Yarn and Knitting of course. Very pricey yarn so instead I treated myself to this great little project bag. So refreshing to find something specifically for knitting or crochet that doesn't involve floral prints! One main compartment and two outer pockets which are ideal for the small notepads I use for counting rows or making adjustment notes. I'm using a vintage knitting pattern that Grandad passed on to me. It's a small pamphlet so it fits in the pocket perfectly. It's nice to think that I am now knitting a little cardigan for my niece that Nan may very well have knitted for me!

I'm probably woefully late to the game with pompom magazine. I vaguely recall some blog mentions but can't say I've ever seen one before. It seemed like a lot of money for a small magazine and when I flicked through it I was conscious of dragging E into yet another place where they happen to sell wool so I made a quick decision to buy it anyway and see what it was all about on the train ride home. Cough, cough, £9.50. Yikes. I expected an arty type magazine with plenty of pictures, a few articles and a lot of ads for expensive yarn. I hadn't realised that the arty pictures were all items for which the patterns were provided. I think I got lucky with this issue because the theme and all of the projects are exactly my taste. Its all undyed, natural, textured knits and crochet projects. Woohoo!

I'll do some pics of the inside spreads when I've had a chance to unpack properly and get the house back to its former glory (I'll give the men a two out of ten for effort on the clean house homecoming front, and I think it's fair to say that J earned the two points single handed; one point for attempting to hoover even though the Hoover bag was totally full and there wasn't any sucking power at all, and one point for washing some football kit.