WOYWW 471

SHOULDER TO SHOULDER 

AND FRIEND TO FRIEND..

It's getting a bit embarrassing, all this 'too busy to craft' lark, but it's true.  The crochet blanket is growing slowly as I'm not that keen on using acrylic yarn when the weather's been so warm - sweatyhanditis, you see!

I have got the card making stuff out however as I had to make a sympathy card for an old band friend in Wiltshire whose mum passed away recently:

Crafting on the dining room table this week! The photo of the bluebells is one of G's, it's beautiful, I may make a few more cards with this image for WI:

A soft focus vignette courtesy of Photoshop and Bob's your Uncle!  G has taken a couple of really beautiful pics this week:

Backlit roses in the new border....

...and a common blue butterfly feeding on the broom down in the dunes by the harbour!

Other artwork is courtesy of my friend Lynne (Lynnecrafts) who came to see us last week - she's discovered watercolours big time and painted this for me as a thank you for the hare cushions I made for her recently:

I love it! When the JanCave is back to normal, this lovely painting will be going on the wall with some other artwork. The earrings are also from Lynne and are in suffagette colours - I wore them to this event:

I played as part of an all female brass band at the Cardiff Processions 2018 event, where thousands of women marched through the streets celebrating 100 years of Women's Votes in the UK - other marches were in London, Edinburgh and Belfast. I wish you could have seen the amazing banners, all sewn by the marchers but I was too busy playing to take pics. 

Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, the Paralympic champion, was the BBC presenter, a lovely lady. We just made it onto the BBC footage and our playing was heard on the news but that wasn't the priority, being there to witness and take part in a wonderful event was the most important thing.

And the first ice cold beer afterwards didn't even touch the sides :-D

It's supposed to be a quieter week but I remain to be convinced!

xxxxxx

WOYWW 470

ALWAYS DEAR, I'LL BE HERE WAITING

LISTENING TO THE WIND THAT BLOWS....

A slightly tongue-in-cheek lyric this week and dedicated to my brother Steve - he's a regular reader of this blog and gently chastised me last week for not showing any crafting for the past couple of weeks (he was teasing!) So, just to keep him happy...

This week's workdesk aka the kitchen table! If this shot looks a bit weird, G bought a very wide angle lens off a mate and I was trying it out! The weather has been so amazing this week, the doors have been open to get some breeze into the house...

How's about this for a random assortment of bits and pieces?! I'm entering the County WI competition in a few categories - the theme is 'Crossing Continents' and so I've done a pen and ink drawing of some Easter Island figures, a computer generated poster advertising the Taj Mahal (photo courtesy of my other brother Eric), a poem 'On Safari' and an original photo of a European landmark. I picked the most obscure categories possible as there's no point me entering cooking/floral art - I love both but sticking to a recipe/strict brief simply isn't me :-D

Is that ok for you Steve? It's crafting of a sort!!

Some more beautiful ATCs turned up this week - thank you so much Christine Bishopsmate, Sylvia Little Treasures, Robyn and Kim; such gorgeous little works of art and all so different. I love them xxxx

The garden is finished!! Woohoo! Well, I still have a few plants to put in but all the hard landscaping is done - G, Rhys and I shifted a tonne of grey slate chippings the other evening to finish off the paths - it looks great.

We've sat in the shade an awful lot this week!

And the bathroom has gone from this:

to this:

So we're getting there slowly. You can imagine the layers of dust upstairs but I'm ignoring that until the work is finished!!

Hope you all have a fun week and manage to do more crafting than me ;-)

xxxxxxxxxxxx

WOYWW 469

THANK YOU VERY MUCH

THANK YOU VERY VERY VERY MUCH....

Wasn't it fun last week?! I really enjoyed the lovely vibe of the whole desky madness and the added bonus has been the extra snail mail that's been arriving daily - it's really great to receive proper mail as opposed to mundane bills etc. Writing proper letters is something to be treasured - emails, while convenient, just aren't the same.

Lovely ATCs

Top L-R  Diana, Sarah, Helen, Cindy, Annie (PIF partner)

Mid: Jo, Annie, Heather, Neet, Shaz Silverwolf

Bottom: Ali W, Margaret, Zsuzsa

Thank you ladies, they're brilliant and all unique, I love them all but equally wonderful were:

the envelopes, cards, fabric, tags and embellishments (thank you Zsuzsa!) It just made me smile and is another example of WOYWW generosity xxxxxx

The garden boys are back after a week away and you really don't want to see the bathrooms at the moment, so here are a couple of pics taken down the beach on the same evening that the Midlands were getting flooded out...bonkers....

A couple of holidaymakers had taken a lot of time to make a seaside stone circle - we loved it and thought it might make a good feature for our garden, lol!!

A heron was looking for his supper.....

It was a calm and extremely beautiful evening in complete contrast to the huge storms further east.

I will try and show some crafting next week but don't hold me to that!

xxxxxxx

WOYWW 468 - 9 and counting!

BOOM BANG A BANG!

Wow, 9 years of global fun, friendship and a little bit of crafting thrown in for good measure! Many congrats to my lovely and best friend Julia, without whom this wouldn't have happened - I know you don't like fuss, my marvellous mate, but you're just gonna have to suck it up today :-D Hope you like the new banner, it may have something to do with my ATCs!

So, today's lyric could refer to fireworks in celebration of this momentous occasion!

Or it could be the noise of the gardeners working their miracles, cutting slabs, decking and rope edging.

The decking area in the backing is going to be my shady sitting spot - it needs painting but that's for another day. 

You get a great view of Pembrey Mountain!  The gravel area looks a bit stark at the moment but I'm going to put drought tolerant plants in there to soften the look, plus some lovely big stones and nice pots.

View from the shade! Complete with Ron testing out the edging....

And here he is again:

Les and Oscar made me some little raised beds in which to grow a few veg and herbs - they made it out of the recycled timber of the old decking - Les also knocked up the log store in the background out of it as well - it's now full of logs, that was our job on Monday.

But the Bang a bang could also refer to the chaps who are upstairs knocking two small rooms to make one big en suite for our bedroom!

They didn't half work quickly! Within a few hours, it looked like this:

It's going to be a lovely large room with plenty of light - worth the three weeks' build time.

So, you can see why there's been no crafting done this week but here are some pics of the WI suffragette afternoon:

The swag and rosettes I made turned out ok!  But another much cleverer lady had made this for the competition:

Isn't she fab? I love her sash!

The committee dressed up, some were even chained to the railings - we did stop some traffic!!

 All that remains is to thank you lovely lot for turning up week after week with your support and wonderful comments - it is a fantastic community and I just love being part of it!

Enjoy the celebrations today and have a marvellous crafty week - now all I have to do is not forget the asterisk by my linky name!!! ****************

WOYWW 467

COS WE ARE LIVING IN A MATERIAL WORLD 

AND I AM A MATERIAL GIRL...

Well, it's been another busy week with lots of different things happening. So I'm not going to apologise for the amount of pics, it's just how life is!

CRAFT ROOM

I'm making the most of the JanCave this week because next week sees the start of some work which involve turning the two small shabby en-suites into one big one for our master bedroom. So that door on the back is going to be closed off. This means that I'll have to pack everything up and move it into another room, but it'll be worth it. The green, white and purple fabric are all old sheets/stash which are being used to make some sashes and banners for our next WI meeting which is celebrating 100 years of Womens' Suffrage.

Just making it up as usual :-D

GARDEN

Les and Oscar are working miracles, it's still in the underpinnings stage at the moment but Les promised me that I can start planting this weekend - woohoo *happy dance*

The paths are laid out:

The paths are straight because I wanted a formal walled garden look. There's going to be rope edging holding the borders back, slate chippings on the path, that area in the middle will have the recycled gravel put back. We're not sure what to put in the middle yet, an acer in a big pot or a raised pond. But there will be dry loving plants put in the gravel to soften the look.

The area in the shade is going to be decking - I can't sit in the sun for long so that's going to be my spot! You can sit and look up at the mountain and trees.

Les is an amazing chap, we were chatting the other day and he told me that he made flowers and animals out of scrap metal and sells them in the Gower Gallery. He brought some to show me:

The red is Hammerite paint - he dips the rose into it and lets it drip upside down because he didn't want brush strokes to show. I'm very lucky because he gave me the one on the right which is now on my bedroom window sill :-)

FB friends have already seen these pics, but this was the state of me when G and I painted the fence on Sunday..there was more on me than the panels!

But the result is really fab:

I love how the slate grey really shows up the foliage and flowers - gorgeous!!

RANDOM STUFF

I came home from band practice last Tuesday and was settling down with a cuppa about 10pm when G announced that he wanted to go down the harbour to take night sky pics for a camera club competition. I didn't want him going on his own so we wrapped up and spent an hour down there, it was VERY dark!!! But he got some awesome pics:

This really shows the effect of light pollution, don't you think? Look how many more stars are visible in the dark area of the pic, whereas the lights from Llanelli don't help at all. This was taken as a 30 second exposure and you can see a shooting star trail on the right hand side. The lights on the other side of the estuary are the Gower Peninsula, for those of you who like to know these things!

The harbour looked very different at night - it wasn't as bright as it appears here, G's camera is superb in low light levels - ie pitch black where you can't see where the edge of the quay is!

And this was a final shot taken in our back garden - you may have to enlarge the pic to see the nebula that's in the sky, easily visible with the naked eye.

I really would like this week to be a bit quieter but don't think it's going to happen!

xxxxxx

WOYWW 466

ME AND MY SHADOW....

Well, the weather has really helped this week, don't you think? It's been so glorious, being in the sunshine just makes you feel better. Consequently, not much indoor crafting has taken place and what there was, I can't share with you yet as I completed all my ATCs for the Anniversary swap in a couple of weeks' time! Woohoo, go me getting my act together, THAT doesn't happen very often, I can tell you :-D

Most of the activity has been outdoors:

Our garden is in the process of being re-landscaped, the lovely Les and Oscar have dug out all the bamboo, which let me tell you, was no mean feat. They have levelled up the ground and have started to peg out the deck area, borders and paths. G and I have always done this ourselves in the past but this was a heavy job. I'll show you how it gets on in the next couple of weeks!

This was a semi-circle of rotting wooden decking, it's going to be my raised veg patch, keeping the overall shape - it's like my very own walled garden!

My Outdoors Desk aka the Black and Decker Workmate! Our wooden patio table and chairs were looking a bit sad so we decided to paint them - Dusky Gem is the colour, it's very lovely indeed!

Well, it's got to be tried for size and comfort! All that's missing is a G&T :-D

It was a high tide this time last week, a beautiful evening - since then the superstructure of the new RNLI boathouse has gone up (the other side, just to the right of the brick building) It's going to be an amazing asset for the area and both lifeboats will be housed there. Burry Port is the second busiest inshore station in Wales so it's sorely needed. I did my first stint as a volunteer in the shop on Sunday and learned that the most important thing is to get all the stuff for sale out of the way quickly if there's a shout!

And just for Julia and Helen:

Taken before Rhys went back to uni to sit his Finals, I can't believe that he's coming to the end of three years' study at Winchester...blimey, that's gone quickly.

Take care, sorry about the lack of desk this week but hopefully there may be something to share next time!

WOYWW 465

COME BACK AND FINISH WHAT YOU STARTED....

Last week was particularly bonkers, this week has been less frenetic but has still been filled with quite a bit going on. 

Let me explain.

After making a mess in the JanCave, I spent a happy hour tidying up and sorting out my stash. The fabrics are slowly diminishing but the wools seem to magically multiply and it's not even that I'm buying loads more, people keep giving it to me!

The shelves have been slightly rearranged so that I can fit in the box of cards that I take to WI to sell for fundraising - haven't done the box of ribbons yet, they're still a rats' nest :-D

Then Lynne asked if I could make a mini cushion for her to take on journeys - her cracked rib is still very sore:

I found some wadding and rolled it up then made an inner pillow case to keep it in the same shape. I used some of the grey FQs that Margaret Glitter and Glue sent recently.

Then I covered it in the same hare fabric that I used last time. As the fabric was out, I thought I'd make a little zippy purse to go with it. some grey spotty fabric was suitable for the lining.

Et voila!  Hope Lynne likes them :-D  I think I've got to replace this fabric - oh dear, another trip to the lovely quilting shop in Mumbles might be in order *grin*

And organised chaos reigns on the dining table, I was sorting out all the bits Elizabeth sent recently into Male/Teenager/Diva categories. Ready for another card making session!

Great fun was had on Saturday - my band entered a big contest in Cardiff and we came second, beating some arch rivals. Everyone was really thrilled and consequently we ended up in the local pub:

It was a fun few hours with folk who have become really good friends over the past year. There might have been quite a few whiskies involved....:-D

Have a great crafty week everyone!