Say Cheese!

I have been very lucky in my life to live in some very beautiful places and none more so than the area of Devon that I grew up in. It is a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (and indeed it is), a technical term that is supposed to prevent crazy planning applications and any sort of development that takes away from said Natural Beauty.

I've got used to seeing pictures of places that I know intimately on postcards in motorway service stations, on the front of packets of fudge, and frequently appearing in west country dramas. If you've ever watched some of the more recent (and some older) Poirot adaptations, they are all filmed around Salcombe, Dartmouth and Burgh Island; and my highlight to date was recognising the path to the lighthouse from a panning shot at the start of a Mrs Bradley Mystery before the lighthouse even came into view.

That was then, this is now. This evening on the way home from a swim we stopped for petrol and popped into the shop to get a few odds and ends for dinner; some more milk, some cheese:


Everyone apart from my sister and my parents is currently thinking "so what? she bought cheese."

Look a little closer:

That arrow (badly drawn in by me) points at the pine tree above my parents' house. I have swum from that beach more times than I could remember, and a walk down the hill, along the beach and back again is the standard constitutional when at home.

I couldn't tell you which pixels are their chimney but I'm still pointing and giggling that my childhood home is on the cheese.

I should also point out that my parents live in South Devon and the cheese (according to the label) comes from the Taw Valley. In North Devon. Despite this clear attempt at misrepresentation by Marks & Spencer it was still very nice cheesy mash.

Now enough of the cheese - time for a little knitting eye candy:


Just a plain, ordinary, standard, toe-up sock; nothing exciting or extraordinary about the pattern or the knitting; just a simple 64 sts ...

IN MY HANDSPUN!!!

I may be a little excited by this. Sorry. I'll try not to shout so much.

As I said, the knitting itself is very simple, the beauty is the soft gradual blur from one colour to the next. I used half-ish of the barberpole three ply for the sock and then used the chained 3ply for the ribbing.

It is soft and wonderful to wear and I'm scuttling off to knit a few more stitches on a secretsecretsecret so that I can cast on the next one!