I was there ... (1) AIA and Nic and Andy's wedding

I've been meaning to update this for ages, and I have the photos to go with it, but little inclination to stop and think what stories I meant to tell.
So, although this will not be in chronological order, it makes sense to follow on from the previous post.
Nic and Andy's wedding took place on the hottest day of the year.

Ian and I have had a very busy year, and getting to the wedding was complicated by being in Colchester for the preceding week at our annual industrial archaeology conference. 

So, there we were taking in the brickyards,  

Thames barges, 

and mills of various kinds with wedding items to hand.

As we were at leisure, we travelled to Newport with a small diversion on the Isle of Wight Steam Railway, 

and saw this beautifully preserved signalbox

along with the vintage carriages.

Before getting into party mode for the wedding we visited Ventnor, not much good for beachcombing as all I could see was sand!

But it was very lovely sand, reminding me of my first visit back in the early '60s.

On the Saturday afternoon we caught the bus early enough for me to hang my butterflies in the trees. 

If I remember rightly, I had 17 of them to distribute near the food area. This took a bit of doing, twisting turquoise wire round branches to hold them in place. It gave the feeling I had been aiming for though.

Nic looked stunning in turquoise, and Lixie's bunting made the day.

 And then just as the ceremony ended my camera packed up with the lens stuck out, and it's not worth attempting to repair it.
So, I'll just leave it that this was the best wedding ever, held on a wonderfully bright sunny day with a great crowd of friends.

Finally, I made sense of my camera ...

... and can now reveal my latest parcel from my secret pal. Thank you so much - you got it all just right!And here we have: a fantastic project bag in bright colours, just my style!
Some fibres in a bright jewel greeny blue; some mysterious seeds (they came unlabelled) that I don't immediately recognise; and the most exquisite fine mohair yarn.

All this came recently, but I haven't been at home in daylight hours much recently, and then the camera batteries were flat!!

Excuses! Excuses, I know, but all true.

Meanwhile we popped over to Lincoln for the AIA conference, and took a side trip to Gainsborough where we saw this lovely passion flower creeping out from under the metal hoarding of a building site.

In Lincoln itself I was tempted by the texture carved into this stone plinth. It looks as though it would be really easy to translate this into crochet.

These are the latest socks off the needles: I now have a sneeking suspicion that the bright red wool element might not be machine washable, so their first wash was by hand. I will have to try felting a bit of the leftover yarn before I next want to wash them.