Greyhound Snoods

Whenever we go away anywhere I always make sure I take plenty of knitting & crocheting to do.  In fact I probably take more of this stuff than clothes & food.  Recently whilst we were away in Derbyshire marooned in our snowbound cottage, I knitted my way through a good load of greyhound snoods.  As mentioned in a  previous blog entry awhile ago I use the wonderful pattern from Erssie called Dizzy Lily - A Snood for a Hound.  Erssie sells this pattern to support Essex Greyhound Rescue.  The link to the pattern can be found scrolling down on the right hand side of her homepage.  The pattern suggests knitting with dpns but as I absolutely loathe and can’t get on with these devilish instruments of torment I usually knit flat on two needles and once finished quickly sew the seam up. You find my current selection for sale HERE

As modelled by Raven (top) and Bluey the nearly real greyhhound

Greyhound Calendar

The 2011 Action for Greyhounds UK is now on sale for £7.95 plus postage and available from AFG’s website here – where you can pay by cheque or paypal.  My very own Raven is the star of May.  I think you will agree he looks every inch the star due to the talent of Greyhound Watch whose stunning photography is featured throughout the calendar.

A week in the Derbyshire Snow

Saturday 27th November saw us head north to stay at Aero Cottage near Baslow in Derbyshire.  This delightful, tastefully converted stone holiday cottage sleeps 4 and is equipped with everything to make your holiday perfect.  John & Claire the owners are always on hand for any queries or advice about the local area -they live behind the property.  We had stayed previously in Aero in September and thoroughly enjoyed our stay especially as they are one of the few holiday cottages that allow two pets.  The ground floor of the cottage has flag stones with under floor heating, so with dogs and boots traipsing in and out, there are no carpets to worry about. 

We left Norfolk with a slight dusting of snow on the ground and as we proceeded northwards up through Lincolnshire and into Nottinghamshire there was a little more snow about.  However we arrived safely at our destination stopping for a well earned late lunch at the nearby market town of Bakewell (famous for its puddings!).  We soon settled ourselves in for the evening.

Sunday and Monday were ok to get about in, we could drive out to the local villages and get a meal out in the evenings as long as we drove really carefully.  Both evenings we drove into Sheffield to pick up Sam to take him out for a meal.  Also Monday was Nigel’s birthday (46th!).

However from Tuesday onwards we experienced a lot of snow (about 2 foot in places) and freezing temperatures and after visiting Bakewell in the morning to pick a few supplies up we headed back to the cottage where we stayed put until we left on the Saturday morning.  Luckily on Thursday, Charlie the son of the owners of the cottage gave Nigel a lift into Chesterfield in his landrover which with difficulty managed to creep back up the hill to the cottage and his house.

We had a lovely relaxing time where I got loads of knitting and crocheting done but we would have like to have gone walking in the hills as we usually do.  Nigel had to dig us out of the cottage drive and on to the road.

Our journey home was initially slow as the first 15 miles took over an hour to drive but once past Mansfield we drove home as normal as there was considerably less snow the farthest east we went.  On arrival home there was hardly any snow around but evidence of some very hard frosts and to Nigel’s dismay our little river dyke that leads onto the main river was frozen and remains frozen to date, so he is unable to get his boat out from its shed.