Pure gold....

For the last two weeks I have cycled, run, jumped and swum.........  Now I must get off the settee and do some exercise.The Olympics are over.

  What a fortnight. From the spectacular Opening Ceremony

until the moment the flame went out.  We shouted in excitment and dashed away tears of joy. We marvelled at unbelievable stamina, strength and grace. We were amazed how quickly we became experts on sports we had never seen before. Medals apart, we won on every level.

One of the fascinations was watching the different reactions to winning and losing. A bronze medal produced sulks in some and smiles of pure joy in others.  A gold was celebrated with theatrical display or quiet pride.

One disappointment was that no one thought to make the Torch Relay Team part of the ceremonies, they did such a good job in all weathers in the ten weeks before the Games started. I hope they receive some form of recognition.

Well done London (and the rest of the country)

 Yeah!!!

Right three weeks to tackle the ironing before the Paralympics begin.

Wonderful beasts....

I found these wonderful beasts by Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor on the Textile Arts Center blog

(No copyright breach intended)

There are more pictures on the link.

I love the bird, in the background,  who appears to be sneaking out.  What a great way this would be to reduce my stash.

Hating the everlasting grey and rain, up side is lots of time to sew and watch others give there all at Wimbledon and in the Tour de France.

More Kentwell.....

Still reeling from Nadal's defeat..... as another week flashes by, more photos from Kentwell.

Is it a cow?  Is it a donkey?  Is it real?

These photographs don't really show how big these French Donkey's were.   In spite of the field of lush grass behind them they preferred you to hand pick their lunch from the grass on this side of the fence
 The other animal that featured in site and sound was the peacock, a sad tale of a tail here because a fox had stolen his hen so he was calling and displaying as he tried to find another mate.

 So much to see.

Through the time tunnel......

  into the 16th century.  Yes, time for Kentwell again. 1556 to be precise.  We were greeted with music,

and the sun was shining. The gentry were taking a stroll.

and children were everythere.

People cooked

Worked

and rested

and gave us another wonderful day out.  NB Mark calendar for next year.

Where does it go?

59 years since these were taken, Coronation Day, June 2nd 1953.

Me and my little brother, the dress had was white with red and whie piping, I loved the collar. 

Happy Jubilee weekend to one and all.  (I told you I would play with those flags).

Journals online......

We are used to seeing pictures of people "journals", the modern painted kind but today they have announced that Queen Victoria's Journals are now on line.   Here .  I have read excerpts in the past and am now looking forward to being able to dip in and out at will.  I thought is would be interesting to link it with some of the dates on my family tree.
As a blog post isn't complete without a photo, this was in Regent Street, London yesterday. (I intend to play with this some, feel free to do same)

Still addicted to the Olympic Relay coverage. Here  Love listening to the snippets of conversation that are caught, from delighted "Here it is" to one bored male voice "Is that it?". So many happy, smiling people, lovely.

The right way......

I find Blogger has a thing about photographs taken in portarit mode.  It refuses to post them the right way up.  My solution is to go into My Pictures and rotate them to the left, Blogger will them reporduce them the right way up.  Weird but true.  Of course I then have to remember to turn them back again in MP otherwise they are wrong in slide shows.

 Original

 Turned to left.

That's it......

I am addicted.... to the Olympic Flame Relay.  I never have the TV on in a morning but realised this morning they were showing the start of the relay.  Two hours later I'm still there.  Watching the mixture of nervousness, pride and happiness  in the faces as each bearer takes the flame.  Magic. I have found that the whole thing is on the old analogue channel, no annoyingly,  banal commentators, just watching it all happen. You can follow it's progress here.

I am loving the guy who unlocks the torches, the super fit discreet police escort but most of all the happy cheering crowds.  The politicians and the press tell us the future is grim and I feel it may very well be but for the moment let us revel in our British way of doing things and enjoy the Jubilee and the Olympics when it comes.  We can go back to being gloomy afterwards...

Pebbles....

I was going to title this "Stoned" but thought it might bring some unwanted attention.  Continuing the Feather Project Jude wanted to include stones, see her explanation here so these will be on their way soon.

I have been working slowly on my Earth Cloth (Space is still waiting to be finished).  This is a detail of the swirl when first applied.

and this a little later (about two months) with the stitching added.

and you can see why I am "stoned"

Fun day....

The blog of Lynda Monk popped up on my reader today and that was funny because, unknown to her, I had plucked up courage to brave the M25 in  my new car to go to Art Van Go to see what she was up to on her Artist in Residence day. It was really good to see the things she has illustrated on her blog for real.  She really is a very clever lady, Her technique for making Lutradur resemble beautifully rusted metal.is fascinating. I have had Lynda's new book "Fabulous Surfaces" a few week, time to try some of the techniques I think.

Of course being in Art Van go I had to have a little shop.  I bought some of their extra fine calico which I love and some interesting rubbing plates and some of the new Koh i Noor Brilliant watercolours, mainly because there were four yellows and I always run out of yellow first. Came away with fingers itching.  Good feeling.

More good feeling, I have heard this piece of music many times but it has never brought a tear to my eye until this.

Let me tell you a story.....

Some years ago I started researching my family tree, after reaching dead ends that could only be passed by money and travel I gave up the search. In 2003 I had posted a query for information on an ancestry site and having no luck at the time had forgotten about it. On Tuesday for some reason I woke with the name of my Gt Gt Grandfather in my head. I looked at my old query and there were replies. The strange thing is one reply had been posted in 2010 but  most of the replies had only been posted last weekend and I find, what I had always suspected, that I have Cousins. Amazing. We are now having fun exchanging snippets of our joint history.

                                                          Nana and Granpa Parramore.

Seagulls....

 "Does my bum look big in this?" was my daughter's caption for this. 

and I am liking this.

and this handsome pair.

Happy Easter,everyone, has anyone noticed how it has rained every day since the hose pipe ban came in? 

The things you see on a beach........

 After 24hours of battling with SAGA insurance's terrible service I am in need of a laugh. Things we saw last week.

Cornwall

We have just spent a very pleasant week in St Ives in Cornwall. This was the view from our apartment.

The tide came in and out of the little beach right below our window. We woke to sound of the waves. Tempted?  This is where we found it,  a lovely welcome and in no time at all were settled in.
This was right outside our door.

We ate Cornish Pasties, of course,  but this was our favourite eatery making the best sandwiches I have ever tasted. 
 We saw some of these,

One of these,

 and a lot of these

But above all some stunning scenery.

 Only another 500 photographs to go..........

Moments of sadness

For my friends.

Rocks in my head.......

I was reminded of this.....Sue Lawty's World Beach Project

and this

Stones.....

This morning Jude said something in the Magic Diaries that set my mind racing,  She said "....stones are sort of scraps of something bigger".   Like many other people I have a habit of picking up a small stone or pebble from places I have visited, they become a symbol of the place,  a souvenir.  But this is something bigger.  At school, Physical Geography was my absolute favourite subject, I have marvelled at The Grand Canyon, been excited  by the magnificence of the Alps and loved the beauty of our own Lake District but until today I had never consciously thought that the pebble I pick up is just a scrap and once belonged to something much, much bigger and when I hold it I am holing a piece of the Universe in my hand.   Is that what we are?

Technology...".

This is to test whether I realy can update with my iPad. This was my Christmas gift from DH. A complete surprise. Adding pictures is obviously book 2,

The Artist

I did enjoy  this film.  So clever. I was completely absorbed the whole way through and came out feeling very good. Give yourself a treat.

It is a well known fact that I am not an artist but I do love messing around with paint.  This is a little bit of collage, "stitched" together digitally.

 

Here they are mounted in the beautiful giant Moleskin my son bought for me.

 Things have to be auditioned to go in here.  It has taken me over a year to put anything on its beautiful pristine pages.  As the years roll on, so quickly it seems now, I must learn to use all those things I have been hoarding for so long.

Disappointing weekend......

Just about recovering from the match.  Don't think it is at all fair to heap all the blame on Wes there were lots of other mistakes.  If that wasn't bad enough we found we had missed the boat on our Wembley tickets so will have to make so with the Fan Day and watch it on TV. 
The other disappointment was the Creative Stitches show at Bluewater.  How can you organise a show with that name and not ensure you have at least one person selling threads. I didn't see so much as a skein of DMC .

So time to turn my hand (and head) to something new.  I have been working on making the backing cloth for "Earth" for some weeks, working on the idea in my head in the meanwhile. Today I have pinned the "spin" in place around the centre ball of  molten rock. It is slightly smaller than Space which is waiting for it's backing. I am still deciding exactly how I want that to happen.

Hyperventilating......

Game Day (or in our case night)

 

  Photo from NFL No copyright breach intended,

I'll be there with my duvet. 

And then....

I played some more.

Thanks to the Graphics Fairy for the clip art.