Out and About

This last week was the last week of the summer school holidays and meeting up with my son Alex and his family for a day in Portsmouth.  We used our Tesco Clubcard points were converted to vouchers which we used to get tickets for the Historic dockyard there.  It's a year's ticket which will allow us to visit again later, because we barely touch upon all the exhibits.

We visited HMS Warrior briefly before taking the boat for a tour of dockyard and the ships that are berthed there and different views of the harbour.  Several years ago part of the dockyard was sold to developers and is now well known as Gunwharf Quay shopping centre with its Millennial tower called the Spinnaker Tower.

Spinnaker Tower

 HMS Warrior

View across Portsmouth Harbour with the Isle of Wight ferry coming in

Later we went on Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory, which despite its age and being permanently in dry dock is still classed as an operational ship and still has the Royal Ensign at the back of the ship.  There is also a museum about the life of Lord Nelson together with the artifacts that celebrate his life and being victorious in the battle of Trafalgar.

The top part of the masts have been removed due to ongoing restoration.  I couldn't get all the ship in so I took photos in two parts.  If you zoom in on the front of the ship you will see the figurehead of Nelson, which is on the ground behind the ship.

There were some other things on display - outside the Naval Museum was what looked like a wooden Nutcracker statue displaying tattooed arms as there was an exhibition about the Navy and tattoos.

There was also a naval helicopter outside HMS Victory

Yesterday I went on a coach trip organised by Happy Patchers to the West Country Quilt Show half at the University of West of England (UWE).  An early start but I was organised the evening before so didn't take long to get up and out for the pick up.  I took my knitting with me, another pair of socks which I think will be a present when finished (got to start thinking about Christmas!) to keep me busy.  Here's my progress by the time we reached Bath, which I Instagrammed, I started at the grey line

This is a relatively new show, but it does come quite soon after Festival of Quilts, so it wasn't that busy, however it is nice to be able to go around the exhibits without a lot of crowds and there are a lot of contemporary, art and modern quilt exhibits.  There is a small display of competition quilts  and another of cushions which were displayed hanging from rafters at the top of the stand.

I managed to get a close up of one that won a rosette which has curved lines of embroidery.

This quilt I liked which was really unusual in that it was stitched on deer hide and quilted and painted with leather paint.  This was made by Annelize Littlefair, I just liked the texture

I also liked seeing the Modern Quilters' exhibition, with their challenge quilts and also display of sample quilts.  They have teaching cards and also tutor packs that are lent out to groups.

I liked this collection of shoes in this quilt on the Contemporary Quilts West stand.

 Even I had a quilt displayed there!!  No, its a postcard, but it is still classed as a quilt as there are 3 layers!

This was on the UK Quilters United stand and this was the sunflower postcard that I made for this display.

I also met up with my room mate for the Sewing Shindig, which I will be going to later this month.  Her name is Marie and she happened to be at the exhibition on the same day as I was there - it wasn't planned!!  We enjoyed a coffee and had a chat and I think we will get on well and I'm looking forward to the Shindig.

I made some purchases. including some lobster fabric which I was unable to get earlier this year.  The screen printing kit in a tin will. be interesting, I hope I can try that out later this week. I also bought some hand dyed fabrics and threads (the green fabric on top) and blue fabric for another project.

More knitting was done on the way home (got to keep busy!).  The stitch marker fell off my needles so its a good job that I had a long tail of yarn which I could use to keep track of the beginning of rows.

With a two + hour journey each way it was amazing how much the sock has grown