A hot sunny holiday at last!

I was beginning to get a bit desperate for a holiday while Ivan (Mr Bicknell) was away, so I got on the phone to Bex, we were at uni together and have remained the best of friends ever since, sadly she now lives in Germany so I don't see her half as much as I would like, so being able to do lots of catching up, somewhere nice and hot couldn't be missed - so we did it - booked a Thomas Cook holiday to Santorini in Greece! I have never booked a Thomas Cook holiday before (bit of a snob), but beggars can't choosers and all that, however, I'll tell you what, they were fantastic and I would definitely do it again!

Our hotel - the most amazing surprise - considering we virtually paid nothing for the privelege!

The pool looked amazing surrounded by fruit trees and bougainvillea - I swam 200 lengths every day - yes really! Have you seen how slim Bex is? It is enough to put you to shame! And at night it looked pretty good too!

I don't know what her name was, but the hotel's cat was super sweet and spent every day curled up on our balcony! She appeared to be very practiced in posing for the camera too!

You all know that I am a bit of a Spa brat, but these massages that we had on the beach truly rival anything I have ever had before - "England" was a true Thai master and really meant business in getting rid of all that pent-up pre-holiday stresses! Not a bad way to start you holiday! Oh yes - I didn't think you needed to see me in my bikini - Bex looks MUCH better in hers!

Donkeys are a big thing in Santorini - not only as a mode of transport, but a bit of mascot too - these painted ones popped up everywhere!

Well, you have to don't you?!

I knew exactly how he felt - Santorini is HOT!

The church is typical of the island's sugar cube architecture and blue domes - and how blue is that sky?

I know that this is also a bit of a cliche, but I love the fact that left, right, and centre there are olive, pomegranate and fresh fig trees, so this had to be taken!

Ntomatini - the best place to eat in Perissa, the food is exquisite, the staff are super friendly and the actual restaurant is very beautiful.

Really I should have taken a photo before I dived in, but the food is so good here that I couldn't wait! Straight from the sea, no fuss, just perfectly cooked fresh produce.

The Yazz bar is in the oldest standing building in Perissa, it is by day the most laid back place with great chill out music and fantastic food, but at night it really comes alive.

And well, you have to try the local thirst quenchers don't you?!

Rather than just laze around we decided to see something of the Island - so booked a boat trip to the island's volcano - it was a bit breezy - apparently Santorini is famous for being a bit windy in August - so the sailing proved to be not for the faint hearted - fortunately we are made of tough stuff, and the wind is actually quite welcome as it really stops you from feeling the 40 degree heat!

Our boat for the day.

Hmmm, the Albatross - glad I wasn't on that one!

Looking back at Thira.

Our first stop was the volcano which is situated bang in the middle of what is now the horseshoe shaped island of Santorini - 3 KM's up and it was hot, hot, hot, in fact you only needed to dig 12cm down and you could cook your lunch in the soil! I think this is a particularly fetching pic of the two of us - that's the great thing about being on holiday at our age - you just don't care! What does worry me though is just how mad we are beginning to look! It also looks like I've had a bang on the head!

After the volcano we jumped (well I'm a bit of a coward and had to be pushed) off the boat and swam to the hot springs - this is where the volcano is still active and the water bubbles up around you, there is also a special mud so that you can have a quick facial - sadly my camera is not waterproof, so you will have to imagine this, but the photos would have been funny and very embarassing! Next was a short sailing to another tiny island - Thirasira, for lunch, this consisted of huge fresh fish kebabs and of course, Greek salad - swimming below us on the terrace were these fish....

Annie, my lovely sister in law gave me these sandals and I don't suppose she would be very impressed to see them immersed in water like this - but look at how clear it is and sadly how white my legs still were (brown now!) Ivan (Mr Bicknell) maintains that they have an anti-tanning pigment in them!

You cannot visit Santorini without at least a night out in its capital Thira - and a very pleasant one we had too!

Thira is jam packed with incredible jewelery shops - this one was particularly gorgeous and the owner was more than happy to let me take a picture of the beautiful display - Bex and I did treat ourselves to a few bits and pieces from a lovely store later on - but not here as we would have needed to really max out our credit cards! Ahh, one day, but not on a teachers salary!

The owners of this store weren't quite so accomodating - forbidding me to take any photos - but I did anyway - I love the matchboxes - maybe a new college project?!

Not only were the jewelery stores amazing, but the various ice cream and cake shows held their own too - this one looked like this before we had supper and when we passed by later on it was practically empty!

What you must do in Thira is check out the sunset over the Caldera, so we did.

We decided to push the boat out for dinner and go a bit posh - this one (Casablanca) was situated right at the top of Thira, all swishy drapes, lovely blankets to wrap yourself up in if it got too breezy (it was all open sided at the top), incredible food and great wine, in fact, the lovely french couple next to us treated us to a bottle of Rose - who said the french were mean?

The view over Thira from our rather posh restaurant - breath taking, balmy and beautiful.

Screen printing continued......

So here is part 2 of your screen printing master class! Not exactly a highly professional operation, but you will get the idea with a bit of luck.......

So,first of all you need to find some fabric and give it a bit of an iron - at college we have a proper print table which has a neoprene surface which is then coated in something called gum arabic - this is a type of glue which when you iron your fabric down on to it, becomes sticky and keeps the fabric attached to the table so that it doesn't "pick up" when you start to print. At home I have a board with blanket stretched over it onto which I can pin my fabric so as to keep it in place.

Below are the other important tools of the trade - hand towel to clear up the mess (of which I make plenty), jars of ink - this is made from a concentrate and a binder, think of the concentrate as being the cordial and the binder being the water if you like! A spoon (to spoon out the ink) and the grubby looking objects under the spoon are called squeedges and these are what you use to push the ink through your screen and onto the fabric as you will see below.....

Because I have put lots of images on one screen and not left much space around them, I am isolating the image I want to print with masking tape, this helps me to not only focus on what I am printing, but will also help to prevent me from printing other images from my screen by providing something of a barrier.

I then carefully spoon some of the ink above the image I intend to print on top of the masking tape, as I said above, this will prevent the ink from seeping through the screen in areas I don't want it to - the text in this instance.

A bad picture, sorry, but then, carefully and at a 45 degree angle and relatively firmly, I drag the ink across the image, where the fabric may be seen through the image, the ink will be printed....

And there you have it - your image all beautifully printed!

In order to prevent the residue ink drying and therefore blocking your screen you must use a damp sponge to clean it up on both sides and then give it a quick dry with some hand towel - you can use a hair dryer to speed the drying process up, but be warned the silk screen can melt if it becomes too hot!

What I love to do is to build up a collage effect by over printing and over printing, using lots of different images and colours until I get a finished "picture", this really is a case of trial and error as mostly the colours are transparent, so for example, if you print a yellow over a red, you will make orange, also some of my inks are mixed with an opaque binder so that I can print light colours onto darker grounds, and when you print over these your colours will change too, and the opaque colour will always show through - so you never quite know what sort of effect you might get.....

It is also a really good idea to keep a hair dryer at hand to dry each print as you go, this will prevent smudging and bleeding, keeping things nice and crisp and clean.

Here are two finished pieces from the same afternoon.

4 years and counting....

Ivan (Mr Bicknell) and I have just celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary - strangely however, this is the first year that we have actually been able to do something together, you see this time of year tends to be taken up with epic travelling adventures and normally jetlag, illness or delay! So we bravely decided to venture into deepest, darkest walses, take our chances with the elements and rough it in 5* luxury! Our destination was Peterstone court in the heart of the Breacon Beacons - http://www.peterstone-court.com/ - If you are looking to be spoiled, then check out the link! Our amazing neighbours had cheekily phoned ahead and arranged for some fizz to be placed in our room, and with the hotel now knowing that we were celebrating, they up-graded us for free! We had an AMAZING room - jars of lollipops, huge four poster bed, flat screen T.V. window seats, robes, the lot!

The hotel also has a spa, where we had great massages, saunas, lots of dips in the jacuzzi and I even had a pedicure where you are given homemade ice-cream to eat at the same time! There was a gorgeous heated outdoor pool to splash around in which had incredible views of the Beacons and as the weather was so nice, we could sit on the terrace, have afternoon tea and do the crossword!

The hotel's chef has just been awarded Welsh Chef Of the Year, so as you can imagine, the food was pretty good too!

We did lots of walking in order to walk off the excess eating and came home this morning feeling properly pampered!

Heading into Wales.....

It is great to see that husbands are not only great for footing the bill, but they can carry the luggage in too!


THE room!


Could we have better neighbours?

Mysteriously the jar seemed to be empty on our departure.

And as for the products, what products?

Cheers!

It tasted as good as it looked - the staff were a bit perplexed as to why I was photographing the food though, but hey ho.....

A sign of protest? Abandoned boots at the start of walk one.

We are here.

So it is true - although a bit breezy, the sun really does shine in Wales! Behind me is what we did the next day - yes it did take nearly 5 hours!

All stone walls and rolling hills - wondrful!