Serenity

I had an amazing day on Wednesday! We drove up to Seahouses and took a tour around the Farne Islands by boat - it was a truly incredible experience!

I'll show you some photos in a minute, but first, I want to direct you to this website (just incase you fancy taking a trip yourself):

http://www.farneislandstours.co.uk/

This is the company we went with, and from what I have heard, you get so much more out of a tour with these guys! They really know their stuff, and clearly have a deep rooted appreciation and love for the islands and the wildlife surrounding it. If you do go on a Farne Island tour, try to get a seat on Serenity II - you won't regret it.

Ok, on to some pictures! Here's some seaweed in Seahouses harbour - I thought it was pretty!

Here is a view of the harbour:

It didn't take long before the islands became clear enough to take a decent photo of:

And then clearer still:

Messing around with my zoom actaully paid off this time:

It was just about at this point that I stopped taking photos for about 10 minutes. Why? A puffin flew right in front of us, and I spent the time acting like an over-excited 5 year old!
The camera soon came out again, when I realised I couldn't miss this shot:

Aren't they just gorgeous?
We noticed a few jellyfish in the waters surrounding the islands - can anyone tell what kind of jellyfish they are?

As if the puffins weren't gorgeous enough, I fell in love with this beauty:

There were many, many seals on the islands, either soaking up the sun or playing hide and seek in the water. Honestly, the ones in the water would dive under just as I clicked to take a photo of them!

What really amazed me about the seals, is the way they make eye contact - there is an air of intelligence about them, something almost human.

I was really pleased to get this picture of the lighthouse where Grace Darling lived:

This bird is called a "Shag". There were so many different birds on the islands, a lot of them stayed too far back, or moved to fast, for me to get photos of them:

Here is the view from Inner Farne, looking back towards the mainland:

Inner Farne is a bird santuary, and we were lucky enough to spend an hour on the island. There is a roped off path that you follow all the way around the island - although the terns didn't take much notice of the "our part, your part", and why should they?? It's their island!
We were warned that we should cover our heads when we arrived on the island, as the terns like nothing better than to "attack" during the breeding season. I did see a few people being swooped on, but there were no serious attempts!

Really, if you ever get the chance to do this tour, you should! We're hoping to go back this summer, maybe for the 4 hour tour (which includes a tour of the Northumberland coast), and again sometime in October for the birdwatching tour... Can't wait!!

Lesson learned: It's ok to act like an over-excited 5 year old sometimes!!

Juggling...

Sorry it's been so long since my last post... I feel like I'm juggling a million different things right now!
I am making progress though, and actually enjoying the harassed feeling!!

First of all, I'd like to apologise to the people who were expecting this blog post to include a step by step Yorkshire Pudding tutorial... The truth is, my muffin tin is in an awful state that I really wouldn't want anyone but family to see, and I forgot to buy a new one for the tutorial... I'll try to remember this week and get the tutorial done soon!

I noticed recently that my views on Etsy go up a lot whenever I add a new item. I put some thought into what this possibly means, and discussed ideas with J and K. We all came to the conclusion that I need to be adding a new item as often as possible...
So, today begins a year of adding listings to Etsy on a daily basis:

This lovely hat and scarf set was added today. Yes, I know it's July - but I live in England! We had our few days of sunshine and warmth a while back, so my thoughts are turning to winter now!
I have 5 more sets similar to this already made up. They will be added over the next few days.

The hat and scarf were made to use up some of the yarn I bought for a custom order - yes, really, a custom order! The customer wanted a small bag in a deep purple colour... I only needed 100g for the bag, but I couldn't find any suitable yarn in the right colour and ended up buying a massive 400g ball!

Here's the bag:

I also tried out a new bag design. I had an idea of how I wanted it to look, so I sat down with notepad and pen, hook and yarn, and made the bag. It's not often an idea works straight away, so I'm really pleased with it!

Do you remember this from my last post?

This preserve jar cover is on its way to Canada, where it will be appearing on a market helping to display the wonderful flowers made by Stephanie! Please  have a look at Stephanie's Etsy shop:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/berryisland

It's been so wet here, that I haven't been taking many photos of scenery. I did test out my photographic skills by taking some photos from the car:

I'm really quite surprised at how well this turned out - especially considering we were going about 50mph at the time!

Lately, I've been wondering what to do with my yarn trimmings. I was planning to stuff a small pillow with them when I had enough, but decided that washing said pillow could be pretty troublesome as they are various materials, weights, etc.
I was looking at my bag of trimmings when Miss E came along and gave me an idea:

Purr-fect! All of the trimmings are now back in the bag and waiting for our next play session!

Lesson learned: One woman's trash, is one cat's treasure!