Holiday in the Netherlands 🇳🇱 Part 2

 In the last post we got as far as the Kinderdijk windmills, after which the ship sailed towards Amsterdam for the excursion to Keukenhof Gardens. The site is only open for 6 - 8 weeks and on the Sunday morning of our visit we had an early start and the gardens got busier and busier by the time we left on our coach around midday. It is well organised with coach and car parks, even a cycle parks.  There are going to be lots of photos.

Theses tulips with multiple petals are called Ice Cream varieties, but these look almost like peonies.

There were still daffodils and grape hyacinths in flower.

The above photos were all outside and the weather was lovely and warm.  After exploring the gardens we went into the indoor spaces. The Willem-Alexander greenhouse had new species of tulips and other plants, such as Kalenchoe (sorry think that’s how it’s spelt) and Amaryllis.

And we went to the Orchid house, which was really busy.

Then back outside from which we could see the tulip fields

Try playing ‘Tulips from Amsterdam’? 

And a kind tourist took a photo of us both.

It was a lovely morning followed by a canal cruise in the afternoon, which I didn’t take photos of.  There will be more in the Amsterdam which will follow next.

Holiday in the Netherlands 🇳🇱 Part 1

David and I have come back from 8 days in The Netherlands, firstly by taking a river cruise, then a few days stay in Amsterdam. Last Thursday we flew from Southampton Airport to Schipol in Amsterdam for transfer to our ship (in sailing terms the passenger carrying vessels are called ships, not boats). There were long queues at Schipol Airport to get through passport control, which apparently is nothing unusual, but having got through that we found our transfer to the ship. There’d also been problems with flights out of UK airports due to bad weather so sailing was a little late. View across Amsterdam from the ship.

Our first stop was Enkhuizen a town to the north which has an outdoor museum called the Zuider Zee Museum, to which you arrived by boat from the quay. 

The lime kilns near the entrance 

I took a photo of the map of the museum to guide us around

Looking over the water towards Enkhuizen town.  We didn’t get time to see the town itself.

A row of cottages

And inside one of them. Look at the different tiles around the hearth and chimney breast.

Of course there was a windmill, two photos taken (not two windmills).

We were there just for the morning as the ship sailed in the large lakes to get to Rotterdam for the next day. There we had a guided walk about part of the city.

The old harbour, with the White Huis based on buildings in America and the first high rise building in Europe. It was the first to have an elevator and electric light.  Below another innovation, the Cube houses, designed by Piet Blom and here’s a link about them.

Behind is block of apartments called The Pencil and you can guess why! Because the city was bombed severely during the Second World War a lot of the building are modern.  After the morning in Rotterdam it was off to Kinderdijk in the afternoon. This is a World Heritage site and it was very busy with visitors.

The windmills are for pumping water, not for grinding grain and each has a small reservoir for pumping out water. As you can see there’s a series of them, each was run by a family who lived in cramped conditions.  

This was a recreation of the living area and like most Dutch houses there are cupboards inbuilt for their precious objects.

I’m going to stop here to upload and there’ll be lots of tulip pictures from Keukenhof soon.

Beginning of April

 

Today is the 6th April. If I was working (I retired nearly 6 years ago) yesterday’s date and today’s would have meant the tax year end for 2023/24 and start of 2024/25.  I’m pleased I don’t have to work to that pressure any more but when these dates come around I still think it as a new year.  With spring here at last it’s good to think there are nice days ahead, even though it’s still very windy and rainy today, much like the winter!

Anyway I have a couple of finishes to report. The main one is a fox. Three weeks I purchased Florrie the Chicken Mad Fox from Lucy Locketland, when I saw a post on Instagram. I could not resist her, she is so pretty.  The kit came five days later and I immediately started working on her.

The kit came with all the yarn to make Florrie, her dress and cardigan, underneath the yarn is the woollen stuffing and a couple of chicken stitch markers, the little one of which I’ve used as a brooch on her cardigan. All the instructions including Lucy’s pattern for the dress and adaptations to the original pattern by Julie Williams, the designer behind Little Cotton Rabbits.  The kit was part of Lucy’s Year of Cotton Rabbits series. 

By the end of last month I had some foxy pieces and a dress knitted (see my monthly marker at the top,of this post for a close up).

I was also finishing off the clown ready for Cecily’s birthday (see my last post) so Florrie to a back seat for a few days but I was back on it as soon as I could. There was a cardigan, feet and legs (each leg and foot was worked in one piece), sewing the pieces together and stuffing.  I’m pleased to say that she’s finished.

She’s a lovely bit of frippery but I also learn a lot from making a little character, especially with the shaping - invisible increases and correct decreases to get the shapes just right. Making a 3D item to look like it should.  I would like to make a sheep one to join my other softie sheep and I’ll probably make that later in the year. 

My second make has been a succulent, a String of Pearls.  This is from a book by Emma Varnam called Crochet Succulents, which I’ve had for a few years.  I’ve got a plant display with owl plant pots which was a birthday present year before last and although I’ve bought little plants, they’ve not survived.  Last month I made a ball cactus with a little flower.  This time I’ve made the String of Pearls, which involves crochets bobbles. This is literally a quick make, which took a couple of evenings making the stands of bobbles, then the ‘soil’ cushion to stuff and sew the strands into.

Then it joined the other plants in the plant arrangement.

I then had a lovely little pot for Mothers Day last month but with just a ball of soil and a Viola but that dried out and died.  I should have planted in the garden straight away. So that will be another contender for a crochet succulent makeover, because the pot looks so cheery.

But that is going to wait until I come back from our holiday to Holland, where we go off to on Thursday for a week.