Salute!

Everyone around here knows exactly what was happening twenty six years ago today.  We went shopping in Bath on the morning of the 5th January 1985 and then returned home to take down the Christmas decorations.  After a warm bath I decided it might be a good idea to telephone Stroud Maternity Hospital and late in the evening we took their advice and drove over there as the snow started to fall.

The rest is history.

Happy Birthday Edward!!

Roses

I’ve written before of my love of things Clover so finding a new gadget in my stocking brought a smile to my face.

Better than that…

Three different sizes of Rose Maker.  It’s been a dreary old day here, the roads were so slippy this morning that the whole village was doing a Skating on Ice impression in their cars and so I chose to stay at home and fiddle about before work begins tomorrow.

Anyway, as usual, the instructions are enough to fill one with fear and dread until the foreign languages are discarded and the one relevant section is identified.

Having cut the correct size piece of fabric – this is some old sheeting I dyed – the two template pieces are pinned either side of the strip by inserting the pins through the holes provided.  Easier said than done, for lining them up accurately isn’t as straightforward as you’d imagine.

Having done that, it’s time to being sewing.  Easy to see where to start

The instructions suggest taking 1cm long stitches, so I did.  I also used double thread because, reading ahead, I spotted that these stitches will be pulled up to gather the fabric.

It’s a simple process of folding and stitching, though the folds distort the fabric a little and it has to be pulled straight to stitch.  Soon, a circle is formed by the folds and it’s time to stop.

Removing the pins means that the plastic templates can be pulled through the fabric tube and the seam straightened out a little.

Pulling the thread creates a few loose gathers

The hairgrip (supplied – haven't seen one of those in years!) is used to anchor the first little seam and to begin rolling the centre of the flower.

It’s easy to do that and the stitched fabric tube curls up very readily.

Having rolled the whole piece up, it can be secured with the needle and thread,

before taking the needle completely through the base of the rose, anchoring all layers with large stitches and finally finishing off the thread securely.

There it is, the finished rose, which would have looked better had I engineered it in a way so that the deeper shades were in the centre.  Never mind.  Not bad, eh?

Thank you, Father Christmas.  I’m delighted with your choice of gift for me!

Goodbye Christmas 2010

Today we de-Christmassed.  Funny how it takes a day to decorate the house and yet it all comes down in a couple of hours.

One small bear had a slight fall from grace in the process – fortunately she fell in a way which saved her blushes.  Our Christmas tree was stripped of all the bah-boo-bah (as tinsel is known in this household) and looked particularly sad and droopy.

Time to move on!

Remembering the Martha Stewart blog entry about decorating the tree, (just wait till you see photo 11!)  I was conscious of how many boxes contain our Christmas decorations.

Answer: Three.  The Christmas story books go into a separate box and don’t count as decorations! 

They’re now all in the loft again with just one casualty, sadly.  Of course, it had to be a lovely one, newly purchased this year in a set of four from my friend’s great gift shop Chalk  - here’s hoping she still has one or two left so I can get a replacement.

After all that exhausting work (!) a spot of lunch was required.  On the way there, it started to snow.

Enough already!!

Happy New Year!

It was around the time the cheese was being passed around that we looked at the clock and realised there were only ten or fifteen minutes of 2010 left. 

A quick pop of a cork and a few sparklers later and it was 2011.

Definitely an evening for leaving the washing up until morning.

The evidence of a lovely evening in the company of dear friends.

Happy New Year!

December: How clever is this?

I discovered Pummelvision yesterday and have had loads of fun watching parts of my life flash before my eyes.  This morning, I uploaded my December photographs and the video above is the result.

Though I tried to insert the separate folder containing my London trip photographs in the correct place, somehow it tagged on the end.  But it’s early days with this nifty little program and I’ll get it worked out eventually.