Ramsey Craft Centre

                Needles, pins and arty things

A visitor to the island, many years ago,  follows the blog and asked me if a "pretty little shop full of brightly colours cottons" still open in Ramsey.  I'm happy to say, indeed it is.  I've had many a sewing emergency (ok one or two) averted by this little local shop. Just a quick post and a snapshot, with the morning sunrise reflection, though I will photograph inside for our visitor soon.
Simonetta

Collins Lane, curiously- abc

What Old Curiosity Shop?

Today the letter is a mainly a C

Curiosity led me to this little back passage. We do like crawling around a back passage here in these parts you know. Wherever you find a seaport you find the narrow little pathways like these. Who said smuggler's. I floated that idea before and was told that there is a story or two to be told. Today we just have Collins Lane though. It is another of those wee, single file only alleyways that connect Parliament Street(where I took the image from) to the quayside harbour, that being the far side white light calling you. In keeping with the other alleyways I have shown you we have one whitewash wall and one local stone wall. As a bonus with this one you get a timber roof joists. If I knew more I would tell you. I'll just have to find out then.


The sign on the wall? Well do as it says follow the arrow. On the left hand side of the passage way you will find Isabel's Curiosity Shop. Exactly as it says on the wall sign an eclectic mix of bric a brac and antiques. The sort of place you could drop your mother in and collect five hours later having purchased every trinket in sight and then realizing she can't actually board the plane with it all.Put it this way if you like to mooch for antiques and rummage around for a bargain bit of furniture then you'd love it here. Suppose I will have to photograph the actual shop for you now won't I. Undercover of course. Until then just use your curious imagination won't you.



If you are still curious you can check out more C words here

Carry on up the back passage

Blinded by the light

Shall we have a little alley action? No alley cats hanging around or lowlifes just my camera and I.
This is one of those little slipways we have that links Parliament Street to the harbour side that you can see in colour by clicking a back post here. Whenever I see passageways like this I am prone to let my over active imagination run riot and believe that of course this was a secret runway for the smugglers escaping with their ill gotten gains. I have so many things I could say about bankers and taxes but I'll resist. Back to the back alley.

I took this with something called fill flash. Does what it says. Not that it was necessary just wanted a blinding light. Don't ask. Some crazy idea I had at the time about obscuring the image before I reveal it's secrets to you. Anyway let's carry on up the back passage. Into the bright light you can see over the road to a white van. That is no ordinary van but a Police van. Why? The Police station is just to the right of that van. Makes sense then. Behind that van is a lovely little local shop which I'll show you soon. As you can see the alley has two different types of wall.I have noticed a lot of the back ways have walls of differing styles. Each wall is the side of a local business. We will have to take a look at those sometime soon too. If you peer very closely you can see the Christmas lights strewn across the sky. Yes I did say Christmas lights. They stay up, but stay off until Christmas. A little gritty image today.Realism.

I hope you enjoyed wandering around my back passage virtually, anyway.