Yup! More Time Out!

This will be the last trip for a while...maybe until MY birthday treat in September...maybe not!

We were on the road again this week...very tiring!

Way back in 2008 I wrote about my trip to Belfast Zoo, you can read it here if you would like to get the background details to this post.

Very briefly (much more fun to go back and read tat post tho'.....the house elf donned one of his other hats and transformed into Conservation Elf.....for the annual Research meeting at Belfast Zoo.

The roads are fantastic now, if very boring.....motorway...including 4 toll roads all the way to Belfast.

Compared to the beautiful dry spring like weather of last week, this drive was like going back into winter. It rained most of the time.

After an overnight stay in Belfast and a mornings shopping .....more beads of course....and a delightful find in my constant search for hangers to display my tatting.

A Silver and Crystal Jewellery Tree from Past Times......

Then it was off to the Zoo. It was bitterly cold and rainy so I didn't see much of the animals this year.....I never even got to write a post about our great trip north last year...what a pity...you would have enjoyed it.

There were a couple of new gigantic wood carvings.

 Ring tailed lemurs....

and..

this fabulous Meercat......don't think he is a wood carving.

There were some interesting conservation presentation.  

The most interesting to me was about our native Red Squirrel. 

The Red Squirrel is  quite a bit smaller that the grey with a bushier tail and furry ear tufts.

You may not know this but the Grey Squirrel was introduced into Ireland from North America in 1911 at a wedding party in an estate in Co Longford! No doubt it was very appealing...

BUT...

During the last 100 years they have been spreading all over Ireland.

Although the Grey Squirrel is a very pretty animal it is regarded as a pest in Ireland.

It is bigger, more adaptable, and more aggresive that the Red.

It can eat the tougher acorns and beech nuts.

But it can also eat the favourite food of the Red Squirrel...hazel nuts, when they are not ripe enough for the Red to eat.

Thus in every area that the Grey moves into....it out competes the Red.

That together with constant reduction in the available hazel woodlands means that the Red is doomed!

Many conservation groups have been set up to help the little squirrel....particularly to provide food in the winter..as if the squirrel is not well fed it does not reproduce in the spring.

They set up cages with food inside and an entrance only large enough for the Red to enter.

the poor little Red also catches the squirrel pox virus that the Grey is often immune to.

The Grey Squirrel is only about 50 miles from our area and will no doubt arrive within the next 10 to 20 years.

The beautiful dainty, little Red Squirrels which have been in Ireland on and off since the Ice Age still inhabit our Wildlife Park.

Now that I am dyeing brown threads, I have no excuse not to dye one to tat a Red Squirrel...the beautiful Squirrel tatted by Tatman comes to mind.....well it never actually left my mind...was always on my 'to do' list. Anybody know any more Squirrel patterns....I have the one in Inga Madsen's Animal book.

Read all about the fate of the Red Squirrel here, this was the very area we were in last week and we saw the Greys.

More about the rest of my trip tomorrow.

Time out!

Yeah..I know..I am always taking time out....but I do take my tatting!

Don't always do any tho'!

Some of you like my history lessons...so here goes....another one.

Three years ago we decided...the house elf and I that since birthdays were no longer something to look forward to, maybe we should do something about it.

So twice a year we go off for a couple of days on a special hotel offer somewhere in Ireland.

There are great offers for 2 nights B&B and a dinner!

What could be nicer than to wake up on your birthday in a lovely place, eat an enormous breakfast, open your pressies, have a leisurely day being a tourist, getting to know a bit more about where you live and finish off with a gourmet meal.

We almost close our eyes and stick a pin in the map..open them, but if we did that, we would probably say ...nah...let's not go THERE.

So this was his third birthday treat and we chose the east coast and the beautiful vale where St Kevin founded a monastic settlement in the 6th century.

Arriving there in the March chill,our Hotel was only a stones throw from the famous round tower.

Round Towers are characteristic of these early settlements.

The story that I always knew was that the monks would keep a look out at the top of the tower where there were windows facing North,South East and West.

They were watching for an attack by the Vikings and would give the alarm for the treasures of the monastery to be brought into the round tower and the ladder to be pulled inside,as the entrance was about 12 feet off the ground.

Lots of monks would also hide inside the tower.....not a very wise thing to do if the tower went up in flames.

This is what it would have been like inside the tower...

...and at the very top in the cone was a bell. (sorry about the reflection ion the glass).

It's now thought that the Round Towers were simply bell towers. The four windows at the top were so that the sound could travel in all directions.

The towers were very tall so that they could act as a guide to find your way home.

The cone on the top of this tower was rebuilt in 1875.

The monastic cathedral is in ruins.

You can just see the tower at the right edge of the photo.

A very small church is still standing.

This is what the settlement might have looked like.

See the little church on the bottom right.

St Kevin chose the most beautiful place to settle. There are two lakes fed by a small river.

This is the lower lake...

....but it was in the hillside surrounding the upper lake that Kevin built his cell.

Wow, what a view to wake up to.

There are such a lot of other touristy things to see in this area.....haven't been there for years....

and the beautiful town where the famous TV series was set.....did any of you watch it?

 

......and the Church from the same series.

You can see how glorious the weather was.

A super birthday was had by all...and the food really was very good.

More about the Gingerbread Boy!

I made the Gingerbread boy with my tat lassies...tho only two were brave enough to try him..after I had explained all the pitfalls...and hopefully jumped over them!

Today they came back!!!

Jackie had made hers in my Gingerbread in Lizbeth 40..

and he is DIVINE!

Remember that I said that this was the one that I had hope would be my 'piece de resistance', but that he didn't turn out well.

here is my one and Jackie's one side by side.

Look how much smaller he is...it's amazing.

I was so sickened by my result that I had decided that my Gingerbread thread was best used in small doses, along with my other Spice threads as it just looked too busy......but in  the smaller size and done well!! it looks wonderful and not at all 'busy'.

The way that she has done the icing..similar to my last attempt looks so good.

He is so cute and shows the thread off to perfection.

he really does look good enough to eat...and he makes mine look even worse!

I almost have to tat him again!

The other Gingerbread man also came in with Carmel but he isn't finished yet.

But 

we all thought that he was so cute that we almost said....

Don't change him, he is perfect as he is.

Doesn't he look different

very Teddy Bearish and furry.....and very surprised...maybe because she had discovered a discrepancy in the pattern....the instructions give 12 rings in the head and the photo shows only 11!

Jackie and I tatted 12 but Carmel went with 11 which makes his eyes closer together and I think makes him look more surprised,

Gingerbread Boy!

I first saw Gina Brummett's Gingerbread Boy in 2005

but 

there was nothing in my thread stash that would do it justice...so I archived it in my 'to do' list...which get longer every day.

A good selection of browns was urgent if I wanted to tat all the animals on my list.

But

it had to wait.

Until

I finally got my act together and dyed the ChocoMango series of thread that I showed you before Christmas.

First as I always do I tried the pattern out using one of my 'boring' threads, just to see how do-able he was and of course how much thread he took(essential for me).

Gina's pattern is good but written in a rather long winded style and without a good diagram.

I know that she is going to update it when she gets time....but she needs encouragement as this is a good design.

I enlarged the small image to fill a sheet of paper in the hope that it would help.....and it did.

Sometimes it was hard to figure out what joined to where and I did make mistakes! as you will see.

I would love to see it re written with a series of diagrams and then it would be easy peasy.

My second attempt was to have been my dream Gingerbread boy,in my dream Gingerbread thread, but he had a bit of an accident in the oven..well that's my story and he came out a little disfigured! poor little chap..he will find it hard to run away!

In truth I just didn't join his legs in the right place.

So on to number 3, 

this time I used a solid colour...my cinnamon HDT for the body with the Gingerbread thread for the body outline.

He is a little beauty, thanks Gina for a great design, I just love the white icing, he is good enough to eat. This time tho' I maybe brought the icing in too tight under his chin, what do you think.
Thanks Gina!

More about the Caribbean!

So glad that you found the last post interesting.

Expecting to see some tatting

ok then

had to tat something in Lizbeth Caribbean 20

Beautiful, I love this design looks good in any colour combo.....I have shown it before...many times....

here and here and here,and even here and here!

The Geckos are up and running along the beam...

...and there is room for MORE!

I couldn't resist a look at eBay last night and there are lots of Caribbean Geckos for sale and we were right..they are made from recycled oil drums...that's brilliant. Also found the Brown Wooden Gecko type that comes decorated with multicoloured dots Aborigional style. They are hand crafted in Bali.

It's great to be able to buy genuine handcrafted souvenirs.

While in Martinique we got to gorge ourselves on our favourite vegetable Taro, also called Dalo, we can get yams,cassava  and sweet potatoes here nowadays but have never seen taro outside the pacific islands so it was a joy to see it in the Caribbean....but we did buy ornamental taro plants last year in a garden center here .

We came across a vegetable we had never seen before...'Christophine'

Apparently used like courgettes, we had it' au gratin' and it was very pale green...and good.
Just found the recipe here.

Also came home with a packet of Columbo spice mix....a Caribbean Curry speciality.

More tatting soon, I promise.

Winter Sunshine!

I can't believe that it's the middle of February already.

My resolutions have all gone astray.

After all the bad weather of snow and ice,

(I have never seen Ireland look as pretty as on our drive to Galway for Christmas)

.........wind and rain,burst water pipes, the excitement of Christmas quickly turned into dreary, sunless January.

BUT

with the aid of 100,000 airmiles about to be lost....saved over what seems like several lifetimes,

we finally cashed them in and flew to Martinique for some winter sunshine.

Turned out to be a great choice...being French it is in the European Union and uses Euro..great!

Martinique conjours up so many names in my head, so many areas I have never been to..

The Caribbean

West Indies,

Antilles,

Windward Islands 

 I spotted a bracelet tatted by God's Kid in my Coral reef thread.

A lovely design by Dawn McLaughlin.

She calls it Wandering Blooms, but in my thread it looks so like tropical waves to me.

I LOVE to see what people make with my thread. 

Martinique is not too touristy, we stayed in a stunning spot overlooking the Atlantic side of the island.

Our room was huge furnished in French Creole style with and enormous 4 poster bed.The view from the balcony was splendid, a complete panorama of islands.

Highly recommended.

The main crops of Martinique are Vanilla mmm! Bananas....each bunch inside a blue plastic bag?

and Sugar Cane.

'Twas the sugar cane that was the most fascinating as it is used not for sugar production but for making RUM!

There are almost a dozen distilleries on the island and each can be visited!

We only got to see 4 but each one was so different.

Martinique rum is called 'Agricultural Rum' and is different from 'Industrial Rum' made elsewhere in that it is made from whole fresh sugar cane. Other rums are made from molasses left over from sugar production.

One distillery lies at the foot of a volcano..it last erupted in 1902, you can read about it if you enlarge the display photo.

This one had a water wheel to drive the crushing machinery.

another had its own windmill.....

.....yet another showed a wonderful creole homestead...

Ahaa so this is similar to our bed in the Hotel

I was interested in the beautiful beadspread....

a tape lace.

Each distillery told the history of Rum Distillation from the transport of the sugar cane from the fields

weighing, crushing and after 24 hrs the fermentation and distillation begins.

Sorry I could go on about this all day....and then there was the tasting.....mmm, my favourite was a Orange Rum liquer called Shrubb.

needless to say our suitcase was a little heavy.

Back at the Hotel we had a tame Anolis lizard that came to share our biscuits.

He had to stay behind but we did come back with more Geckos! surprise surprise!

Well we had finally found a home for the Gecko that I brought back from Spain....isn't it wonderful when that happens and it's no longer classed as 'clutter'.

It found it's home on a beam in our upstairs lounge and now will be joined by...

...and...

...and our favourite...

The last two are 3D made of metal in Haiti, maybe of recycled cans.

They are all about a foot long.

Oh...did I tat while I was away......no....the light was too poor at night...well that's my excuse....I took a break but am getting back into it now as I hopefully return to normal!

More tatting coming soon.