Trains, Planes and Quilts

Last weekend was probably our last weekend away for this year.  David and I, for various reasons, have only had one week's proper going away holiday this year (to Cornwall in September) but have had quite a few weekends away this year.  We joined Peter and Diane, my brother in law and sister in law in Knaresborough for the weekend staying at a B&B there on Friday.

On Saturday we went to York travelling on the train from the quaint station in the town, but before then we followed a trail of painted fake windows.  Knaresborough has a lot of Georgian buildings, which were subject to Window tax and in order to keep the symmetry of the houses but without paying more tax these bricked up "windows" were created.  These were used by local artists to get people to explore the town. 

Quite appropriately (as it's Bonfire night tonight) the window above right is of Guy Fawkes, who was born in York, but lived in Knaresborough, with a keg of gunpowder.

This was the station, Grade 2 listed building with old fashioned semaphore signals and the signal box was attached to another building at the end of a terrace of houses. 

 

It even had some friendly looking staff

 Once in York, as usual of a Saturday there it was heaving with people.  We wanted to visit the National Railway Museum, which is currently celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Mallard steam engine's world speed record, which remains unbroken.  With the Mallard were the remaining engines in the same A4 class locomotives, Union of South Africa, Sir Nigel Gresley, Bittern (from the UK), Dominion of Canada (from Montreal, Canada) and Franklin D Roosevelt (from Green Bay, USA).  The queue to get into the NRM was so long, we decided to have a wander around the city before going back in the late afternoon, by which time the queue had gone.  It was an awkward place to take photos and there were a lot of people- my camera got totally confused and they all came out dark, but my iphone managed OK, but these were the best I could get.

 This was Bittern (4464)

The star of the show - Mallard 4468

Sir Nigel Gresley (this engine was named after its designer)

Dominion of Canada

I took loads more, but don't want to bore you here.  I'll see if I can have another go at a photo collage to put them together.

On Sunday we left Knaresborough and went to Duxford, near Cambridge.  At the IWM Duxford was the Autumn Quilt Exhibitions held by Grosvenor Exhibitions.   I wanted to go here to see some of the Civil War Quilts made by Foxy Quilters of Barnsley.  When I lived in Yorkshire I used to be a member of Barnsley Creative Embroiderers and some of the ladies used to be in Janet Bottomley's patchwork class and I guess that Foxy Quilters came about from that class.  They are a talented group of quilters and their work shows.

A couple of my favourites.

There were some quilts by other groups too, here are just some of the photos I took

 And you can't go to a quilt show without any purchases.  Mine were small - a cutting board, a bag pattern and a couple of books.  Shows my diversity with an embroidery book and a modern quilting book.

Oh yes, there were planes too, if you didn't know about the venue (or didn't see from the link)
it is an aeroplane museum

Here's the Typhoon and it's engine beside it amongst the quilters in the eating area with the quilts on display behind it. Really unusual venue.