A BOUNTY OF BOBBINS

I'm the queen of the castle! Tigger lacks great heights to climb. Her wild-tree-cat genes encourage her to try anything eg. curtains, cars etc. She still can't see over the top of the wall or hedge. The crab apple tree will get her there next year but she won't think much of it when she sees it. The factory roof will be in the same place! I harvested a double heap of lace making bobbins at Watson's Auction House this morning. We sorted them and spread them along the sideboard.

They are mostly antique turned ones and some are pewter decorated with tiger stripes and leopard spots and two have butterflies. The glass bead spangles are really old on many of them and they are a pleasure to have in such quantity. It makes them all look like a pile of glorious treasure.

There was also a fabulous home-made pillow. The stuffed rollers sat in a stuffed green cushion, held on a solid wooden base, so that it will sit safely on a table top. This has been listed on ebay but is only suitable for "pick-up" because it would be too hard to pack and post. It has some lace, patterns, cottons, linens, velvet backing, piercers, parchment, patterns bobbins and two spare drums. I hope someone wants it and that it goes to a good home.

I've had a go at bobbin lace making and can do it reasonably well but I don't think I should add it to the list of other arts and crafts I love, do and rarely complete.

We went for a three-miler up the hill and back around the farm shop, before coming home to make chicken pie for tea and stopped on the way to take our fill of wild raspberries. There were a couple of apple trees nearby and it is likely that this was once a garden of a cottage along the old railway line. It was not far from the site of the first railway sidings in the world! They are no longer there...hardly National-Trust-worthy at the time. Maybe the shunter had a cottage there and the fruit is from the garden.

I heard from Heide today about sock blanks. I had never heard of them before but they are the next thing on my list of must haves.

Cheers Gillian