October makes and celebrations

October was a busy month and seemed to pass by really quickly.  We had two family birthdays, Oliver turned 12 on the 17th and It was Marks birthday on the 21st.  Mark never likes a fuss and is really hard to buy for so we just went out for a meal on the Monday night, just the two of us, not something we do very often so it was nice, and being a Monday night it was quiet too.

Oliver requested that nanny make his birthday cake, a lemon one with sweets was the brief, I think he was happy with what I came up with 😀

It's been a busy month for stitching too with the Quarry Bank Stitchers day retreat on Sunday 13th and on the following Tuesday six of us met up at the Nimble Thimble for a stitching and shopping day then last Saturday was our monthly meet up at the Exchange cafe in Birmingham.  The retreat day is always a good day, this time there were a couple of new ladies at our table, ( hi Esther if you are reading this, it was lovely to meet you and your friend).  Esther emailed me after reading about the previous meet-up on my blog, so that was lovely to be able to share information about our meet-up, and happily they were able to secure a place.  

Our monthly meet-up in Birmingham is as I said in a cafe, the only requirement is that we purchase something to eat and drink whilst we are there. In the past they have reserved an area for us all to sit together but have now decided that they are no longer going to reserve tables, hopefully that's just because with Christmas coming they will be expecting more trade from shoppers and the Christmas market.  It would be a shame if we had to cancel that meet-up because it's a lovely atmosphere.

Mary Margaret has had quite a few outings this month and this is how she is looking at the moment.

I'd say she is over half way done and If I can get a few evenings stitching during the coming weeks I should be able to get her finished before the end of the year.

I only made a couple of purchases at our Nimble Thimble visit, a couple of charts and  I took some charts from stash with me to get fabric for, which prompted my next start. 

Black Bird Designs Red Bird Sampler

I can't tell you how many years this has been waiting to be stitched!  Once I started it was all I wanted to stitch and was done in no time.

Although I took it with me to buy fabric for I ended up finding something to suit in stash along with the threads.  Not sure If I'll take this to be framed or look for a frame and do it myself, depends if I can find something that suits and I like.

The end of October is the time to share our Stick6 finishes, this time mine is a Prairie Schooler Santa.

Only one more to stitch for this year, I do love taking part in this SAL, It keeps me motivated to stitch with no pressure. 

My final finish for the month are my socks.  I thought the colours were perfect for Halloween month.

The yarn is Opal, from their Beauty Collection, colour no. 11300

Back in the Summer my five year old laptop died and was beyond repair, reluctant to buy another one at the time I've been using my fifteen year old laptop, which works fine except for the fact that I have to keep it plugged into the mains because the battery is no good and I just keep putting off buying a new one.  Then a couple of weeks ago some of the keys weren't responding, rebooting solved the problem a few times but then that didn't work so I was left with no a,s or d and no return key either!  I was still reluctant to get a new laptop as there may be some black Friday deals soon or offers over Christmas, plus I hate shopping for new appliances of any sort.  It took me a good few days to realise that I could buy a separate keyboard quite cheaply which would enable me to still use my old laptop😂  So that's what I'm doing at the moment and I have to say that typing on a proper keyboard is way better than typing on a laptop keyboard.  That is rather a long winded way of saying that I am way behind on commenting on blogs at the moment, but I will try and catch up soon.

I was going to share some charity shop stitching finds with you but I've rambled on far too much already so I'll save those for another time.

Hope you are all well and have a fantastic November, It'll be Christmas before we know it!

-X-

Last week

Last week was a week full of sorting, again.  

I do declutter regularly but always manage to fill a bag for the charity shop each time.  I didn't pick up my knitting or stitching much during the week so no progress worth showing but I did manage to pickle the beetroot I'd harvested from the allotment.  Only enough for one jar this time but we do have more in the ground which aren't ready to pull just yet.  I've not tested it yet, the recipe I found online was a simple one, just vinegar and brown sugar and it said to leave in a dark place for about two weeks.

If it's not good at least there is only one jar and I can try out another recipe for the rest.

Since the oven had been on to sterilise the pickle jar I made us a cake for the weekend as well.  

The recipe for this Anglesey cake came from this little book, 

I have several of these Favourite Recipe books picked up from various trips, I added The Grow Your Own Recipes to my collection from our recent visit to The Black Country Museum, there are definitely some things in there I will be trying out at some point and If they are as good as the cakes I have made from the baking ones we won't be disappointed.

I also had a lovely surprise parcel arrive last week.  

My lovely friend Jo, who I'm sure you know blogs at Through the Keyhole sent me the most thoughtful gift.  She has been reading the Seven Sisters series by Lucida Riley and thought I might enjoy them too so she sent me the first book to get me started, but not only that, look at all the other Autumnal goodies she included along with the book.

I admit I got quite emotional when I opened it.  I shall enjoy using them all, in fact the Caramac chocolates have already been enjoyed and I made a hot chocolate using one of the chocolate sticks last night 😋 Thank you again Jo for being such a kind and thoughtful friend.

Speaking of reading and books, I noticed that for Prime Members Amazon has a three month free trial offer on Kindle Unlimited.  I haven't read anything on my kindle for at least four years but when I looked into it I quite liked the look of some of the books on offer, so I signed up and right away downloaded a couple and chose to start The Lost Bookshop.  Evie Woods is a new author to me but one that I will look out for again as this is so far a very enjoyable read.

I made the most of the sunshine yesterday and spent a couple of hours in the morning at the allotment, I have onions to go in so prepared where they will be planted and gave all over a general tidy up.  In the afternoon took everything out of the bathroom and sanded the woodwork down, horrible job but has to be done.  Today I've painted the woodwork and the ceiling and tomorrow will give it another coat and put everything back again.  Sometime in the next couple of weeks I will do the same to the shower/laundry room, although giving the shower a good descaling on Saturday Mark discovered that the inside had corroded so badly that we now need a new shower 🙄 

At least we found out before any damage was done.

-X-

Taking a step back in time

 For the last couple of years we've visited the Autumn Show at the Malvern Three Counties Showground which is held on the last weekend in September.  With all the rain last week we were a bit reluctant, parking is on fields and although hubby drives a large 4x4 truck and we probably wouldn't get stuck, if other drivers did it could turn into hours to get off the parking area.  They show the same things every year and the stands are selling the same wares so we didn't feel as though we were missing out.

We decided instead to have a day out closer to home.

The Black Country Living Museum is only a few miles from where we live, I've visited on several occasions, with my children when they were younger and with the grandchildren.  I hadn't realised that Mark had never visited.  So that's where we decided to go.  

As the name suggests, it's a living museum where you can experience life as it was in The Black Country of years gone by.  The area known as The Black Country is in the West Midlands and the  Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall and the City of Wolverhampton.   

Some people think Birmingham is part of the Black Country, it's not, and Black Country folk will always be happy to put you straight on this if you say it is 😁

The West Midlands was at the heart of the first Industrial Revolution and its name is thought to come about because of the air pollution from the factories and the black coal seams in the area.  Queen Victoria when she visited at age thirteen is said to have written in her diary;

The men, women, children country and houses are all black.  But I cannot by any description give an idea of it's strange and extraordinary appearance.  

The Black Country flag represents the areas industrial heritage with the black representing the coal dust, the red representing the fires from the furnaces, the chain represents the chain making which the area is famous for and the white cone shape representing the glass cones and iron furnaces that were a common sight.

It's been a good few years since I last visited the museum and there have been some new additions in the meantime to include a 1940-1960's high street, infant welfare centre and cast iron houses.

I loved the new high street with it's familiar shops, and it gives you a sense of how much things improved in living standards from just a few decades before.

The co-op supermarkets are still around, although not as small and friendly as this one would have been

Does anyone remember any of these?

I remember my granny having a block of green fairy soap, it was so big it was hard to hold in your hands, lol

If only they made chocolate boxes as pretty as this now

And others of you who are around my age will remember this horrid toilet paper they had in schools!  It just wasn't fit for purpose 😆

The newsagent's had some familiar chocolate, although the size and packaging has changed so much.  Look at the size of the crunchie and the penguin bar!

The Daily Mail was offering readers a chance to win a new car worth £1,250

The cast iron houses were a very popular attraction and I was unable get any photos of the insides.  These cast iron houses were built by Dudley council after WWI to meet the demand for housing when material and skilled workers were in short supply but they proved expensive to build and once the traditional brick became more available the council reverted to the cheaper option and the cast iron ones became experimental.

A lot of the buildings at the Black Country museum are original buildings, dismantled and re-built on site.  The clinic/welfare centre building however is a replica of the Lea Road Welfare Centre Wolverhampton opened in June 1928, as you can see they stayed true to the building design.

Image below taken from the BCLM facebook page

As soon as we walked in we were amazed that not only did the inside look like a baby clinic it SMELT like one!  I wasn't the only person to comment and ask how on earth they re-created the smell.  The volunteer couldn't give us an answer, only mentioned that there was a Box in the doctors office, we looked and couldn't find any box so are still none the wiser.

There were too many people around to get a photo of the room but it was set out exactly how I remember the one where I took my eldest daughter when she was a baby, the big weighing scales, various toys for the older children to play with and of course selling Farley's Rusks, Rose Hip syrup and Cow and Gate baby milk.

I remember my mum having a big Silver Cross pram when my youngest sister was born.  The Royal babies are still carried around in these beautiful prams, not at all practical for today of course, but they still lovely.

Knitting was a necessity more than a choice back then and there were lots of hand knitted cardigans and matinee coats on show as well as a lovely hand made dress and romper suit with hand sewn smocking, you can just see those on the end of the table in the second photo.

There are demonstrations and talks but we  had just missed one and were too early for the next one, perhaps I'll catch those on another visit.

I always find it fascinating to look around the older buildings, those dated before the 1930's, it's hard to imagine how people managed, it was certainly a much harder way of life.

We moan about having the clothes on the airer on rainy days, but imagine how long it would take for clothes to dry that had only been through the ringer!  

The Black Country Museum is used as the set for many of the scenes in Peaky Blinders

The setting for Charlies Yard in Peaky Blinders

There are various demonstrations as you walk around, nail making, chain making, brick making, all trades that the area is well known for.  My dad was a chain maker all his life, I remember going to see him in his chain shop and it was exactly how its set up here, such a  hard labour intensive job and a long process to make just one link of chain.  Today it's all done by machine so it's good to see how it was once done.

We had a great day out, entry wasn't cheap though at £25.95 each, but that does give you return visits for a whole year, so If you look at it like that It's really not so bad.

-X-

Some more socks and a bit of this and that

Monday was a wash-out where the weather was concerned so I had a lazy day at home just pottering inside.  Tuesday was much better and so I spent a few hours tidying up the garden, there were a few plants weighed down by all the rain and even one of the bird boxes had come off the tree, although that might have been one of the squirrels.

It took a good couple of hours to get it all tidy again and It looked lovely, for a day at least.  It's raining again today so on the next dry day I'll do it all over again. 

 Clearing leaves is a bit of a thankless task this time of year, but as I've said before, we have far too many to leave and oak leaves can take up to two years to break down, so It's really something that has to be kept on top of.  Once they have stopped falling, towards the end of November, I can take a breather.

I planted more Rudbeckia around the garden this year, It does make the garden look more cheery, even on a dull day

Love how the Chameleon changes colour in the Autumn

I grew the cosmos from seed this year and they are really tall, over five feet, they are starting to look a little straggly now but still have plenty of flowers

I popped to the allotment in the afternoon, there wasn't anything to do there but I wanted a lettuce, there was broccoli ready too, as rain is forecast for the rest of the week I picked what was ready.   I'm so chuffed with what we have been able to grow in such a short time, I came home with four heads of broccoli and two lettuce.  I shared some of the bounty with my sister and have put some of the broccoli in the freezer.  I think there will be some beetroot ready very soon, we are going to have a go at pickling that, no idea how to go about it but I'm sure we can call on google and you tube for some advice.  

I was still in the mood for knitting socks after finishing my Autumn ones so at the weekend I cast on another pair with the yarn I'd picked out for October.

The yarn is an Opal from their Beauty collection and has extract of Edelweiss and vitamin E in the yarn.   It's so soft and lovely to knit with; and the orange, purple and green colours makes it perfect for October / Halloween.

Last Wednesday in the month is stitching group.  I had planned on going but it's still raining and now I'm settled i don't think I want to venture out again so I'm going to make myself a cuppa and see if there is anything worth watching, if not I'll have an early night.

-X-

This week.......

 I finished my September Autumn inspired socks.

Yarn is Pumpkin Spiced Latte from Blue Fern Yarn

Worked on another Trescao jumper

Almost finished the body so it shouldn't take too long

Yarn is James C Brett Shhhhhh.  Colour number Sh11

 Met up with some like-minded people for a stitching afternoon.

It was lovely meeting and chatting to those I've know for a while and also meeting some new people this time, hopefully the will become regulars too at our meet-ups

I worked on Mary Margaret by Carriage House Samplings while I was there

Lots of baking happened.

The Scouts where my daughter, Joanne volunteers held a charity coffee morning on Saturday, she asked If I would make some cakes for them.  There were other cake-makers too of course and they did really well raising £115 for the charity.  

While I was in a baking mood I also made a tea loaf for us, It was good and voted a winner by Mark, whose not a cake person. 

Had a bash at making bread

It came out pretty good but not sure bread-making will be a regular thing because it's not something we eat a lot of, I just had a craving for marmalade on toast

And I enjoyed walking in the glorious Autumn sunshine

Today is the official start of Autumn and the weather next week is set to be very wet, we have had a good run of sunny dry weather lately though so shouldn't complain.

Enjoy your week

-X-

Growing, growing, gone

 It certainly feels like Autumn has arrived with cooler mornings and nights, this September is more like the ones I remember as a child, going back to school when there was that nip in the air.  I really don't mind this time of year, by the end of August I'm ready for a new season and a new start and the colours everywhere are so lovely, I love decorating for Autumn as much as i do for Christmas  

On Monday I spent a good three hours down the allotment tiding everything up.  We've had a bit of a disaster with the cabbages and some of the broccoli and cauliflower, they were covered in cabbage mealy aphid.  I thought at first I would be able to wash it off but the further I went I discovered that all of the plants were covered, I didn't want to risk it spreading any further so ripped the whole lot out!

Looks disgusting, and this is one leaf that wasn't that bad!

At the moment the other broccoli, we will need to keep an eye on it though, if you can catch them early enough you should be able to wash them off. 

Everything else seems to be doing ok.

We have a few lettuce, and behind that we have squash, no fruit yet but loads of flowers and there are still a few courgettes to come

Sweetcorn

Carrots, salad onions and peppers.  We probably won't get anything now on the pepper plants.

The kidney beans were slow to start but are growing nicely now

We also have leeks and sprouts which are both doing well.  Not bad considering we only started a few short months ago.

We were keen to get things in the ground when we got the plot and should have given more thought to the layout, we've been talking about how we want to set it out and what we want to grow next year. 

 Mark is going to make us a brassica cage, the cabbage, broccoli and cauli I dug out was under one of those mesh tunnels and we reckon that exasperated the aphid issue, because they had got so big the air flow wasn't so good and perhaps if other friendly bugs had been able to get in the aphids wouldn't have gotten hold.  Oh well, it's all a learning curve isn't it

At home I've taken out all the tomato plants, what a disappointment.  We've had a few that ripened but the majority stayed green.  

I have a couple of bowls in the conservatory and they are slowly turning red.

I've seen online that a lot of people in the UK have said the same of their tomatoes this year, just my luck that I've gone all out on the growing on a bad year 😏
 
-X-