There are several Gardens at Kylemore Abbey – there’s the lower gardens, which are filled with trees and walking paths around Lough Pollacappul. Then, there are the upper gardens. A short drive (or walk) by bus leads you up the hill to the top of the Mountain. When you first get out of the bus, the view (above) is breathtaking and natural. As you walk on the pathway, you begin to see the Walls of the garden – surrounded with these giant trees that were so big that I couldn’t get my arms around.
The Tea garden cafe is to the right, and as you walk past it, you enter into the first of the walled gardens. Below you can see the interesting layout with the white Victorian greenhouses on the far end, a caretaker’s cottage, and lovely white benches throughout. The second picture is with your back to the caretaker’s cottage, looking toward the entrance.
In addition to the caretaker’s cottage (below) which is heated by peat (peat pile 2nd picture) there’s also a second carpenter’s cottage and some ruins (very first picture at the top) of a heated conservatory that is in the process of being restored.
Other than the main sculpted garden, there’s also a really nice vegetable garden / herbal remedy garden. This one’s more rustic and has a stream off to the edge.
The stream runs off into a grove of white beech trees.
As I left the upper gardens, It started raining – just in time for me to head back to the Galway Bay hotel. Luckily, I was able to get out the map and avoid all of the fun detours that took me so far out of the way, and get on some main streets to get back to Galway for a massage and a good nights rest with the windows open to the fresh sea breeze.
The next day, I headed back, stopping in Athenry and Clonmacnoise. More from those later.
For my colleagues today, I thought it would be fun to make a few Valentines. I wasn’t sure what to do this year, and then I saw a simple idea on one of the Martha Stewart pages here.
After gathering some lollypops and some colored paper, I thought it would be brilliant to cut some heart shapes out of the paper using both the scissors and a hole punch. I then glued all of the shapes together and hole punched the main larger hearts. Sliding the heart “petals” up the stem of the lollypop and securing on the reverse side with tape (being careful to NOT tape the paper on the lolly) I think they made some cute flowers.
Next time, I think I’ll try making some with words on them (like fun Valentine’s Day slogans or something), or maybe adding some other features like ribbons. Otherwise, I would say this is a great craft for the kids too!
The story of Kylemore Abbey is a story of love and loss, vision and tragedy, and finally hope. Without getting deep into the building’s history, I’ll try to hit the high points of the history, and for more details, you can go to the Kylemore Abbey website here.
Back in the late 1800′s, an English surgeon named Mitchell Henry and his wife, Margaret, were married. They came to Connemara on their honeymoon and were enchanted by the area’s wonderful hunting and fishing. They vowed to one day return and build a home in such a beautiful place. When Henry’s father died, Henry received a large inheritance and decided to give up medicine for business and politics. He and Margaret bought property in Connemara (some 13,000 acres in land) around the old Kylemore hunting lodge. The property included mountains, a lake and boglands. Margaret and Henry started to build a 70 room home – what is the main portion of the Abbey today, in a Victorian Style Castle. They built the castle in the shadow of Druchruach Mountain and hugging the shores of Lough Pollacappul, to maximize the view. By 1871, the castle and the walled garden were completed. In 1874, while on holiday in Egypt, Margaret died, leaving behind her broken hearted husband and 9 children. Mitchell sent her body back to Kylemore and in the coming years, built a mausoleum in the style of an old gothic church along the side of of Lough Pollacappul to commemorate their love. For 40 years, Mitchell and his family encouraged locals to take up tenancy on his property – and during the time of the Irish Potato famine he is known to have provided work, food and schooling for those that he shared the land with.
In 1903, English King Edward VII came to Connemara to visit and toured the property and grounds. Shortly thereafter, Kylemore Abbey was sold to the Duke & Dutchess of Manchester, who bought the home and its grounds in 1909. Sadly, in 1914, The Dutchess of Manchester’s father, Eugene Zimmerman passed away – and because he was financing the home – the property was lost to the bankers.
The property remained mostly empty (caretakers were watching over it) until the 1920′s, when the Benedictine Nuns of Ireland purchased the land and property. They established a convent, guest house, series of gardens, and a Girls School (the school closed in the 1990′s). Today, the Benedictine Nuns still hold the property, making their money off of the location as a tourist attraction and selling their wares locally while doing good works in the local community.
While I didn’t have time (a 2 hour detour does this to ya!) to see inside the house or the Gothic cathedral, I did make it to the gardens, which I’ll post pictures of tomorrow – but for now, a preview of some of the flowers.
Yesterday, I started telling you about the trip from Galway to Kylemore Abbey and how I got detoured nearly 2 hours. You can see the post here.
By the time I made it to the James Joyce craft and gift shop, I was ready for a break. I’d been battling down very narrow, winding roads, and past several sheep and cars on roads which proved to be a bit stressful since they weren’t on a map and nothing was labelled. The craft shop is on the N59 road, and after not having seen any place to stop, this looked like a nice place – not only because of the complex of small shops – but also because it had a couple of eye catching monuments that made me want to stop. Pulling over, however, I found that the monuments were rife with Irish humor.
This is a sculpture of the Connemara Giant. It’s huge, and made out of granite. It sits directly in front of a sort of art deco shield type monument, which one would expect would have names or commemorate something important. Upon closer inspection, the sign under the Giant says:
The giant was erected for no apparent reason. It cracked me up. As I maneuvered myself around to the second monument that sits just behind the Giant, I was again greeted with a but of humor that even PT Barnum would have appreciated.
Yep, on this site in 1897, Nothing Happened.
After getting a drink and a couple munchies, springing for a couple postcards (mailed off to the family), and even a piece of beautiful green Connemara jewelry, I headed off again, hoping to make Kylemore Abbey in a short time. The roads the rest of the way to Connemara weren’t bad at all – despite seeing more and more sheep along the road…
More from the beautiful Kylemore Abbey tomorrow – including the story of the love that it was built for.
Back in July 2011, I went to the west coast of Ireland to do some site seeing. I stayed in a place called Salthill, just north of Galway (see previous post here). Where I was staying, it rained, and the weather wouldn’t co-operate. As a result, I decided that I was going to drive up through the beautiful Connemara and to Kylemore Abbey (more on that later).
The thing with driving in Ireland is that it’s not particularly difficult to physically drive on the opposite side of the car (it’s a Right hand – British – drive country) but it is different. You have to learn to look over your left shoulder when backing up, you have to learn to shift with your Left hand (instead of your Right) and you have to relearn your spacial location for where you are in relation to the car – and just where/how it fits on the road – so you can do things like parallel park. For me, every time I get behind the wheel I have to remind myself to drive on the British side of the road (old habits die hard) – and that the round-abouts go clockwise.
The above not-with-standing, the logistics of driving in Ireland is a unique challenge all its own. What do I mean by this? Well, keep in mind that the USA is generally a young country. What this means is that we built our roads and our businesses and our homes at the same time. As a result, the roads tend to be a bit wider (built for cars), a bit straighter, and there’s usually not a requirement to go some hour out of your way to come back an hour when there’s a detour involved. You can just cut up a couple blocks and there’s a paralleling road to get past the construction site. In most places in the US (unless you’re in a very rural place) a GPS is a luxury – it simply supplements the easy to read, high contrast reflective road signs that are posted at nearly every intersection (or every few miles on a long road) – so actually finding your way about is fairly easy.
In Ireland, though, the places were built, and the roads sprung up for foot traffic, horses, carriages and finally cars. Here, road signs, once you get off of the autobahns, are practically non-existent. Where there are roadsigns, they’re not really easy to read (light blue background with white text). They don’t say which direction the road is going (as in N/S or E/W) – only the next town – or sometimes multiple towns pointed lefty/righty/lefty/righty/straight ahead/ back behind you/ another 3 to the right/2 to the left / eat at Bob’s / shop at Fred’s discount … – piled up one on top of each other randomly on a post starting some 6-8 foot high and going to maybe knee height. As a car driver, this monumental pile of signs is nearly impossible for you to read all of in the few seconds you’re trying to approach and drive past it (while trying to drive, pay attention to traffic, and enjoy having some local yahoo behind you crawling up your bumper). Also, once out of the city, the road signs become overgrown, faded, damaged, and often only posted at a T junction so the stopped traffic (not the traffic paralleling the sign) can see it. Because of this challenge, a GPS is a practical necessity for a car – and sometimes even the GPS doesn’t know where the crap you are. (recalculating… recalculating… recalculating..)
Ok so where am I going with this post? Well, the trip to Connemara / Kylemore Abbey. When I left Salthill, I spiraled my way out of town and hit the N59 which should take me straight to Kylemore Abbey, driving through the rural areas of Connemara. Connemara is one of the last places that they speak Irish (Galic) as their main dialect (English is secondary) and has mountains and moors, and is one of the most beautiful landscapes on the west coast. I was looking forward to the drive on the main two lane road over the next hour or so. What I didn’t know, however, is that there was road construction on the N59, and that the result would be a detour down single lane roads that were barely as wide as the car – and so overgrown that at times the branches were scraping the sides of my little Fiat Punto. Above you can see the route I was supposed to take – 1 hour and 10 minutes. Below, you can see the route that took a little over 3 hours.. and for which the GPS was almost completely useless because I was driving on roads that simply weren’t on the map!:
The laughable thing about this is that while it was beautiful, it was also nerve racking. The roads were so narrow and hilly that you couldn’t go very fast, nor could you see if there was oncoming traffic in many instances. I mentioned the roads were narrow – and I’m not kidding. When you had to pass someone, you had to pull into someone’s driveway – and wait for the other person to pass. And – in some cases, you had to reverse back to the next “closest” driveway to allow this to happen.
At some points there were houses, but mostly, it felt like you were driving in the back country – complete with rush hour sheep blocking the road. Oh – and for the record – no matter if you honk or not, if the first sheep isn’t moving – the rest aren’t either.
By the time I made it to the very rural James Joyce gift shop in Connemara (below) I was ready to get out of the car and take a break.
Back in October, I posted about my feral family of kittens. I’m pleased to let you know that they’re still around, happy and quite healthy. This winter in Dublin has been quite mild, and on the colder days (when the frost is on the ground) I’ve found that the kittens have made it through the night snuggled up inside their box, quite warm, dry and happy.
This last week, I was amazed to come home from work and open the bedroom curtains to see this:
Yep, that’s Miss Piggy up in the tree and after the bird pictured at the top. At the same time she was in one tree, Two socks was sitting on the ground under the other – prepared to go up as well – should a bird come near enough. It made me giggle at how confident and determined they are in their adolescence, and at how fast they were in going from branch to branch in order to even think about getting a bird.
They quickly realized that I was about, and Two Socks slunk back to the bushes – and then observed me observing him.
When his brother, Runt kitty came out from under the bushes, they looked a bit like bookends as they both watched me.
Finally, I decided to pop out and feed them, and Miss Piggy came down from the tree – (u fed me lady,I come down now) to eat. And surprise surprise – guess who appeared but a pudgy Bibs kitty – who I’d not seen since October – well fed, well groomed and wearing a collar. I guess someone decided he deserved to be adopted into a forever home.
Disclaimer: This pattern was written, created, and tested and copyrighted by me. Please do not copy it to another source, whether on paper or on the web or any other media. Anyone is more than welcome to link to this page or any pattern on it. You may also print out a copy of my pattern for your own personal use but please do not distribute to others. If you do decide to make the pattern, please also consider making a second for charity.
This pattern is written in “American crochet” abbreviations. It is worked in the round and should gradually curve into a bowl shape.
Crochet hook size: EU 5.00 mm US 8 / H UK 6
Yarn Weight: EU: Sock yarn / Baby weight yarn in UK / Sock or Sport weight in the US
Row 2: ch 3 (counts as 1st stitch). 14 DC into loop. (15 sts)
Row 3: ch 3. *2dc in next st, 2 FPDC in next st. repeat from * around. In final stitch, 1 DC, Join. (30 Sts)
Row 4: ch 3, FPDC in same st. DC next st. *2 FPDC in next FPDC; 1 FPDC in next FPDC. 2 DC in next St, 1 Dc in next st around. (this will alternate FPDC and DC around hat.) join.
Row 5: ch 3, 3 FPDC in next st. 2 dc in next st; * FPDC in each FPDC, DC in each DC around to last. Skip last stitch & join. (48 sts)
Row 6: ch 3, FPDC in next 3 FPDC, 2 dc in next dc, dc in next dc. *FPDC in each FPDC; dc in each dc around Makes alternating 3 FPDC, 3 DC around. (49 STS)
Row 7 – 12 (or more if you want to turn it up): ch3 FPDC in each FPDC, DC in each DC around. join.
Row 13 – FPTC in each FPDC, DC in each DC around. join. (this evens out any waves that may occur)
Row 14 – single crochet in each stitch around. Finish off and weave in ends.
Back in July 2011, I had a few days off and decided to go to the West coast of Ireland and stay near Galway. After some perusing about the hotels, I found a beautiful looking hotel called the Galway Bay Hotel, on the North Side of Galway in a suburb called Salthill. The hotel faces the sea front promenade around Galway Bay and has interesting warm yellow architecture. The inside is very elegant with marble floored oval foyer with custom dark wood seating. The Foyer opens onto an all glass conservatory from which you can reach a lovely summer terrace with chairs and tables so one can take in the brisk sea air and a bit of sun on warm days. I got a prime room – on the top floor, and facing the beach – with a huge king size bed – for a good deal of less than 100 euro a night. Despite the drizzle for most of the day, the view (below) was magnificent.
I had a massage, and a chance to soak in the tub and relax. By the time that I was ready for diner, the weather was clearer and cooler – but twilight had set in. I walked over to the village…
and opted for a Slavic restaurant that promised authentic perogies. Now I’m no expert, but I did have lots of Perogies when I lived in Russia. I was a bit skeptical at first, but when I asked the waitress what type of perogies they had – and she told me the names I was familiar with, I got my hopes up and was not disappointed (seriously the best perogies I had since I lived in Russia!). Add in a bit of tasty pear vodka and also a bit of yummy dessert and I was one happy girl. (Who would have thought that such a tiny town would have such an awesome restaurant?)
On the way back to the hotel, walking along the promenade, I did try to take a picture of Galway’s lovely Bay with an tanker sitting out on the water. It’s blue because of the twilight – and I wanted to try again later (no chance – it started raining again and did most of the morning – thus why I headed to Connemara/Kylemore Abbey) but I think it came out ok.
Earlier this month, while the ladies and I were out to lunch, “A” mentioned that she wanted to buy a teapot cosy – but that “J” talked her out of the purchase because it was too expensive – something like 30 Euros! In the process of the discussion, I said you know, for that, I could make you one – just give me the yarn. After some further discussion, a couple days later, I went and checked out patterns – and emailed a few to “A”. We both agreed on this one:
because it was fairly simple – but yet looked quite complex. I’ve never made a tea cosy before (in the USA we generally don’t have teapots quite like they do here in Ireland / UK where its actually a part of the culture) but I think it turned out quite fine – especially with my added touch of the flower. I made it out of scrap yarn that I had – a beautiful dark violet and pale green. What do you think? I’m thinking it looks a bit “basket” ish in these colors.
On a side note – this pattern had two new stitches for me – the Spike Double Crochet (pictured below) and the reverse single crochet (which blew my mind until I looked it up on youtube!). I always like it when I can add new stitches to the ones I already know.
Otherwise, Just wanted to send a shout out to “H” who let me borrow her teapot for the model & size testing since I don’t have one.
Oh – and one more thing – In the US, we spell it COZY, but being that this is for an Irish teapot – it’s the British spelling all the way – COSY!
Folks, Jedward has come out with a candy bar. It just makes me want to cry, because it’s so painfully pop culture, punny, laughable and sad all at the same time. Someone else bought it for me as a gift, and my first thought was that I *Had* to blog about it and post pictures, because this is something that is lost in translation (and I’m sure didn’t make it across the pond). So here they are.
Jedward candy bar – twin “popping” chocolate bars
(yes, it says that it’s FULL ON, Crazy, JEADLY)
Want to Meet Jedward? Get the golden ticket! (Thank Goodness I didn’t get the ticket.)
For those of you who don’t know who Jedward is, let me explain (although I’m not sure there is any explanation for these two). They were twin contestants on “x factor”, which is basically the “American Idol” for Britain and Ireland. They’re 17 year old blonde teenagers who, for lack of a better word, are stupid – and famous for it. They can’t really sing, and they (like Bieber fever) are everywhere here in Ireland and one doesn’t really know why. You can’t get them gone. They’re on TV (doing ads for a local cell phone company), starring in Celeb Big Brother House, and earlier this year – were Ireland’s entry for the Eurovision song contest (please don’t get me started on the contest).
They’re voted one of the year 2011′s most annoying…
