Blogging in the Rain- Pt 1: It started with a knit

A little introduction, before I get started:

The whole decision to start a blog came from nothing good.  It was born from envy of following the glamorous bloggable lives of a couple of ladies, namely Needled and, more recently, Rus in Urbis .  Both are knitters, both found by chance when  I was looking up other things, and both have things in common with me, especially the latter.  Now, I KNOW that blogs are edited, and if I look at the dates of posting I can see that they both have their share of unworthy days that pass unblogged.  And yet, I still take it all at face value. 

So I decided to prove to myself that my life is as blogworthy as anyone else's.  And so it began.

As I'm quite partial to the odd mosaic, and not long back from Pompeii and Herculaneum, we decided to see a bit of Roman Britain.  I remembered a knitting pattern I had seen (yes, everything really does start with a knit) and we picked St Albans.

By the time I typed my first post, we had already booked a little weekend away, I had my new camera and was ready. 

When Saturday morning finally came round., I leapt(ish) out of bed, flung back the curtains and...

Not to worry: a bit of rain won't get us down.  Not on this, our special weekend.  Looking forward to putting my new anorak through its paces, we set off, laughing all the way.  Here is but one of many moments on the road:

First stop, having decided to leave the walk around the Roman walls for another day (maybe), was the indoors, covered, dry Roman museum, just a short wade from the car park.  For no reason that I remember, I decided not to use flash, which has given everything a slightly sinister air.

if you look closely, you'll see Mr Turner has been less than careful. 

Uplighting lends your basic everyday handicrafts a touch of much-needed menace

If there was a reason, I can't remember it

And finally, here is Rich having a whale of a time in front of the mosaic that started it all off

The pattern is here:  Roman mosaic jacket and yes, I do believe I'll make one.  

At the gift shop.  Do the teddies have a wardrobe, or should this have told us something?

Another bit of sightseeing to continue the cultural tour.  Oh, Look! it's an historic pub.  I wonder if it's as historic inside... 

One soup later, a brief drizzle of mildly apocalyptic proportions and a quick swim back to the van, and onward to the mostly, but thankfully not completely, outdoors Butterfly World, featuring Ant World. 

I acknowledge these are of limited artistry, or indeed interest, but I am by now desperately trying to find any photo with any colour.

Over time, the sky rained itself out, and was having what would  turn out to be a short break from deluging, so we made the most of it, and went around the concept gardens, some of which I got on with better than others.

What's that coming over the hill? Is it a 50 foot ant statue? Yes.

 What would Joanie Do?  

Rich spotted the Dali reference, I just spotted our lobster

 my one attempt to connect with the garden and take an arty snap of the poem that ran throughout the area, when Rich came over to see what I was doing.

we had something not dissimilar...

And so part one ends, with us warming ourselves in the cafe, perusing the flyers for places to visit, such as: Discover Dartford! Wicked Watford! Potter in Peterborough! etc.  On to tomorrow, and the Countryside....