Two birthdays

 

We had a lovely time a couple of weeks ago at Nikita’s super villain 7^th birthday party which fell at the weekend. Heather & Jason had decorated the house amazingly, bars on the windows, 7’s all over the walls and a bat cave under the stairs. Plus, the food was themed too, cryptonite jelly, asteroid nuggets & pizza the hut.

 

And Heather’s 30^th birthday is next Monday. It was snowing this time 30 years ago, our car had been stolen and we travelled to hospital in the brewery’s old van which had a broken passenger seat!! Plus, there was a telephone strike on, (no mobile phones back then), which meant we couldn’t let anyone know she’d been born. John had to drive to Edgware to let everyone know.

This morning we moved from Sollom to Tarleton ready for a weekend of birthday celebrations as Ada & Dale are coming up for a long weekend. It’s so nice to be on proper moorings with bollards to tie to and hard standing. The tow path at Sollom was very muddy, but amazingly quite with hardly anyone walking by.

Yesterday we walked to Mere Bow, a gentle 6 mile stroll there and back as it’s flatter than the Fens here and the soil is just as black. We had lunch at Legh Arms, it was lovely, especially the most AMAZING crème brulee I’ve ever had . We’ve been to the sister pub the Hop Vine in Burscough.

I’ve been to the knit and natter at The Farmers Arms in Burscough quite a few times now. I just ran up to the village to go today and missed the bus by the skin of my teeth, not to worry. When John came a few weeks back he impressed everyone by making a set of woven coaster on his little loom. So, if you’d like some coasters, even if you’ve got some already just let us know. I need to get down to grafting the toes on 3 pairs of socks I’ve knitted. I’ve spun up the purple/pinkish wool/silk blend fibre I was given by P&M Woolcraft when I left the Bedfordshire Guild of Weavers Spinners & Dyers. I’ve plyed it with similar colours to make a yarn that gets gradually darker purple from pale pink. And I’ve started knitting a scarf with it, quite a few of the girls at The Farmers Arms are making the same scarf. 

 

At last I've made a long skinny triangular rag rug for beside the fire to put the fire tools and coal bucket on.  The majority of the material is what I dyed in the autumn with acorns.  Plus some old sweat shirt of John's and a jumper of my dad's that had
been put through the wash & shrunk.

 

 

John has his second dose of mead fermenting away by the fire. I think our last bottles of blackberry wine and mead will be consumed this weekend.

 

We had hoped to head south in March when the locks on the Rufford Branch reopen after their repairs. However, there are works on the Bridgewater Canal that are going to over run until mid June. So our plan to go to Crick Boat Show at the end of May is totally out. So we’ve booked to go into Salthouse Dock, Liverpool instead. It’s something we’d planned to do at some point in the future. You can stay free for 7 days and the pontoons have free electric hook up and water supplied. If you stay longer than 7 days it cost £20/day. We have been told if you go out of the dock and return a few days later it’s free again, so that’s what we’ve booked to do. We’ll probably catch the sea cat to the Isle of Man for a few days.