All Hail Hailing Island

So this weekend myself and his Jammyness headed to Hailing Island to see my auntie Yvonne. Auntie Yvone has always lived on hailing Island, but I haven't visited since I was little (my lasting memory of the place was that there was a cracking pet shop around the corner from Auntie Yvonnes house with a massive Python in it called Monty, you should be able to tell from this I was at an impressionable age :-). Anyway we headed back to visit and although the weather was a bit blustery (well I guess it was November) the place is just as lovely as I remeber it ( its like time has turned back, in the best possible way). Saturday we walked to the shore and explored the many antiques shop, eventually stumbling on a great little bakery (result) and on Sunday Auntie Yvonne took us for lunch at her local sailing club. It was lovely food and a beautiful view (mum and dad were also visiting as they had been looking after Auntie Yvonnes house, and dad was very keen to see the squadron of spitfires which were appearing at the goodwood revial festival, but alas the weather was too bad). We did however have a lovely weekend, here are some photos, mostly taken by Jam who stole the camera...

 Mum, aunti Yvonne, Me & Jam

 Squadron leader (Rtd) keeps his eyes peeled, sadly to no avail...

Boats in the harbour

 Jam experimenting with photos through a telescope

 The usual suspects...

Awww if you need to avert your eyes note the nautical curtains :-)

And then there were 4...

So having mentioned the gig in Garsington it dawned on me that I had actually forgotten to mention that the number of musicians in Writings has actually doubled since our first gig in April. I was waiting till I had some decent practice shots or better than that some demos to post here but we've been so busy practicing there has been no time for photos.  Plus recording has been postponed till after Christmas because of an interesting possible development of which alas I am not yet permitted to speak of... Anyway the two nw members are my friend Emily (who I met while building a newt house post here) and Kevin who I used to play alongside in Stranger things happen at sea. As is so often the case with these things the whole process of expanding the band happened quite organically with people we already knew who had simular ideas about the kind of music they wanted to create, but I think Emily and Kevin will also bring their own ideas and style to the table as well. This weekend was our final practice before the Garsington Gig (we are playing quite a bit of the material which received its debut in April but all of it has had to be rearranged to make the most of the expanded line up (my favourite bit has to be when Emily takes one of my tunes on the cello, it just sounds beautiful). After a hard (timed) practice we had a bit of a relax and as it was all lovely and autumnal outside it was decided an updated band photo was in order so left to right Kevin (violin), Emily (cello), Chris (melodian, piano, everything), me (viola/violin/vocals) all stood outside Chris' house in Garsington (the reason I'm beaming is that Julia Chris' most excellent wife had just plied us with tea and cake, yum!) This one was eventually ruled too dark so the official photo is here and will hopefully be used to promote the band in all future endevours!  

Alright monkey?

New arrived over the seas that Lisa (previously featured on this blog as I made her a wedding dress) had had a little boy called Theo. I suspected they already had blankets (as little Theo wouldn't have survived long without them in Sweden). So I tried something new & completely different. I knitted a monkey!

The monkey in question was from The Little Things and a kit (it says on the website aged 8 up, but I missed out the scarf & hat & thus detoured all things unsuitable for little ones). Here is monkey awaiting is parceling up to Sweden.

 "Oh how I long for Sweden!"