The countdown has begun

December 1st seems to come around faster and faster each year!  I usually like give the house a good clean and put my decorations up on the 1st but for the last few weeks I've been so busy trying to get the decorating done on the hall that It didn't happen yesterday, well except for giving the bedroom a deep clean and putting the Christmas bedding on, the rest will have to be done over the coming week.

The papering and painting in the hall has been taking up a lot of time and my hip and butt cheek, (sorry to be frank, lol) are still giving me some gyp, some days I've been in so much pain I've been close to tears.  I thought my visits to the chiropractor were doing some good, but now I feel like I'm wasting my money, I've tried heat, cold, various rubbing ointments and pain killers but nothing is getting rid of it.  We have a physiotherapist at our doctors and I've got an appointment for this coming Thursday, hopefully they will be able to shed some light on what's causing the pain and suggest some exercises, I've been like this for over two months now so I'll try anything!  Sciatica was dismissed but doctor google suggests that it could be just that, apparently the pain/ burning sensation does not necessarily extend down the leg.  Fingers crossed I get some relief soon because I'm like a bear with a sore head most of the time and not very good company.

Anyway, enough moaning.  There have been a couple of outings recently to cheer me up, It was our monthly Birmingham Stitchers meet up a couple of weeks ago, it was the Saturday that storm Bert hit so the day was very dark, wet and windy.

Outside the Library of Birmingham opposite the cafe where we meet they have a pop up ice rink and a ferris wheel, there were some braving the weather to ride the wheel and the two other rides, I was just happy to watch them while I waited for my bus home.

The cafe was once a bank, built in 1933 it was the headquarters of the Birmingham Municipal Bank, a savings bank which was created by Lorn Neville Chamberlain for the workers of the city.  The bank closed in 1998 and the building was vacant until it was purchased by the University of Birmingham in 2017 with the aim of repurposing the space for both the University and community.  The Exchange opened in 2021 and in addition to the cafe there is event space, meeting rooms and outdoor courtyard and roof terrace.

It's a lovely open space with plenty of light, perfect for stitching.

I took Margaret Mary along with me again and did get a good bit of stitching done this time.

I did hope that I might be able to get a finish on this by the end of the year, and If I just concentrated on this one thing I could probably do it, but December is a busy month so I'm being realistic and saying that It will most likely be the end of January, and that's ok.

 After the disappointment of my Bristol Christmas Market trip a few weeks ago we had an outing to Worcester Christmas Market, It's been about six years since we visited last and remembering how busy it was on the weekend that time we decided to go on Thursday with daughter's no's. 1 and 3.   We had a wonderful day out, the things on offer were good quality, there was also a craft market in both the Town Hall and the Cathedral, both with amazing sellers.  It was the first day of the market and although there were still a lot of people around we were still able to see what the stalls were offering without all the pushing and shoving, and we enjoyed a lovely pub lunch too.

The stairs and landing carpet was fitted yesterday, thank goodness, I was fed up having to try and avoid treading on the gripper rods! Also the last of the two radiators were replaced.  The radiator guy didn't finish until gone five and by the time I'd cleaned up the mess (such a mess!) it was late so I had an early night.  I put my Christmas tree up while the carpet fitter was here but no decorations yet, just the lights.  I'll get it trimmed in the next couple of days.

I wanted to try and post a bit more leading up to Christmas so I'll hopefully be back in a few days and share some of the things I've been working on.

-X-

Rescued - Not my work

 I do love a mooch around a charity shop, It's not often I find anything other than books but sometimes I get lucky, like with the Fat Face skirt I found for a fiver a few weeks back, I was pleased with that find.  

But back in the Summer I came across this finished cross stitch in a basket with some paintings, I thought It was perfect to put with my other Autumn pieces.  I paid just £4.00 for this, which is a lot less than the kit would have cost, not to mention the hours it took to stitch.

This is one of the Four Seasons by Derwentwarter Desings.  If you look very close you can see that It wasn't professionally framed, but It's not too bad.  There is a sticker on the back saying Handmade by Jean Knowles, so thank you Jean :-)

I believe Bothy Threads bought out Derwentwater Designs but you can still by the kits for all four of the seasons.

I saw this next one hanging on the wall behind the charity shop counter in a local town, and you can see that I paid £3.50 for this one.

I'm not sure but I think this is/was a DMC kit, the only thing I can find similar is called The Christmas Window and is for sale on AliExpress, but that piece is larger than this one, perhaps whoever stitched it only stitched half the chart?  I've no idea about that but I do know that It was framed by my local needlework shop where I get my framing done because there is a sticker on the back with the their information.  Whoever stitched it wrote the year 2010 on that sticker so we at least know that it was framed fourteen years ago

I always think It's so sad to see someones hard work sold for so little, but at least these two pieces have found a good home with me.

We've had the boys staying over for the weekend as Jenny and James have been to London.  Goodness can those boys eat, lol.  You forget that having children around is a constant round of preparing food, tidying up and breaking up squabbles!  I love them to bits but It's been a noisy few days so I'm looking forward to some quiet time tomorrow.

-X-

Not what I was expecting

 It's been a number of years since I went on a coach trip but when I saw that a local company had a trip to Bristol Christmas market with a stop for a carvery meal on the return journey I booked  myself on it.

Bristol Is somewhere I've wanted to visit for a while, It's always mentioned as being a nice place to shop with a variety of independent shops so I was really surprised to discover that It wasn't at all what I expected.  Cabot Circus and The Galleries did have some different shops than we have locally but The Arcade which supposedly had independent shops turned out to be mostly nail, hair and beauty shops. Although It was nice to explore new shops the main reason for the trip was the Christmas Market.

What a disappointment. I imagined walking round and getting into the Christmas spirit with perhaps a glass of mulled wine and a mince pie, ha!

 Seems you can put up a tree, a few Santa statues and some wooden huts and call it a Christmas Market.  None of the stalls were selling anything really Christmas related, there was a stand selling jewellery another selling wooden items and one selling those bohemian ceramics and the rest was made up of food and drink.  The prices for food was ridiculous, loaded chips were £8.99 and churros £7, a burger was about the same.  Needless to say I didn't buy anything to eat, nor was there anything else I wanted to buy.  I initially thought the four hours we were there wouldn't be long enough, turned out that It was quite long enough!

But, we had a carvery on the way back to look forward to, and thankfully that was wonderful and the highlight of the day.

Will I visit Bristol again?  Well not for the shopping but I would probably like to do a sightseeing trip sometime in the future. 

For now I'm in search of a much more Christmassy experience.

-x-

Out and about

It's been a busy couple of weeks again, some fun stuff but also doctor appointments and chiropractor visits mixed in too.  Those chiropractor visits seem to be working, albeit slowly.  The  Doctor suggested an xray on my hip which took me two days of calling to book and they can't get me in until December 26th, the problem may well have sorted itself out by then

Halloween night was fair and dry so we did have quite a few kids trick or treating, they were all younger kids and all had made really good efforts with their costumes, there was only a few treats left at the end of the night.

The night before Halloween Joanne was taking the children on a pumpkin walk and asked if I wanted to join them.  It was held at Bodenham Arboretum which I've visited a few times in the day light, the paths lead around a central lake with a working farm about half way round, it's a really nice place for a walk  The organisers had put a lot of effort into the pumpkins which decorated the path, some were real works of art and it made for a spooky atmosphere because there is no artificial lighting.  When we reached the farm the kids could make a magic wand from sticks and wool listen to a spooky story.  The walk ended with marshmallow toasting.  It was perfect, and unlike so many attractions today there were no fairground rides to spoil the magic.

The giant spider was brilliant and I loved how they decorated the bales of hay.  They had also set scenes at various points using some of the farm vehicles, It was well worth the £10 ticket price.

 Last weekend was a busy one, I had a day out on Saturday with my daughter Stevie, we had a lovely lunch in a fairly local farm shop and then called into a small garden centre on the way back where they were hosting a craft fair, we had such a lovely time that I forgot to take any photos, lol

 Sunday was the last day of the Sewing for Pleasure show at the NEC Birmingham, the ticket price included the Cake International and Simply Christmas show.  I bought my ticket last minute thinking It would be quieter on the Sunday, It wasn't.  My only purchase was two pieces of fabric to make something Stevie had requested, (more on that next week perhaps).  There was nothing in either the Cake Show or the Christmas Show that I wanted, the Christmas one is always full of over-priced things that you can get cheaper on the high street anyway.  

I did spend quite some time admiring all the amazing cakes, although these are not the edible kind, they are purely to showcase the amazing sugar craft talent.

The biggest and probably the most impressive creation was the life sized replica of Elizabeth I.

Inspired by the Rainbow portrait at Hatfield Park and created by Emma Jayne Cake Designs, this amazing piece of work took four weeks to create, three weeks for the body and a week for the head.  

Following the show the cake is to be taken to Hatfield Park and auctioned for charity.

Aren't they fabulous? the time and skill involved is just unbelievable.  There were some 'real' cakes that were taste tested and in amongst those I spotted this.

Oh dear! Imagine taking the time to make your entry only to have this happen on the way to the event, I can imagine that they were very upset.

 I've been stitching a lot this week but I will catch up with that another time, It''s Remembrance Day tomorrow, Oliver's Scout unit are not marching for the second year running, they don't have enough people to cover, apparently.  Bonnie and Jacob are doing a short march from their meeting place to the church with Beavers and Squirrels and Bonnie has been chosen as flag bearer so we will go and watch them and stay for the service.  

Hope you are having a good weekend whatever you are up to.

Take care

-X-

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-