Weekend in the country

Finally summer, and suddenly living in the country feels like being on holiday. It's been nearly two years since we moved here from London, yet I still pinch myself every day and even more so when I can come home from work and sit in a quiet, shady garden, slurp watermelon and watch the cats bounce around in the grass.

This weekend was also the Machen Agricultural Show in our village. I've been looking forward to it as last summer, our first in Wales, the weather was so atrocious that the show had to be cancelled for the first time in 75 years. But what a difference a year makes - families all in their lightest summer clothes all coming out to watch the dog and horse shows, enjoy the bouncy castles and meet some more or less usual animals. There may have been meerkats and owls and chickens of all shapes and sizes, but my heart belongs solely to the pygmy goats.

 

 

 

And also a little bit to this stunner: if I could style my house, my kitchen and my car after it, I would.

 

 

Feeling very much like that last sleepy goat after a morning in the sun, we retreated to our garden for the rest of the day. Progress on my rag rug was made:

 

 

 

In fact, that loom makes a lot more sense to me for rag rugs. I couldn't really see myself weaving lengths and lengths of scarfs and wraps - I feel that I achieve more wearable things by knitting, and knitting is much more portable and easy to just pick up whenever you feel like it. Warping and threading the loom still bores me to death, I absolutely hate it, but the quick progress you make weaving rags goes some of the distance to make up for that. Since looking into it, I have also discovered how addictive rag rugs are. There is a huge tradition of rag rugs in Sweden and once you start looking at them, they are mesmerising in their variations. I will assemble a few inspirational pictures for my next post to show you all.

 

I am still knitting! It may seem like I'm distracted by all kinds of other things, but really, all along, I still keep a project by my side! My current one is just...not all that exciting to show off. In a stash-busting effort, I pulled out a couple of my big cones of DK linen from Texere Yarns - they used to come in many more colours than they do now, which is a shame because at £6.50 for 400gr, they are incredible value for money - this loose tunic in a plus size is not even going to use up two of those!(just watch out for the variations in thickness) .

 

 

Top-down tunic with a tunisian neck with hopefully an interesting graduation between the grey and the brown. Main body is nearly finished, just sleeves left after that - hoping to have it ready for my summer holiday as all my cotton sweaters are so incredibly heavy to travel with!