Growing up!!

As today is Tuesday, it must be Cambridge day with my grand-daughter, Ellie, and today is a very special day as she is going to her new school this afternoon to hear a story being read.  Next Tuesday she is going to play in her new class for about half an hour.  The folder has arrived with her school start times in September and for the first week it will be mornings only then in the second week she will stay to lunch and come home afterwards.  Then it is full time and I cannot believe that she has grown up so quickly and.she has told me she will miss 'Granny' days   So will I.

Yesterday I went on a coach outing with the U3A History Group to Eltham Palace in South East London.  It is a very historic site and Henry VIII spent much of his childhood there and later when he became King, the Tudor court spent their Christmases there.  Now only the Great Hall built by Edward IV in the 1470s remains, but in the 1930s the Courtaulds took a lease on the place and built a house using all the design features of the time.  There is a great deal of wood veneers, Art Deco and glass which allows plenty of light into the building.  It is one of my favourite design styles so I enjoyed the visit immensely, though I did have the niggling feeling that a great deal of money had been spent on a house when at the time there were strikes and poverty in the country.

The gardens were in full flower and the moat was full of water and extremely murky, but had huge fish in them as this picture shows as they were being fed by some of our members!!

This picture is called 'Fish Finger'!!

They had enormous mouths, which appeared to be open all the time!!

At last the Mandalas!!

I know, dear readers, that you have been waiting in suspense for the Mandalas of the Poppy Patch Crochet Group so this is the official unveiling before being sent off to Attic 24 for her project at Yarndale 2014

It has amazed me that they were made from the same pattern and yet using different colours come out so differently.  Anyway here they are:-

Lesley B's

Ena's

Ellen's

Lesley M's

Jo's      

Carol's

Each one has to be stiffened before being sent off and then with a bit of luck they will appear on Pinterest within the next couple of weeks.  I think we all enjoyed making them and I think they look great.

Trooping the colour

I am such a monarchist that I watch anything I can on television and as I had to clean my neglected house I watched Trooping the Colour, in between the cleaning.  Can't wait for the fly past because as you know from my Duxford visit I love planes and especially the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.

Many, many years ago a friend said would I like to go to a rehearsal of Trooping the Colour and of course I accepted.  At the time we were living in Gloucestershire so we caught a train at the crack of dawn, telling our husbands to expect us when they saw us!!  We met the young man who had the tickets, watched The Colonel's Review rehearsal and decided to visit St Pauls Cathedral on our way to the Tower of London.  Outside St Pauls we found a £5 note and decided that the streets of London were indeed paved with gold!!!

We then went on to the Tower because the father of the young man who got us our tickets was a Yeoman Warder who lived in one of the round towers in the outer walls.  We were shown round the Tower and went in the Jewel House, without having to stand in line, joined the Yeoman Warders in their private bar and were very privileged to be allowed to watch the Ceremony of the Keys from a private viewing area.  By this time it was late and we had a train to catch so we managed to get a taxi, leapt in and I said "Paddington Station as fast as you can!!".  We missed the train because the American President at the time, who I think was Ronald Reagan, was visiting and we had to wait for his cavalcade to pass down Park Lane after a dinner he had been to, so I didn't get home until about 3.00am in the morning, but it was a great day out.

However a few years later my husband and I did get tickets to see the actual ceremony of Trooping the Colour and I loved it all.  We walked down the Mall afterwards, saw all the Royal Family and watched the fly past.  What I remember vividly was the smell after the Red Arrows had flown over and I now know it was diesel from their smoke.  We applauded - how stupid is that!!

The next time I saw a full display by the Red Arrows was when my eldest son graduated, from RMCS Shivenham, now Cranfield University, which is quite close to the M4. We wondered what the traffic on the motorway had made of it and if there were any accidents as the display went over their heads!!

Thank you!

As followers of my blog know, I am new to this and get very excited seeing where viewers come from and you are many and varied - Russia, Venezuela (hope that my blog wasn't a mistake), New Zealand (I think I know who you are), Australia, India, Germany, China (occasionally) France, USA and of course the UK.  Thank you for coming back time and time again.  I now have over 3,000 hits, including my two sons who have decided they should look at what I write so that I don't harangue them when I see or speak to them!!

Since my last post, I have had another Nordic walk around Irthlingborough and Stanwick Lakes and luckily we started early because it became very hot towards the end.

Backs to the camera ladies, NO faces

When I got home, I wandered around the garden and took a few odd photos and this is the assortment - 

The Phormium that has NEVER flowered before

Chusan Palm flowering for the 2nd year

Love this little chap in my pond!  A second one is nearby

What pleases me so much about the pond is that I have newts in it and they were just below the surface as I took this photo.  Unfortunately newts eat frog spawn so I don't know whether the frog spawn laid earlier survived.  But that is nature of course.

Sambucus nigra

I called in to the Monday Higham Piecemakers group meeting and showed them my latest Dorset Buttons creation -

Will I ever stop!!

and took away the World War 1 Christmas Challenges that we are showing in a garden in the Secret Gardens of Higham Ferrers on Sunday.

Oh yes, my Mandalas are finished and waiting to be shown at Crochet Group on Friday; more about them then and I am writing this just before I go to embroidery class.  I have been working hard on my drawn threadwork and hope to finish in the next two weeks; so more about that later.

Oh what a beautiful morning ......

I woke this morning, thought about my blog and wondered what to write;  I needn't have worried.  The blackbird was shrill with it's warning cry, which in my case is CAT, so I walked round the garden banging all the bushes in case it was lurking underneath one.  Then I saw this picture in my mind and rushed inside for my camera.

My beautiful Philadelphus and it smells good

Can you see the bee, pollen hunting in the middle of the flower and look at that wonderful blue sky in the left hand corner.  No touching up done at all!!

I love the bumble bee

I had been watching the weather forecast all week because yesterday was the village church fete of my brother and I had agreed to help with the cream teas.  Every time I looked at the forecast there was a thunder storm forecast and certainly, earlier in the morning it poured with rain.  However when I arrived the village had decided that everything would proceed out of doors, and as it turned out we had glorious weather.

Waiting for the table cloths and visitors!

My sister-in-law makes over 200+ scones in the morning, whips up countless pots of cream and there are lots of jars of strawberry jam.  Two kettles work non stop and as she had forgotten squash, children were offered elderflower cordial, which quite a few accepted.  A local band was playing, the sun shone, a small steam engine was giving rides up and down the street, the bouncy castle was doing good business and the stall holders were all sold out at the end.  I stood on my brother's drive looking over this scene, with a wonderful thatched cottage in the background, and said "How perfectly English"!  My brother agreed.  Incidentally his garden was absolutely stunning and everyone who looked round agreed and we made about £170 on cream teas in about an hour.

Oh, my downfall at the garden centre

After the hairdresser yesterday, I thought I would pop into the local garden centre to buy some packets of vegetable seeds I needed and a couple of perennials for my sister.  I am going to supper with her and instead of flowers or a bottle of wine, I thought plants would be more acceptable as she is trying to get her garden ready for a big party later this month.  I picked up a small basket and it was downhill from then on, as I landed up with seeds, at least six pots of perennials, bird food and other items.  I staggered to the checkout and was slightly surprised that the bill was not higher than it was.  

I have just been in the garden trying to decide which plants to give my sister as I love them all, and it has been a struggle giving up two of them.  I have planted the remainder and put up my hanging baskets!!

 If you are a regular reader of my blog, you will remember that I had started to make Dorset buttons.  Well this has progressed and yesterday afternoon I spent a happy time making a Christmas decoration using one of them.

These are the originals and one has turned into  .......

this

I have even made a large one with a hanger attached and this is still very much a 'work in progress'.

So 'watch this space' to see what finally happens.  I still haven't found the right thread for the big one, but I think there is hope on the horizon from my local little shop which stocks absolutely  everything, and I am not kidding!!  Ask her for it and she has it.  Brilliant place.

A day out at Duxford

They had a 'teacher's training day' at my grandson's school so Granny was asked if she could look after him for the day.  But where to go?  In the end we decided on the Imperial War Museum at Duxford and though we have been before, there is always so much to see/  We saw everything today and boy, were our feet sore at the end!!  In Hanger 1 they have Concorde which you can walk through and lots of hands-on gadgets where you push buttons, turn handles and generally try to get different machines to do different things.  We went to the 1940 Operations Room, the American Air Museum, the Battle of Britain display and the Conservation hanger, where old planes are put back together.

But for me the highlight was when I heard a plane starting and the tannoy announced that the Spitfire would be taking off.  We then had a fantastic display of this iconic plane in flight, climbing to great heights until it looked as if it would stall and then swooping low in front of us.  I tried to take pictures but it was going too fast, so they are not too good- my apologies.

Back on the ground

Quite wonderful for me as I have a secret passion for old aircraft and I love watching them; not so my grandson who was bored stiff by this and kept asking if we could go!!

He was really interested in the D-Day display though and the War on the Land exhibition  with tanks and guns.  I hope and think he will remember something of the visit.