Quilt update

 Strips done, set out the square...not quite right

Got it! 

Get sewing....

Travelling soon...

Memories and photos

 Pirate's dad, his eldest brother as a boy and in the RAF (killed in action March 1945) and Pirate in 2000 having won a Masters track medal.

I have been sorting photos... yesterday pulled out a shortlist....now today I have a shorter list 

I am going to take a break to plant the tomatoes in the greenhouse earth....

Then I need to choose a very small selection for his Celebration leaflet....and write a resumé of his life...a tall order 

Inky fingers

 Oil based ink gives the best results..but is the devil to remove! 

The reason that printing apprentices were called printers' devils?!

A day for tidying loose ends and starting jobs that have been waiting...

Pirate has started cleaning the next batch of eBay sales items. I might put some clothes on there that I hardly have worn, no point them packing out the wardrobe.

We have a gardening job coming up...not a huge one, but we keep on saying that we won't work there again....it's a nice place to go, however!

Pirate is out for his daily bike ride..then on his return we will be watching track racing from St Petersburg, a world cup meeting moved from Newport in Wales.

Friends are competing in it. So it is good to watch.

tissottracktv.uci.org if you are interested.

Memories

 Putting memories in prints. AotearoaNZ Road Trip series perhaps?

Food memories

I have just read Cro's blog on his 'must have' food, sandwich spread...and Lettice with the canapés being cheesy wotsits.
Pirate has to have HP sauce on eggs....during the war  theand in 40s, his family used to make bread into Cocoa Sop...soak it in hot milk with cocoa.

I am wondering what are my, and your food that you must have, or that brings memories.
My father's was condensed milk spread on bread...called Connie Onnie...and he would still sneak a slice when mother wasn't looking!
I carry on what grandma taught me, home preserving and bottling and baking.  We used to buy McVitie's Jamaica ginger cake, which you can still get...but it has shrunk massively!
I remember fresh fruit and veges from the garden.

How about you?

family visit on the way home

 birthday shirt...and granddaughter

 memories

son...then about six, now fifty two....

and we saw a chicken on the way home....and a Belgian bar....

picking

After the allotment committee meeting yesterday I picked the remainder of the gooseberries...I think!! Two large bushes have been overtaken by a huge sage bush...and these are a Japanese named variety with huge thorns!!...waxed jacket and gauntlets recommended!!

After lunch I decided, bravely, that the weather was going to stay dry after this morning's shower.
I put the washing back on the line!!

More clay kneading and replacing in the bag. I didn't find any more bits in that, or in the next bag, but I've noticed one in the outside of one of the larger bowls. That will need digging out and patching.

By 4.30 I realised that The Carpenter had only been out of the house to get bread from the local shop....so needed some real daylight to help him sleep at night.
A good excuse to go up on Mynydd Maen to check ponies and pick Whinberries!

We saw two mares and foals and one had last year's foal with her too, a lovely darker grey.
These are one of the pairs that came from the Bogey Ponies stud on Ffos y Fran near Merthyr Tydfil, so they are still keeping to themselves and not mixing with the main groups. They are looking after themselves well.

We went to the first slope that Col took me too on our first visit to the mountain three years ago. It is still a good place to pick, although it took us an hour to gather a litre box of fruit!!

My birthday present in 2009 was a large bag of Whinberries...it must have taken him a whole afternoon to pick them....true love!!