Thursday, August 21, 2014

Gower peninsula


Last weekend I went to Wales on the train to visit the Gower Peninsula, where my brother's family live.

It's an area of beautiful beaches as well as countryside and history. We did a lot of walking in the area, this is the Mumbles Lighthouse, which was unusually accessible as the tide was really low (don't think I'd have risked going over there though!).


It was raining on my journey over, but after I'd arrived the sun came out and we could enjoy the scenery. This is another view of Swansea Bay, looking over towards Swansea from the Mumbles side.


We visited the new Mumbles lifeboat station. This lifeboat is absolutely huge and can apparently carry over 100 people should it need to.


The next day, whilst my brother was at work, the rest of us climbed over a big hill to Langland Bay. This one used to be really sandy, but lots of pebbles were washed up over the winter, so it's much more of a pebbly beach now. It also had some really smelly seaweed!


And that evening we went to Caswell Bay. We walked down to it through Bishop's Wood nature reserve. This bay is a lot more sandy, and my nephews enjoyed kicking a football around whilst the adults had a cup of tea on the beach!


We left it just as the tide was coming in and the sun going down.


That afternoon I'd also found the Red House Quilting shop, on the way to the park, which had a lovely range of quilting supplies, plus a room with yarn at the back. I found this ball of Regia 4 ply sock yarn, in plain purple, which should be useful for socks with intricate stitch patterns.


And, of course, I needed a project to do on the train there and back, and the existing cardigan project is quite big. So, having read on Roobeedoo's blog about knitting the Wise Hilda's Basic Ribbed Socks, and how the heel turned out quite narrow on this pattern, I thought this might be the one for me as I have the world's narrowest heels... I paired it with a ball of sock yarn from my stash, Bergère de France Opal (which seems to have been manufactured by the makers of Opal sock yarn, just branded differently). I think it looks even better knitted up than it does in the ball! Love those stripes.


So, I got as far as the leg and turning the heel whilst I was away.

1 comment:

Iris said...

Really enjoyed your pictures of Wales and the purple sock yarn is very pretty. I'm more and more drawn to plain colour sock yarns. Much as I love the variegated yarns on the skein, I often find that knitted up I don't like them quite as much...