Sky Watching

We've spent a lovely few days in Durham this week, visiting family and taking the opportunity to explore some of the surrounding area. I will admit I was looking forward to the slightly cooler temperatures up north, but was totally unprepared for the drop to around 12°C when we got out of the car at the service station at Wetherby. We were all shivering and looking for coats, stepping over puddles, it was comical. Once the rain stopped it warmed up a little and for the rest of our time away we were treated to a mixture of sun and cloud, and some spectacular clouds at that.

This was Ziggy's first long journey and he coped much better than expected. Never the happiest traveller, he settled down once we were on the motorway and slept a lot of the way there. We took him out and about with us as much as possible which was lovely, and he seemed to enjoy Warkworth Castle, sniffing a lot but thankfully not peeing up against any historical monuments.

Warkworth beach was wild and huge, and not overly warm either. I love the beaches of the Northumberland coast, they're so vast with their miles of sand and wide open skies, quite different to the crowded, shingle beaches down here. 

Angus, John and Ziggy played football, Bella hunted for pebbles to paint, I took photos. Everyone was happy.

Inland, the wild flowers were in full bloom and I was struck by the soft purple and gold tones everywhere from the heather and grasses. Ziggy was spoilt for walks while we were away with the moorland and beaches, and the cooler temperatures meant we could walk for much further and longer than we have been in the heat. 

 We couldn't visit Durham without a trip to Seaham beach to hunt for sea glass. 

John and the kids always roll their eyes and make out like I'm dragging them all there (it's a twenty minute drive!) but, once we're there, they all have as much fun as me. 

Bella got really into it and collected a bag full, and John found some gems. Angus explored the caves and searched for interesting pebbles and stones to add to his Interesting Things box.

 And Ziggy was happy just to wander between each of us, occasionally having a paddle in the surf or going to say hello to another dog, but I think it's safe to say he had as much fun as I did.

 I find searching for sea glass very soothing. You can just lose yourself in what you're doing and let your mind wander. 

I sat myself down on the sand and looked out to sea, then ran my hands through the sand around me, and unearthed so many treasures. I could have sat there all day. And these were the afternoon's treasures: mostly green and white with a few bright jewel colours and a couple of gorgeous, large pebble-like pieces. They've been added to Bella's collection.

So a brief trip but a nice one, and we enjoyed the time together. Today has been busy as we did errands and jobs like laundry, ironing, washing the car, and getting ready for a break in Devon next week. I'm out all day tomorrow at my friend and colleague's wedding so I won't get anything done then. Everything happens at once and this summer holiday is filling up rapidly.

I took lots of crafting projects to Durham with me of course (I needed something to do on that long journey) and I have made a start on an EPP hexagon patchwork quilt (much, much more on that another day) and crocheted a bag which I will show you soon, but the main thing I was working on was this gift for my friend, the bride.

It features flowers from her bouquet (cream roses, green hypericum berries, white bouvardia and baby's breath/gypsophila) and around the bouquet, I have embroidered their names and the date of the wedding. 

I've backed it with cream wool felt and tied a velvet ribbon to the top of the hoop so it can be hung.

It's not my usual style of embroidery but I went with it and just embraced the bridal frothiness of it all. I'll show you a finished photo of it soon. I hope she likes it.

Late February Days

We went to Yorkshire and it snowed. We were staying with good friends that we've known for years and years, in their house high up in the hills near Holmfirth, and we'd spent the morning walking off our hangovers in the sun and eating a cooked breakfast. Suddenly the snow came down thick and fast for about ten minutes. It didn't settle. When it stopped we went out for tea: pie, chips and gravy. (Eating is my path through a hangover.)

Then northwards to Durham to see John's family. I "persuaded" everyone that a quick trip to Seaham beach for a walk (for me to look for sea glass) would be a cracking good idea in one degree winds. We would have stayed longer were we not about to lose all feeling in our extremities, but what a lot we found. The trouble with looking for sea glass, though, is that you spend the whole time bending over looking at the ground when you could be looking at the sea or the sky.

We were home at the end of the week in time for me to celebrate being one whole year older. I tried to convince my niece that I was twenty eight, not thirty eight, and she just looked at me through narrowed eyes and really scrutinised my face, then said "I don't believe you".

I don't care. I had a completely lovely day. Friends from near and far sent cards and parcels. New friends from school called in with gifts and flowers which was unexpected and moved me a bit, as I was not expecting that at all. Bella drew me a new family portrait which nearly made me cry when I unwrapped it. My family came round in the afternoon and we sat in front of the fire and drank tea and ate three types of cake. John made a blackcurrant and liquorice cake (so, so, so good) and then my parents babysat so we could go out. A really top day. All birthdays should fall on Saturdays, don't you think? 

And when I look at myself through Bella's eyes I don't think I look a day over twenty eight. 

Beach Jewels

Hasn't the weather been absolutely glorious this week? Just beautiful. Even up here in the North East (where we've spent a lovely few days) it's been sunny and mild. I say "even" as I have been coming here long enough to know that it always feels cooler up here, and that the cold north sea wind blows hard. On Wednesday we visited Seaham beach, on the Durham coastline. It's not somewhere I'd been before, but since reading Caroline's post last summer, I was very keen to go. Seaham beach, it turns out, is absolutely full of sea glass. Seriously, I have never seen so much in one place before. We found all this in the space of a couple of hours:

Not to mention this pottery:

I was particularly keen to find some "end of day" glass, so called because the local glass factories (long since closed) would tip waste glass into the sea at the end of the working day. It tends to have variegated patterns and different colours. This was our haul:

The pink piece (pink sea glass!!) is about 1 cm across, to give you some idea of scale, so quite small.

Looking for sea glass is enormously, incredibly, relaxing. It was absolute heaven to wander up and down the beach, scanning the pebbles to see what treasure lay hiding there. John and the kids joined in. 

Actually, Bella is completely obsessed with sea glass and has appropriated all that we found on Seaham beach to add to her already quite large collection. There are also some excellent rock pools and on a warmer day I'd have been in them, flip flops on, paddling around.

Occasionally we would find a kind of seam of glass, a small area rich in it, and if you pushed your hands in and under the pebbles there was more hiding, waiting to be found. It's a cliche to say that a piece of wet beach glass glistens like a jewel, but it's true, it does.

And of course the fun doesn't end when you leave the beach, as when you get home you get to play with the treasure, sorting and arranging your haul. Look, it's like a paint box of colour.

If you want to read more about Seaham sea glass, Emma of Silverpebble wrote a great post about it, and if you type "Seaham Sea Glass" into a search engine there is a lot more information out there. 

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Thank you for your kind words about our new home and all your good wishes. I am sorry I've been such a bad blogger lately, not visiting or saying hello, but I'll be back properly soon. Not having broadband has been both liberating and constraining. I've had a much, much more time to do other things without the siren call of the laptop, but often, when I've just wanted to check something (bank balance) or buy something or look something up, I've really missed it. And I've missed you all too.