Fastening waistcoats for work and such ..

Well tomorrow it will be May ..................the months are flying by ..!

 

 

Made up a couple more fastening waistcoats for work this week, got two more to make next week too.

My fig tree has survived the winter thankfully and being dug up, then replanted in one of the raised beds, though I doubt I will ever get edible fruit from it. But that's fine maybe the birds will get to eat the fruit in time.

 

Harvey has taken to thrusting his head into the growing cat nip, maybe I should try it ... he seems to be happy enough afterwards!

Evie's found a new use for this toy box ~ she's also learnt the words
'I don't like it' ............. it's meaning being interchangeable for whenever she doesn't want to eat or do anything..

Don't these just make you want to smile?

Being thankful for simple things ~

I picked this wrap up for a £1 today, I have always meant to make one
but don't need to bother now lol
Mind you now I have to unearth all the crochet hooks, which are here, there and everywhere. These few are the only ones I could find straight off.

The New Hexagon Rosettes 1, 2, 3

Instead of making the April rosette, number 4, I decided to remake my first, 1st rosette, altogether.
I selected a completely different colour combo and also did way less fussy cutting on this one and now its completed, I'm happy enough with it.
I am NOT making another 1st rosette - at 36" wide its huge! lol

 

I'd better get stuck in on the 4th rosette now.
It has 31 hexi blocks so is another big one!

The Ruby Reds - a win! - and Wentworth Miller a new hero to admire

First something more light hearted in this post : )

For those of you from afar afield, Withernsea is on the coast not far from Hull and these ladies were on Britains Got Talent last week.
Keep watching. Your guaranteed a smile!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGkI0ysGerk

Brave ladies yes? Yes!

I left a comment on Billies blog a short while ago, meant as a comment rather than an entry for the giveaway she was running,
 ~ but I won!!
I hadn't given it a second thought afterwards since I follow Billies blog by email and its a delightful place to go visit, and I certainly hadn't expected to win.
But imagine my surprise when she told me my name had been drawn and now, the goodies have arrived!
I had been thinking it would be a single small pack of fabric pre cuts and I was really lucky to have that - but no!
I'm SO thrilled,
SO thrilled LOL
and look at the wonderful Bee My Honey fabrics too!!
Oh Billie and Big Mickey Thank you both!!

Please pop over and say hello to them both too.
http://billiebeesblog.blogspot.co.uk/

I borrowed the box set of Prison Break and am half way through it,
and have been enjoying watching it, not least because of the extremely good looking actor Wentworth Miller.
Sigh....
I was also very taken by the leather clad guys in The Musketeers, I may have mentioned it before lol


http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480x270/p01mc3yp.jpg

Well imagine my surprise when I found this speech by Wentworth on You Tube.
He's gay and maybe I'm the last to find out.
He's still bloody lovely looking mind you and now, I respect the guy even more.

This speech at the Human Rights Campaign launch in Seattle is really worth listening to and highlights why he took so long to come out.
He's way more of a hero to me now!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8DD99_00bs

Saxby on Hill, the Airship R38(ZR2) Memorial and WW1 war graves in Hull's Chanterland Avenue graveyard

Over Easter I took a drive into North Lincolnshire to do a bit of photographing for Dasha's genealogy research. 
Dasha lives in Australia and an ancestor was the rector at the Saxby on Hill village church. 
Dasha's blog link below.
http://patchingpixies.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/hereford.html?showComment=1429381027870#c4003329626004043811

In fact Dasha is in the UK now, well actually she may well be in Germany right now, but she wasn't going to have time to visit North Lincolnshire this trip, which is why I volunteered to trip across the Humber river on her behalf.
It was a delightfully sunny day and I thoroughly enjoyed finding pictures of the stained glass windows that were dedicated to members of her family.

 

The church itself is tucked up an incline and the graveyard was a feast of wildly scattered primroses, so pretty.

Anyway I must have got the taste for graveyards because Friday I finally took the dog to a nearby, very large graveyard for a look round.
I had noticed a War Graves plaque at the entrance as I have driven past and wanted to see what war graves were there.

Well there is this for a start -

This monument is to commemorate the men and officers of the Royal Air Force and the Rigid Air Detachment of the United States Navy
and the members of staff of the National Physical Laboratory
that were lost in the Airship R38 disaster which took place on
August 24th 1921.
I found this on Wikepedia which sums up what happened

"The R38 class (also known as the A class) of rigid airships was designed for Britain's Royal Navy during the final months of World War I, intended for long-range patrol duties over the North Sea. Four similar airships were originally ordered by the Admiralty, but orders for three of these (R39, R40 and R41) were cancelled after the armistice with Germany and R.38, the lead ship of the class was sold to the United States Navy in October 1919 before completion. On 23 August 1921, R-38 was destroyed by a structural failure while in flight over the city of Hull. It crashed into the Humber estuary, killing 44 out of the 49 crew aboard.^[1][2] At the time of her first flight she was the world's largest airship.^[3] Her destruction was the first of the great airship disasters, followed by the US airship Roma in 1922 (34 dead), the French Dixmude in 1923 (52 dead), the British R101 in 1930 (48 dead), the USS Akron in 1933 (73 dead), and the German Hindenburg in 1937 (36 dead)."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R38-class_airship

There's a fuller explanation here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/making_history/makhist10_prog10a.shtml

The graveyard had a great deal of damage to tombstones which was sad to see. Some bloody hooligans have gone round tumbling over and damaging far too many of the gravestones.
It makes me cross to see this, and sad,that lives once lived have been laid to rest, only to have some daft sods go upend their tombstones today.
I may not be religiously inclined but I do believe in respect.

What is totally charming and I must find out what the thinking is behind this, is that there are war graves set all around the huge graveyard, in amongst gravestones from all ages past.
If you enlarge the picture, you can see where they have been mounted for far enough and if I turned in any direction, the scene is the same.
It is a large place and there are a lot of lads remembered there.
I wonder if their remains have been found and laid more recently so I must do some finding out about this.

 

and here's some of the lads remembered

 

I make no apology for showing gravestones,.
Like I said, I believe in respect where it's due.
There's an awful lot of guys laid here from WW1 sadly.

Susan Syddell at Stitchy Club

We had Susan Sydell as the guest speaker last Saturday showing her machine stitching on paper.
Some of the pieces were really striking and she explained how she at first started drawing and then stitching the wiring on electricity pylons.
However, as clever as they were, once she concentrated on fishing boats' rigging instead, she realised the reason why none of her electricity wiring pictures hadn't sold!
lol

Susan uses paper that has a fabric content so that the stitching doesn't tear it.

 

Susan uses Brusho paints and had some samples with her where she had dribbled pva glue over the paint whilst it was still wet. I thought it was really interesting as a technique and that you like to see the effects.

 

One of the club members put this table runner on the display table and I thought it worth showing. She made it for an Easter table display at home and I had never seen one made this way before.

http://www.susansyddallartist.com/

Work looms ahead : )

The garden is showing signs of Spring - Hooray! 
The raised beds are filled with soil now and some plants  and seeds are in place in them. There is a bed to the right out of sight above,
2 at right angles  to each other, farthest right and one just visible, on the left here and below.
Like the snazzy springs laid to discourage the cats from tiddling there? lol they were in this which I picked up at Scrapstore.

We have been ever so lucky with weather over this Easter break and in the last week we have some glorious blue skies and delightfully warm days.
I managed a few days sat out back, bathed in warm sunshine, stitching away and hardened some of the seeds off though my tomatoes seem inclined to be scrawny so far!
Perhaps they don't like being seeded in cut away milk flagons and juice cartons, that fit on my narrow window sills better than seed trays!

The cats kept me company and the dog was tucked snugly at my feet.
I had moved from a cupper to G&T at sunset : )

Proof here that we had blue skies!

Sadly, I am back at work tomorrow but having had 2 weeks off, now that I am working term time only, I shouldn't complain ....

The window cleaner pulled out the wafting dried pampas grasses for me, left behind at the roof eaves by an enthusiastic, but inept nest building starling and happily, said starling has not tried to build again!
Bless him ~

That patchwork above is my new 1st Millefiori rosette, I was never satisfied with my original one, so have remade it in different colours.
I decided to remake the 1st one rather than start my April (4th) rosette
and this is as far as I am with it at present.

I visited a charity shop one day and got a bargain roll of fabric for £3. Thinking there was perhaps 2 or 3 mts on it and it would make a cover for one of the leather settees, I hauled it home and since the sun was beaming, I washed it.
All 6 metres of it!
The single quilt cover was 50p and is actually a lovely cotton with a subtle self coloured pattern on the cream back, so that got washed and dried too.

The GYB giveaway, a starling, 4 rosettes and daft cat : )

Hope you all had a great Easter break, these holidays are over way too soon for my liking mind you and the need to go back to work is almost upon me!
Just as I was getting used to not being there ~

When I offered a giveaway in the Grow Your Blog Hop, I suggested sending UK magazines if it was an overseas winner and US magazines, if it were a UK winner.
However, Nanette who won and lives in Australia had quite enough magazines, which I quite understood, so we agreed I would make her a bird pennant, like some I made a short while ago.
Now I know it has arrived safely, I can post a picture of it and thank fully Nanette does prefer it to magazines!

I was thinking it could be hung from a piece of natural twig but since Australia is particularly hot on not having that kind of thing brought, or posted, into the country - I was hoping Nanette would find a suitable something for hanging it on.
The backing fabric was one of my foliage dyed fabrics but I have quite forgotten what I used to get the lovely colours and pattern. It's hard to see but the word stitched on the top is Hopeful.

I printed off some rosette pattern papers the other day and Harvey, who has limited experience of the printer was fascinated.

Hey what's this noisy gadget Mum?

 

Is it sposed to do this? Its moving!

 

It's doing it AGAIN!

 

 

                                           This is so spooky ~

I think the printer stressed him out so much that he went out back and sat on the new growth of the catnip plant to chill out!

   This was my 3 Millefiori rosettes last week, with the still unfinished burgundy 1st rosette, bottom right, which I fell out of like with.
It wasn't Millefiori enough for me once I began to realise what I should be doing.
So before starting my April, 4th rosette, I decided to remake my 1st.

But I opted for completely different colours and will re-use the blocks from the first, 1st elsewhere ~
This is the new plan so far -

Enlarge the picture below, spot the dried pampas grass on the top left?
Don next door watched a starling struggling in flight carrying a piece of this pampas grass, which is a good 4' long, up to the roof!
No, just an average sized starling!
 (Did you know their numbers have dropped dramatically and they are almost on the endangered list in UK?
No neither did I before the Spring Watch bird count. )

I had found several pieces of dried pampas on the floor beneath that bay window area the other day and knew some had previously been laying in my other side, next door neighbours back garden.
A bit odd and unlikely though it seemed, I assumed the high winds had blown them all over the house.

But I now know it was one very ambitious starling trying to build a bloody nest with it!!
I'm guessing he's new to nest building bless him.
All this effort on his part despite the fact that I had a chap fill that area with anti nest plastic stuff last autumn, precisely so I didn't have a bevy of baby birds stomping above my bedroom ceiling all night long again this year lol
Life can be amazing and funny at times!
Have you felt pampass grass?
It feels like a cats tongue, raspy ...........
not what I'd ever choose to build a nest with, not that I've had much practise mind ....