A Quilt for my daughter

 My daughter has a significant birthday at the end of this month, so I decided to mark the occasion by making her a quilt.. I love the colours.

It's a batik fabric called Shades of Peace.

I bought it from a little  shop in Portland, Victoria, Australia, last year.

I have just been waiting for an excuse to use it! 

The quilt design is 'Birds in the Air.'

I have loved making this and have sewn most days to get it finished. It's all triangles and to cut them I was working with 7/8th of an inch, not my favourite sizing, but after cutting out 490 triangles I have got the hang of measuring such a weeny part of an inch!!LOL

Hope she likes it. It is the sort of colours she likes and so I hope it will fit in with her colour scheme.

The redder colours are slightly darker than the photos show.  

Thank you for all your kind and encouraging comments it is so lovely to be part of this generous blogging world.

Happy Days

xx

End of the Summer......

We have had a beautiful sunshiny day here today and really warm.

Washing was on our line early,  so a true Monday! And we do have lines that straddle the garden between trees, our rotary line broke last year and because we couldn't  find time to get out and buy another one, we made do with the plastic coated rope across the garden and it is lovely to see the washing filled with the breezes.

Here are some of my pots still going strong as we do water most evenings. Each time I look at them I do feel proud,  as most of my flowers are all grown from seed, so my heart skips a beat just to see their colours in the early mornings.

And I have survived another weekend with out blowing my food plan. We ate following SW recipes and our Sunday dinner was mostly our own grown veg!

We still have cabbages to harvest and the beans are still going strong so a few more dinners from them.  But the garden is beginning to look as though it needs a good rain fall.. we don't have enough here in the East.

So it's the end of the summer.

We have had a really good one. With several days out in London, we also saw  a play with  Maureen Lipman called 'Daytona' and it was excellent. We've had long weekends  away and then visitors here. Even some  cousins from Australia before they were off to Paris. DH's daughter and hubby of 4 months came for the Bank Holiday, and that was nice. And of course went to our favourite place several times... Southend on Sea.. last week it was to see the Tall Ships sailing down the Thames. And yes we had an Italian Ice cream and because we had to wait a long time for the ships to pass, we went to one of the 'under the arches cafes' and had fish and chips and amazingly I still had weight loss the next day at my slimming group!

And we haven't finished yet as we're off to Skipton for Yarndale at the end of the month.. I am so excited I have had it all booked for months.

So happy, happy days!

XX

 

Three days at home in Wales

We have just had three sunshiny and very happy days in Porthcawl, the town where I was born and lived till I left to become a nurse in 1960.

We stayed with my mother's cousin, so she is my first cousin once removed.

She lives in a small town 4 miles from Porthcawl.

When we were young we saw quite a bit of each other, as like me her mother had died when she was a baby, so she came a lot to our house; my gran was her aunty.

We spent a lot of these last few days remembering  of how things were when we were growing up.  I can remember when she said she could help me with my knitting and dropped stitches  so it went all holey and I went crying to my aunty who said.. don't be such a baby!! And started my knitting all over again!

 

She couldn't remember that,  but it must have been important to me.. she has planned a huge party in October when she will be 80.. so a great big family get together.

 

Of course we had to have a Sidoli's ice cream and it was lush.

Nell had some too.

 

 

 

Such happy times.. we spent an hour before we started the 223 miles drive home, sitting drinking coffee on the prom and looking at the sea, me dreaming of living back in Wales. But I probably never will, here is home now.

xx

My next quilt ...

I bought this batik fabric in a little shop in Portland, Australia.

A lovely little shop where I had been before.

 

I am thinking of using Birds in the Air design which I also got there.. can't wait to get started.... but we do have to get our garden straight for the winter so maybe sadly this will have to wait a few days!

Thank you for all the lovely comments, they give me such a boost.. and in case you hadn't notice my weight is going down albeit slowly!

I am working on a cross stitch as a Giveaway so keep watching!!

XX

Pressies arrived so I can show

Lovely smiley Jacquie won my blogaversary giveaway and it has arrived , so I can show what I made,  a little pillow  and...

 

Sent.. A Lizzie Kate chart of a snowman and a pretty Teddy Scissors

She is delighted with them all and so that is good; this is what blogging is all about..
The pleasure of giving and receiving... don't you just love this wonderful world of blogging?

I have posted my 500th post so that's a reason for another Giveaway.. this time again some thing made by me and a choice of kits! So watch this  space  blog!!

Happy days blogging friends and thank you for being there for me!

xx

A Quilt for my grown up Grandson...

Remember these?  

Now they are this!!!

My grandson wanted woodland colours and kind of camouflage and I think you'll agree it is!

I hand sewed all the piecing and thoroughly enjoyed sewing it

 

It is very satisfying and quite soothing hand sewing the pieces together.

I did a lot sitting outside in the garden in the beautiful weather.

The quilting is machined and I have just cross hatched diagonally across the blocks and through the middles and then in the ditch around the sashing.

And having watched a utube on quilt binding several times I have at last got the hang of perfecting the mitred corners, so I am really pleased with myself. 

He has seen it while I was still making it and likes it and is taking it to UNI with him after getting 3 'A' s.

 

Whew!!!!

 

I LOVE QUILTING!!!

 

XX

 

I must thank everyone who wished me well last week, I don't think I have ever been so ill before, but am properly well now. Dh is relieved too as we both had a dreadful scare.

 

 

Is this doing the rounds?

I have had the most terrible time. I woke up on Tuesday with dreadful vertigo.

 

I couldn't walk without the feeling of falling over and the room spinning,  but even worse with each movement of my head I had horrendous vomiting. It was so bad my DH phoned our Dr's surgery for a prescription or something to stop the continuous vomiting.
And wow!!!..... we had a phone call  back from a Dr who said he would visit me in the afternoon for a HOME VISIT!!!
Gosh I didn't know they still did such things.
He arrived with a hypodermic needle!! It didn't hurt (much!!) but as an ex nurse I don't think he had had a lot of practice. But it was to stop the vomiting as I was close to getting de-hydrated.  I was also given a prescription for some tabs that weren't to swallow but to put under my top lip so it that it was absorbed.
However there was a problem with the prescription, well several!

1. The local chemist didn't have it.
2. DH drove into town to Boots. The drug  the Dr had prescribed wasn't available but the chemist suggested one that was..
3 However... the prescription didn't have my name on it, nor did it have the dose!

So back to the surgery to get it sorted. While my lovely DH was doing all this, the injected drug had worked and I was blissfully sleeping! I was exhausted as I had been awake since 5 o'clock and had been continuously sick.
Eventually I had the tabs and thankfully all the vomiting has stopped and today I have what can be called a normal cold, a cough and runny nose! First I have had for years!

But I am very grateful for the treatment I have had, so the when it works the good ol' NHS does work albeit with some hiccups!
Thank God.

xx

And the winner is.......

THANK YOU all my lovely followers for entering this giveaway 

 

I counted all the names and there were 23.. so using a number generator the number chosen as you can see is 4 and the 4th name was Jacquie Morris!

 

 

Thank you to all that have congratulated me on blogging for 6 years, I can't believe myself.
Sorry you all couldn't win but I will be giving away some charts and kits  in the next month.

And will be listing them, so please come and look and put your name down.

Happy Blogging all and thank you again for all the comments and good wishes.

 

XX

My fat story!!!

Can you imagine wanting something that others say is an easy target? And you really, really want it but it keeps slipping out of your grasp?

That’s me and trying to lose weight. I started a record book of my weight loss journey 14 years ago. I called it my ‘Fat Book.’ In it I stuck photos of me, photos cut out of magazines of women who were the shape I wanted to be, not Kate Moss look alikes, but ordinary women. Also clothes I would like to wear, exercises I should do.. one was a bike, can you imagine me on a bike?? I couldn’t balance and as I got older I was afraid of falling and breaking a leg, or an arm. Foods I ate or didn't eat, how I felt and what I was trying to do.

Me, trying to lose weight I think is like a marathon, but I don’t approach it like a person training for a Marathon! They train and follow a strict regime if they want to come up there in the first few out in front. I know all this, I know calories, fat free foods, eating healthily and that the best and cheapest form of exercise that needs no exercise machine, is just walking. I have a husband that walks every day with our dog. He is willing to walk with me. But I hate it. I make excuses.  (it was too windy today!!)

So why can’t I do it? Some days it is a struggle; today  I wanted cake, but I ate cherries, an apple and then a cup of beef oxo. I felt full and actually lost the craving, but if we had cake in the house I would have eaten it! I didn’t put on any weight when we were in France, but I had already put on 3 pounds before we went! It was like a green light,  we were having a holiday and to me that meant ‘treats!’  And I treated myself generously.

So here I am again, trying to lose weight!  Building a new dream to be slimmer.. note I didn’t say slim, I ‘d be happy to be slimmer.

For a two years  I have had my…….

Dream weight.

Happy weight.

Acceptable weight.

Disappointed weight.

All listed for me to see daily and in two years I haven’t even got to my disappointed weight.
Does anyone else ever feel like me, that being slimmer it is out of my grasp? Or are you how I used to be, could eat anything and stay the same weight?

What is the answer? 

xx

My Giveaway for my 6th Blogaversary

I hope you all like this .. because I am stitching this as my giveaway. I don't know yet how I will make it up when it is finished. It is a lovely sampler and the saying is so close to my heart.
The design is by Diane Grick for Silver Creek Samplers.
I will include some other little items too, so do sign up.
The usual rules apply.
1. Be a follower of my blog
2. Post this Giveaway on your blog
3. And most importantly SIGN UP!!

I know some peeps said they'd like to be included when I first mentioned I would be doing a giveaway and I'll include you all in the draw, which will be in 2 weeks time on August 16th.

Happy stitching all and happy days!

xx