October 2011 - Trip to the States

Our October trip to New England was magical - the weather was far from typical fall as the temperature was high, the leaves were not turning and the sky was a perfect blue.  We swam in the ocean, were cossetted by our family, did yoga in Sian's class, saw Dana play at a gig, enjoyed a "girlie clothes swap" with Kate (must try this here at home), talked and laughed with the kids, met some great people, enjoyed fantastic Cuban dinner cooked by Rockin Rick and Keith, worked with Kate on her "new side garden" and replanting two baby ginkos, travelled as seniors on the bus from one end of the island to the other which was great fun and so it went on .....

I'd made up my mind on this trip to attempt to teach some of the grandchildren how to knit and I could not believe how well they took to it .... Elias age 5 was the first and with some little help I left the States with him wearing his midnight blue wristband - very cool.    Ivy and Pandora were next when we arrived at Martha's Vineyard and like little ducks to water they produced cuffs, headband and were working on scarves as we left.   India age 10yrs produced a lovely aqua headband as seen here -

and Ginger the dog was also keen to get in on the act as I worked on my knitted patchwork throw.
    
  It was great to go and see India at her soccer match and altho on this occasion they didn't win, she nevertheless put up a great defence - such times with your grandchildren can't be overestimated.  Precious.
 

Steve and I went to the picture perfect town of Edgartown on the Vineyard as we'd heard there was a good charity (or goodwill/thrift as they call it) shop there - I really got lucky and bought three fab felt hats, one a grey fedora type, a cloche in purple with wonderful wide green velvet ribbon and a funky black one with raspberry-coloured corsage - 15 dollars the lot.  Steve said I looked rather "Miss Marple" in the fedora but of course I ignored that and went ahead and bought it and since then I've had quite a few compliments from the womenfolk!!


I was delighted that the sweaters I had knitted for the girls were immediately worn and they really seemed to like them - they certainly looked gorgeous, I thought, as shown here and worn with their pj bottoms.

We had a particularly good evening around the dinner table with Sian and her girls and Natasha (originally from Macclesfield) and her twins, Claudia and Paige  ..... we talked about the differences between Americans and the Brits - there were no fights and it was all great fun .... Claudia then recited some of her beautiful poetry, Sian read one of mine and in no time at all Ivy (aged 11) was over on the sofa and writing some of her own.   Pandora (aged 9) a few days later also got the poetry bug.

After two weeks on the island Sian took us to the ferry and we said our quick (less painful) goodbyes and spent our last days in the U.S. in Somerville which is just outside of Boston with Kate, Dana, India, Elias and Ginger.   One of our lasting memories was seeing Elias head off for school the day we left.
                                                       
It's tough being so far away from our family but we're not alone in this these days with our global community and all you could ever want is to know that they are healthy and happy wherever they are ... and for us, well home's not bad either.