Cathedral Window

I attended a quilting workshop at the weekend. I am so pleased with my little pin cushion that I spent most of last night cutting an old cotton duvet cover into squares. Guess who is planning to make a quilt ? :-)

The flood

I have just had the experience of a burst pipe. I was standing in the conservatory watching the fish in the garden pond when I heard splish, splash, splosh noises coming from behind me. A waterfall had formed in between the kitchen and sitting room. Where is our stop cock??????? Down in what is called the cellar. This area is about 4ft high and runs all the way under the house. We use it to store china, glass etc. The hatch to the cellar is in the understairs cupboard. Well if your understairs cupboard is anything like mine you will know how many coats, boxes, ironing board etc you have to move before you can pull up the hatch. Okay that done, raise hatch. The electric has blown it is total darkness down there. EEEEEEK what do I do? Do I ring Tony and say I just can't go down in the cellar or do I get on with it? Blimmin torch battery is fading so I have a a very dodgy torch that keeps going off. Well to cut a long story short I just got on with it. I went down into the cellar and felt my way through the darkness to the stop valve and switched off the water. I was a shaking wreck when I rang Tony to tell him what had happened. I now have every towel in the house and a couple of blankets to wash as I used them to mop water and stop the flood reaching my bookcases. I have hundreds of pounds and many years collecting books of every craft genre there.
Very big lesson learned. GET THAT STOP VALVE MOVED. We have talked about doing it for ages.

Cake Stand

My colleague Sam and I are organising a retro tea party in aid of womens cancers. We will be serving Fairtrade refreshments and cakes and are trying to make it as pretty and feminine as we can. Ages ago I bought a pile of tea plates and matching saucers from a jumble sale for £1. With the addition of a cake stand fitting from Ebay I made this pretty little cake stand. I will make a few more before the event as I really love the outcome. I will be searching jumble sales for pretty plates from now on.

Crafty tip.........To make the holes I used my dremel and a grinding stone attachment to start it off. Then I used the big drill (boys toys) with an even bigger grindstoney thingy (girly description) to grind a wider circle/dent. Then I put a 6mm drill bit in the big drill and drilled right through. The drill bit came free with the cake stand fittings and kind of looks like a hollow tube with grindy bits on one end, I have never seen a drill bit like it before. I got all the plates and saucers for £1 and two cake stand fittings and the free drill bit for £4. Dead cheap and if I had broken some it wasn't a fortune to spend. Best place for plates is probably jumble sales.

Oh and if you try this put a splash of water on the plate/saucer and only drill in short bursts or the china will overheat and crack. BE CAREFUL, electricy and water don't mix.

Inner Tubes

I am still tryiing to think of new things for my schools day display and thought these flower bracelets would be fun for the kids to make. Well doesn't everyone have a few inner tubes hidden away ???? I guess not :-) To be honest I competely forgot I had a bagfull of inner tubes in my craft stash. I had planned a big sort out of the room this morning when I came across them, nuff said :-) How can a girl resist an old inner tube???

Tony has just headed off to Manchester for the football match and I have a lovely evening all to myself. Now what can I make???? Oh and while I remember, I finished another shawlette. This one is really pretty and in soft spring colours. I think it will be pretty with a tea shirt or broderie anglaise blouse.

more fish

Tony had a bit of a sleep in this morning so after dusting/polishing and laying the fire ready for this evening I crocheted two black fish. Many years ago I had a beautiful black fantailed goldfish and when I was looking through my stash of carrier bags I came across a nice flimsy black one. I have a lovely box left over from a gift of foot spa goodies. It will make an amazing aquarium and as soon as my new knitting pattern book arrives I will knit some coral and seaweed from plastic bags. I have a vision of tropical fish now.

Gorgeous weekend

Well the weather was fantastic and Tony and I managed to get a whole pile of logs for the woodstore. It is filling up nicely and even if the weather turns nasty we have enough to keep us going for at least a month now. We are planning to gather enough throughout the year to last us through next winter if we can. We left the log burner to burn itself out on Friday as it was so warm indoors.
I spent quite a bit of time on Saturday afternoon making some more bits and pieces for the 'Schools Day' event that MEC organise each year. I was getting a bit fed up of seeing the same tired display and thought it might be nice to introduce a few new things. I am currently collecting plastic bottles in all colours and finding more and more ways to re use them. It has been a great learning curve for me as I challenge myself to come up with new uses for throw away items.

Pop Bottle Aquarium

I had a lovely evening all to myself last night. Tony dropped Adam off at his friends house, Alexander went to Helen's and then after watching the match on TV Tony went for a couple of pints and a natter with the lads. I spent most of the evening knitting and feeding the log burner. It was so peaceful and relaxed. It really does one good to just chill out with some soft music and a ball or two of lovely soft knitting yarn

I have been meaning to take a photo of my pop botle aquarium for a few days so here it is. Are you shaking your head and sighing yet???? :-) Well my little crochet fish need somewhere to live don't they. I have a large jar of gravel from the fish tank just waiting for a new use. I think it finishes it off nicely. I have also made a blue stand and am waiting until Alexander finishes the bottle of Pepsi so that I can make another tank. I already have the fish to put into it.

Oh those flippin plastic bottle brooches :-)

Today I had great plans to clean the house. I started out really well but then was highjacked by a gorgeous red shampoo bottle. Well what is a girl to do when such riches are within arms reach (and it was empty) . Decisions decisons, do I chuck it in the recycle bag or do I go and get the pink plastic bottle from my stash? Goes without saying really doesn't it???? I now have my eye on the gorgeous yellow bleach bottle. :-) watch this space cos a girl can never have too many plastic bottle brooches can she?????

And besides which. I have to do some more cleaning so that I can empty the bleach bottle don't I??? I reckon it is fair reward for an hour of cleaning :-)

I'm a lumberjack

Today Tony and I went out and collected a whole load of wood for the log burner. It was physically quite hard but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It is really satisfying to see such a huge pile in the garage. That should keep us going for a couple of weeks and the way the weather has suddenly turned really cold we might just be very glad that we did get out while it was nice. The snow has started falling lightly but we are expecting a lot more over the next week.

Paul and Andrea came over this afternoon. They are such fun to be around and always entertain us with funny tales. We were all cosy sitting around the fire talking about allotments and making meals very cheaply from good tasty ingredients.

Freezing outside

Well I finished off my parcel which should have gone in the post today but it was soooooo cold outside so I very sensibly stayed indoors knittiing and doing general housework. (loathe housework).

I managed to get most of the laundry washed, including my bedding. It dries so quickly over the clothes horse in front of the log burner. I haven't used my tumble drier since having the stove installed. It adds valuable moisture to the air too as the air in the room tends to get very dry after the stove has been burning for a while. We are saving huge amounts on our gas bill as we hardly use any at all now.

The kettle is currently sitting on top of the log burner warming water for the hot water bottles and Alexander is making me a nice cup of tea and a lovely scone with jam and cream for my supper. Well I need the extra calories to keep warm :-)