Himself had a day off work and we went on a jolly educational trip. We visited Cold Harbour Mill, which is a 200 year old spinning mill. Originally powered by the huge water wheel, then later the steam engine. Since we started to card and spin our own fleece, we have been interested in visiting this mill, to see how the process is done on larger scale. A small place with a friendly atmosphere, and so nice to wander around looking, at the working machinery, with the belts running over head etc.
Unfortunately, they do have a nice shop.. with yarn and other goodies.. and unfortunately they had bags of small balls of wool, the ends of larger spinnings, all different colours in lovely muted tones of blues greens greys beige and dusty red. and unfortunately these bags were only 2 quid. Lets face it, I’m a material girl… that is I like buying material.. particularly yarn. so my stash is er.. well overflowing.
On the up side, there I was at the checkout feeling just a tad guilty and looked around for my tolerant family, and only saw a tolerant son - himself was still browsing the carded wool. Having got into spinning, seems he has come over to the same side. He bought some Merino tops in navy and green, as he wanted to see how it spun up. Excellent.
Since we were fairly close, we popped into Knightshayes Court, just to take a look at the restored walled kitchen garden. We have made a few trips to this, and it’s nice to see at different times of the year. Huge garden, maybe 1.5 acres? (I’m guessing) and so well kept, I would get depressed, but then I remember how much we manage to grow with our limited time and without a huge team of gardeners! AND their tomatoes were worse than mine, and I thought mine looked grotty!
As a bonus, they have a web cam set up in a nest box on the wall, and you can view the blue tits coming and feeding the baby birds. That went down very well with our son, an avid springwatch fan.
Then to top it off, after a brief nip home to check the animals, collect eggs and water greenhouses, we went to Slapton sands, had a lovely fish and chips dinner and skimmed stones into the sea. Perfect day.
I must have been in your part of the world this week-end as I drive past Knighthayes when I visited my parents!