The Sunday Sock: Day 1

What is it with holidays? You spend all year dragging yourself out of bed for work or daily chores. The idea of a holiday is to relax, maybe have a wee lie in and wham, there you are up at 6am bright as a button!
So up we were. The sky was bright and the day looked promising.

These views were what greeted us. Stunning tranquillity.

After coffee we ventured out again and met the neighbours.

They seemed quite affable and were curious of us until Skye caught the scent and began to bark. Then they were off across the field. Now this was quite amusing to us as Skye could not see over the wall so had no idea what it was she was smelling and likewise the cattle could not see her, only hear her.

Back indoors we settled down to a relaxing morning when oh my goodness disaster struck. I am well into knitting a Swirl Jacket which at this point had over 400 stitches on the needle when horrors the needle tip snapped right off. Argh!! Quickly I grabbed a couple of stitch holders which were in my wee kit and managed to rescue the stitches.
This picture shows roughly where I was when the needle snapped

So what was I to do? The only other knitting I have with me are some socks on 2.5mm needles and this was a 3.75mm. I am so addicted to this project that I have touched nothing else since I cast it on on the 6th Sept. My plan this holiday was to hopefully get it finished so I will have a cosy cardi for the autumn and winter. I packed light when it came to knitting this year, (totally unlike me, just ask himself).
Darling hubby to the rescue. He says well we would just have to go find a wool shop and buy a new one.
A little research later and we discover there is a shop in Alnwick. Off in the car we go. Now we have been to Alnwick before and loved it. It was on our list of places to visit this trip, but not quite so soon. Upon arrival we discovered that the annual Food & Beer Festival was in full swing in the marketplace. Wow, what glorious things we were offered to taste and drool over. The needle was almost forgotten about. Unfortunately I had not brought my camera, nor had we brought our bank cards so looking and the odd tasting were all we could do. Mind you we were handed a free bag of tatties by one stall and we are looking forward to trying them out soon.
The other thing of note which happened as we were making our way back to the car was I am pretty sure I almost literally bumped into the celebrity chef Jean Cristophe Novelli. I am certain it was him. He was surrounded by folk and had whites on under his jacket.

Anyway back to the cottage we came to discover we had a visitor

What a beauty we were entranced.

Then after the excitement of the morning we both fell asleep!

Once we awoke we lit the fire and settled back to relax at last. I made more progress on my swirl and we watched Foyle's War and Midsomer Murders on ITV3.

A last look outside showed the clouds had lifted and the moon was lighting up the sky almost like the sun.

It is so dark here with no light pollution I wish I could take night photos to show it, but here for you is my best effort.