Post-Christmas Post

Here we are, in that strange no-man's-land between Christmas Day and New Years Day. A time of clearing away, finishing off, sales fever, and reflection. I'm sure there will be many blog posts about New Year Resolutions, and reviews of Old Year, and I may or may not go down that route later on, but for now I'll just keep it low-key and local.

Above is a post-Christmas view of our little tree, sans the splendour of all the presents round the base. We don't do 'large and natural' these days, this pretty good artificial has done us proud for a good few years now, and the size s just right.

Christmas cards are, apart from the tree, the sum total of our decorations. Oh, and a wreath on the door.

Oooops! Did you spot the reel of elastic nestling between the cards here? Luckily it is not the knicker variety, I don't know how it found its way here!

The sunny view out of my sewing room window this morning, across the nursery field to where the cattle are chomping at hay bales. It is gorgeous here in West Norfolk, but very cold outside!

The garden in the sunshine looks a bit thread-bare this time of year. Jim spent yesterday afternoon hoovering up the fallen leaves. Well, most of them!

I've done a fair bit of embroidery on the quilt - sometimes in my sewing room listening to audio-books, sometimes in front of the television while we watched a bit of Miss Marple, or a video. Can't say the Christmas tv has been all that spectacular.

Finished the applique on this, ready for stitching  into a cushion cover. Need to find a cushion form!

And here is my ready-to-go box for bangle-making; it's handy to just grab the box and bring it into the living room in the evening.

So, are you tuckered out with turkey and trifle, or have you got rid of all the left overs? Planning your New Year Resolutions, or firmly forsaking the very idea? Back at work, or at least back in the old routine, or still enjoying a little peace and quiet before reality kicks back in? I'm pleased I've got back into the swing of blogging, and I shall now go and catch up with what you've been writing on yours. If I don't manage another post before next Thursday, Happy New Year to you all!

Beating the Glums

Oh isn't it annoying, when you just can't drag yourself out of the Glums? Especially when you know that really, if you are honest, you don't have much to be glum about. In the Great Scheme of Things sinus troubles do not rank terribly high, and at the moment I can't say there is even much pain, just a dull discomfort, because , yes, once again I am on a course of antibiotics; infection nailed - swelling goes, acute pain abates. However, four days or so after the course ends the symptoms return and so the whole cycle begins again. And I guess until I get my ENT appointment at the hospital that is how it will continue.  So, you know, no-one died, I'm not on the critical list, and I can cope with the symptoms. But actually you do become a bit weary, and just want to bury yourself at home, go nowhere, see no-one. I'm very fortunate that my good friend Yvonne did the ferrying about last Friday and Saturday, or I wouldn't have got to Harrogate or to Jane-Ann's.

So I have been hunkered down at home for ages - no Mollying, no box lesson, even no weekly musical soiree with Rob and Marj last night - pootling about doing a bit of cooking and housework, and spending quite a bit of time in my sewing room.

 Audio book on the machine, surrounded by colourful yarn, threads, and fabric, it is quite soothing and spirit - lifting. Here, then, are some peeps at what I've been up to. It's cheered me up, I hope it does the same for you if you' re having your own personal Glums!

Another pincushion completed - and spoken for - and a couple more in the pipe-line.

A few more bangles completed, trying various colour combinations.

I started this quilt some years ago. It had been put away and almost forgotten. I just felt the need to spend some time gently quilting, and this quilt, with its soft flannel fabrics, was just the ticket. I've added some appliquéd text to the border as well. All in all it has been a very comforting, cosy reunion.

So, even an attack of the Glums can have its productive side, and it has been quite satisfying gathering this little lot together to photograph. How do you deal with the Glums when they arrive at your door?

Art Journals, Castles and Scalded Fingers!

Sniff. Sniff. Sneeze. Watering eyes. Sniff sniff. A...a...a....tchooooooooooooo! Sniff. Sniff. And a happy summer to you!

                                      The windswept Pollen Fields of West Norfolk!

Oh dear me, yes. A month and a half late, the hay fever season has hit me like a brick in the face. Not helping that I have to walk down and up the garden path each night and morning from my 'home from home' sleeping arrangements! Still, now I have found a gigantic pair of wrap-around sunglasses things have improved. Goodness knows what a passing stranger would make of us, sidling guiltily from our back driveway over the road to the pub, me in my sunglasses at 1030 pm, clutching my Cath Kidson overnight bag. I'm probably being put down as Jim's secret 'other woman'...except that most of our neighbours are 'in the know'!

Sunday saw me cooking a roast for 9 of us - would have been 10 but Beccie is obligingly in America so we had enough chairs to go round without resorting to garden furniture! Whilst I pottered in the kitchen, Jim Kit and Krissie took Fraser and Dylan to Castle Rising to see.....the Norman Motte and Bailey castle there. Dylan is currently studying mediaeval history at school and so was thrilled to hear we have a genuine important twelfth-century building near us. Its most famous period was when it was the home of Queen Isabella, mother of Edward 11. In 1544 it passed into the hands of the Howard family, who own it still.

                         

                       Obligatory stop-off at the Tea Rooms - hmm, lovin' that applique, Fraser...

                                                             Arise, Sir Dylan!

Meanwhile back at the ranch all was ready for family and guests. Jim laying the table, Krissie sorting the serving dishes, and I was....checking the steaming veggies....yes, you guessed it! Steam scald right across the fingers of my left (fortunately) hand. Arrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhh! The excruciating pain for about 30 seconds. Then just normal really really really bad pain, folks I kid you not! Quick as a flash my hand was under the running cold tap (drought? What drought?) and clingfilm was being sought. Between us, an ex-Girl Guide/ Nurse and a Paediatric A&E Nurse, we sorted me out and I directed operations from the sink whilst Jim and Krissie saw to lunch - Kit doing the child-care and entertaining. I tell you, never a dull moment. Anyway, lunch was great, with top marks to Krissie's famous baked Chocolate Cheese Cake. (well, actually it is Nigella's but we won't tell)

So the Kiwi's are off for a day or so visiting other relatives and we are chillin'.

                                              jim was chillin' at the water's edge.............

                                                  There, you see.....proof!

And while Jim was out doing manly, outdoorsy things, I have been in my sewing room doing some of Krissie's quilt, and also looking back at my old art journals. I got into journalling briefly during the two years I wasn't stitching. Then I stopped. Quite abruptly. Now, though, I have a yearning to be messing about with marker pens, and inks, and carving stamps, and ..........but this time I want to incorporate my paper art into textile work. I just have to get my head round  what I want to be doing. I enjoy collage, whether paper or textile, and I enjoy using text with cloth, so I think I will be having a bit of an experiment. Here are a few glimpses at the sort of thing I was doing.

                                    My early attempts are clearly very derivative.....

                                       ....the wings, the crown, the stripey legs..........

                                           .....oops, another crown, more stripey legs!

             zzzzzzz...zzzzz......more crowns.........birds, the EYE........

           But these are all mine. Sorry about the flash. Collaged cutouts glued to painted background.

                                                rather duller than in real life

                              The bottom is missing from this page  - wouldn't fit on.

So, just a few pages from the journals, now I'm really itching to get going, but have to remember I have a few other things I need to be doing ! OH! and speaking of which, I had a nice opportunity come my way the other day.

I was browsing a rather nice household-ey kinda shop near LynneK when I spotted a .....three tiered wooden tray thingy for putting pot plants on....the name will come to me eventually.. I was having it folded to pay for it when we got chatting at the cash desk and I said as well as holding plants, I might paint it white and use it at the next craft fair. Well! Floodgates opened. What kind of crafts? Did I do workshops? Might I be interested in a plan she (the owner) had for a large back room she was having painted out. More details later, but the upshot is....I will be offering workshops and classes in the autumn! Hows about that for happenstance?

Tomorrow Jim and I out for a nice birthday lunch with Mike, number One son and his partner Vicki. The fun keeps right on happenin'! See you soon, Lx.

Photographs and Osteopaths



View from the back door

Well, there's certainly been a bit of weather since my last post, hasn't there?  Here in West Norfolk we've been reasonably lucky - very cold, minus 15 at one point, and a fair bit of snow.  However that seems to have cleared from most areas now and I do believe it's warming up a little.  I know the children have had a marvellous time playing in the cold white stuff - but to be honest, I like to see it in the morning, nod, say 'very nice', and then have it gone the next day.  And yet....and yet.....if you don't have to go out in it, and have food and warmth and company indoors, there IS something rather pleasant about feeling snowed in for a day or two, time seems to stand still, routine goes by the board, and it all feels rather special for a while.  Then, of course you start experiencing 'cabin fever' and get desperate for things to be back to normal.  The photo above 'view from the back door' is one my other half J took to send to Number 2 son and his family in New Zealand.  Smallest Grandson was amazed when we showed him a huge snowball on a tin plate when we Skyped them last weekend.

My photography is a poor thing, I need to have a session with Sue who really knows what she is doing with cameras and computers; I will FORCE myself to become, if not proficient, then at least able to take a reasonable 'snap' and upload it to this blog without the mega-drama it is at present. Ooooh this blogging really is a steep learning curve!

Sue has been forging ahead tinkering with the website and facebook account, and she's also designed and organised our business cards.  The logo is the same as our design now heading our blog; a lovely little oval of bunting surrounding free-machine stitched text.  Once we'd agreed colour schemes it was trial and error getting the words centred and evenly stitched - not an easy task when you have such a very small area to work with.  We think it's pretty good, don't you?  She's also been stitching up some more designs to add to her own....er.....portfolio, I guess you'd call it.

Meanwhile I have been whipping up a blue and white quilt top which I will hand quilt very simply. However, whilst chain-piecing the top, I have over-swivelled on my ergonomically designed office chair, and done something to my right sacro-iliac joint, which has left me pretty immobile for the last week.  Soooo painful, my most comfortable stance was bent over at 90 degrees, looking and feeling for all the world like Julie Walter's aged waitress in the Acorn Antiques sketch.  As I stumbled up the kitchen steps, my breakfast tray wobbling wildly the other morning, I greeted a bemused J with the iconic words:  'Two Soupssss?'  (Find it on YouTube, you'll see what I mean.)  So I'm afraid there has been none of this:

very little of this:

And CERTAINLY none of this:

Although a trip to a very able osteopath yesterday morning has improved the sutuation a lot, and I'm very hopeful things will continue improving. What a dangerous sport this stitchery business is, to be sure!  Don't ask me about the sewing machine needle through my finger, the week before..... no!  I said don't ask......or I might have to tell you!  Catch up with us again in our next  -less traumatic I hope - post!