Hello there, this is coming to you more than a little bit late! I was in the midst of lots going on at the end of May/ start of June so it didn’t see the light of day until now. Such is the pace of life at the moment, that I can’t even remember what was going on which took my time back then – so it was nothing drastic, just general busyness!

Anyway, here we are, at the end of June and here’s a little snapshot of my life last month…

May marked the end of an era in our house, Son number 2 left school and went off on study leave ready to start his A-levels. It felt very odd, just having one child left in school. Times have certainly changed since the early days of this blog when I had three young men in school… I am pleased to say that at the time of writing, the big A-level exams are now finished and have been survived, it’s a waiting game now.

Crochet News

For several months, my crojo had been a bit off, but in May, it came back in abundance inspired by the lovely spring flowers on display – you can’t help but be inspired by all the lovely colours! I bought the yarn to create a Bluebell inspired ‘Up the Garden Path’ character about 3 or 4 years ago, this spring the appearance of Bluebells in my back garden as the inspiration I needed to crack out my hook and get busy – Belle is still a work in progress, but thankfully she has at least appeared!!

Did someone say flowers?

I found myself at our local National Trust property, Dunham Massey early in May and was thrilled to see a brilliant exhibition of what looked like botanical drawings. They were, in fact, the most intricate decoupage I have ever seen. Created by Mary Delany in the 18th century, they were as vivid and crisp as if they had been created yesterday. The exhibition was put on in collaboration with the British Museum and is running through until autumn. If you get the chance to visit, I would highly recommend it.

Going underground

Last year, Eldest went on a tour of a disused Tube station and when he reported back, it sounded fascinating, so this year, for his birthday present I booked for us both to go on another one – together. It meant a night away from home – you can’t guarantee that the trains between Manchester and London will actually run or not at the moment, so I travelled down the day before to ensure we would be there in plenty of time for our tour in the morning.

After arriving down in London, Eldest took me on an epic walking and railing tour of the capital which involved the most amazing Rhubarb crumble with frozen custard in Spittlefields Market, a long and very warm and sunny walk around the Olympic Park in Stratford (which I forgot to take a photo of!) and a wander through the West End and China Town. My word, we walked!! I clocked up just under 30,000 steps – I don’t think I’ve walked so far in one day since my days doing the Med Steps 5 Challenge back in Gibraltar (where you climb to the top of the Rock and walk back down to the bottom of the Nature Reserve 5 times in a row).

On the day of the tour – around Moorgate Station – which is still a functioning station on the network but which has lots of secret tunnels and interesting bits not open to the public, we got to go through doors and passageways not normally visited by folk who don’t work there. It was actually part of the very first Tube line back in Victorian times and has had lots of uses for its tunnels through the years including as an interchange between overground local trains and a World War II bomb shelter. If you have any interest at all in recent history, transport or London in general, I would highly recommend the tour it was super. It was booked through the London Transport Museum if you’re interested in finding out more.

Back to the V&A

When I was at secondary school, we had a brilliant English teacher called Mr Dixon. Sadly he’s no longer with us, but his memory lives on with those of us who were lucky enough to be taught and inspired by him.

Mr Dixon had spent his undergraduate years in London, and it transpired, he spent all his free time between lectures traveling around the capital and immersing himself in all the free entry museums and art galleries. At our school, he set up the ‘Cultural Society’ where one afternoon after school each week, he would play classical music, speak about art or his beloved Japanese carvings and Samurai swords.

I was lucky enough to be allowed to join the Cultural Society and, being in that exclusive club (which a lot of my fellow students had absolutely no interest in) we would, at least once a year, have a day trip down to London with Mr Dixon leading a route march around the city taking in a couple of significant destinations. We rarely took the Tube, because Mr Dixon said we would miss too many important things. As we walked he would regale us with tales of the goings-on which had happened in the streets we were pounding, from the Great Fire of London to the sites of royal executions to tales of scandal in the 1960s, and countless other interesting tit bits.

One of our regular destinations to visit was the V&A where I fell in love with the textiles department. I loved the gorgeous designer gowns, the fabulous textures and colours, and I decided back then I wanted to be a fashion designer.

Fast forward 30+ years and Eldest and I found ourselves with some time on our hands before my return train was due and he asked me where I’d like to visit next. It had to be the V&A for old times’ sake. My word, it was so lovely to be back.

I made a beeline for the textiles area and was thrilled to find so many costumes from the worlds of stage and screen! It was amazing. There was a film showing how wigs were made for the Crown – that was mindblowingly complex – plus Kylie’s entire dressing room from one of her tours. If you get the chance to go, I’d highly recommend it!

Great Run Fun

Regular readers to this blog may remember that when I hit the big 5-0 I set myself the challenge of running my first ever 10K. It was supposed to be a one-time-only event, but on the finish line, son number 2 said he’d run it with me the following year. I couldn’t say no, so signed up again last year. Then, when the email saying early bird places for this year’s event landed in my inbox, before I knew it, I found myself hitting the enter button again.

Lo and behold on Sunday 31st May, I found myself back on Portland Street in the centre of Manchester city centre along with thousands of other folk in trainers and set off on my third Great Manchester Run 10K. In the run up to this year’s event I chose not to do it for charity, but that may have been a mistake as I didn’t have the same dedication to training as I had done in previous years. Despite that, and against my own prediction, I managed to run the whole thing and was less than 1 minute slower than last year’s time so I’m taking that as a big win – there’s life in the old bird yet!!

At the end of that run, I promised myself, I would keep up with the running, however, as I write, I have still not put my running shoes back on…. oops!

Podcast News

First of all in May, I was thrilled to be able to share a chat I had with Kit Giroux, semi-finalist in the latest series of the Great British Sewing Bee.

Kit very kindly invited me to his home and showed me some of his Sewing Bee creations including his Pop Art inspired paper dress. It was absolutely fascinating to hear his experiences from inside the sewing room!

Next up, I shared a chat I had with Angharad & Isobel from the Knitting & Crochet Guild. I was invited to meet them at the home of the Guild’s Collection, an archive of tools, patterns, samples and knitted and crocheted items dating back through the years.

I loved hearing about some of the items which have been donated to the Collection and the detective work which goes into finding out who made things and the lives they led.

You can listen to both of these episodes and the full back catalogue of over 100 episodes over on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube as well as on my website.

And that brings this little postcard to a close, I shall have to press publish now so that it goes out while it’s still June (for a few hours at least!!).

Thanks for stopping by!

Lindsay x