Return to Cairndinnis

(Click on photo for more pictures.)

Faithful readers may recall that for my birthday this year Mike took me alpaca trekking in East Lothian with Cairndinnis Farm. As part of the outing, I got a skein of alpaca wool (from Belhaven) to play with. I made a headband out of it and enjoyed the feel of working with this yarn so much that I decided my next major knitting project would be made out of Cairndinnis alpaca yarn. A week ago I got an email from Carole to say that their latest stash of yarn had arrived and would be available on a first come first serve basis.

I started plotting immediately. The roads have been icy of late (worst winter in 50 years here in Britain), so Mike was not keen on getting a City Car Club car and driving out there. Fortunately, a search on Traveline Scotland showed that it was easy to get to East Linton by public transit and a further search of walking routes revealed an off road path from East Linton along the River Tyne to Hailes Castle and from there up to Traprain Law, which is right beside the farm.

Today we made the trek, catching a bus two blocks from our flat that took us to the heart of East Linton in under an hour. From there we followed the well marked trail along the Tyne to the Castle and then up to the base of Traprain Law. The walk also took just under an hour. When we arrived, Carole and John insisted on serving us hot bowls of soup, bread and cold cuts. Through the kitchen window we could see the alpacas peeking out of their barn every once in a while to see if the snow had gone away yet.

I bought enough of Pride of Place's yarn to make a genuinely 25-mile jumper. It's DK weight, so the project should take me most of the year (I'm a slow knitter). It knits to the same gauge as Berrocco's Ultra Alpaca Light, so I'm going to use one of their patterns.

It was an absolutely beautiful day out and it was truly enjoyable doing business with such generous, hospitable people. Having already spent some quality time with the beast whose fur I'll be working with is an added bonus.

Doctor Who Nation

Sci Fi has a bit more cred over here in the UK. It is a well-respected Christmas tradition to sit around and watch the good doctor save the planet (or at least London). Coffee-vending police boxes make coy references to Torchwood and the Tardis. In fact, Tardis is a word in common usage amongst the general public. And paraphernalia from the show is considered worth appearing in special exhibitions at publicly-owned museums (which we went to see in Glasgow before Christmas, Mike forgot to mention that in his previous post).

As mentioned in a previous post, we have been blessed with plenty of snow this year. We returned home Saturday night to discover our neighbours had been busy building a Snow Ood (photographed above). As someone who did an "interest talk" in grade 5 on set and costume design for Doctor Who, I have to say I'm enjoying living in a country where such interests are not seen as a sign of incurably nerdiness.

(I'm sure Mike will want me to make it perfectly clear that it is me, AJW, writing this and not him.)

Having just watched all five episodes of Torchwood: Children of Earth, I have to say that the Doctor Who spin-off series has finally found it's legs. The previous two seasons suffered from silliness, but in Children of Earth Russell T. Davies treats his characters brutally and creates a gripping story-arc that provides an at-times painful portrayal of what people are capable of when their backs are to the wall. Well worth watching if it makes it across the pond.