Happy to be Home Again

It was a really nice retreat in Cumbria but I am happy to be home. I am thinking that perhaps 3 days away on retreat is quite enough. Not that I didn't enjoy myself, but I wanted to be here where things were happening and I missed my Donald more and more as the week went on. I did enjoy having my own small room which overlooked the most gorgeous fell behind the Victorian house that is St Mark's B&B. The fells are gentle but high hills and this particular set of fells is known as the Howgills. Originally in the Yorkshire Dales, Sedbergh, the nearby village, is now considered to be part of Cumbria (formerly the English region of Cumberland where the famous Lake District is situated).

In addition to doing lots of quilting (in fact I made or mostly made a total of 9 quilts, all but 1 of which were wall quilts) we also took field trips every day. I went on all but one of these. One day we travelled to an Arts and Crafts mansion (from the Arts and Crafts period of architecture and design) on Lake Windermere, the busiest of all the lakes in the Lake District. If you are interested in the Arts and Crafts movement architecture, you might like to see more at http://www.blackwell.org.uk/ . Another day we went to the market town of Kirkby-Lonsdale (pronounced Kirby-Lonsdale) for an afternoon of browsing in the shops. The views along the country roads as we drove to and from the town were exquisite. On Friday afternoon, three of us went into the town of Sedbergh for a short browse and then walked for a couple of miles along the riverside path to a rendezvouz spot (see photos above) where a fourth person picked us up and took us back to the B&B. The views were lovely, especially as the weather was warm and sunny all week.

We ate well, drank well, and most of us slept well. We worked hard and we played hard. Barbara Mainwaring, our host, provided us with a hearty breakfast first thing each morning, coffee and biscuits at mid-morning, a lunch of nourishing and delicious soup with bread and fruit for lunch, tea and cakes at mid-afternoon, and a three-course evening meal of high culinary quality. We brought our own wines which sat on the sideboard or in the fridge just waiting to be tapped for dinner. When we weren't partaking of various beverages and foodstuffs or off on a field trip we were hard at work in the craft studio, a good-sized room with individual stations for sewing machines all around the walls and large work surfaces in the center of the room. It was a great boon to me to be able to work this week given that my studio has been packed up for a wee while now. I was suffering from fabric withdrawal!

When I got home yesterday at 12:30 in the afternoon, Don was on the golf course. I had fun going from room to room to see what had been done on the house in my absence. The first thing I noticed before going in was that the stone chimney and partial front wall were finished and the front of the verandah roof had been finished. Three telephone-type poles had been delivered but none had been erected (one will hold up the small flat roof over the new entryway and two will hold us the verandah roof where metal scaffolding poles are now doing that job). Inside, most of the walls have been primed for paint or paper and the window sills have all been painted. The new pantry doors have been put on but the shelves are still to be put in. The pocket door separating the utility room and kitchen has been put in. In the shower room, the wet walls are up, the shower has been installed, and the door has been put on. The toilet and sink have been plumbed but the bulkhead needs to be put in place and then the toilet and sink fitted in place. The new semi-overhead/semi-pendant light fixture over the dining table has been installed and a few other things like that have been finished or are almost finished.

We expect that this week will be the last big push to finish carpentry and painting or papering. Then flooring can be put in and we can start thinking about new window treatments. The brickies have to do some final things to the top of the chimney before George Ferguson can come put on the roof tiles on the two last bits of roof. And we're waiting for the fellow to come back and put the rough-cast wall on the new entryway.

The garden is going great guns. The rhodies are starting to bloom. Azaleas are in various stages of coming or going and tulips are still blooming. Some white daffodils are blooming in the back but all the others are practically finished. The quince is in bloom as are the Jew's Mallows and redcurrants. The double cherries and the little plum tree are blooming too. In the herb garden the chives are about to bloom and I can see what did and didn't over-winter. (I must put in more parsley.)

Last night Don and I went to the Perth Theatre to see a National Theatre of Scotland production of Elizabeth Gordon Quinn by Chris Hannan, a marvelous play about a Glasgow family of almost a hundred years ago during the rent strikes in the infamous tenements. The writing was strong and the performances were superb.

This afternoon was spent at the home of Helen and Gordon Rae for Gordon's official retirement party. Gordon threatened for years to retire and then just kept working. He has now been well and truly retired for a month and so his friends and family came today to celebrate with a big "do." Fortunately it remained dry so we could spill out of the house and into the garden. We enjoyed visiting with friends we know and meeting some we didn't know as well as getting to know some acquaintances a bit better. We met Ally and Graham, the Raes' daughter and son, whom we've heard so much about. Ally and her partner, Alan, are in the publishing business in Edinburgh and Graham, a nurse, who made a surprise trip to Scotland from Australia.

Tomorrow afternoon we're having our friends Patricia and Bryan Rose for an evening meal, our first entertaining since last autumn. The forecast, after two weeks of mostly sunny and warm weather, is for a week of near-constant rain. That bodes well for indoor carpentry and painting but no so well for brickwork. Oh well.