Port Lympne Safari Park

 

As many of you will know, I am also a Rainbow and Guide leader when I'm not stitching away - and I'm also now in a job share to be District Commissioner for my District too, which involves a depressing amount of unwelcome admin. 

Our Region wanted everyone to get involved with a weekend of Animal Adventure activities at the end of June - with a special badge - and I ended up organising for 75 Rainbows, Brownies and Guides, plus 15 Leaders and helpers (including myself) to travel to Port Lympne for a day! It's not something I would take on by myself again in a hurry, I must admit, but it was a great day and the girls all had a lovely time! The weather was absolutely brilliant as well which was a relief, and we all got there and back safely so you can't ask for more than that with a mega day out. 

I would quite like to go back to the safari park with my family I think, when Baby F is a bit older, and have a bit more time to wander round the bits I missed. It's very hilly so not ideal if you are mobility impaired, or require a buggy to be pushed around, as there are also lots of steps. You can hire little golf buggies to drive around but I think there are set routes for those. 

The house is beautiful, and the gardens around the house as well, and the views!! Oh my goodness, those views out to to the sea are incredible. It was so clear, you could see for absolutely miles. We saw loads of different animals and I did take pictures but quite a lot of them include the girls so I can't share them on here. We started with the Lions and Tigers, then walked down a massive flight of steps to the little pond in the above image, before wandering off again to see the Gorillas (who had a little baby playing with a stick) and different types of monkey, and two Orangutans swinging around chasing each other with their long arms. With all of the fencing you were actually standing quite far away from them all so the photos aren't amazing I'm afraid, I should have taken my zoon camera lens with me. 

You also get to go on an actual safari ride, so we packed in all of the girls (on two different safari trucks and trailers) and set off on our safari adventure! We saw wolves, bears, capybaras, rhinos, various types of deer, zebras (in the distance) wildebeest, water buffalo....

I mean, how's that for a view?! I hope these safari animals appreciate it. 

I think my favourites were the giraffes, they're always so majestic looking. We had to stop for this one because it decided to stand in the road in front of us with a kind of giraffe-style Paddington hard stare but it eventually allowed us to pass and go on through. 

The camels, however, are sassy creatures aren't they? Even when they aren't looking their best and are moulting all over the place they still have high sass levels. We actually had to radio for help on this one because a smaller, private safari truck in front of us got stuck when one of the camels started using the front of the vehicle as a scratching post. It didn't matter how many other trucks were queued up behind us revving their engines in a kind of passive aggressive manner, the camel wasn't moving and eventually they called a keeper to come along who banged on a bin lid to get it moving out of the way. It seems to be a regular party trick though as both of our safari truck sessions (which were staggered 30 minutes apart) experienced the same thing and got stuck with the camels and had to be rescued in a similar fashion. 

Just look at that 'don't care' attitude going on there. 

The macaques were hilarious, and very smelly! The Rainbows (the youngest girls in Guiding aged 4-7) in particular were fascinated by the grooming going on, especially when we told them that the macaques would eat the little bugs they were pulling from each others' fur. "Ewww, gross!"

If you get a chance to go then it is definitely good fun! Just be aware that there aren't very many toilets if you are going in a big group, and the toilet blocks themselves are quite small and spread fairly far and wide across the site. And it's a lot of walking!

Catching Up

 

August and September were busy months!! We seemed to cram an awful lot in and didn't have a weekend to ourselves at the end as we were all over the place. Luckily the calendar seems to have calmed down a bit now and today has been really nice just to have a lie in and a chilled out morning. The only thing planned for today is Reece having a hair cut about two minutes walk from our house so, as it's sunny, I think we'll walk with him and maybe go to the playground. That sounds like an excellent chilled out day to me!!

I've been going through my photos and there are a few things that I thought I'd just chat about on here, the first one being this little sheep hoop which doesn't appear to have made it on previously. It was the sample piece started at the Frittenden workshop and I used it as my bus project for a little while. It's not anything spectacular, and reminds me of how I'd started this whole journey, simple layers and stitches just for me rather than for anyone else or to experiment with something new. 

Some layers were quite fun, the sheep were my usual technique of french knot wooly coats, although this time they were in different shades of brown and white. I used variegated purple/green thread to make two strand straight stitch stems with one strand pistil stitches and I had a play around with the squares above to make an offset crossed stitch in two colours which was quite effective. 

I was using up green threads I had so some of the colour changes in the above layers were because I'd run out of a colour, there are lots of colours in the french knot edging, and about four I think in the big back stitch between the french knot spots above. 

We had a lovely summer for weather, although I seem to recall last summer being hotter? Reece asked for a day at the beach and, whilst that was a tad unusual for him to request, I was happy to go along with it. We spent a wonderful day mooching around Eastbourne seafront, and ended up on the cliffs near to Beachy Head where he asked me to marry him!! (Ulterior beach motive after all.) Before you ask, yes I did say YES!

So now we have a wedding to plan and save up for. How exciting. That's like, a proper grown up adult thing!

I've had to concentrate a lot on my volunteer work as a Guide and Rainbow leader lately too. We participated in the Uckfield carnival at the beginning of September, for which there were several planning sessions on how to decorate the float and then getting the girls in to do the decorating, then the evening itself. I also organised a woodland craft and camp experience day for the whole District of Rainbows, Brownies and Guides where we took over a local campsite and cooked over fire, made things with leaves and twigs, wove wall hangings, pitched tents and enjoyed a visit from an archaeologist who ran an activity on Stone Age houses. What do you think of the Stone Age huts they all made?

At the end of the day some of the younger girls had asked to have their huts back but they were just poked into the ground so not particularly transportable. I ended up carefully dismantling them and resetting some into clay bases, getting my hands absolutely covered in the red ochre that had been used to decorate them! I've still got a whole village to do to make a display in our Guide hut - although I haven't got enough clay to make a base for each hut, so if you have any other inexpensive ideas do let me know!

I haven't had a huge amount of time for stitching but I have started working on a new kit idea based on my first ever kit, Summer Sweet. This time I'm going a size bigger to a 20cm hoop to add in some sizing variety to my current collection. 

The fabrics for this have been collected for a while but I couldn't start until I'd found some trimmings to go with it. I think this petite ric-rac is just so darn cute!

Progress on this is slow though and I've stopped for the minute whilst I ponder over a few parts. I have stitched most layers down to the green leaf spray pattern but I don't like what I've done in the wheat field so I've stumped myself and it will all have to be unpicked I think. 

Eventually it will be done though so watch this space!!

End of Term

We're on summer holidays here in England. It doesn't necessarily affect me because my little one isn't old enough to be in school but it means that we don't have Rainbow and Guide meetings so I get my Monday afternoons and Tuesday evenings back from volunteering as a Leader with both groups. 

For Rainbows we had our last meeting at a local wildlife reserve, Horsted Green Park, and took the girls (aged 5 - 7) for a wander to look at the different habitats. It was actually a really lovely evening; I hadn't walked around here before even though I live fairly close. It's one of those reserves built to offset the fact they have built/are building 1000 new homes on the other side of the road so it's relatively new as a place to visit. 

The ponds and waterways were a little bit brown and dry looking but this particular pond (overgrown puddle) did have water boatmen and other little watery bugs skimming across the surface. 

The grasses were absolutely stuffed full with crickets, which the Rainbows loved because they could try and catch them in their hands. There were also butterflies and bees flying around and we saw some buzzards flying overhead. 

It will be interesting to see how this reserve matures. Several years ago it was a farmed field - as were the ones on the other side of the road now covered in houses and tarmac roads - so I'm not sure whether there was an initiative to scatter around lots of wild flower seeds to encourage more varieties to grow. They've also planted little trees around the pathways so hopefully they'll grow big and tall to provide future habitats. 

Less guiding means more time stitching and I started my Allotment Garden ATCs shortly after my visit to Horsted Green. There was lots of inspiration for colours and tall plants, even an orchard. What would you include in an allotment garden? I actually roughly sketched this design to make sure that I had enough space for a greenhouse and some bean poles. I can use this sketch to make templates for the building to cut my fabric shapes from. 

I love the bottom batik fabric that I've used  - it really gives a sense of a ground surface and I like how there are splashes of that bluey/grey to match up with the sky fabric. 

At the parent's house they've had a whopping crop of leeks this year, all of which have flowered (I'm not sure whether that's meant to happen) with the most enormous purple allium flowers! Perhaps I could include some of those in my cards?

My greenhouse fabric has little grey leaves throughout to sort of hint at plants further into the structure than I would be stitching. This I've just simply blanket stitched with a single strand to hold it down but I have vague plans of layering this with a clear plastic of some kind over the top to make it shiny like real glass. 

I had to stitch my contents down first though so I have satin stitched a bench and a couple of flower pots to fill, leaving a gap at the other side for a door which will go down in a different greyish fabric later on. 

The top pot I have filled with a wild chain stitch plant. There was no planning to this plant so they are not the same, I've just gone straight in with stitching random branches using two strands. It reminds me of a Christmas Cactus! 

The bottom pot I've filled with a leggy climber plant, using a single strand of back stitch for the stems, overlapping them and working them up toward the roof of the greenhouse. Detached chain stitches are being adding at random points along the stems for the leaves, making sure to vary the angle and direction. I didn't actually plan what plants I was putting in these pots but I'm really pleased with how it's looking!!

Rainbow Colouring Sheet

You may have noticed that lots of rainbows have been appearing in windows around the country. I am really enjoying looking out for them when I have to walk to the Post Office to post my orders, and I'm sure they are bringing smiles to other people's faces.
Apparently it was possibly something that has originated in Italy during the Corona outbreak and is meant to be a sign of hope and joy - schools in the UK have adopted it and lots of children have been decorating and designing their own.
This is the sort of creative bandwagon I love to jump on, so last night I drew out my own rainbow and, taking inspiration from a rainbow that Sarah from Made & Making made this week, cut small pieces of card and paper to make a collaged rainbow arch. My happy sun was then coloured in and I left my clouds mostly blank.

I am so chuffed with how this turned out!! It is now stuck in my window for all to see!

Because I am a Rainbow and Guide leader as well, I decided to turn my drawing into a colouring page for the girls in our Guiding District to enjoy. I have popped a JPEG version of this worksheet at the bottom of this blog post if you would also like to join in and colour your own - do send me a photo if you finish one. Keep smiling!