Back In The Land of The Living

Knitwits Yarns knitwitspenzance.co.uk
www.justgiving.com/TheHopsons

Apologies for disappearing off the face of the earth but we took off last week for a much needed break in Devon. The trouble with being self-employed is that it's all sitting there waiting for you when you get back so the week between the two "holidays" was utterly manic and insane. 654 emails of which 634 are rubbish and Spam offering various enhancing medicines. Today there were 364, of which 20 are of any interest at all.

Whilst we were away we re-charged the batteries (much needed after 967 miles in 12.5 days - the camper and I, incidentally, did 2,150 miles in total), ate far too much (huge respect to my sister-in-law who organised all the meals), drank a fair bit and managed one lovely walk on Dartmoor between the rainy days:














Here are the 4 cousins in height order (my brother and sister-in-law are both very tall so G&T are enjoying the few years when they are taller than their cousins - it won't last long):















After that we moved down to East Prawle for our annual camping expedition with friends. Last year East Prawle looked like this:


This year, as we put our tent up, East Prawle looked like this:














Here the car is acting as a rather fetching wind break:














We are, as a family, rapidly getting known as the family not to holiday with as we seem to attract the very worst of the British weather. (We even have one set of friends who took the rather drastic step of booking a 2 week holiday in Kenya to avoid this weekend in Devon - a tiny bit extreme we thought but, maybe, just maybe they had a point.) Obviously, there was only one thing to be done:


















(That's a Cornish Organic Wool blanket, cream and rose 4ply for those of the knitterly persuasion.)

After a very late night in our communal tepee, some of the more insane of our group decided on a morning swim to blow away the cobwebs. I went along as official photographer:














Barking I tell you - absolutely barking (that is Salcombe in the background, not Monte Carlo or Mombasa).

So we're now back at home for the foreseeable and serious training is commencing for the forthcoming rugby season (boys, obviously, not me). Lord help us all, blink a couple of times and it'll be Christmas.