a very quick post here to share a few more photos from cornwall. this morning i went out again before classes began and this time, i took the road which winds up and away from the hotel, toward the next town and the airport, just to see where it went.

it’s a steep climb initially, a real butt-buster, but a good way to warm up and get my blood moving, first thing (as you can see, it was quite frosty this morning before and during sunrise . . .).

the climb is worth every step, though—when you get to the upper part of the hill, the skyline begins to reveal itself in full.

along the paved road, you don’t have a view of the sea, but on the other side, there is a wonderful panorama of local farm fields

once you are at the top, the road undulates only slightly while winding back and forth along the perimeter of each farm.

before long, some familiar forms presented themselves on the horizon and as i drew nearer, i could see a crowd of them in the near distance, enjoying the first warm rays of the rising sun.

and then—wait for it—there they were, right in front of my eyes; a whole pack of mama sheep, with several obviously new additions tagging along close beside them. aren’t those little lambs just adorable??

i caught them just at the moment the sun was coming up behind them.

today turned out to be much more clear and warm eventually, but at this time of day, it was still very cold from the previous night. i walked fast to keep myself warm, but i could still feel an intense chill from the pavement beneath my shoes, which numbed my feet for a long while.

i walked a half hour in the outward direction and made it all the way to the next little town, which turned out to be directly above the area we walked to on the beach yesterday.

this path leads to the cliff edge where i can look down below and see the back side of the notched rock formations we stood in front of at the end of the beach saturday.

wow, it was really frosty, huh?? haha, it didn’t seem that way when i was out there taking pictures.

the cliffs themselves show a history of upheaval in the tilting textures and various layers showing at their surfaces

on the way back i took the more rugged path that follows the cliffs very closely to get the most of the sea view. it was a lot safer too—no cars whizzing past out there at the edge of the precipices.

the beach view was stunning from up there—that stream that runs out over the sand, though salty, was actually frozen this morning; that’s how cold it was—even the sea water froze!

what’s funny is that those white dots are birds and they are obviously congregating right in the middle of the freezing water; i wonder why?

you can see that even during the final descent back to the hotel, there is heavy frost still on the ground—and that was after 9am. now, lots of you in north america will not find that unusual, but apparently it is quite out of the norm for the south of england.

i headed back inside very reluctantly, where it was nearly time to start classes. today we progressed into the the leg of the marie antoinette socks and everyone began to make noticeable progress. many aprticipants left today’s three hour session well past the heel.

and even those who didn’t get that far left very happy with what they accomplished

YAY!
that’s lilith from old maiden aunt, right in the middle; we may actually go to visit her at her dye studio, once we’re in scotland—i promise i’ll bring my camera along for that . . .

tomorrow is the last day of the retreat; my class will meet in the morning for a photography and photo editing session, where we’ll put our cameras and framing skills through their paces. i think we have the perfect setting for a wonderfully fun class to end the weekend.

in the afternoon, we head back to london to rest up and wait for david’s arrival. this time, i really mean it—you probably won’t hear from me for a couple of days. but i’ll be back, once we get to beautiful edinburgh.

i’ll miss cornwall—it’s been a greatly inspiring weekend . . .

we finished up in NYC with a flourish, thanks to a day and evening at knitty city. cookie and i presented a designer talk on monday evening which was an awful lot of fun—thanks to all who ventured out in the bitter cold to participate.

we were treated afterward to a lovely dinner at fishtag with knitty city owner pearl chin and her mate, arvin.

the food was artfully presented and tasted fantastic; with such good company, we warmed up quickly.
the next day i taught a sweater fitness class to a full house, including nancy, cathy, donna and agnes from our ravelry group and mary of the fischer clan.

cookie used the day to work a bit while i taught my class and afterward, we all headed out to the new grand sichuan for a family-style chinese meal, which was scrumptious—no photos however; the light was way too poor to make any of us look our best.

after dinner, arvin whisked us off to newark to catch our flight to the UK, where we were to meet up with alice to prepare for her knitting retreat in cornwall this weekend. i was so exhausted by the time we got on the plane that i fell asleep for a good while—which cut into the knitting time i had planned (what was i thinking??). i don’t usually sleep on the plane, but this one was mostly empty and we each got our own row, which allowed us to lie down. it didn’t last all the way to london though—by 3am i was wide awake and needed something to entertain myself with.

i worked on my new shawlette and finally got it off to a successful launch—it took a few iterations to decide exactly how i wanted it to be at the neck, but now i’m happy with it (i think). we landed in london at the crack of dawn, a little earlier than expected.

the passport control area was deserted except for us. the man who checked my papers was completely amused that i was entering london to teach at a knitting event—my work papers state that officially, i am a “lace sock teacher”. he asked if i was “socktapus” and i said no, i was knitspot. smiling and head shaking, he asked how socktapus and i had met up. i told him that we first met at sock summit, but that i worked with alice last year at knit nation also. i thought he was going to split his shirt laughing. he did NOT make dumb jokes about knitting needles; i liked him a lot.

cookie, on the other hand, had to sit in the pen for a bit—her agent was apparently not quite as smitten with the whole knitting-as-real-work thing.

FINALLY we got out of there—just in time to catch alice coming in from the parking garage to collect us—YAY.

ever since we started our descent into heathrow, my ears were completely plugged—since i couldn’t hear a thing, i sat in the back seat and took pictures out the window all the way home

(i still haven’t completely recovered, but it’s a LOT better today than yesterday and no one has to shout to get my attention today)

this building is the london ark—alice was telling me a little about it yesterday and now i want to live there.

i love big cities and all the various neighborhoods within them—as we drew closer to central london, we could see each neighborhood in a little more detail.

the yellow brick used in the buildings throughout this neighborhood is actually made from clay that was dug up from the ground right in the vicinity—cool, huh?

before long, we were snugly ensconced in alice’s house, where she treated us to a breakfast of eggs, toast, fruit, and good conversation.

cookie spent most of the day in a horizontal position, but i wasn’t much better—it took til this morning to really get our sea legs back.

deuce, alice’s adorable pug, helped out as much as possible

here he can be seen giving cookie tips on twitter strategy.
(she has a smart phone now—she’s a completely changed personality)

at a certain point, even the dog gets bored though, haha.

i have to admit, on this trip, i can finally see the use of twittering—when i’m on the go and can’t corner a big chunk of time (or wifi access) to blog, it’d be a good way to put stuff out there that i would normally share here.
so i’m experimenting . . . i don’t think i’d use it at home, where i have all the tools to put blog posts together, but in tighter circumstances . . . maybe.

i didn’t want to spend all day twittering myself—i wanted to knit, which always makes me feel more normal (still no hearing, haha). i worked on my gray scarf during the day, while we chatted. later on, i went with alice to get some groceries for dinner.

after a good supper, we finally seemed to be getting our energy back—i took out my cabled hat project, we skyped david and janel, and generally picked up the pace a little bit.

we stayed up pretty late, but at least that felt normal. i slept really well, too—as much as i wanted, for the first time in a few days. i still woke up early, but at least it was on my own clock. plus, alice made waffles for breakfast—what more could you ask for?

well, time to get myself cleaned up to go out for the day—i think alice and i are heading out to do some errands and have a bit of a walkabout, which should be a lot of fun. i’ll bring the camera . . . and tomorrow we head for cornwall, so next time you hear from me, it will be from the coast.