Camping in the Cairngorms

Hi Folks, I'm still here, just enjoying summer with my family. We've just got back from camping in the Cairngorms National Park for 10 days!! That's our longest ever camping trip. That part of Scotland is beautifully stunning, I took lots of photographs and am planning to create a body of felting work which is more art than function, something I've not really done before. I can't wait to get started on the sketch book, something I rediscovered whilst on my City and Guilds course. I was always very precious about work that went into my sketch books and consequently they never really flowed, but on the course I just went for it and didn't worry to much about the end result, and it turned out keeping a sketch book can be fun. My 7 year old daughter likes to join in to. We sit together at the dining table with all my materials spread out and experiment with colour, techniques and shape. Here are a few of my holiday snaps...

that's our tent in the left hand corner, with spectacular views of cairngorm in the background.

We made it to the coast one day but it was very windy, so I sat sheltering in the sand dunes taking photos whilst M helped the kids build sandcastles.


This is the lake that's on the edge of the campsite.


We did a lot of walking.



and saw lots of different creatures.


but my favourite bit was feeding the reindeer.

Sorry, no felt today.....

I'm being a bit pants with the blog again, I'm also behind in the reading of blogs as well, I have over 500 unread entries in google reader!! Ever since taking time off from the computer during the half term holidays I've struggled to get back into it. It could be the good weather we're having, we had a cracker of weekend last week so we took an impromptu camping trip with our new family sized tent. It was fantastic to get away and explore somewhere new, the kids loved it. We're hoping to do it more often, surely we're due a hot summer aren't we?

These photos were taken on the Ingleton waterfall walk, so proud that the kids managed a 4.5 mile walk in hot weather with no complaining!

I received some good news last week, I don't know if I'd mentioned it here, but I was a little bit slow getting my Woolfest application in and missed out on a stall. I was gutted as I really like doing this show. Well, someone has pulled out, so I got a call last week to tell me there's a stall going if I want it! I'm really excited, but I'm working like mad to get enough stock ready, only 3 weeks to go!. Also, all the B&B's are booked up, so I'm camping with my Auntie (who doesn't camp), fingers crossed for good weather.

Other non felting news, here's my cat, after surgery to rectify an ingrowing eyelid and remove pre cancerous lumps from both ears! She's making a good recovery, but now looks a little bit like a bear! For those of you with white haired cats, use sun block if you want to avoid expensive vet bills!
I'll be back next week with some pictures of things I'm making for woolfest, I have been doing a lot of dyeing!