Random Fiber Ramblings

Random Pictures from Vacation

These are a few of my favorites :-)

12th Century Saxon Church and 1st Century Roman Lighthouse

(taken from the top of Dover Castle)

Canterbury Cathedral

(taken from our hotel room window!)

The Great Hall at Kenilworth Castle

Kevin standing in the middle of a 2-lane road in Ruthin, Wales

Secret Pal 12!!

I got my first secret pal package yesterday! After working a marching band car wash for 4 hours, my slightly-sunburned self got home and was nearly followed down the driveway by the mailman. He brought me this:

(yes, that's a package of dark chocolate in the ziploc bag!)

There was a pretty card

2 skeins of one of my favorite yarns, in a gorgeous color

2 skeins of Reynolds' Soft Sea Wool.

I wasn't familiar with this yarn at all....but wow, is this soft and squooshy!! This will make a really nice pair of gloves!!!

My secret pal raided my Amazon Wish List and sent me this book!!

I definitely have a great secret pal! She is spoiling me rotten!! She has been in frequent contact with me - she even followed my trip overseas!! Thank you, Secret Pal!!!!

London!!

Since I took over 600 pictures on my trip to the UK, I'm going to post just a few. We spent our first 3 days in London, and here's a quick synopsis (for the rest of the London pictures and their descriptions, please click here)

We landed at Heathrow at 8:30, took the train to London, and then took the tube to the Kings Cross Station. Our hotel (the Montana Excel)was about 200 yards from the station, which made it a great place for touring London!

After we got settled in our room, we took off walking...and we ended up at the British Museum:

The Elgin Marbles

The Sutton Hoo Helmet

The next day, we took the tube (Mind the Gap!!) to the Tower Hill Station.

Tower Bridge

and we visited the Tower of London

Traitor's Gate

one of the Tower Ravens

We did a lot of wandering around - we would often cut down an alley, just to see what was there. We saw some pretty interesting things that way, such as the ruins of Winchester Palace:

(I took the picture because it intrigued me, and Dad did the research from home to find out what it was!)

We visited St. Paul's Cathedral, even though I'm not a fan of Christopher Wren (the man destroyed a lot of medieval architecture in his day)

I sat on the steps, because that's what everybody does. :-)

We saw Big Ben

(Jackie, it was 2:04 when I took this picture - and I didn't even have a watch!) :-)

We took the train to Windsor:

arrow slits at Windsor Castle

and visited St. George's Chapel

I was really disappointed, though - just as I was getting to the choir (where Henry VIII is buried in the floor), they closed it to the public for a funeral.

We walked to Buckingham Palace

and then we visited the Jewel Tower

stone boss in the ceiling of the Jewel Tower

(yes, we saw the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London. Since the "real" crown jewels were melted down during the Commonwealth, nothing at the Tower was older than the mid-17th century. The ones at the Tower were okay, I guess)

We visited Westminster Abbey

and I got to touch the tomb of Geoffrey Chaucer (and I got a peek at the tomb of Edward the Confessor - the one who started the whole mess that led to the Battle of Hastings!!)

I took a lot of pictures of stone bosses, gargoyles, and grotesques

(these are about 40 feet up on the back of the abbey)

before we left London, I took a picture from out hotel window. This was taken at 4:30 am (yes, that's 4:30 in the morning!!) It didn't get fully dark until almost 11:00 at night, either...

I'll try to get more pictures up from the rest of our trip later this weekend!

The Zig Zag Socks

Felici, "Mixed Berries" colorway

and....the catalog picture! :-)

I've been knitting madly since I got home from vacation - I have to have the Sampler Afghan from Cables Untangled done and mailed by the time I leave for Knitting Camp on the 22nd...and I'm only halfway done. Back to my knitting!!

Oy

I've been recovering from my trip, slowly but surely. I'm trying to put together a blog post about my vacation, but where on earth do I start? :-)

In the meantime, Kelson got his ACT and SAT scores:

ACT - 29 composite

SAT - 1260 (plus 500 for the writing).

He scored 630 each for both reading and math...

and he did the math section without a calculator, because he forgot it that day!

Not to shabby for a kid who just turned 16 one month ago! :-)

He's going to retake both tests in the fall to try to raise his scores. He took the ACT once before (when he had just turned 15) and he scored a 27. There's no doubt that he can raise his SAT scores - he never even looked at the SAT prep book that I bought him...

More Pictures

We're in Dublin right now - coming home tomorrow! In the meantime, here's an updated link to my Flickr photos (click on the mosaic to access all 3 sets)

More updates after I get home! :-)