Nominated and nominations!

I was very touched that Victoria nominated my blog.
Let me explain the rules for the next nominated blogs:
" Choose up to 10 of your favorite blogs which bring you inspiration and make you appreciate the blogosphere ! "
Next you must inform the bloggers of their nomination by a post on their blog so as to keep the chain going !
So, here are the blogs I have chosen to nominate:

Gabrielle Swain at Handmaiden
Sue at CraftchatsewIknit2
Helen Suzanne at Hebart Journal
Shirley Goodwin at Dyeing2Design
Tommy at Tommy the Material Girl
Moi at Suckers Anonymous
Helen Cowans at Textile Goddess
Sharon at In a Minute Ago
Sarah Ann Smith at Art and Quilting in Camden
Robin at Quilt Antics

These are my ten nominations. They are always interesting; I often learn something new and frequently I'm amused. They are all worth a look if you haven't been there before!

Back to normal....well almost!

It was good to see the grandchildren and Caroline again though I didn't get a thing done while they were down. We had a day in Penzance and went over the causeway to St Michael's Mount. The castle was shut, being winter, but the tide was low and the sun was shining and the walk over is fun. The kids enjoyed it. The sand had some interesting patterns of which I took pictures for future reference. Also there was a wrought iron gate into the churchyard that had an interesting feature or two. The views down the coast were fantastic as it was so clear. For a February day it was magnificent. The car was a very old one we saw in Penzance. It isn't every day that one sees one of these cars so I took a picture. I also added a picture in the middle of the collage of the children with their grandfather. We found the red dog in a charity shop in Penzance which was quite a find and Fred was delighted with it. Fenella prefers the fluffy variety so we bought her a soft toy to add to her collection.

I have been enjoying lovely wood fires in the evenings and admiring the new floor! Just curling up with a book and relaxing. After a full day's activities with two small ones this was bliss! And we have lots of offcuts from the floor plus all the old skirting boards to burn.

I have not been able to get a lot done on TIF number 2. The above sketches and the two below are all that I have achieved. There is no way that I can be finished by the end of the month. I haven't got further than sketching out ideas. However I have decided on which direction I wish to go in and I might get it done next week given some free time. The only trouble with visitors is that there is so much to do when they go!

The sketch on the right below is the one that I am going to go with. It is simple and it says all that I want to say. The contrast between then and now is so great. Then our freedoms were restricted due to war and now our freedoms are again becoming restricted due to our useless government and an overburdening of 'health and safety'. We don't actually see the barbed wire in our lives but it is there all the same. The sun is slowly setting on an existence that we are only just appreciating as we lose it. As a young child I didn't see anything odd about what this picture portrays - as an adult it means so much more symbolically!


On a brighter note I have actually managed to make a log cabin top ( I needed a sample for class last week) and some tray cloths! Pictures of these later. This week we are doing set in circles which should be fun!

Finished at last and just in time!

Well just as I was going to post this my server went down and we had no internet service in our house for a few days while Martin sorted it out. I'm writing this at work (February 7th) so I can't re-send the pictures at this time. The room is lovely though and although now completely awash with toys and stuff the floor remains a joy to me. I have to keep standing and staring. Pictures will come later but for the next couple of weeks I'm going to be unable to blog due to constraints of time and place. Martin and Kieran did a great job though and I am so grateful for the amount of time they put in to get the job finished before the enslaught. It's going to be a rush getting the February TIF challenge underway let alone finished. In fact it's going to be hard to get anything done. I feel as if I've got an invading army staying! But it's fun!

New TIF challenge

It being February there is a new TIF challenge which can be seen here. The colours are not to my taste at all so I think I will go with the main challenge which is 'What are you old enough to remember?'. This is actually quite an exciting theme to work with as if one goes back in stages it is amazing what has happened in a lifetime. I can remember the days before calculators, computers, videos and DVD's, microwaves, and several other things that we now take for granted. My school days would have been completely different had we had calculators and computors but having said that we did actually learn to use our brains and I think learnt more and were more capable than kids of today. My primary school was housed in old Nissan huts and lacked most of the mod. cons. of today but every child leaving there could read, write and do arithmetic. Admittedly only a few passed to the grammar school but they didn't have the same lack of education that today's children have. And very few Mum's worked!

Going back even further my earliest memories are of sitting in a large rubber dinghy at Telscombe Cliffs just after the war. My Dad was in the RAF and this was a retrieved dinghy from a downed plane. It was huge and I look like a small dot in the middle of it! And in the same year I can remember the barbed wire on the beaches which had been put there to stop the invasion and the submarines wrecked in the bay at Gyllyngvase (Falmouth). I must have been between two and three then. One of the wrecked subs was there for years and the conning tower was a good indicator of the state of the tide. There was always a seagull sitting on top of it. Eventually 'health and safety' cleared it away! I was too young to remember this but I've been told that American sailors in Falmouth used to call me Blondie as I had such very blond hair and one gave my Mum a tin of pineapple as he was so struck by my colouring! Pineapple hadn't been seen since the beginning of the war and this was a large catering size tin so Mum gave a beach party to share it around!

So with all these memories what to choose. I would like to do a beach scene with the barbed wire and war ships in the bay. Perhaps planes overhead. But to make it fairly abstract. Whereas I had the twisting, curling vine in my last TIF piece this time I would have twisting, curling barbed wire. I will work on it when I get a moment. I only have two days to get the house presentable before the daughter arrives so won't be for a day or two at least.