Showing off the new Shower

Well of course this isn't it. This is the new front door with an angled shot of the new "french windows" and then the new shed door. It's all a bit plain at the moment but the Virginia Creeper will grow as will the Climbing Rose to the left of the front door. The Wisteria to the right of the front door is doing well and we will soon be covered with vegetation again. These are porcelain tiles....not real marble!

If you look carefully you can see that the tiler has cut us a hole in the wall at about shoulder height and lined it with the same mosaics that have been used for the shower floor area.

The toilet area has been fitted with a shattaf and grab rail as has the shower area.

I managed to buy a heated towel rail on ebay for £40 and the ride up to Gosforth was certainly worth it.

I shall go out tomorrow and buy some towels and bottles of stuff to match....Wouldn't you?

Cheers Gillian

SCARBOROUGH

We went on a coach trip to Scarborough. So did everyone else it seems! Not only was everyone from the north east of England there, but all the "motor scooter clubs" in England were visiting too.

There were donkeys being ridden on the beach, Children paddling, queues at every fish and chip shop, billowing banks of mist rolling down from the cliff top and people absolutely everywhere trying to get some sunshine when it broke through.

The Grand Hotel is a little tatty on the outside but still has very grand Victorian features and an amazingly commanding position on the top of the cliff.

We crossed over the bridge after visiting the Museum which houses the remains of Gristhorpe Man http://www.rotundamuseum.co.uk/rotunda-museum/our-story/The%20Gristhorpe%20Man

The weather stayed fine and we explored the promenade, the shopping area and the back streets before returning to the Grand for a well earned drink with the motor scooter riders in the bar.

Much of the Victorian architecture survives and space on top of the cliff is highly prized. Buildings are wedged together and parking is extremely limited so we were glad we had chosen to travel by coach for the day out. Dozens of motorists got parking tickets along the promenade. They all seemed to have misread a parking sign saying "Three Hours Parking between 5pm and 9am".

Cheers Gillian

SO MUCH SUNSHINE

The spell of lovely weather continues. Clouds go over now and then but the sun soon comes out again. This fuzzy pic shows a black sqirrel in C's garden. She has black ones and grey ones and some blackish ones which must be the offspring. Occasionally she has a little deer visiting but I have never been there for that.

The new doors are on. This is the new front door and there are matching ones for french windows. The sun streams in them all for most of the day. The weather has helped the building go ahead steadily and each day brings it all forward. We are on the enhancing bits now. The plastering is done. The electrics are finished and the lights are all up...there are a lot of switches which will take a while to get used to. They are to enable the lights to be turned off and on at both doors. The window is back in and the tiling is getting done...beautifully.

The knitting is on its third creation. The previous two having been too small. The yarn is now blended with some mohair I bought in Tunisia a couple of years ago and haven't found a use for yet and the whole thing is on larger needles. It feels and looks good and is now up to the armholes.

The shed roof is going on today and the building inspector called unannounced but could find no faults. He has a reputation for being deliberately nit-picking. He boasted to us when we handed in our plans that he could always find something wrong!

But nothing can spoil this. I have always wanted a tiled porch and now I've got one. I was going to wait till it was finished and grouted before I took a picture but I'm so thrilled with it you can all have a look now!

Cheers Gillian

On Top Of Things

The weekend before last was lovely and sunny and so we joined a walk from Middleton-in-Teesdale. we climbed steeply up the Hudeshope valley into the old lead mining areas. These hillsides are heavily scarred with "hushes" and "dumps". The hushes form deep vees in the slopes where the soil was washed away from the lead ore and the waste dumps make the rest of the landscape look very lumpy. The double line across the middle of the picture is the dry stone walls on either side of the road. The mineshops still remain but in ruins. Ponies were so valued that six lived in the stables on the ground floor of this one at Coldberry and 42 miners lived on the next floor up. They were easier to come by!

The roof went on this week and it is all beginning to look less like a building site and more like a building.

I have finished spinning and knitting the merino tops I bought. They have become a large shopping bag. It spent a few days being just that, because I have never felted in the washing machine before and as I have a front loader, I needed to read the manual to work out the pause mechanism. Also, after such a lot of spinning and knitting I was a bit worried that it would be a disaster.

But it worked. It is now out in the sun drying, with newspapers inside to keep the shape right.

So I have embarked on spinning the blue-faced-leicester tops. There is a mixture of natural shades and I have spun and plied them randomly and am knitting them into a jumper. I always hope I shall look like the model in the picture, when I wear my version.

I shall spin more today so that I have some knitting to take south to visit C. I haven't been far from home for a few months and it will be fun to get out on the road again. DJ will stay and keep an eye on the cat and the builders and I shall do the same next week when he goes off visiting.

We are keeping up with our resolution to go to the gym three time a week and although I'm much the same size and weight, I feel fitter and see no reason to give it up. We shall also walk more again as the weather improves but I excuse myself in wet weather by complaining that it is hard to see in the rain when you are wearing glasses.

I don't like wind either.

Cheers for now

Gillian