My Chelsea......

......it should have been the Chelsea flower show this week, in its place there are a series of television programmes looking back.
My garden is tiny but how fortunate, in these isolation times, that we have this small space, my heart goes out to those who don't have even a balcony. We have been able to enjoy the exceptional weather of the last few weeks and one of the results of this weather is that all the roses have come early and all together.

 

How about this beauty, scent is good too

 

and this is not a rose but it is certainly very happy, it has grown from a small cutting given by a dear friend who sadly died so in rememberance I am especially happy to see it thriving.

 

It was hot.....

...................I am a chilly mortal and love warmth but our little heatwave last week knocked me out.  I did nothing  a little bit of gardening very early in the morning collapsing onto the sofa and reading for the rest of the day. Now thank goodness we are back to normal British summer and can move again.  Yesterday we went to the lovely town of Faversham for the Open Gardens.  We only managed about a third of them but the talking point was the variety and the fact that quite ordinary houses hide amazing spaces. The first one had a wonderful wildflower meadow

 Then there was this tiny little garden  (with a very cosy looking garden room ) crammed full of interest

Another slightly larger garden but still smaller than mine with a lovely summer house which also had a heater for the chillier days.

These three were my favourites, others we saw were too manicured for my tastes. One set of gardens were very interesting and very productive but I didn't get any snaps because they were a bit congested not only with plants but people.  The Gardens belonging to the quite modern houses were small but in addition they had small pieces of land belonging to the local school which they are allowed to use as they see fit as long as  it is tended. the land is on  the other side of a small stream, wish is crossed by a series of small bridges. There was an abundance of vegetable and fruit trees and one even had a chicken house. Hopefully I can go back next year and do better.
Our last visit was the Physic Garden behind an Elizabethan building which originally a grammar school. The garden is being restored and enhanced.  A wonderful tangle of everything.

On the production front very little has happened, I am blaming the weather for what is a massive production slump.


Not producing but I loved these intructions by Mary Corbet of how to open Mill Hill Beads. When we had cats I used to blame them for me getting beads everywhere but I am just as bad without them.

Ta Da.......

...finally the lawn has been laid.

Before

and after

Bring on summer.

Tuesday was a fun day with the girls we had a glorious time making signatures for Junk Journals.

Tea, cake and laughter what more could a girl want.

I am making a black white and red one, a couple of pages so far.

Such fun, what I like is the flow of ,"Oh, I could do that" or inspirations for different books which pop up.  Should write them down really for when the dreaded empty mind hits.

Yesterday we braved the crowds. Who organised an exhibition in the same place and the same say as the London Marathon Registration?  ICHF that's who and it was another disappointing show. The Craft side stuck in the world of peel and stick ons.  Now don't get me wrong I will use these things but when I go to a show I want to see new products and good quality supplies.  The sewing side was OK but again nothing to get the juices flowing.  Huge hall only half used with everything cramped together so the aisles were over crowded making it difficult to get near stalls.  The day was cut short because I panicked needlessly when I couldn't get DH on the phone.We were going to do an enamel workshop so I was very cross with myself.

Enough moaning. I did buy a portable ironing board a bit like this one 

 so perhaps now I will stop burning the carpet in my workroom.

Saving highlights of the exhibition were meeting again Helen McKenna who comes from my home town and marvelling at the Aberteifi 1110-2010 Cardigan.

Designed and co-ordinated by byLisa Hellier  assisted by Susan McComb it took 300 knitters to make it. This is the first time I have taken photographs with my phone so apologies for odd angles.(First one had my finger over it!!)

DH 85th birthday tomorrow, off spring coming this evening so off to prepare birthday feast.

Failure.........

......on the 1 Year of Stitches front.  I think I stitched myself into the ground in the run up to the exhibition and at the moment have no desire to pick up a needle or even any ideas of what to do.  My second fail this week has been the garden. This was my garden last weekend

As you can see the lawn is in need of some TLC, this patch in the corner has refused to grow despite repeated seeding and plantings.  So we decided to replace it with an artificial lawn, having admired a neighbours lawn over the last year. Due to mis-communication (one of the modern evils)  instead of being able to show you my wonderful new lawn this is what the garden looks like today

We have to wait until next Friday, very frustrating because the weather is good and all the blossom is out.  Heigho!
Look at my beautiful yellow rose, it is called Rosa Xanthina or Canary Bird it only flowers once but it is worth it to have such brightness in the garden at this time.

Deutzia just burst in the last two days.

This is a joy in my son's garden

 

 The chestnut tree opposite our house has it's candles too so Spring is well under way.

My one success this week has been to finish a junk journal.

a few favourite pages

I have started to make the Mystical Lanterns pieces.  

Good for something to pick up and put down.

This week looking forward to a play day with The Girls and hopefully getting the lawn put down.

Hope you have a successful week. 

Happy Easter.

Lady in waiting........

......that's me this week.  Fingers crossed, tomorrow I will be having a long awaited gall bladder operation.   I have been trying to anticipate all the things that I won't be able to do for a couple of weeks like bend stretch and lift. Somehow I haven't managed to do quite the amount of de-cluttering  that I promised myself I would do but then embroidery, paint play and a trip out with a friend are so much more appealing don't you think?

Week four already of the 1 Year of Stitches challenge and my piece has taken an even more nostalgic trip.

Hopefully anyone who has ever visited Barrow in Furness will recognise the crane from the shipyard. On the way to Barrow the road passes the Dolly Blue Works. Forgive me if I have told you about them before. The road now by passes the factory which is has become a residential complex but one of the delights of my childhood was to  to drive past the factory with its blue walls in the hope of spotting a blue man.  The men wore blue overalls and their skin would be covered in the powder as was everthing around. Oh the excitment if we saw one.  There is an good piece about the factory here,
 The trip was to Rochester, it was freezing cold and foggy but a lovely brisk mooch round the galleries and shops.
Today it reached 9 deg c. and after last week felt like Spring so the garden had a quick tidy and the apple tree had a hair cut before I have to put my feet up.   Lovely to see the white of the snowdrops just beginning to show and the hellebores pushing through. Daylight lasting a little longer too. Hurrah.

I am going to cover the paint play in a separate post becauser I need to link it.
. 

Ye gods........

nearly half way through June...... running catch up as usual these days....

Apparently costs have driven the Prism exhibition away from the, oh so convenient, Mall Galleries to the backstreets of the East End. There were a few exhibits we liked.

Two apologies, one for the poor photographs and two for not making a note note of the artists which is really annoying.
This one is part of an exhibit  by Bea Sewell, all in closed back boxes ready to reveal their secrets of mementoes of her life.

The venue was round the corner from the Geffrye Museum where you can walk through time in different rooms from the 1600s to the 1990s. It also has this lovely garden room,

which we though would make a rather good workroom. I wish!.
The grounds are lovely too with magnificent trees.

We had a peek in Jessie Chorley's shop,

Loved this bunting.
A visit to the East End wouldn't complete without some graffitti. How about this one?

I have actually made something which is now on my workroom door. It started with a stip of canvas, continued on a "and then" basis not knowing what the end product was going to be.  Totally useless article but great fun.

and I have spent some time in the garden where the roses are just coming to there first flush,

DH is improving daily but just in case we can't make it  the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is on line this year. Saves the queues but still hoping to go for real.

Busy Weekend......

This weekend was our long awaited exhibition which was held in the Lecture room of a local garden centre, (unfortunately for my bank balance my favourite garden centre Coolings  but that is another story)

Here is a flavour,

We had examples from group challenges like "seed packets" (executed before we knew we were exhibiting at a garden centre)

and jigsaw pieces with the theme "Spring"

 Me and my friends had decorated vintage napkins which we turned into boxes here we have "
a box of boxes","a seed box" and "a red box"

There is also my friends heart which I should have done more in close up.
One of our most successful exhibits was the table of teddies (and a dog)

It never fails to amaze me how you can start with the same thing, the bare bear in the middle, and each individual creates something unique.
My Seth Apter piece became the centre piece of our table devoted to books and fairy stories.

It is now taking centre stage in my hall way.
On Saturday we played hookey especially to go to the Renegade Craft Fair in the Truman Brewery in east London.  I am sorry to say it was quite a disappointment. I don't know what they are like in New York, Los Angeles and the other venues the advertise but we found the London version,  instead of being far out and innovative, to be no more exciting than the usual craft market in Old Spitalfields. Such a shame.  The most exciting part of the day was finding this glorious graffiti wall.

The weather here is very warm for April which is very welcome and we have spent the last two days putting our little patch of garden to rights.  Today under the bird feeder I found this strange black growth.  It was very difficult to photograph but is I say it resembled fine black wire wool it might give you some idea. It was quite metallic in character.

My Google investigation leads me to believe it is a fungi which come with either Niger seed or black sunflower hearts.  Whatever, it looked vaguely evil so it has now been removed.
One more day of warmth promised for tomorrow and then back to normal.
 Looking forward to "Cinderella" at the cinema tomorrow and a workshop at Sew Not Strawberry Jam this weekend with Jessie Chorley.