Adventure Days

It was my birthday in July and I managed to drag out nearly a whole week of events!! Firstly I cracked on with my Allotment Garden ATCs and discovered that plastic strawberry punnets were the way to go when choosing a clear plastic to stitch down and make the greenhouse all shiny. The plastic itself was initially stitched with long stitches to create the door frame (the door fabric stitched down first underneath), hiding the rough edges, and then I've added more long stitches around all of the edges of the plastic, and used the initial blanket stitches as new stitching points through the plastic. (If that makes sense?) Extra details for the framework of the glass house have also been added as long stitches, especially in the roof. I'm so pleased with how the long spindly plant looks now that there is a 'roof' and a frame for it to cling to!

Reece took a few days off during the week so we took Baby F out for some fun. Our first port of call was to Bluebell Railway which is a steam run line between Sheffield Park and East Grinstead, with four stations to visit in total. It was the most amazing day - there was barely anyone there and Baby F had the absolute best time! He'd never seen a steam engine before and the noise and steam and hissing and movement and chugga-chuggas just absolutely blew his mind. He quite literally waved at everything the entire day, choo-chooing at every opportunity. 

He was as good as gold on the train, sitting on the table with his nose pressed up against the glass watching the world go by. The route goes through a fairly long tunnel at one point which is pretty cool because you can see the smoke puffing past like ghosts and he was mesmerised. 

We were in a 3rd class shared carriage on the way to East Grinstead, then had a compartment to ourselves on the way back again. Excellent for bottom shuffling around. 10 out of 10, we would definitely go again!

The next day we were at Knockhatch Adventure Park. Reece and I had been given an experience voucher and one of the options was to sit in with the meerkats there and to learn about them. Ask and Jeeves (the adult meerkats, soon to be re-named!) were very sweet and the alpha female (not sure which name she had) liked to sit on our laps. They are a breeding pair and had six babies who had a penchant for shoes but mostly for the mealworms that were being thrown on the floor around us. I had thought actually that we would be feeding them but it was more of just sitting on the bench in the enclosure watching them be fed pellets, green beans, worms and carrot. Big handfuls were strewn on the floor and there would be lots of chirping and trilling, little growls from the smallest babies with the biggest attitudes protecting their newly sniffed out worm. It was really lovely to be so close to them and quite nice to have a meerkat sat on your lap. 

Back at home I am still working away on the August ATCs and have now added in my bean poles with a lovely yarn from Lamington Lass Yarns. I pondered over what to grow up them but I think beans are the only way to go really. I've made them with two strands of feather stitch with a variegated yarn and they've come out a lot lighter than I was thinking but actually I quite like it because they stand out more from the green background. There's more to be added, I'm going to put in the bean flowers because they are often that lovely bright orange colour which will pop nicely against all of that green. 

And the birthday celebrations continued - but more about that in another post I think. We are very lucky to live in an area with so much to see and do!