Carcassonne Crochet Retreat

During the first week of October I was lucky enough to go away on holidays to France on my own for a week. I say on my own but actually I was with my bestest oldest friend (we have known each other for 49 years!!!) and a group of 12 others on a lovely relaxing crochet retreat. The retreat, which was organised by Stitchtopia and run by the wonderful Lucy of Attic24 fame, took place in the beautiful city of Carcassonne in southern France.

We set off very early (I got up at 2:30am - yikes!) on a Monday morning and got off to a great start with bucks fizz for breakfast at the airport...

We met everybody at the departure gate and before long we were touching down in Toulouse to beautiful sunny weather. An hour or so on the coach and we were afforded our first view of beautiful Carcassonne...

... and yes it really does look like that - just WoW - a beautiful, historic, medieval, walled city perched on a hill surrounded by rolling green fields. (Well on a few sides anyway, there is also a newer area of town but we'll come to that later.) 

Entering the city is by way of a huge gate which would have had a portcullis and drawbridge, as there is a dry moat ...

Once inside the city, which is made up of lots of little winding roads and alleyways made of cobblestones, its very peaceful and quiet as there is no traffic (hence no traffic noise), and of course everywhere is safe for pedestrians. Everywhere you look there are little restaurants and boutique shops, its just so quaint and pretty.

Our hotel was actually inside the walled city so it was very handy for all the restaurants, and lovely and peaceful at night. We stayed for 6 days - 4 days of crochet (yippee!!!) and 2 days sight-seeing (with a little crochet added in of course!). During our crochet days we had workshops run by the lovely Lucy, who taught us about colour theory, and then gave us a wonderful pattern to follow for a cushion cover. We were challenged to be bold and brave with our colour choices, and to step outside of our comfort zones. And how lucky were we - we were each given a pack of Scheepjes minis to work with (photo nicked from Lucy as I was to excited and forgot to take one !) ...

Ooooh my! Amazing! Such gorgeous colours and such cute little balls, just such fun for messing about with and playing with colour. The front side of the cushion was a little experimental with some blending first of all ...

 

... and this soon grew into nearly a competed front cover ....

... it was wonderful to see how everybody else's cushion covers were so different despite working from the same palette...

... we added some little flowers to the middle of the front, here is mine completed ...

... to be honest I'm not wildly happy with it, too much orange maybe ? But here is the reverse and Oh My GoSh I LoVe It ...

I feel with the front I let myself overthink it whereas with the reverse I just went with the flow a bit and as a result it feels much more balanced. Or maybe its just that I love brights so much! Nevertheless the workshops were such fun, lots of lively chatter and laughter, and soooo good to spend time with like-minded people, and during down time we could relax in the sweet little hotel garden ...

We had a couple of days of sightseeing, and the old town of Carcassonne is so beautiful - I took a gazillion photos. One lunchtime we went for a tour of the chateau and ramparts - the walled part of the city consists of over 50 towers, and its possible to walk around the ramparts a fair way. 

We made it into the new area of town as well, and had a lovely afternoon shopping ...

... and we went on a little boat tour too ...

On our second sightseeing day we went to Lavantel to the Musee de Textiles .... 

... and we saw some fascinating spinning and weaving demonstrations ...

Over the week we had lots of lovely food and of course vino!

But all too soon it was time to go home again. Going back to the reality of laundry and cooking was a bit of a shock to the system, I can tell you! 

I've been a terrible blogger this year, but am hoping to get things started again with this post - so watch this space and next time I will have some crafty happenings for you.

Til next time, hope you have some crafty fun,

Jillxxx

Mountstewart, Summer 2015

Hello dear readers and a Happy Monday to you :)

We are back from our holidays; the unpacking is almost done and I'be made a good start on the dreaded post-holiday laundry. Today I thought I'd share some photos from one of our days out - a visit to Mount Stewart, a National Trust property in Co. Down, N. Ireland.

Almost every time we go over to Norn Irn we spend a day at Mount Stewart. It's very local to where we stay when we're there, and we can easily spend the afternoon exploring the grounds and gardens.

It was looking a bit dark and damp when we arrived, but the drizzle soon abated and the sun almost came out :)

Just at the entrance there is a Lookout Hut, inside which is lots of information about the wildlife of the area, and the deck has a gorgeous view over the beautiful Strangford Lough. Strangford Lough is in fact part of the Irish Sea, and therefore is tidal - the tide is out in the picture below.

And on the side of the Lookout Hut there is a fabulous mosaic mural depicting the lough with geese flying overhead.

The house's recent history dates back to 1744 when it was bought by the Stewart family, later to become holders of the title Marquess of Londonderry. 

The house has undergone an extensive refurbishment, and I'd love to have a look inside, but the Little Peeps aren't that keen, so we stuck to the gardens.

And the gardens are beautiful, we only managed the "back garden" which consists of a large lake surrounded by pathways and gardens.

There are more manicured "front" gardens, but the lake and its surrounding is much more fun for tree-climbing, and exploring in general.

The gardens are FULL of hydrangeas, I could easily have filled an entire post with photos of hydrangeas alone. Such beautiful colours, mine never look this good at home!

The insects were busy doing their insect-business ....

.... and there was colour everywhere ....

Upon arrival we had picked up some of the National Trust's "50 Things to do before you're 11 3/4" books ....

.... and we saw that one of the things was to make a grass trumpet. I don't remember ever doing this myself as a youngster, but had a vague idea of how to do it, so I picked some nice fat blades of grass and gave it a go - it worked! So I showed the Little People how to do it - and they picked it up straight away. Happy sigh. My parenting was a success that day!!!

It was really funny. There we all were, screeching away on our grass trumpets, giggling like anything, and every family that came along clearly saw this as either a challenge or an invitation to join in, soon there were little grass trumpet orchestras screeching away all over the place!

Other "50 things ..." things included roly-polying down a hill .... now that's one I definitely did when I was the same age as as Little Tomboy ....

.... and everywhere we walked gave us a new view of the lake .... so pretty :)

In a small clearing is a rather bizarre statue of a white stag. There's no mention of why it's here. I suspect it's been donated by a local artist, but I could be totally wrong. Whatever, it is beautiful, if a bit surreal!

Halfway round the lake you stumble upon an intriguing little staircase leading to "Tir n'an Og" ...

Tir n'an Og is Gaelic for "Land of Youth", and was the name for the Underworld (or nicer sounding Otherworld as it was called) in Irish mythology. At Mount Stewart the Tir n'an Og staircase leads to the private Stewart family cemetery, and as it's private obviously I have no photos, but in the pathways and stairways surrounding it there is a riot of colour, the flowers really come into their own here ....

We loved the way the red fallen leaves looked so vibrant in the cobbles below ....

There was lots of nature-gathering - I love these photos of booty from our trips ...

After a full circuit of the lake we made our way back to the cafe for ice-creams outside. I love the super-size flower pots ....

... and I had a little peak in the plant "shop". The window in the fence is actually a mirror. I LOVE this, I totally thought it was a window until my own reflection surprised me!

The plant area had some fabulously quirky olde-worlde bits and pieces dotted about ....

By this time it was time to head home, but not before a quick nosy in the second-hand bookshop. And of course I couldn't leave empty-handed. You've probably heard me say it before - what I love most about second-hand book shops is the randomness of the books. This time I bought, for the princely sum of £1.00, this book by Betty MacDonald.

Onions in the Stew, memoirs of Betty's time living on an island near Seattle, will be on my next month's reading list :)

Right, the washing machine is finished, I'm off to reload it for the millionth time today!

Bye for now

xxxxxxx