Silly Saturday: Rudolf

I came across a few of these, tucked away in a cupboard – made by Miss E when she was about 8 – she is now 16.

She’s thinking of making another, to see how much Rudolf has grown.

Instagram Stories created the special effects

Fathers Day

Master R’s card for his Dad.

I had his permission to share it with you.

In a Vase on Monday – Vintage Plough Share

Eucalyptus clippings and self-seeded wallflowers in a glass vase and a little found shrimp paste pot; an old brick found on the beach, and put in the fire to clean off the black tar; a vintage plough share, washed and waxed with furniture wax, and some rusty old sheep wire formed into a spiral.

I was walking along a farm track with my daughter and her three children a couple of weeks ago and spied a piece of rust embedded in the chalk and rubble of the track. (Not this track but one very similar – this photo was taken on Friday)

Oooh Rust! I cried! and bent down to try to pick it up. I couldn’t get the piece out, so said I would come back another day to retrieve it and bring a tool to work it free. The children were determined to get it out for me, and with some sticks and stones they only took about 5 minutes to free it. I always have my rucksack with me, which was just as well as it was heavy to carry home.

A precious (well to me anyway) piece of farming history. My son-in-law recognised it as a single furrow plough share, from the horsedrawn era and spent a bit of time looking online to see if he could identify it more precisely. It might have come from something like this one.

Just the sort of plough that my Grandfather would have walked behind on his farm in West Dorset.

When I sent this photo to my son-in-law later, he said it looked like an alien snail

So the working title for this little sculpture is ‘Snailien’.

What does it look like to you?     What would you call it?

It’s catching – Little Miss M, 8, has now started her own rust collection!

and this is Miss E (13) having her first welding lesson from her Dad, what a cool Dad he is!

It turns out she was making a flower/plant for me! and when I got home that night she had planted it in my garden!

Oh my! Better than diamonds – this makes me so happy.

This is a great fat rainbow I saw on my walk on Friday – it looked so much closer and bigger in reality. Maybe there is a pot of rust at the end of it! 😉

Joining Cathy who is Rambling in her Garden this morning and giving us a Little Love to help us grow.

❤ 🙂 ❤

Winter Woodland Walk

It has been so wet for so long and some of the woodlands near me are looking particularly lush and mossy – elves and fairies peeping out from behind every tree and fern.

To give everyone in my daughter’s family a much needed break from the rigours of home learning, I have taken two of my grandchildren out for a ‘keep-your-distance-walk’ a few times.

Little Miss M and Master R love to draw and grasp every opportunity, so when they found some chalk on the ground ….

This is one of the cyber characters that inhabit Master R’s imagination

and then – throwing the chalk at the tree to make marks was a good game too – who could make the highest mark, how far away could they stand and still hit the tree?

(Yes I did knit the bobble hat 🙂 )

And something to melt any Granny’s heart – a card from Little Miss M

She had made one for both of her Grannies. Awww! ❤

You might remember that Little Miss M and I are walking 500 miles together – You can go to this link to see a wonderful walk we did in March 2019.

We did not add many miles to our total last year (I wonder why?!) but we are both determined to do more this year.

Our total to date is 133.5 miles, only 366.5 to go!

Have you been able to go out for any walks this week?

Scrap Happy: Weaving

It is the last month of The Stitchbook Collective and this month’s box of goodies is all about weaving.

Helen has sent us a kit to create a loom on cardboard but, you must know by now, it’s all about rust for me! So what better than some old rusty sheep wire to create my own little loom.

and as if by magic

it fits perfectly on the Stitchbook page.

It needs a backing to cushion the spikes of the rusty barbed wire.

As I was doing the weaving with yarn, I wondered whether it would work with just bits of metal woven through linen thread. I have to admit, I am thrilled with this one.

I am not quite sure how to mount it, but I am just enjoying it as is for now.

When Little Miss M (8) saw my weaving she asked if she could have a go, so I made two more looms for our afternoon by the lake.

We collected reeds and other bits and pieces, and she sat on her paddle board to weave

and together we made our diptych entitled ‘An afternoon by the lake’

I am planning to mount them in a box frame when they have fully dried.

Joining Kate and her merry band of scrappers for Scrap Happy Day

Kate, Gun, Titti, Heléne, Eva, Sue, Lynn, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, Jill, Claire, Jan,
Moira, Sandra, Linda, Chris, Nancy, Alys, Kerry, Claire, Jean,
Joanne, Jon, Hayley, Dawn, Gwen, Connie, Bekki, Pauline,
Sue L, Sunny, Kjerstin and Vera

 

Silent Sunday Sand Spiral

Made by Miss E.

Little Altars at Home

Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while will know how much I loathe housework, but these are strange times! Today found me actually wanting to give the bathroom a thorough going over!

As I was putting things back on the windowsill, I realised that every item has a special memory or significance to me.

Left to right:

There is an Umbrella plant, that I grew from a root cutting given to me by a dear friend who I see only rarely nowadays. She is currently staying somewhere in deepest India, unable to return home due to the transport system in that country being under lockdown. The glass bowl it sits in, has been with me since I got married in 1972, nothing special, not beautiful, but it has become an old familiar friend.

In a little pot next to it are some honeysuckle cuttings, waiting to see if they grow roots, so that I can give some little plants to my daughter as requested.

The fish shaped little dish holds a bumble bee that sadly died in my bathroom, I know Little Miss M (7) would love to see it, so I am keeping it for when she is able to come into my house again.

The clay dolphin was made by Miss E when she was about 8. I took her to some wonderful sculpture and stone-carving worshops when she was being homeschooled.

I bought the brass incense burner with the Ohm symbol when I was travelling in 1994 and visiting Buddhist communities all round the world – such powerful memories. It reminds me of chanting in the echoing valleys of the Himalaya Mountains.

The scallop shell was given to me by my neighbour, who is a diver, and brings me yummy scallops in the summer. The shells it holds all come from the beaches of my beloved Pembrokeshire, collected on my month in a treehouse by the sea.

Sea glass, collected on my local beaches, in times gone by.

A collection of tiny white pebbles – there is something so beautiful about them.

The twisted piece of wire with beads: this was a spiral Christmas decoration I had been making with my grandchildren

One of them sat in the bathroom, and after the twins came to stay – I found this one had been just too tempting to resist – I rather like the resulting tiny wire sculpture.

The jam jar has more honeysuckle cuttings,

and the shell on the right was given to me by my Mum when I was a teenager.

A whole lot of family, friends and memories on that tiny windowsill.

Do you have similar little collections about the house?

Windows

Welcome to the Monthly Meet-Up Photo Challenge, posted on the first Tuesday each month. The theme of  WINDOWS is running throughout the year.

To join in please leave a link to one of your posts which includes a photo of a window. The post can be current or archive – sometimes it is fun to look back through your photos and old posts and rediscover them.

Three from me today:

Greenhouse shading creating pattern and atmosphere at Kingston Lacy

A window lighting the stairwell at Greenway House

And little Miss M painitng, looking out of my sitting room window a few weeks ago.

~

I’m excited to see the windows you are sharing with us this month!

End of Term

Little Miss M broke up from school on Tuesday, for the Summer Holidays. As she is leaving the school, her classmates made her a card.

They each drew a little picture for her, and some of the pictures were of her.

There were more on the back

M went through each one telling me a little bit about it, she LOVES her card.

On the back was this picture

Little Miss M: “Look Granny, Elliot drawed me with no eyes and no arms.”

Me: “Perhaps he was drawing himself.”

Little Miss M laughed …… ….  ……..  a lot!

“Granny!!! It looks nothing LIKE Elliot!”

 

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

 

 

In a Vase on Monday

It’s Summer! No more fires, so I can cover the top of the woodburner with a few crazy objects

From left to right

Back Row

Pink Watering Can

A few years back, after helping put together 3 weddings and numerous Christenings, it was about to be my 60th birthday – I was planning a big event for ME! The theme was to be English Country Garden, I bought tiny colourful plastic  flower pots in which I was going to serve chocolate mouse (earth) with pop cakes flowers in them, I bought a garden arch through which guests would enter the village hall, I intended to cover it with crocheted flowers, The drinks were going to be poured from brightly coloured watering cans …………..

woah!

Then my son and daughter-in-law annouced the impending arrival of twins – guess when they were due ON MY BIRTHDAY!

All plans for a big party were (happily) dropped – but I still have the watering cans!

And my children gave me a wonderful surprise birthday party in September on our family holiday. So all was very well!!!!

The can holds Jodie’s Forever Flowers and astrantia.

Orange Giraffe

I know you have seen the Giraffe before (from Chive), I hope you don’t mind her making another appearance. I’m very fond of her and her headgear today is a white perenial foxglove called Snowy Mountain.

I bought the seeds at Chelsea Flower Show.

I grew 6 for myself and gave some to friends – they were beautiful in the first year – last year, gorgeous I was thrilled with them. All but one has died, the one I have left is pathetic, it has this one flower spike. Oh dear!

Painting by Kaneda Hanaki

I saw this painting when I was in Japan. When I got home, I contacted the gallery to see if it was still available and it was! I love its quirkiness.

Front Row

Self-Hardening Clay objects:

Hedgehog with bead eyes: Made by Little Miss M

Pineapple 1 made by Little Bro

Pineapple 2 made by Bog Bro

Crocodile made by Miss E

Candlestick

Made by Devon ceramicist Ross Emerson

~~~

 

Joining the Garden Party at In a Vase on Monday.

 

 

 

Photo Challenge: Yellow

Welcome!!! It’s the Monthly Meet-Up Photo Challenge, which happens on the first Tuesday of each Month.

I had a happy time looking through my files to find archive photos featuring

YELLOW

This is Miss E with her Dad enjoying a bouncy castle a few years ago

A friend in a yellow silk dress at my daughter’s wedding, 2006

A postcard made for iHanna’s Postcard Swap 2016Collage waiting to be turned into a greetings cardPainted garden potsCandlelight at a wonderful surprise party thrown for me by my lovely kids and their partnersBig Sis at playgroup when she was 3 (she will be 8 this month)Swiss chard stalks from the gardens at Esalen, California – such happy memories from November/December 2008I was there for 6 amazing life-changing weeks on a Workstudy Course, working in the gardens and doing Creative Expression and Process ArtHave you ever tattooed a banana? No – really? See here how to do it

A plasterer’s bucket from when I was having my fabulous new bedroom created

A happy sunny yellow trip down memory lane for me – I hope you enjoyed coming along.

If you would like to see last month’s entries you can see them in the Comments in this Post.

Couldn’t resist including another blast from the past

To join in please post a link to your photos of YELLOW in the Comments. Archive, or current, all are welcome.

You can see all the prompts for the year on my Photo Challenge Page

For May the prompt is

FLOWER

 

Hearts

My family and I spent Half-Term in a wonderful holiday house in Devon.

We combined Pancake Day and Valentine’s Day, another excuse to bring out the ice-bowl I’d made for Christmas – it survived the 1.5 hour car journey, from freezer to freezer, really well.

the rice was asking for some decoration but the central stenciled heart did not work, a sprinkled heart worked better

time away allows us all to get creative…

the card my daughter made for her husband

get it?!

Little Miss M did her version, don’t you just love the toes!

and inside

and the card made by Dad and Little Miss M…..  a love dart to the heart ….

I do hope you had an enjoyable Valentine’s Day, not always easy for anyone on their own.

I’m joining in with Postcard From Gibraltar’s Friday Photo Challenge – I know it’s not Friday, but I hope I can just squeak in.

 

 

In a Magic Garden on Monday

….. where a dragon, Frosty the snowman and a little glass duck can frolic happily together

The above arrangement was created by Little Miss M aged 5, in a pot of succulents

 

 

 

 

 

Then we added to it

with two more funny Forever Flowers  made by Jodie

The photo below is Jodie’s, showing more of her wonderfully bonkers creations

I just LOVE them!!!! They make me smile and brighten up a dull, rainy Jaunuary day.

We added some ‘flowers’ made using sculpture pieces by Zolo

These pieces are great for the children to make fanciful sculptures with – sadly they cost a fortune to buy from the US once shipping and customs duty ave been added. I first bought a set at the airport in New York when I was coming back home in 2008. Then luckily a friend of mine was able to get another set for me when she visited the US more recently.

The vase:

Hazel catkins, ash twigs and golden privet.

Pop over to Rambling in the Garden to see what Cathy and other gardeners, from all over the globe, have put in their vases this Monday.

Silly Saturday with Shelma

Shelma was going out on a date

So excited she just couldn’t wait

She was looking her best

In her January Sales dress

The evening was going to be great

~

Sandy lit Shelma’s fuse

She loved his winkle picker shoes

It brightened her mood

To be with such a cool dude

He banished her January blues!

~

They wanted to paint the town red

But painted the beach blue instead

A moonlit walk along the sand

Strolling together hand in hand

Anticipating what lay ahead.

~

poem by Judy E. Martin

shell art by Sandra Dorey

 

 

What lies ahead for this couple I wonder, any ideas?

Will it be calm seas or stormy waters?

Judy and I have enjoyed teaming up again this week. I do love her take on things, pop across to Judy’s Blog to read more of her delightfully beguiling work.

Did you know you CAN still buy Winkle-Picker shoes? I’ll be looking out for them now.

I recently found the pebbles that my grandchildren children had drawn on last Summer, lurking in the bottom of a bag. They had obviously been lying in wait, ready for an appearance in a ‘Silly Saturday’ or two.

 

Woodland WiP Wednesday

The Woodland CAL created by Lucy at Attic24 is growing on me!

Week 1.

I struggled to get the pattern to work at first – my own fault – it looked so simple I just steamed ahead. After masses of counting, re-counting and undoing (or frogging) The penny dropped = LOOK AT LUCY’s TUTORIAL!!!!

Lucy does the best photo tutorials I know – I trust her implicitly – and there was the answer. Check that every third stitch in the ‘valleys’ lines up with the third stitch in the corresponding row below – sorted! Now I can wander along and enjoy the Woodland Walk.

Stylecraft Special DK and a 4.5mm hook

I have substituted Mocha (beige) with Walnut (brown) and I’m following Lucy’s Random colour order with slight adjustments to accommodate the Walnut.

My colour order so far: Lime, Cypress, Meadow, Mustard, Tomato, Spice, Storm, Duck Egg, Copper, Walnut, Gold, Pistachio, Grey, Lincoln

4 more colours to go, for this week – we get the next 18 on Friday.

Taking a walk in the Woodland today is a sweet creature made by Little Miss M out of self-hardening clay and some sticks.

The biggest joy is that I have joined the Attic24 Moorland and More Group again. It started up during last year’s CAL and has continued since. It is a brilliantly friendly and supportive group. I revel in all the detailed yarny chit-chat and practical tips.

How are you getting on with your WiPs this Wednesday?

More Notan inspired designs

Put three different coloured sheets one on top of the other and cut through all three layers together. Then have fun arranging the pieces you’ve created.

Add a few doodle decorations if you like.

Use camera settings, photo-editing or Photoshop to play around with different effects.

Have fun!

And then there are the offcuts to play with….

Great for greetings cards.  And I’m wondering about printing some out on canvas. They remind me of 1960’s designs. I think they would look good in a child’s bedroom or playroom, do you?

Click on any picture to see it larger

There are quite a lot of You Tube tutorials about creating Notan designs – This one is a simple one to get you started.

Notan Butterflies

This gallery contains 4 photos.

Letter

My entry in our One-a-Week Photo Challenge. 

The Letter A

I came across the Japanese Art of Paper Cutting called Notan, which uses positive and negative space. Go to Pinterest to see the most amazing examples.

The photo was taken using the ‘Sketch’ setting on my Nikon D5200.

Step – by – step:

A piece of A5 coloured paper and an A4 background

It needs to go on a coloured background

Couldn’t resist a bit of doodling, and then it needed to go on a black background. Now some of the doodling looks like cut-outs.

This is such a good activity to do with children aged 4 onwards.

The designs would make great greetings cards.

Please leave your link in the comments – Cathy and I always look forward to seeing each interpretation of the prompt – she has a corker this week!

Do The Monster Mash

On the scariest night of the year

The Halloween Disco was here

The Shelleys so cool

Dressed as ghosties and ghouls,

Looking rather scary and weird

 

Thriller got them up on the floor

Monster Mash had them begging for more,

Bewitched went down well

As did Bat out of Hell

And they danced as never before.

 

poem by Judy E. Martin

assemblage art by  Sandra Dorey

background painting by Master R aged 8

 

Are you all ready for Halloween? The Shelleys are and at the Dee-I-esS-Cee-O!

Dancing to Bobby Pickett’s 1962 Monster Hit

 

Silly Saturday!

Joining in with the Daily Post: Ghoulish

Beach

 

Passion for sand play

Creates dragon with baby

on Pembrokeshire beach

~

Photo Challenge Prompt: BEACH

Ronovan’s Haiku Prompts: PASSION and PLAY

 

Please leave links to your BEACH photos in the comments – thank you, looking forward to seeing them and remembering long summer days.