Back to civilisation

Just arrived back in the civilised world of Boston, MA after a couple of days in "the wilds" of New Hampshire! Who would have thought that, in this land of plenty, we'd have found almost two whole states with no cellphone connection at all? For the last two days, we had enforced "peace and tranquillity" in an inn in Franconia, where, not only did we have no cellphone or internet, but no tv, telephone or newspapers either. Now, this might be a haven for some, but for those of us with responsibilities at home, particularly in a time of travel disruption - this is a far from relaxing situation to be in.

Anyhow, we are back in touch with the world and all appears to be fine. We might even be able to take a bag on board our flight home on Thursday evening!!

We stopped off at the Canterbury Shaker Village today, en route to Boston. What a fascinating place it was, and what a splendid guide we had to explain things for us. The craftsmanship all around was superb - in the meeting house, sets of small round markers were set into the wooden floor as positions for dancing - whether they were plain wooden dowel, stripy wooden dowel, copper discs, steel nailheads or black ?wood?, all were perfectly set and had remained so since they were placed there more than two centuries ago.

Of course, there was plenty of other evidence of the aesthetic aspects of their plain and simple life. We enjoyed seeing inside the laundry, with the "system" of making sure nothing got lost by applying numbers and letters to everything. The Sisters House with the spinning and weaving tools, knitting machine and examples of their work was interesting, and though we couldn't see a demonstration of making boxes, there were plenty of examples...one of which is in my suitcase! (Made in Canada, Nadine!)

No yarn shops today. I think that, even I have to say that I have enough yarn to be going on with. For now.