Mud Running

Today was the annual local mud run so we walked from the country house to the cricket ground and got signed up. (I didn't run because someone has to hold the jumpers and take the photos.) After some horrible wet weather yesterday, this morning brought clear blue skies and strong sunshine. Only a cold wind reminded us that we are drifting gently into winter.

The boys ran off somewhere while I took my camera fingers through a thorough warm up and stretch.

The full race is a pretty gruelling 11km slog across soggy, boggy, wet fields and lanes. Once the main race had been started and everyone had disappeared in a schlep of lycra, the 2km mini fun run got underway. No 1 child returned 14 mins later in about 35th position and child number 2 skidded in about a minute after. Both did very well and naturally we had to take pics of the medal. This was the moment I had trained for after all.

They took their muddy little selves off to look out for Super Dad and watch the end of the race. Once again family pride runs high with all boys taking on the challenge and winning even if they didn't win, if you see what I mean.

It took a mammoth shower session before they were all clean enough to be taken to the local pub and fed a huge Sunday lunch. My nose has only just thawed out!

 

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Mouse Mat

Our sewing teacher gave us all a summer challenge a few weeks ago.  She sent us a few small pieces of fabric and we had to make a quilty thing using each of the fabrics and were allowed to add one additional fabric.  I was on a bit of a mouse roll at the time so decided to interpret the challenge in such as way as I got to make another mouse. so here is my "mouse mat".  The quilting is sneakily added in the quilt the mouse is sitting on.  I've just realised I've added buttons.  Ummm... I don't think that was in the brief so don't tell anyone 'kay?

In other news, it's autumn here and I've got the photographic evidence...

 ...and we had a fabby full moon last weekend.  It's a cracker isn't it? 

I played about with my camera settings and ended up with something which looks either like an Alpine mountain (rather than the stone wall it actually is) or a painting.  I like it.

Biscuits for Macmillan!

Morning!  It's an early blog this morning as I and my work colleagues pack up our cakes, biscuits, flapjacks and bakes for the fund raising Coffee Morning for Macmillan's Cancer Support.  In addition to the mouse I've made some empire biscuits stuffed with delicious strawberry jam, iced and half a glace cherry blobbed on top.  I don't think we'll be needing breakfast today!  There's also the promise of a Celebrity Baker from The Great British Bake Off, a hugely popular programme here in the UK so all us amateur bakers are pretty excited about that too.  And it's Friday!  Does it get any better?!

A Mouse for Macmillan

The company I work for is a big supporter of Macmillan Cancer Support and we all look forward to the annual Coffee Morning which gives us an excuse to eat more cake than is good for us!  This year however, we were talking about different things we could do apart from bake and eat.  As a result, some of my (male?) colleagues will be getting waxed in exchange for hard cash.  It's in a good cause.  That's what we've told them.

My contribution is a mouse.  I'm not entirely sure why and I'll bake something too but we're going to raffle the mouse and hopefully it will raise a smile too :)

The pattern for the mouse came from this rather wonderful book by Tone Finnanger.  I've made several things from it and they've all turned out well.  Now I'm almost at the stage of needing to hold my book together with sellotape it's so well used.

I wanted to let the recipient know this was handmade, therefore I needed a label and found an idea somewhere on the internet to use fray check for hemlines and decided to adapt it.  Print what you want onto photo fabric.  Allow it to dry then cut out.   

Gloop fray check around the edges and leave to dry.  

 Fold your label in half and sew into a discreet area of your handmade item.  (In this case under the dress of the mouse.)  Ta dahhhh....

In Search of Richard III

As well as crafting, I like history and I've always felt the Tudors were too keen to turn Richard III into a monster so since my late teens I've rejected the Shakespeare villain and read as much about all sides of the argument as I could.  (If you like an academic approach visit the pages of the Richard III Society or if you prefer a well researched novel read Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time.)  
And now there have been exciting developments in a car park in Leicester!  If you watch the recent press conference the archaeologists look pretty excited about what they've found and despite the cautious words and warnings about scientific testing those guys are grinning like crazy and BUZZING!!

Now I am a bit biased but I've been wondering what would have happened if Richard hadn't died in 1485 but had defeated the real usurper, Henry Tudor, and won the Battle at Bosworth....

We wouldn't have had the unlovely Tudors who ruthlessly and efficiently removed all opposition  including Margaret the Duchess of Salisbury and niece of Richard who at the age of 72 was sent to a messy execution at the hands of an inexperienced and clumsy axe man.  Perhaps England would have remained a Catholic country and preserved both it's religious houses and the treasures stored within them,  treasures denied to us now having been destroyed by the greed of Henry VIII.  Without a crown on his head he wouldn't have  been in a position to make 6 women miserable and 2 of them headless. Shakespeare would not have written his history plays in quite the same way and we would have been spared hearing "Now is the winter of our discontent etc" delivered in bizarre tones by actors who should know better, dragging themselves across a stage like smacked spiders. Nor would there be a state in America named Virginia.

Mary Queen of Scots may have managed to live out her inevitable exile without ending with her neck on a block, her son would not have inherited the crowns of Scotland and England and her grandson would not have had his head chopped off by Cromwell who would have been remembered for being a conscientious Huntingdon MP with no need to create a new model army to fight a king.  With no restoration we may have lost some exuberant and bawdy plays but I like to think Nell Gwyn's charms would have worked on whichever King occupied the throne at that time!

If the Stuarts had stayed north of the border, there may never had been an act of union between England and Scotland and our flag would look quite different. Perhaps the slaughter of Culloden and the systematic destruction of the Gaelic culture would never have happened.

We would have avoided the Georgians although the first elector of Hanover would have still imprisoned his first wife for 30 years in Castle Ahlden, the third George would still have been known as a mad man instead of an ill man and his son would still have grown fat on food and poor on gambling. But he would have had no Parliament to pay his debts!  Parliament may not have developed in the way it did had it not seen the chance to take greater control into it's hands under a new and reluctant German king. We would have been spared Victoria and her endless monuments but would have lost out on the enterprise and energy of Albert. Without Victoria's grandchildren in charge of Europe, would there have been a 1st World War?  And if Alexei Nikolaevich had not inherited haemophilia from his gloomy granny could Rasputin have held such influence and would Russia have kept it's Tsar? Communism could have been a footnote in history and the nations would have had to find other reasons to argue with each other. Is it conceivable that a 2nd World War could have happened without the first?

How exciting if the bones in a Leicestershire car park are finally proved to be those of the last Plantagenet king of England!  And what a pointless but curious way to while away time playing the "what if" game of history.   And...if it is Richard...can we have an extra bank holiday in 2013 for his state funeral please?!

Hidden Message Christmas Card Tutorial

The lovely ladies at Paperarts do a card making class on the first Thursday of every month so no prizes for guessing how I spent my Thursday evening last week.  We were shown how to make a gorgeous card with a secret sliding section and since the night's are drawing in here in the UK and my thoughts are turning to seasonal baking and making, I thought I'd exploit this post to help me get ahead of my Christmas card making!  We're going to make a card with an insert which slides up to reveal a hidden message....

Assemble your papers and cardstock.  Choose your inks and stamps and have some sticky dots, glue and a hole punch standing by.

You're cutting out everything in inches:

A card 

Paper to cover half of the card 

3 sizes of white card which you'll stamp onto

3 mats to mount them on each 1/4 inch bigger than the white card  

You'll also need a circle.  The size doesn't matter too much.  

Cut your paper and card to the sizes shown below....

Now stamp as shown below.  Position your stamping on both white card sizes 3 x 5 and 2.5 x 2 towards the top because only the top will be visible once the card is complete.

Now you've assembled everything.  Glue the stamped pieces of card on their mats and take the long white 11 x 4 1/4 card and fold in half.

Now glue the 5 1/2 x 4 1/4 piece on the front half of your folded card.

Open the card out and mark out the sizes below on the inside face of the card with the piece you've just glued on underneath.  (You'll be cutting through two pieces of card.)

Cut out the two narrow pieces as shown in the picture above so that you end up with two slots shown below.  Then position your 5 1/4 x 3 1/4 stamped and matted card inside so  it's top is level with the open top of your folded card.  Cut or punch a semi circle in the top as shown.

Use double sided narrow tape to glue the extreme outside edges together.  Only glue the sides!

With your card glued and your stamped card inserted, place two sticky dots at the bottom of the two slots.

 Now cut your circle in half and place on top of the sticky dots... 

When you pull the inserted card up, it should take the semi circles up and get stopped at the top of the slot.  

 Now you can position your smallest stamped and matted card as below and glue to the semi circles. 

When you push the inserted card down, it will take the smallest card you've just stuck onto the semi circles with it.  Neat huh?  Next take your remaining stamped and matted card and put raised dots/foam shapes down the sides only.  Place this over the top of the smallest card on the front  and secure in place.  (See below if I haven't explained that very well!)

 It should look like this....

 Add a little frou frou ribbon to the top (punch a hole or skewer with a pointy stick) and when you pull the ribbon the card reveals the hidden message.  Ta dah!!! 

August

It's been so long since my last post (mostly due to August getting in the way) that I almost had to relearn how to work blogger.  But I've figured out which buttons to press now and can update you on what we've been up to that's kept me away from the PC...

Himself and I strapped on our walking boots for a long weekend of walking in the Yorkshire Dales and it was beeeeooootiful.  In the midst of a rainy summer, we had a little sunshine and made the most of it.  The countryside is such a dramatic contrast to the soft stone and woodland of my more familiar Cotswolds that I came home with over 500 pictures!  

Looking at the greens captured in between the stone walls made me imagine quilt designs...

There were some surprises such as this heart in a rock and below, a log lying in a dried up stream with the coins of hundreds of visitors pressed into it's soft wood.  It's such an unexpected sight, you could easily walk past and never notice it.  But once we'd noticed one, we saw several "money logs".

A couple of weeks later we were enjoying another long weekend camping and body boarding at one of our favourite places in north Devon.   

This is the body.  This is the board.  Body boarding.

 It looks almost like a warmer, more southerly location but this really is north Devon!

We celebrated 2 birthdays.  For himself, I baked a Victoria sponge and it was decorated/graffeteed by both his boys.  It's difficult to tell but these are flowers and meaningful splats made with pre-filled, coloured icing pens. 

The 2nd birthday was himself's mum who reached 80.  We took over a local hall, invited all her relatives and friends and had a civilised afternoon with catering, speeches and balloons.

Sadly, there was also a loss in the family.  Making this card helped me appreciate crafting in a new way, as a way of remembering the lost one and as a way of reaching out to their closest family.  When words feel difficult and clumsy, a handmade memorial speaks for you. 

There was more, happier creativity too as I returned to a hobby which has always left me frustrated because I cannot seem to master it!  Watercolour painting!!  This time I've set myself a challenge to actually sit down properly with the correct materials and take my time to LEARN!  With any other interest I am always realistic about what result to expect, except this.  I expect myself to churn out works of art despite the fact that I don't know how to use the brushes or how much water to use or how to mix the colours.  Sheesh!  If I was baking a cake I'd expect it to be a bit ropey first time but to improve each time I made it  and that's the logic I need to apply to watercolours :)  So using a book and a set of DVD's I did a tree (easy - think stick covered in blobs)

...and a moonlit scene.  It's a bit dodgy and the middle ground colours went seriously wonky but you can mostly tell what it is (ie it's not a bowl of fruit) so I'm happy with that.  My next lesson is misty mountains and I'm hoping it is achieved with blobs because I can do those :)

Must be Summer...

So tonight, I'm messing about in my craft room (of course), listening to some banging tunes (not really) and wondering what to do with some gorjussss papers purchased recently when I hear a slow deep "whhoooooosssh" from outside.  I know that sound.  I hear it whenever the air is very still, usually early, early mornings or calm summer evenings.  And sure enough, it's the whoosh of balloons inflating ....

Balloons have been rising into the sky for the past three evenings and who can blame them.  Because I'm at the top of a building on the top of a hill, I get a close up view of the passengers in the baskets and sometimes I hear them whoop as the balloons rapidly ascend.  I had to rush to grab my camera and hang out of the window to catch these before they disappeared off into the sunset.

And when they finally did float away, I was left with a beautiful apricot coloured sun and the high pitched song of the swifts buzzing around my windows.  

I'm hoping the nice weather holds because me and Himself are off north tomorrow to the Yorkshire Dales for some walking and sight seeing.  It's a new area to us both and we're really looking forward to it.  (I haven't mentioned that there are 3 craft shops in one village alone.  Can't wait!!)

After the rain

Finally after all the rain, this weekend the sun decided to shine on the south west of England!  Out we rushed into the neglected garden of the Country House to catch up on all the weeding, hoeing and...well actually not doing any of that - just sitting outside enjoying it all :)

The raindrops were still hiding in the folds of this perfect rose and the scent was fantastic, it really filled the air but it didn't last long.  By the end of the day the petals had wilted away.

We're in deepest farming land here and the world smelled earthy and fresh when the rain cleared.  The flowers and thistles down the lane all popped out and the insects, bees and birds got busy.

This was the first BBQ of the year - very late for us as we take every opportunity to get outside and start a fire and the boys take any chance to slap a bit of cow on the griddle!

 Then for dessert.....it had to be...

 Bliss on a stick!  For how ever short a time it may be with us - long live summer :)