Monday 27 September 2021

There’s a Project afoot

Hi there everyone 😃

It’s been a good old while since there has been anything crafty going on over here … not that there haven’t been projects buzzing around my head.

For a while now I’ve wanted to update the contents of a large photo frame with multiple apertures. For ages it’s been filled with photos from a trip to Heligan, a beautiful garden in Cornwall.

I wanted to make it a bit more personal and reflective of our own garden over the summer months.

I started off thinking I would fill it with watercolours that I’d done myself and started out with these echinacea …

… and some Roses …

… and some leaves

Well … for some reason I had a bit of a change of heart and thought I’d mix it up a bit … starting with a bit of a garden landscape made from fabric. I wasn’t particularly wanting it to look like the garden, as I thought that would be a bit tricky, but to just reflect the colours of our garden over the summer months.

It was time to get the scrap box out …

… and take a photo of the garden to see what I was looking for … I have only just taken the photo, so it’s more a reflection of autumn than summer, but I can remember the bits that have changed …
I was thinking of building up fabric strips in rows to reflect the colours of the garden … so starting at the bottom with earthy tones, moving up through greens for the grass and foliage, then purples and hot pinks for the flowers, with splashes of white and yellow, going back to greens for the tree canopy and then blues and whites for a summer sky … here is my first go at laying our the fabrics …
Straightaway I could see I needed to condense it down a bit if I wanted it to fit the largest aperture in the frame …

So I squished it all up a bit to fit the gap …
It was time to get out the sewing machine and have a go at stitching the pieces together, I did deliberate for a while over whether to seam them together or whether just to overlap the raw edges … in the end I opted for seaming. This did make it a bit tricky getting the spacing right and I did end up having to drop a couple of the pieces as it would have been too big. After I’d finished it and pressed it I had a go at playing with some of the decorative stitches on my sewing machine and I’m quite pleased with the final result, though some of the strips are a little wrinkly …
So I’ve just got three gaps left to fill in my frame now … need to get my thinking cap on for what I can fill those with 😃

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Friday 24 September 2021

Photo Scavenger Hunt :: September #4 ... Ball

Hi there everyone 😀

The theme that Astrid has set for us for this week's photo scavenger hunt is ... Ball 🙈

After a quick scratch of my head and a slower trawl of the archives I'm come up with a bit of a varied selection ... 

This is one of the box balls in our front garden ... before and after it's annual trim ...

Fun in the garden for our very own ... Garden Olympics ... if you want to read more about our Garden Olympic event you can do here ...

Dad loved coming round for family get togethers in the garden and he always threw himself into whatever we were doing. This is one of my favourite photos of him ... having such fun ... you can just see the ball, be it a little blurry, at the top right of the photo ...
Whilst I don't do lots of knitting or crocheting I did go through a phase of buying lots of yarn ...
To be fair this selection was bought with a specific purpose in mind ...
In July 2019 Martin and I took a day trip to Kew to see the Chihuly Reflections on Nature Exhibition, which was amazing ... you can read more about it here.

This exhibit was in the Japanese Gardens and was called ... the 'Niijima Floats'. We couldn't decide whether they more resembled a giant game of marbles or another far away planetary system ...

The allium is one of my favourite flowers ... 

This ball I get excited about every year ... I love Strictly ... especially Halloween week ...


Funnily enough, out of the blue, after all my hunting ... my nephew sent me these photos. This is Nancy, my great niece. She's not long had her first birthday and was helping sort out the hockey balls whilst watching nanny, my sister, play ...
That seems like a good place to wrap up for the photo scavenger hunt for September. For the next couple of weeks I am going to have very limited access to archives so it will be interesting to see what I manage to come up with ... can't wait to see what Astrid has in store for us 😀

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Monday 20 September 2021

Random Ramblings :: So what's been occurring over here?

Hi there everyone 😀

It seems like an age since I’ve had a random ramble so thought I’d just drop by to let you know what’s been occurring over here of late.

It doesn’t actually feel like there has been an awful lot … we’ve had a few Mondays out with mum and Bobby over the summer … which have been just lovely ... just simple stuff, but lovely all the same ...

We’ve been to Chasewater and done some bird and train spotting …

We’ve been back to Beacon Park for a picnic and to check out the crazy golf …


We’ve been to Branston Water Park …


We’ve done a town treasure trail around Tamworth, taking in our castle grounds, which were looking just amazing …
… and we’ve been to a new adventure golf at a local golf club ... where 18 holes may have just been a little tiring for little legs ...
There seem to have been a fair few afternoon teas ...

... with mum at Barton Marina …

With friends at Coombe Abbey ...



… which was very nice indeed …

In the garden … with the whole of the Wakelin family round for a rainy afternoon tea ...
The weather didn't seem to bother the youngest members of the family at all ...

... and a sneaky little mid-week trip out to a local spot with Jackie, Rachel and Erin ...
... who is now walking and is a bit wobbly but very confident and totally fearless ...
Martin’s recently had an op on his ankle so hasn't been out and about much but we did manage a ride out to Cannock Chase on Bank Holiday Monday ... with a very nice lunch thrown in ...

So actually there has probably been a bit more going on than I thought … a fair few get togethers and plenty of food.

Phew ... well done if you stuck with me till the end ... I hope I've not made you feel too hungry 😋

It's not long now until we are off on holiday … to Pembrokeshire this time ... so I’m hoping to have plenty to tell you about that very soon 😀

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Friday 17 September 2021

Photo Scavenger Hunt :: September #3 … Fall

Hi there everyone 😀

This is a bit of a funny one … though it wasn’t at the time … and I know this isn’t really what Astrid really had in mind when setting the word Fall for this week’s challenge …

Last week I noticed that a spider had caught a bee in it’s web, hanging off our urn, and was pretty much cocooning it. I thought Bobby would find it fascinating so got my phone to take a photo.

Well … my photo taking didn’t go to plan and I ended up stepping back falling down the step on the patio and ended up spread-eagled on the floor with the side of my head banging against the razor sharp render on the side of the house.

My fall left me with grazed arms and legs and a black eye that I’m now quite proud of … I looked like a kid that had fallen of their bike.

Anyway … whilst I was laying on the floor mopping up a cut on my forehead all I could think of was getting Martin to take the photo before the spider either disappeared or ate the bee.

Was it worth it? I will let you judge for yourselves …

Apparently Bobby was pretty impressed so that was a win for me .

Now for a few more fall like photos … from the garden as it is now …still with plenty of late summer colour …



Still plenty left to harvest …
Still a few jobs being undertaken … finally got the bench painted …

… and plenty left for the birds over winter …

The question now will be … do I dump the hanging baskets before we go on holiday or leave them in the hope they still look good when we get back … experience tells me to empty them, but I hate bringing something flowering to the end of its life too soon 🙈

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