Back in Eastleigh, with my inlaws. Had a FANTASTIC time with toothycat in Cambridge, as always. Got hailed on in two places (Flag Fen and the Cambridge Botanical Garden) but only drizzled on at the Craeftiga crafts fair at Sutton Hoo, where Wonderful Husband and I purchased some honeycomb (for my father-in-law), some honey (for us), and a handmade vase and wooden bowl (for my mother-in-law's birthday present). The weather, as always, conspired to remind me of why the British have historically loved wool. Also, given that this was at least partially a reenactment craft fair, I'm feeling the medieval costuming vibe again. Probably in linen not wool, given I live in SoCal....

This afternoon we went into Winchester in search of the used bookshops, where I lucked out on a couple cookbooks, some Victorian costuming books (including Norah Waugh's Corsets and Crinolines for seven and a half pounds!) and Mansfield Park in the old red hardback Everyman's Library edition. And a jar of ginger preserved in honey, which Wonderful Husband says I am entirely welcome to.

I am thinking costuming thoughts for when we gt back. We're returning halfway through RenFaire season, so I won't have time to sew anything up for that this year (I should get off my duff and do it in the OFF-season!), but both SDCC and Costume College will be coming up in July. I've had a brainworm about making the Squiddle, with his blue eyes and dark blond hair, a TOS Captain Kirk outfit. And making a science blue matching set for Wonderful Husband. And a red minidress for me to complete the set. Which I could wear at both SDCC and CoCo. And if I have time, I have several lengths of fabric I've earmarked for Regency dresses, but I would need to make new stays for that, so we'll see. I know the CoCo packet will be waiting for me at home. Eager to see what classes will be offered this year. Since I made the executive decision not to teach this year (among other reasons, I burnt out after teaching, and screwing up, four classes last year), I'll be freer than usual to decide what I want to learn.

In England, in Southampton, where my inlaws are adoring spending time with their only grandchild. :)

The flight over was miserable for various reasons, but at least only (ha, "only"!) nine and three-quarters hours long. It took us a couple of days to get over the jetlag and lack of sleeping on the flight, but I think we're adjusted now.

I have a couple of projects I should be working on. Writing more novel, my blocks for this month's Block Lotto... but thus far I've just been powering through my latest embroidery project. Embroidery is fairly mindless. I brought four cards of floss with me and have already polished off two. ^_^;; Tomorrow I shall sew, as the quilt blocks have a deadline, and then when I have those done, I shall see about reviewing and writing.

Signs pointing the way, in all blunt honesty and with no trace of irony, toward Corpsewood Park.

I love these gruesome images.

My sleep pattern seems to be drifting closer to normal, which can be nothing but good. I've hit a roadblock on one of the stories I was working on and so shifted to the handwork projects I brought with me. I packed three, all "finish ups" from this year's Costume College. My Regency reticule is now done, so the next time I need a 19th century purse, I'm set. I also finally finished beading the two sample bags for the beaded fringe evening bags class I taught. There is a qualitative difference produced by running the beading pattern horizontally versus vertically, so now I can show that. And while I've been working with my hands, my brain has produced the solution to my writing block, so tomorrow I'm planning to switch back to that.

Wednesday we're going to London for the day, so I'm making a short list of places we want to go. Harrod's, Hamley's, Liberty of London, a quick pop in at the V&A just to see if they have a gift shop outside of the pay entrance, because there are a couple of books I want, and because I am a dork like this, tracking down a Chipotle in London for lunch, to see if their fare is of any greater or lesser quality than the branches back in the USA. (It happens. Ask my husband about the difference between UK and US Burger Kings, KFCs, McDonalds, and Pizza Huts.) Maybe also going to the London Eye? We shall see.

After a flight that seemed shorter than usual, we arrived safely at Heathrow. Squiddle was mostly very good during the flight, except for one crying fit when he was overtired, trying desperately to sleep, and just couldn't. But he got there eventually. Wonderful Husband and I got very little sleep on the flight, and didn't get to watch more than half an hour of a film. So yesterday was a very long day. But hopefully it helped reset our inner clocks.

Safe in Southampton, at my inlaws', and trying to convince myself to start working on writing stuffs.

It has been a very long day. And tomorrow starts very early. But for now, I will finish my soup, go to the bedroom, and collapse onto the bed. Various quasi-amusing anecdotes about the day to come later. 'Night, y'all.

Yesterday we got off to a late start, and went to buy tickets to take the train up Snowdon mountain; given the times that were available, we ended up purchasing tickets for today, then went off elsewhere. Elsewhere included the Trifew Woollen Mill, which was an interesting contrast to the Whitchurch Silk Mill Wonderful Husband and I visited earlier this trip. We then went to Conwy, where I can now say I've had the genuine British seaside experience: eating ice cream (lemon curd flavor!) on the beach, in the cold. :) We then walked Conwy's medieval town walls, then came back to Beddgelert and had the most delicious stir-fry, followed by games of Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne..

Today, we went to Snowdon and rode the train to the top. Which was all fun and neat and fantastic views, until we hit the cloudline. Then we eventually started noticing the snowdrifts outside the train car. Then we reached the top, and before the doors even opened, we noticed the ice on the gridwire mesh below the handrail, and how from the ice you could tell the direction of the prevailing wind....

We went through the cafe and climbed up the slushy steps to the top. The grass was coated in ice. The visibility was probably less than thirty feet. The wind was blowing so hard that I angled myself against the rocks on the ground. We weren't up there long, just a few minutes (the train only stops for 30 minutes at the summit), then, as we climbed down again toward the cafe and the promise of hot chocolate, we got attacked by stinging wind-driven hail. After we'd ducked it multiple times before on this trip, it finally caught up with us. I do have to say, any inclinations I might have had toward becoming an Alpine climber have now been thoroughly quashed. Everest is not in my future. :)

Upon reaching the bottom of the mountain, we sought sustenance and a honey/mead shop toothycat knew about, then decamped to Anglesey in search of standing stones and burial chambers. We found four discrete ones, which were each neat in their own way. Though uniformly in locations that made us break out in variations of "cows to the left of me / sheep to the right / here I am, stuck in the middle with you." The last burial chamber was in a very obscure demi-offroad location by an abandoned farm, which made me want to adopt it and fix it. :(

And then after the mild and temperate weather in Anglesey, on our way back to Beddgelert, we got hailed on again. :)

Today, we went to Caernarfon Castle, which was in a reasonable state of repair/conservation, and quite fascinating to me for the insight it gave into early medieval life. For instance, it was cold and wet the entire time, so I now actually understand why outer garments were all made of wool. In SoCal, one of the problems with reenactment garb is "how not to overheat." Here, it'd be quite the opposite!

Also interesting to me is how, in Wales, everything closes at 4pm on Sundays. ^.^;; So after castle-ing, we took the scenic route back. Britain in general gives me a better sense for why the human eye is developed to distinguish more shades of green than of any other color. Wales is no exception to this. It was very wet and hilly, very aesthetic. There are sheep everywhere, dotting the steep hillsides (and shallower valleys) like creamy fuzzy rocks. They don't all stay on their side of the fence, either, though I do note that I've not seen any roadkill ones yet. Roads are bordered by slate dry-construction stone walls. And everywhere, everywhere, there are a million tiny little waterfalls and rivulets. This is amazing to me. This is not a country where the words "water rationing" mean anything.

Tomorrow, as the rain forecast is heavier than today or Tuesday, we are planning to take the Ffestiniog Railway and see what we discover....

Unrelatedly, during my vacation, I have been working on a cross-stitch embroidery kit I inherited from my paternal grandmother, who passed away when I was a teenager. Consequently, I have been thinking of her quite a bit. My parents, when I called them earlier, reminded me that tomorrow is the twentieth anniversary of her death. Almost as though my thinking of her summoned the reminder. I hope to finish the project by the time I get back home, and post a picture of it then.

We went to Salisbury Cathedral today. Good god, that's an impressive structure. There really isn't anything on that scale in California, either in grandiosity or age. (A tiny bit of me always looks at half the architecture here in the UK and thinks "One good quake, and that'd come tumbling down." I am such a Californian.) It's always a bit odd walking around cathedrals over here, because I'm never sure if I'm being disrespectful in walking over where people are interred beneath the floor. I mean, if you go to a graveyard, you just don't walk over the graves....

Anyway, very big building. Very beautiful. Very impressive. Has a very nifty working medieval clock, which Wonderful Husband was quite taken with, and, oh, by the way, the freaking Magna Carta.

That sound you just heard? That was the echoes of my brain being broken. I have seen one of the four surviving copies of the Magna Carta with my own eyes. I have been less than two inches away from it.

GAH.

Nothing quite like this in America. Not even on the East Coast.

Tomorrow, Wonderful Husband and I head to North Wales, there to meet up with toothycat. We're stopping in Stratford-upon-Avon to break up the drive. Just since, y'know, it's on our route anyway....

Totally broken.

Wonderful Husband has just spent 15 minutes on his parents' piano reconstructing from memory the Tetris theme. Given that he doesn't even play piano, he has declared this a feat of geekdom. I am inclined to agree. ^_^

Have been keeping relatively busy. On Sunday, WH and his family and I went to the Whitchurch Silk Mill, which I think everyone found interesting. Between the three of us, WH & Sister-in-Law & I wove maybe an inch of silk taffeta on one of their practice looms. Very fun, and the intricacies of the machinery were sufficiently fascinating for the more technologically-minded (IE, the men) among us.

Monday was a bank holiday, so we went to the (new) Costco near my inlaws' home. I was surprised - it was just as big as the one at home! Though the contents were a mix of American stuff and British. Or, at least, the one at home doesn't have family-sized cottage pies, ready to bake, nor lamb steaks, venison and cranberry sausages, nor bathmat-sized squashy packages of Tetley's and PG Tips teabags. (Had either of those latter been decaf, WH's favored type of tea, at least one would have found its way into our luggage.) We also went window-shopping around West Quay.

Yesterday, Wonderful Husband and I went off to Bath. It was good timing because yesterday was warm and sunny and today is cooler and rainy. We went to the Roman Baths, of course, which turned out to be a surprisingly huge museum complex! And, yes, we both drank of the water. Though the bath itself was being drained and cleaned that day, the red-brown crud getting scrubbed off by two men in hip waders wielding push brooms, clumps of it drifting toward the drain....

We also went to the Assembly Rooms, which, hominahominahomina, are gorgeous, and of course (me being me), the Fashion Museum under them, where I took lots of photos. We then walked over to The Circus and the Royal Crescent, then stopped by the Jane Austen Center on our way back to the park and ride. I've mostly been in the flatter places of England, so it was a bit surprising to me that Bath is very hilly! Not quite as bad as San Francisco, but not too far off either. It made riding on the second story of the park and ride bus kind of scary and kind of fun.

That's all so far from England! More reports to come as warranted.