Christmas Decorations

I know some people manage to keep their poinsettias going from one Christmas to the next but I don't have a great deal of success with indoor plants. Poinsettias show their disdain for their new home by fading and shedding their green and red leaves as soon as my back is turned. I water them and it happens. I don't water them and it happens. I realise it is something to do with the temperature of the house but I do like to be warm, so the poinsettias lose out. Anyway, at the moment there are more poinsettias at the supermarket than litres of milk and they cost the same so I bought a few more!!! They seem to like to be in huddles of hundreds but it was three for £5, so three more came home to replace the two, fast-fading ones. Unfortunately, they don't fit in the fridge like the milk does even though they would probably prefer that sort of environment.

This is one of the old survivors and oops! a leaf fell off as I wrote this!!! Perhaps they don't like exclamation marks!!!!!

It would be tragic to allow me to treat real Christmas trees to the same central heating temperature, so I invested in a tinsel tree. I'm fond of Wilkos at the moment. It seems to have replaced Woolworths for many items and is easy to use and the staff are really friendly. I came home from Wilkos with this little GOLD tinsel job (not much point having a faux GREEN one) which has LED fibre-optic ends to the branches and they change colours beautifully. I tried to take pics of the different colours but they blur, so the blue will have to do. It looks really lovely in the sitting room and has been much admired by DJ and me, in fact, nearly as much as the new telly.

At WI a few weeks ago we got to paint ceramic blanks, which the tutor took away to glaze and fire. This much improved the overall look of the item but my "snowman" xmas-tree bauble still has an alarmingly grizzly look about him. I've secreted him amongst the lower branches where he is dazzled by the fibre-optics. The other two..."xmas tree bauble" and "holly bauble" are buried more deeply into the tinsel "foliage" for good reasons. If I had a child who came home from kinder with them I would have been proud. Me...I'm 61 and should be able to do better!

Aaaargh!!!The front door has been a bit breezy lately and so a door-curtain has been hung to exclude the cold wafts of air. DJ did the pole and I did the sewing. It only took a couple of hours. It's great to have that teamwork. It is simply whisked across a pole as the evening draws in (or is it "on"). It is so successful that the doors to the kitchen and sitting room have now been removed by DJ and stored in the shed. The whole downstairs is now a lovely warm open space.

My foot is doing really well...my own non-medical opinion...and the stitches will come out on Friday. I have been obliged to keep the same dressing on all that time. I bath with the left leg dangling over the side of the bath. Tis fine and well and easy to do. I can see the bruising changing colours as the other toes peep out, but the big toe is well wrapped and out of bounds. I can move it up and down without pain. So..., I want to be able to drive again... VERY SOON. Maybe Saturday 19th

Cheers Gillian

Yard For Yard

There has been some work done on the garden since moving in. The overgrowth, which looked endearing at a distance, was in fact pulling the facade of the house and the gutters off. A couple of devil-may-care lads with long ladders took that away in a couple of days. Here it is in progress. One of the lads did dreadful damage to the fingers of his left hand the next week, being reckless with a chainsaw in someone else's garden.Many months and 65tons of excavation later; the correct garden levels were exposed along with two manhole covers, the underfloor ventilation, the damp course and the previously permanently blocked grey-water drain. The drain was so badly blocked, it could not be rodded like the rest of the drain system and so had to be replaced. Water now drains away before I go shopping rather than later ...much later...when I have returned.
The first part of the paving is shown above. It is decorative and should not be used to carry the weight of a car but...
this area will be covered with blocks in sand and cars will be able to be driven in and parked.

In fact here comes D to park his car even though there is still work to be done on the gates!

This is now the view from where the gates will be. It is a bit bare but will soon benefit from next year's spring growth and new planters. In fact , I'm already planning for more plants than I have space but we will see how it goes.

Cheers Gillian

Striding Off

I show off the new TV which I shall watch a lot in the next few weeks, while my toe rests. Striding about is off the agenda for a while. I had a bony accumulation on my left big toe and it hurt when I walk, strode the fells or used the clutch a lot. Sometimes it justs hurt. So, last month, I went to the doctor to get put on the waiting list for a new toe.
Yesterday, no less, I was admitted to Shotley Bridge Hospital for day surgery to re-condition what I have, because they haven't perfected replacement toe joints yet. It is called a Cheilectomy and you can google gory videos of the procedure. So I did, as you do. It told me a lot more than the doctor did.

It's all over now and I have a splendid new shoe for a few weeks so that no pressure is put on my toe while I walk around. WALK!!! its more of a limping hobble, what with the left shoe two inches higher than my normal right shoe, and having to walk with the foot pointed outwards. AND I can't drive till the stitches are out, dressing off and I can do an emergency stop.

I hope the lead up to xmas doesn't get too much. D is wonderful and took me to the Hospital and fetched me and I will go and stay with him for a while and watch telly, read and knit and cook!

The front yard is lovely but google wouldn't let me load more pics so I have to do two separate posts.

Cheers Gillian

Historic Buildings

Across the road is one of the last working gasometers in the country. Two days ago only the white bit showed above the base. Now it is fully erect and filled with gas for the winter.
Just in front of it is the coal depot and to the right of the picture is the sand and grit store for gritting the roads so we are well prepared in Bishop Auckland for what may come this winter!
Cheers Gillian

FIRST EVER HOMEMADE XMAS PUDDING

Here it is, about to go into the steaming pot. I used the recipe from "Stephanie's Orange Bible". That is an Australian cookbook, which is probably my all time favourite. I halved the quantities to make this one, fairly, large pudding and I went to Tracy at the farm shop to get real suet to grate. Gosh! what a mess that is. It then got mixed and left to stand for a day and then taste-tested for spiciness and into the pot it went. It is cooking for six hours!!! and therefore still needs two and a half more. The sitting room has been painted and I had fancy bits done, like the gilding on the fireplace and the ceiling rose and four colours used for the walls, ceiling and woodwork. It all looks lovely and today Alison came to hang the curtains on the "road" window and a roman blind on the "garden" window.

This is one of those Living Flame gas fires so all I have to do is press a button and it leaps into life and looks for all the world like a real coal fire. I have been cleaning up the marble and D has had a serious go at the copper sheet in front of the grate.

You can see a bit of the blind reflected in the mirror. It's all greener than it looks and the carpet is too. The front yard is progressing. The edging blocks have been laid and lots of bits of brick-laying have been done with old bricks to match the rest. The blocked main grey water drain has been dug up and thrown away cos it was impossible to unblock it and a new one has been laid. Sadly the new bathroom soil pipe will have to go across the front of the house to the old one, but to compensate, lots of smaller pipes can be removed.

But this lunchtime the Staindrop Women's Institute Committee went for lunch at the Morritt Arms at Greta Bridge and we thoroughly enjoyed it. I have been doing the calendar of events for the next year and we had a look at my first drafts. Tomorrow I shall visit another committee member to pick her brains for transforming CLUEDO into a Staindrop version to be tried out at the AGM. If they can transpose Monopoly, why not Cluedo. Just put a map of the village on a board with nine sites, make up six names that sort of ring a bell, develop six methods of dying at the hands of another and play on.

I am well, I am happy, I am busy and the house is turning into a real beauty. Hope all is well with all of you.

Cheers Gillian

When It Rains It Pours

The front garden is being transformed from a gravel and grass space into a brick-paved area with pots. The digging machine is sleeping here while the work progresses. A gradual accumulation of soil and stuff over the years had brought the level up too high in the small enclosed space, and vast quantities are being removed. The two manhole covers were found about six inches down and a trench will be dug to one of them for the pipes for the new toilet and bathroom. It was easy to get the digger in and the stuff out once the brick wall at the end had been knocked down. The guys closed the space for the night, with the skip (nearly full to the brim so that the neighbours can't share too much unwanted stuff with us).

Then just after they went home, it rained. It is still raining. It will probably rain all night. The cat has been out for a swim and brought lots of mud back in through the catflap, over the back of the sofa, across the carpet and up onto the table to explore a new cardboard box for size.

It fitted. I had just brought it home from Sainsbury's to pack an ebay item in. I'm still selling things. Lace bobbins will go on for a week or two more at least. This phone came from an auction lot and so did the Davidson glass spill jar which will now wing its way to a new home in Oz. The brass unicorn came from the rubbish skips in Daventry where D's neighbour works. He polished it up and it is now off to Biggleswade.

I have been a bit busy lately and have realised that I can only handle one blog at the moment so RedUmbrella is on hold. It was the last art lesson of the course today but I shall sign up again for next year. I enjoy it so much. This was one of my efforts at painting snow...or not painting it.

Cheers Gillian

The Things You Like Keep Happening

There are still quite a few lace bobbins to sell on ebay. The whole thing has gone well from auction-purchase to ebay-sales. People who collect lace bobbins are kind, polite, honest and appreciative and I have had sales to Sweden, Denmark, Massuchusetts, Tokyo and all over England. The whole thing has been a pleasure. The remains are shown below and will be on line before christmas. It encouraged me to sell some left over stuff from the garden and that has gone well too. A woman just came and paid £5.70 for a small garden ornament that I was going to take down to the tip. The other thing occupying my leisure is my art classes. Paul Dillon at the Darlo Arts Centre does watercolour classes and I have done a couple of courses with him but this year he was offering a more-mixed media course using resist to portray things like shine, frost etc.
Resist is applied before you paint. You can use special rubber pens or oil-crayons. This pic shows the original photo we used as a guide. On the left is my interpretation on smooth paper and on the right is the same approach, colours, resists etc but used on rough but regularly textured paper.Paul had used rough paper and was demonstrating the effect shown in the top-right-hand quarter of this pic. I was so dismayed. I had set up my lesson on SMOOTH paper. I rushed back to my area and peeled a sheet of very textured paper off and carried on with two sheets at once.
This is the application of the same resists, paints and effort for each image. The first pic below is done on the rough textured paper and follows what was done in the class. There were fifteen of us and none of them were the same. The next pic is the "mistake one" done on the smooth paper. It was admired all round, and even by Paul. It does have a more dramatic look, and as many people commented a bit like batik. That was probably because I over-applied the resist but who cares. It was admired, even by the teacher!!!

On my way to art class I popped in to Watsons to put a bid on "Fridtjof of Nansen" (yes it was two volumes 1st, and folded maps were intact) which they had listed at £20-£40 est. Well I examined them and they were really good and generally in good nick. So I left a bid of £75, making the mistake that others often do, that no-one else would know what they were really worth. They sold for £80 to the other person who knew.

I'm still a bit sore about my own parsimonious approach. I must be willing to make 20% profit. I am still hooked on doubling my money.

In the meantime I'm knitting scarves and shawls from the Tunisian wool and mixing it with other stuff and I'm getting my craft space sorted.

Cheers Gillian