Too Many Hobbies, Not Enough Time: Think Distance, Think Cow

Social distancing Cumbria-style

We've had a holiday this week, but not quite like we're used to. Actually it turned out a lot better than I was afraid it might. We were based in a hotel in Carlisle, in the northwest of England, and I went prepared to eat most of our meals picnic style in the room and to spend our days outside on walking paths. But in fact a surprisingly number of sights, shops, museums and tea rooms were open, albeit with a wide variety of social distancing measures in place. It became second nature to look for, and use, the hand sanitiser at every entrance. Actually we became somewhat connoisseurs of handgel: there seemed to be three main types. A liquid that smelled overpoweringly of tequila seemed to be popular, and also another horrible type that was like liquid soap, leaving your hands sticky and feeling awful. And while there were many other holidaymakers around, it certainly wasn't busy like you would have previously expected in high summer/school holidays. We were often the only customers which suited us fine, and I had to make timed bookings for some of the sights we visited. I took cleaning supplies and went over everything in our hotel room on arrival, and the hotel had suspended room servicing for our protection so I didn't have to keep cleaning every day. We tried to be scrupulous about using our own hand gel whenever we had touched anything like a door or a fence gate, and after coming out of shops and tea rooms . Our masks became permanent accessories, ready to be popped on whenever we entered any enclosed space. Most shops or indoor places were limiting numbers, imposing one-way systems, and in tea-rooms doing a lot of cleaning in between customers. So I felt like all reasonable precautions were being taken, let's hope it was enough and we haven't been exposed to anything.

I just tried to be grateful that we were having a holiday at all, and to keep reminding myself not to take anything for granted. After being mainly home-based for four months, it was a delight to see open vistas, green fells, baa-ing sheep and rushing rivers. We even made it to the seaside on the Solway Firth where we went for a somewhat muddy paddle. We spent another day visiting Hadrian's Wall, did some short walks in the Eden Valley, and had a glorious binge in the secondhand bookstores of Sedbergh. After touring Carlisle Castle, we also found another amazing and labrythine secondhand bookshop in Carlisle called Bookends which also has a nice tearoom attached to it.

Here is some of my secondhand book haul which I look forward to reading. The history of the 'terrible knitters 'e Dent' was apparently a source for the highly interesting and enjoyable Richard Rutt's history of handknitting. Dent is an area near Sedbergh.

I also found this book on painting rocks to look like houses, and immediately began collecting potential house rocks on our walks. I'm not very artistic but the instructions have lots of good pictures to copy.

I picked up a slim booklet in the Tuillie House Museum gift shop in Carlisle (quite an enjoyable museum by the way) from a quilt exhibition they held in 2004, because I really liked this quilt. It was made by one of the Miss Dickinsons of Kidburngill, Lamplugh, West Cumbria around 1850 and apparently was huge, 301 x 306 cm. Love the blue border and the unusual centre.

The same booklet had this quilt below made by Martha Jackson, in Westmorland, dated 1790, which has unbelievably symetrical borders. How did she do it, in a time before rotary cutters or fancy quilting rulers, all hand cut and hand sewn? And no calculators for that matter. Quilters of today would struggle to create pieced borders that fall so beautifully at each corner. And the applique feels so modern in spirit and design.

I didn't take any sewing on holiday but I did take my knitting, and progressed almost up to the armhole. It turns out that I somehow managed to buy one ball of yarn from a different dyelot, so there is an faint colour change halfway up. But it's pretty subtle and I don't think it will be noticeable in wear.

I took a free cross-stitch kit from a magazine. I was happily stitching away when I abruptly ran out of blue thread. Turns out all the stitching should have been in one strand, not two like you normally use. But they give the DMC equivalent number so I may have more in my stash.

And I was was working on my needletatting. Doing somewhat better on counting but still having problems keeping chains to the same length and getting my directional changes correct.

I took my Japanese books as well and tried to keep up with my homework every night in the hotel room.

I've come back to a message from someone interested in buying my dollshouse that has been for sale for months, they are going to come over sometime today (masks all around) to have a look at it. So that will pay for a bit of the holiday if he takes it :)

I shall finish with some random photos from our holiday. It's such a beautiful and relatively unspoilt part of the country. It was so nice to get away but it's also quite nice to be back home!