Just have to show you...

This is the quilt I made in two days this week for the latest grandson, nothing like rushing!!
The original pattern was in a Readers Digest Sewing book but I used Paula Ozier fabrics for the applique animals instead of the ones suggested, to makee it a bit funkier. Considering the rush it turned out quite well though I have to admit to machining the applique on (instead of the painstaking hand sewing for the Valentine quilt) However I did hand quilt the outlining.

Flowery weekend

This last weekend was the village flower festival at the church and it all looked gorgeous. I put my dolls houses on display for them which led to a huge effot in finding sorting and cleaning them before transporting them round the corner. As they are going to Ware museum in November it was a good boost to do it and get hem sorted. it is so long since I looked at them I had forgotten how lovely they are. So many people commented on them.
The flowers were just so stunning. Every group or society in the village had a display and the fun bit was Friday in the church while we all worked to get the displays set up. Here is a picture of the WI display - quite appropriate I though, with jam, Jerusalem music and Sunflowers for the Calendar Girls! There were over twenty displays which just shows how busy this village is.
And last week we had the Morris Men at the pub which was lovely. Morris men go back to the Middle Ages and probably earlier than that, all male dancers with bells and ribbons on their legs, they have set dances they have done for years. I have always loved watching them and it was great to do so from the comfort of our kitchen window. The photo is a bit dark (it was 9pm) but you can get some idea

Vintage Valentine is REALLY finished

At last the quilt is finished! Start with something simple the books say. What do I do? Find the hardest design ever! Hand quilted to boot! Pics here. Have to say I am inordinately pleased with myself.
Now it is back to the alphabet sampler (also pictured) I am not sure where I am going to put this when it is done but it has been mostly a joy to do

On the proverbial at a brewery

Yes, just as daft as it sounds really! We went to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk on Monday to visit the Greene King Brewery in the company of 20 reprobates and the maddest Northern Irish guide I have ever met. She was a hoot. Green King is one of the oldest brewers in the country and has always been in Bury and as most of our locals are GK it was quite appropriate to visit the source so to speak! Naturally the guys were only interested in sampling the beer! Fun though to discover GK own the Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham which was one of our haunts in student days, and even more fun to discover the man I sat next to at dinner afterwards came from Nottingham as I do and knew all the places I did. He even remembered the Toreador which was our favourite coffee bar!!
Bury is a beautiful old town, well worth a visit, we went into the park behind the old abbey and here are some pics of the ruins, including some that look like a bird - honest! There is also one on a house built into the old ruins.
On the home front we are really progressing, as I type our second bedroom is getting its carpet laid and then they move on to the third one. I decided to deep clean and piant the kitchen after getting a total shock when I took a couple of plates off the wall - so it now looks fab and gleaming - too clean to cook in of course but you can't have it all!

Comings and Goings

Living in an English village is never dull! Take last Friday for instance...
We had Wheelbarrow Race Night. It can ony happen in England. Contestants dress up (and the barrow too) One pushes the other rides alternately down the village street downhill to the river ford (deliberately deepened for the night,) through it and back over to the pub, down a pint and do it again - you get the picture? 'Elf and Safety be damned - on-lookers throw bags of flour at runners and each other everyone gets soaked and filthy. They then all end up at the two pubs in the street and get hammered. There's a band and revelry and often a fight.
Living in the middle gets a bit much, however there was respite this year - yet another pub has just opened in the other end of the village so we trouped up there for a quiet pint, to discover most of our friends in there as well. Anyone who was anyone in village life had decamped to the Fleece - to wish it well on opening night of course!

This week too, my daughter and I went to my mum's flat in Sussex to start clearing it for the new owner to come in. So sad, though Mum is in a residential now and loving it she can't take much stuff with her so it has to be moved! Luckily she is not much of a hoarder, but 5 irons? All working! And china for every occasion!

The heat here is non-ending, my lawn is like the Sahara but the veggies are managing to survive. Sweetpeas are lovely this year though, and the scent of pinks as you come through the gate in fantastic. I am posting a piccie of the arrangement I did with them for the drawing room and one of the desert my garden has become. Having just done my stint for church flowers this week I am in the groove - though still am a rotten flower arranger!
Oh,and forward news, my dolls houses are going to Ware museum for the Christmas exhibition
We also found out yesterday one of the dh's daughters had her first baby - we were last to be told as usual but hey it is number 13 for us! Hope they let us know the details before long as I did promise myself I would do a birth sampler if it was a boy and they take me a while. I did a quilt for no 12 but girls are easier to do quilts for - I like the flowery stuff but am not so into the cars/monsters bit.
I'm working on an alphabet sampler I downloaded from a web-site (can't remember which one sadly) I'm doing it on 28 count Permin in two blue shades of DMC and it is really pleasing me. Will post when I have done a bit more than the blocks the letters sit in. That's the problem with down-loading sections you never really know how it is going to look till it is done. It was the same with Mary Wigham which I did a while ago.

Seventy and all that!

Well not me - not yet - but this Sunday we went to the seventieth birthday party of a friend. At one time we went to weddings, 21st's (when they were celebrated) and christenings, now its 60th 70th and above birthday parties (and funerals too) The bad side of geting older I guess. Really annoying though, just got settled in excnaging gossip with old mates and the dh gets a phone-call from a customer 'must see him that afternoon no other time'. So what happens? We have to leave the party and come home so he can go and visit the guy! Was I pissed off!! It was the first time we had been out in weeks because the dh was so tied up with this job. Mind you I sulked so hard he took me to the pub for supper after that so a kind of result.

Nicer bit of the weekend, my little grandchildren came to stay the night on Saturday, I had forgotten the unearthly time littles get up! We were up the road feeding the ducks at 8.30am - not atime I knew existed on a Sunday.

Time off for good behaviour

Just back from a week long trip to France and a visit to my old friend Norma in Les Landes (south of Bordeaux) In line with our usual habits we took a trip to Diffus-Laine before leaving Bordeaux to buy fabulous fabrics and haberdashery to fuel our week long sewfest. D-F sell ends of rolls from Paris along with trims and curtain fabrics and knitting wool and always does serious damage to credit cards!
Ina week I made 4 dresses and put together a quilt top from a jelly roll (pre-cut strips for the uninitiated) so I did well, mixed in of course with long French lunches with friends and an attempt or two to get a tan by the pool. Loved the markets we went to, drooling over the amazing food, and linens we found. As befits two grannies, we both looked at a stall selling over the top glitzy dress frocks for kids and said together our 4 year old grand-daughters would go completely crazy over them. Apart from a two hour wait in what Bordeaux airport call a departure lounge and I would call a tin shack, it was a great week, I can't wait for next time!

Historical romantic fiction

I love reading M & B historical fiction, mainly for relaxation - 'collecting your sleeping pills?' teases the library van-man when I get a selection! But there are some great writers amongst them, Louise Allen springs to mind, and Nicola Cornick is another. However this week I bought Bronwyn Scott's Untamed Rogue, Scandelous Miss and gave it a go. No problem with the story, a rollicking romp about horse training and racing. But oh readers, do take heed of the problems of research! Our hero and heroine are out for the day in St Albans which OK is a town I know well. They spend time in the market in 'Peters Square' (now Peters Street) and then take a walk UP Holywell Hill and picnic at the top with a stunning view. So what is wrong with that you ask? Well, Peters Street is at the top of the town and Holywell Hill is a steep slope DOWN (very steep - and certainly not to be attempted in high heels running to the Abbey!!). In other words, the author had looked at a map, seen a hill and imagined it the way she wanted it. Now that is fine, except she used a real place and place name and inevitably anyone who knows the place would be irritated. And she treats the Abbey as ruins, it wasn't it was still in use in the 1830s though run-down, I admit. I was fascinated however to discover from her book that our Grand National horse race did in fact originate as the ST Albans Steeplechase and that it terminated on Nomansland Common which is renowned as the playground of the Wicked Lady - there is a pub on the common named after her now.
It was only after a few years of running that someone thought what a good event for Aintree and pinched the idea.

Vintage Valentine is almost finished

Well, I say almost! It is now a full quilt top and I'm bursting to show it off since I've been doing it for almost a year, in between other things natch - attantion span of a grasshopper springs to mind in my case! All I have to do now is back it and quilt it - by hand since t won't fit my machine very well.
And fantastic news - I now have my living room back!! DH has moved into the new bit with all his papers and the lovely antique furnture that has been lurking in a bedroom for two years has been lovingly polished and re-installed. I am one happy bunny!

The Needle has not been idle...

I've done a lot of sewing in two year apart from 45 odd panto cossies.
Quilts, postcards, samplers, cushions - you name it. Here are a few pictures.........

So... I'm back at last

I was going to drop this blog, until several people moaned at me that they missed it and could I please up-date it, so after TWO years I am back. Older, greyer - but no wiser!
What has been happening in the Dizzy World? You may well ask. The house is STILL being worked on - yes - honestly. Well we now have an extension that is part dump part my workroom, and the DH walks through all the time going 'are you still on that computer' which puts you off a bit, however he is out this morning. I have decided I really don't like having a a husband at home, retiring? Forget it! The joins between the old house (circa 1550) and the new bit are still leaking everytime it rains. You learn not to leave anything precious in the drop zone and always know where to grab a bucket from.
This January we had our village panto again. And this time as well as doing the costumes I played a part. The Wicked Queen in Snow White, well actually I played the Old Corne part of the Queen. We had a fabulous transformation trick where the queen was wrapped in a huge cloak type screen and I stepped out the other side as the crone (typecasting according to the DH). Worked like a dream - only one night I got a lungful of the smoke gun we were using to mask the works and couldn't speak for choking! The only other thing I didn't like about it was when a little girl burst into tears when I pronounce Snow White to be dead. I fellt like a real heel! Fantastic though to do reall over-the-top drama. I am so used to TV acting which is understated, small gestures etc. To be able to do the huge dramatic sweeps of the arm was bliss but took some getting into, and oh my goodness - learning lines after all these years was a nightmare!!
Had a girlie week with my mate Norma in France last summer, drinking lots of wine and ostensibly sewing clothes. I made several shirts and a skirt in between long lunches and shopping. I really can recommend Biscarosse Plage for mussels, chips and wine. Fab beach, goes on for miles of clean white sand and hardly anyone about.
Our garden was open to the public on village open garden day and I had all my dolls houses out on display along with samplers and assorted needlework in the extension, we had the samplers and quilts because they covered the un-finished walls. People were very complimentary about the crafts and the garden which the DH had worked like a beaver on for weeks. He is back at it again right now, though Open Gardens is a two year event so we don't have to do quite so much. But we were self sufficient in veggies and fruit for a good six months and I still have jams, jellies and chutneys in the store cupboard.
I have joined a postcard swap group now which is great fun and I have a huge board of cards from all over the world in my office (corner) and I joined the WI in the village which is a hoot! I am also on the Herts Federation Home-craft committee which looks after all craft matters for Hertfordshire WI.
And of course I am still writing and going to the RNA meeting for the Cambridge section
Socially, I went to the RNA (romantic novelist association) 50th anniversary lunch at the Royal Garden Hotel recently and caught up with lots of old mates over a very boozy lunch. Barry Norman was our MC/Speaker and did a fabulous job, un-like some of the others who have done it in the past - no names no pack-drill! But speaking of the same person, I went to a fund-raiser for the prospective Conservative candidate who is fighting that lady for the seat of Luton South.
Picture is of Norma and her husband and the DH on Biscarrosse beach