Making Good Use

Autumn in August

What to do when autumn arrives two months early.  Well, first of all make a large pot of leek and potato soup to supplement the very silly choice of salad for the evening meal.

Two, do a bit of baking.  In this case a little and large combo of Iced Orange Madeira cake.

The large one is for eating now, the little one is for the picnic on Thursday when I'll be meeting up with DN and my sister for another day out in London. 

And, thirdly, for the wet and windy afternoon, a little light sewing.

Two 'stash and dash bags' all cut out and ready to sew.

This and That - and Thank You

First up - a very big Thank You to Gill who has very kindly awarded me the Nice Matters Award.

"awarded to those that are just nice people, good blog friends and those that inspire good feelings and inspiration! Those that care about others that are there to lend support or those that are just a positive influence in our blogging world"

Thank you so much for this Gill, I really appreciate it.

On to more mundane matters. 

We have some very pretty wisteria at the end of the garden, which is normally a real picture in early May.  This year was no exception and for three weeks or so the top of the garden was brimming with its beautiful mauve flowers dancing and bobbing in the breeze.  Imagine my surprise when last week I noticed one or two flowers coming out again.  Although the display is by no means as lush as it was three months ago, it is still really pretty - and most unusual for August.  Does anyone out there know why the wisteria should have flowered for a second time this year.  Or is it just another sign of our topsy-turvy climate change?

For some reason wisteria always reminds me of 1930's Home Counties suburbia - the sort of place where John Betjeman's 'Miss Joan Hunter-Dunn' (she who was 'furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun') would have lived.  Although these days it also makes me think of Wisteria Lane in Desperate Housewives!!  Not quite such a genteel image.

Yesterday's car boot sale didn't result in anything wonderful.  There were the usual suspects of a few decent books for resale, an electronic dinosaur toy for DN, and a nice thick winter jacket for him too.  I did manage to find this pretty material.  I love the pale mauve and pink flowers on the deep sand coloured background - very summery / beachy.

At the moment it's a fitted single sheet, but hopefully soon it will take on a different incarnation - especially as it is lovely thick material, much too thick for a sheet to my mind - probably as (yet another) bag.

Fruitful

The plum tree in the garden

is now laden

and heavy

with succulent ripe fruitfulness.  We're eating these little beauties, in as many ways as possible, as often as we can.

A quick trip to the Thursday car boot sale yesterday was also fruitful in its own way.

A lovely 'Tonka' fleece jacket for DN,

with this very appropriate label on the sleeve.

A quick tour of the charity shops this morning was also fruitful - this time with a short-sleeved 100 per cent cotton shirt for P (it seems to be as rare as hen's teeth to find these in charity shops at the moment).

Already washed through and drying nicely in the lovely sunshine we're having today.

Yup, quite a fruitful, and money saving, couple of days.

9. (And a couple of F.O.s)

A few hours after I'd finished writing my last post, I had a nagging feeling that I'd forgotten to include something in the list.  Finally, whilst eating my tea, I remembered.  So here it is, number nine, my love of Poldark.

The series was first shown when I was in my mid-teens, and I instantly fell in love with the drama, the costumes, the stunning Cornish scenery, the romance of it all, and, of course, Robin Ellis.  About 13 or so years ago my sister very kindly bought me the complete set of videos - both series one and two.  I've watched them many times since, and still adore everything about it.

In the autumn of 1976, when I had just started the sixth form, and between series one and two of Poldark, we were taken on a school trip to Stratford-upon-Avon to see King Lear.  Although I was studying for my English 'A' Level, I really wasn't looking forward to spending three or so hours on a very hard seat (we were up in the Gods), watching a whole load of 'luvvies' perform.  Oh what a lovely surprise I had when I realised that Robin Ellis was playing the Duke of Gloucester (I think I've got that correct), I even forked out 10p (or whatever it was) to get hold of the opera glasses which were then provided on the back of every seat.  I don't think I heard a word of the play, I just spent the whole time peering through the opera glasses and waiting for Robin Ellis to reappear on stage (which thankfully he did quite often).

I wonder what ever happened to him, I don't think I've seen him on television in many years.  I do remember he was in an adaptation of Barbara Vine's 'A Dark Adapted Eye' about 10 - 15 years ago, and although he was a bit stouter than he had been as Poldark, and his hair was a bit greyer, he was still mighty attractive.

Anyway, enough lusting!!  I've finished a couple of projects in the last couple of days.  First is this knitted hat which I made using the pure wool yarn I got in the local charity shop 10 days ago.

I finished it off with a white wool felt flower and had just the right colour glass button to match.

I'll put the hat away until the autumn and then it'll be up for sale on ebay.

In complete contrast the other finished project is this very summery shopping / beach bag, made using the material I got in Billericay last week.

I'll be putting this up for sale on ebay either today or tomorrow, in the hope of selling it before the sun disappears again.

Eight

I've been tagged by Gill for eight random facts about myself, so, here goes.

1. I have a pathological fear of all things fishy.  I never swim in the sea for fear a fish or some other marine lifeform would touch me, I just know I would die of fear if that happened.  As for 'relaxing' tropical fish in an aquarium - forget it, they really give me the heebie-jeebies.  I rarely, rarely eat fish, although I have got a bit better with that as P is a keen fish eater.  However, anything fish-related that I eat has to look nothing at all like it has come from a fish - fish fingers being the best disguise.

2. I've got a bit of a 'thing' about matching and colour-coordinated pegs when I'm pegging out the washing.  All pegs on any one garment MUST be of the same colour, and should preferably colour-coordinate with said garment.  Goodness only knows why I do this - it drives P absolutely mad.  What I should do is what my mum has done, only have wooden pegs and then they would all match with each other.

3. Generally I'm quite a laid-back sort of person, but I can be reduced to a seething mass of anger if anyone should park outside my house.  This has proved to be an awful bone of contention with me in the past, especially when we lived in a road with limited parking spaces, and lots of neighbours with large cars.  If I can't park my car directly outside of my own home, then I become apoplectic with rage (not a pretty sight).  And I do know that we 'don't own the road', as P was fond of telling me back then. Luckily, where we live now we have plenty of off-street parking, and I don't actually drive a car at the moment - phew, peace, and my blood-pressure, is restored.

4. Just like my father did, I suffer from very swollen feet and ankles.  This is not very attractive to look at although it is seldom painful.  It does mean that my choice of footwear is rather limited - basically Birkenstocks or something from the Cosy Feet catalogue (average customer age 80 plus I would imagine judging by the design of most of their shoes).  I've had this problem for the past 20 years, and year on year it gets just a little bit worse.  I rarely wear skirts now as it doesn't look too good, and only wear shorts in the privacy of my own home.  Still, it won't kill me and it doesn't really hurt so I'm not complaining (really!!).

5. Again, also like my father, I dislike Christmas with a vengeance.  I think it's because it comes at the darkest, most depressing time of the year.  I'm somebody who longs for the light summer evenings, and I feel totally suffocated when it's dark at 3.30 in the afternoon.  It's rather ironic that I dislike Christmas so much as my surname - Yule - means Christmas / the winter solstice.  Perhaps I'd enjoy Christmas much more in the southern hemisphere - maybe I'll try that one year.

6. I've got a BA (Hons) degree in English and Drama.  I don't think I've ever really put it to good use, but I did have some of the best years of my life whilst I was at college.

7. I'm a bit of a weather geek - I can spend ages looking at various towns and cities around the world on the BBC Weather website, especially extreme places like Qaanaaq in northern Greenland which has four months total daylight in summer, four months total darkness in winter, and two months either side of a transition period.

8.  I love a good natural disaster film and am really looking forward to the new film Flood which is released next week.  It stars Robert Carlyle and is about what would happen if the London Barrier was breached by a storm surge. 

I won't tag anyone else, but if you want to join in do consider yourself 'tagged'.

Blue Skies, Nothing But Blue Skies Do I See

I think today has been the first truly summery day this year, with unbroken blue skies and sunshine from dawn to dusk.  To celebrate P and I had another very tasty lunch here.

Followed by a leisurely stroll here.

And a nice cool sit-down in one of the hides overlooking the reservoir where there was this lovely view.

And a sort-of close-up of this little duck family serenely making their way across the water.

They were originally swimming in a lovely straight line with mama duck at the head, but at that precise moment my camera batteries died and by the time I had put some new ones in the group had reformed like this.

The local farmer has obviously been 'making hay while the sun shines' if this field is anything to go by.

Continuing the 'Blue Sky' theme, Mum reports that the bath mitt I made for her with Blue Sky Organic Cotton is lovely to use.  I think her exact words were 'it's like washing with silk'.  I'm very pleased that she likes it so much and I think I may make myself and P one each too.

Blue is a bit of a theme for me at the moment as I found these two mangled balls of variegated blue yarn in the charity shop yesterday.

The subtlety of the colours is lovely and I do wonder if these are Rowan Biggy Print.

Also I've cut out ready to sew a blue floral bag using the fabric I got in a charity shop in Billericay this week.

The pale green fabric at the bottom of the photo is for the bag lining.  I've done quite well selling my handmade bags on ebay this summer so I wanted to get this one finished and up for sale before the sun disappears again.

Hope the sun has been shining wherever you have been today.

Pictures of Lily

Nothing noteworthy to report today.  There has been no thrifting (apart from one book which turned out to be quite a good one for re-sale) and no crafting.  Instead there has been load after load of washing hung out to dry in the lovely sunny weather of the last few days, and therefore a small mountain of ironing to get through!!  Not my favourite job but a necessary one!

So in lieu of anything else I thought I'd post these beautiful pictures of Lily which mum e-mailed to me at the weekend.

Mum's got a real magic touch with photography - both digital and on film - and even though we have the same digital camera I could never in a million years take such a lovely picture as the first one.