Happy birthday Mom

This last weekend was my mom’s birthday and for the first time in 5 years I got to celebrate with her!

Travel Announcement

Dear Readers,

I’m Super happy to tell you that Husband and I will be going to South Africa at the end of January.

Findhorn, Aberlour and Loch Indorb

Yesterday we went for quite a drive. We first went to Findhorn estuary and had a little walk. Then we went to Aberlour so I could go to a wool shop (I didn’t land up getting anything) and we had some coffee in the Town square. And then we went swimming in Loch Indorb! It was my first time swimming in a loch! But it was 27 degrees C so it was really lovely to go swimming.

Pebbles at Findhorn

Having coffee sitting in the shade on the grass

That splash behind me is husband in the water

I can’t really explain how magical it was to be out in the water surrounded by this beautiful landscape!

Hope you are all having a lovely weekend

Peace and love, Ellie Xoxo

Visit to Nairn, Scotland

Today we went for a visit to Nairn. We went for the river side walk. We took a break for me to do some sketching. Then we walked to the local wool shop and I bought some more sock wool(as though I don’t have enough!) And then we walked back. Here are some pictures.

The wiggly branches of these trees reminded me of the milkwood trees back in South Africa

I hope that you have been keeping well and having a lovely crafty time

Peace and love

Ellie

Xoxox

YOP 2020-2021 Week 4/52

Key
Have the Supplies for 🧶
WIP 💜
Finished ⭐️
Frogged 🐸
Hybernating 😴
Added during the year 🦄

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August Already

Hello Again,

I can’t believe that it is almost August already. I am only just beginning to come down to Earth a little after my family-in-law have left, and now my parents are arriving on Saturday.

Helensburgh Holiday

Hi again,

We recently went on holiday for 3 days to Helensburgh with our friend R.
Our cat Jack did not make this easy.

The week of St Patrick’s Day

Hello again readers,

Aren’t you lucky? Two posts in one week 😉

So as you know last week was kind of crazy because my mother-in-law (M-I-L) was staying in Edinburgh from Friday until Tuesday / Wednesday. That is only 5 days to try and cram as much excitement and fun into as possible! There are still a whole lot of things that we didn’t do but that’s just a good excuse for her to come back again 😛

Monday was a very exciting day indeed as we went for a train ride out to Kirkcaldy. Since the Sunday had been so tiring with going to the castle all day we decided that a nice train ride would be good so we could sit instead… ha.ha.ha.

Blow is a map and I have traced the train line that we took in purple. We actually stopped off in Aberdour to look at the castle there and we landed up having an adventure there too. Then we got back onto the train went through to Kirkcaldy (lovely coastal route) and then we just changed trains and went back to Edinburgh again.

I have complied the photos of the castle and the videos from the train into a Youtube video below so that it is easier for you to see.

So our adventure… While we were buying our tickets my M-I-L asked about the beaches near by, the lady at the counter said that it was a really nice walk between two beaches and that the walk was really quick. She also said that the second beach was just round the coast line and there were some cafes there. So M-I-L and I decided to take an amble down to the shore. Below you can see where we walked the way there is in purple and the way back is in pink.

We got down to where it says Room with a view on the map. This is where the lady at the ticket office had said that we just need to go round the coast a little. At this time M-I-L and I were quite hungry and were keen for the “cafes” that were round the corner.

Pebbly beach with an old broken pier.

Well… the cliff pictured below is what greeted us. There was definitely no way that we could go around that. There were some little signs along the way that indicated a walking route but they were not spaced closely enough together for us to really be able to follow them properly. Anyway we landed up walking up a long stairway a litter further back from the broken pier and we found ourselves on top of the cliff. When we walked round we didn’t really see a beach and there certainly weren’t any cafes. So we had to use the little (rather inadequate) map that the ticket lady had given us and we found our way back to the harbor and walked back from there.

Back in the little town we found a nice cafe called Mc Taggart’s and we had some lovely coffee and bagels.

When we arrived back in Edinburgh we went up to my flat in order to start supper only to discover that I had left my keys inside my flat (it has a yale lock). Thankfully T had his keys, only he wasn’t due back home for another 2 hours! So we went back to M-I-L’s flat and she had a rest while I knitted on Jeantelle’s socks.

When T got back he started supper and invited friend E over since it was her birthday! It was a really lovely and jolly evening as M-I-L and I bought special dessert and friend E brought sparkling wine!

Tuesday

On Tuesday we did a bit of admin. I went to M-I-L’s flat to help her carry her things to my flat as she had to check out at 12pm. Then we had to check her into her flight, that was quite an experience as neither of us had done it before. Thomas usually does it for me. Then we went off to buy some presents for her to take back for family members. Then we only realised the time at the last minute and somehow miraculously managed to make it down at 5pm South Bridge Road, to St. Andrews tram stop, took the tram to West end and still made it to St. Mary’s Evensong at 5.30! I think I did my running for the week. Haha.

That evening we went out to our favourite pub for supper and then T and I accompanied M-I-L to her new hotel. She stayed at a hotel next to the airport because her flight left at 5am the next morning so she had to be up at 3am or something like that.

On Wednesday I caught up with a bit of the housework that I had let slide and I did my BLOG POST for you guys!! 😀 then when I had a bit of time to myself I picked up my grandmother’s shawl again.

On Thursday it’s my podcasting day and this usually takes most of the day. I decided then that T, E and I should go out on Friday night to celebrate St. Patricks day, I wanted to dance and I wanted to wear one of the dresses which I got at the vintage fair.

Just perfect for St. Paddy’s don’t you think!

Anyway one of the bands that was playing at Stramash on St. Paddy’s was called “Venus’s Nipples”. I had sent a link to the event to T and E… T sent back the picture below saying, I presume that the band looks like this:

For those of you who don’t know that is a cropped image of Venus as painted by Sandro Botticelli in the painting “The Birth of Venus”

I have included a picture of my video set up for my podcast… because it is funny. I had been using T’s Cannon EOS 600D which is an amazing camera. But it is not so good for filming as it doesn’t have an automatic focus while you are filming. So I tried out my little cannon powershot SX210 and discovered that it does have an auto focus for filming. The only problem is that the display is fixed and cannot rotate out, so inorder to check what was going on I needed to balance my vanity mirror on top of T’s suitcase.

The camera did actually work a lot better, only I think that there was a spot of dust on my lens so it seemed to keep refocusing. I’ll try again next week and maybe move it a bit closer and make sure the lens is extra clean, otherwise I may have to go back to the other camera and just keep manually refocusing.

Then after supper T went out for bowling with his audit team as a team building type thing. So I had a lovely long Skype with my mom and my two soft teadys. The one you may recognise as my new coo and the other is my Sheep which T bought for me a number of years before we were married. I am actually thinking that I might use one of them as a mascot for my knitting podcast and I don’t have any pets who can join me. A lot of podcaster’s pets join them and it makes me miss my pets. But I can’t decide if I want sheepy because WOOL and because I love him. Or if I want Coo because he’s adorable and Scottish.

Friday

On Friday I just knit like a crazy person on my Granny’s shawl. And then we went out to Stramash for  St. Patricks day.

I love this shirt on T but it is too bright to wear on normal occasions.

The Church was lit up green for the event! For those of you who don’t know Stramash is in an old church. I presume it has been de-sanctified. I was wearing lipstick which is not something I do all the time so T got me to kiss his pint of Guinness and see how much rubbed off.

This was the last band that we heard play. They were called Mad Ferret and they were AWESOME. Very folky. And people were loving it and dancing a lot.

More lipstick smooches on T’s cheek. And friend E came to join us as well.

Saturday was a little bit of a write off… we may have gotten home at 3 am! We landed up having breakfast at about 12, then I went with friend E to go buy some yarn and needles for her and her friends who want me to teach them to knit. Then I rushed home to grab my own knitting and went off to my knit group.

By the time I got home I had a muscular headache, so I took some painkillers and just went to bed. I woke up briefly because T made me some supper.

And then it was Sunday. Today! I finished my Granny’s shawl! I am very impressed with my self for how quickly I knit it. Here it is blocking. It will probably have to block for quite a while as I set it up not next to the radiator and now I can’t move it because all the cardboard pieces are separate. So I am guessing it will take a while to dry. The hairbrush is for scale. haha.

Some how I only landed up with one pet photo this week! I think I wasn’t bugging people enough for photos because I was too distracted.

Any whoo that is it for my blog this week. I hope that you enjoyed it 🙂
Love Diella

The week T was away and which ended in getting a flat.

Hello,

This week was quite laid back in the beginning for me but the end got kind of crazy.

The beginning was quite laid back since T went for his second stint of his 2 week job in London. It was quite quiet and I continued my trip down the rabbit hole of watching knitting pod casts. They are so great if you are a knitter because they are done really informally kind of like you’re having tea and catching up with a friend. People often include bits of news from their lives as well so it really is like having a friend.

Knitting wise I knit a pair of split mittens for T. The cut off gloves are too cold here when it gets down to about 1 or 2 degrees C. But it is really frustrating having to keep taking your gloves off and potentially dropping them and losing them. So I made this using a pattern by Winwick Mum which I altered. I also use her sock pattern for my socks. I was very proud of these because it is the first time I have knit this pattern and the first time I have knit using chunky wool and I finished them in one day! In hind sight I don’t think that I really like working with chunky wool. Maybe if I used it for a different pattern or something but it just didn’t gel with me. I might try make myself a pair and use a DK wool and adapt the pattern.

On Wednesday the 25th it was Burns night. I was sad that I couldn’t go out with T but Friend E and I planned to go out anyway and just have a quick dinner before she got back to work. She is on a hectic job at the moment and has to work very long hours. Unfortunately work blew up at the last moment and we had to cancel our dinner plans. She did however pop past for a very late tea and we had a very wonderful chat. It was very late but since I don’t have any commitments at the moment I was happy to just stay up and it was also great to chat to another person. Haha, Podcasts can’t make up for human interaction. I also really get on well with Friend E.

Wednesday was also the day that I finished my pink stripy socks. I meant to insert a picture of them here from my Instagram but it is proving difficult at the moment but more about that later.

So on Thursday I started a new pair of socks! I am on a sock knitting rampage. Thursday was also the first day that I went out on my own in public, aside from the time I had to go to the flat viewing. I am not going to be pretending anything else is happening… I just suffer from anxiety okay. And for me it makes doing things that I have never done before difficult. And it doesn’t matter if I have been to the shops in South Africa on my own before, these are different shops so they are new to me. Anyway I ran out of milk. And if you know me I like my coffee and tea very very milky. So I could have survived if I really didn’t want to go out without T but it was very tempting. And eventually I caved and I went out to the local sainsbury’s to buy some milk. The reward of some hot milky tea was worth it. And the experience was fine… sort of, it was only at the end where the cashier’s cash register wouldn’t open properly and so I had to wait for 5 min while he fiddled with it, all the while my tension building. So eventually when he gave me the change and turned to complain about his thing to his colleague I didn’t count my cash, I shoved it into my bag not my purse and practically ran out the store like a crazy woman. Anyway now that  I have done that and survived I am sure I can do it again.

Friday T let me know that the flat we really wanted had accepted our application and that he was going to sign the lease on Saturday morning. But that we also needed to check out from our current accommodation that morning too. So I flew around the house repacking our stuff and tidying up and making lists of what needed to get packed.
Then that evening T got back and Friend E joined us in going out for Haggis Neeps (turnips) and Tatties (potatoes) for a belated Burns night at our favourite pub, the Haymarket.

On Saturday we had a very busy morning. T went out to sign the lease while E and I went up and down the lifts moving all our stuff from our apartment to hers (in case the staff came to kick us out of the room). Then when T got back we had to do about 3 very heavily laden trips down the road to our new place. Luckily it is like a 3 minute walk so it is very close.
The apartment is an absolute dream so far. Obviously I have not lived in it long enough to really judge it but so far I love it. The first things we noted were that 1 there is no internet there currently. The facilities are installed but we need to get a contract still. And the other thing is that we needed to get some bedding ASAP since we had to sleep there that night.

So we did what all sensible people do and made a day trip out to see IKEA. We didn’t actually buy anything there in the end but I really wanted to go because I had never been to one before. It was also very inspirational to see their examples of how you can furnish a very tiny house without making it seem overcrowded. It was amazing. And we also saw a few things that we might land up ordering online. Unfortunately they didn’t have a large range of bedding and being an asthmatic who is allergic to dust mites I can’t use feather bedding which meant we only had half the selection. Thankfully there was a Next Home near by and we found good bedding there, and  we got a mattress protector and pillows for me that were hypo-allergenic which meant we didn’t need to find dustmite covers for me as well. We also bought some very pretty bedding which is a nice warm colour and which really made the bedroom seem much more homely.

After we got home we decided to try and find some very cheap take out food as we didn’t really want to spend more money but at the same time none of us were in the mood to cook. On our quest for food we saw the below restaurant. It is called Troy and it is all decorated with wood and horses.

Then we stopped at a place which promised “Burritos as big as your head”. It turned out to be run by Polish people, a Mexican Polish place. Hehe. The Burritos were delicious, it was also my first ever Burrito.

After all of that adventure we now get to Sunday where I am sat in a Starbucks, which has an amazing view of the Castle, eating lunch and using their free WiFi to bring you this blog! Unfortunately there are a lot of people using the internet here which is why I am having a little trouble uploading all my photos.

We have bought a temporary 15gb simcard for our portable modem so that this week I can at least use Whastapp and instagram so that I don’t go stir crazy, however I won’t be able to have my knitting podcast company. Funny story about internet here. I know everyone says that South Africa has rediculously expensive internet but it only really hit home today. While we were getting our card the assistant was giving us advice on proper internt providers. And he said that if we were happy with “slow” we could get 15mb for 30 pounds. SO I thought gee that’s expensive. 15mb of data for 30 pounds… aha okay so apparently they don’t mention the amount of data because that’s UNCAPPED! and apparently 15mb speed is slow. Hahaha. imagine paying about R500 for uncapped internet at 15mb. My life has certainly changed. I want to stick with the “slow” one though because it will be fast for me and then we can save up  more money for eventually buying our own house one day.

Okay T is starting to look at me grumpily because apparently I have been typing away here for an hour. So this will have the be the end of my post for this week.

Lots of love,

Diella

Exploring Edinburgh

Hello Again Dear Readers,

I am sorry for my long silence. On the 10th of January my husband and I left South Africa to fly to Scotland. On the 11th of January we landed in Edinburgh. And since then we have been taking a little bit of time to adjust and settle in. We are still looking for a flat to rent although we have applied for a few places already.

Sunday the 15th was my birthday and we decided to go out for a little exploring. I am just going to share a few of my favourite photos as we took way too many for me to share them all.

This is a barber shop but i just loved the sign.

The texture of the ground and the paving here is so lovely.

Living here I think that crocodile stitch gloves are the way of the future. They trap a lot of air and that makes them super warm.

These are the fattest pigeons I have ever seen and they look so plump and cuddly!

I really like Celtic crosses

There are beautiful spires everywhere!

How moody and gorgeous does the castle look?

I am in love with this little cottage.

I got a little warm walking up the hill.

We love our new home

All in all I have to say that the thing that amazes me most about Edinburgh is how dense and old it is. The buildings are so beautiful and they are just ordinary shops and homes. Back in South Africa most of the older buildings are either very run down or they are reserved for museums. Here we are literally just living modern life in an ancient city!!!

I am going to miss this place so much in April when I go back to South Africa.

I hope that you enjoyed that little snippet of our explorations.