Sew, Sow and so on

I have plans a foot to do a lot of sewing though I have a lot of writing to do for two courses with a submission by the end of the month, I find I desperately NEED to do some sewing. 

An Amazon parcel arrived and flicking through these books (a present to me from me) has made creative juices run.

Aren't these duckes great? 

Very pretty and serene though I suspect if I try to recreate then I'll end up with the ugly duckling.

I really like these fabric boxes, they look so pretty but useful too.

Along with getting my sewing machine and also an embroidery sewing machine that dad found at the tip sitting on top of a washing machine, back from the menders I am itching to have a play. Saturday saw me in Glasgow at John Lewis’s buying quilt wadding after I was inspired by the second programme on the Talking Threads series by the machine embroidery that Gilda Baron was doing.

Finally finishing off my Puffin tapestry means that a new project can be started legitimately, but what to do?

Paarp paarp - (blowing my trumpet!)

I am really pleased with it. 

And if I say so myself I like the grass, flowers, rocks.

The grass effect I achieved by using two contrasting green yarns together.

(As it turned out to be square ~ I thought it was oblong, as I didn’t see the whole thing ‘til it was off its frame ~ I think I will turn it in to a cushion.)

I knitted a hat for dads birthday last week,

The ‘brim’ is knitted ~ a 25 stitch wide length sewn together at the back

and the crown was made by knitting 10 meters of cord on a knitting dolly and then stitching it together. Unfortunately it itches too much for him to wear it so it has come back for me to line.

I have made a start on a hat for B’s birthday at the end of the week. He liked the one I made for dad so much he wants one too.

Although today is thoroughly wet and nasty, a really dreich day, in the last couple of days when it has been fine and dare I say it, sunny, I have been doing some ‘sowing’. We will be moving house sometime in the next six months – not sure when or where yet so a nail biting time. I have started packing up the garden, tidying it for the autumn and digging up a few of the plants I have planted this year but want to take with us. I have made two herb beds using old fish boxes I had found on the beach and lugged home. I had runner beans growing in earlier in the year but now they are over the rotten slugs finished them off for me I have packed in some herbs. And others have gone in to big tubs which also had beans in. I have put a handful or two of bulbs in to each tub to come up in the spring, in case I don’t have a proper garden I will still have proper spring flowers.

Last weekend was the weekend of the Grand Sale. Enough I said of carting all these boxes from one place to another. Not enough had gone on to eBay and whilst I was quite happy to donate stuff to the charity shops I thought I would see if I could get something for some of it. It isn’t all ours B&mine I mean, some of it was stock left over from when B&I had a shop and coffee shop and gallery, some of it belonged to my brother and there were bits I that belonged to M&D once and many boxes of books. So I hired the village hall spent Friday afternoon and evening driving up and down the road delivering boxes and laying it all out.

Here, just before the doors opened, I think dad and B were checking out what was there in case it needed to come home again!

Mum down at the other end of the hall sorting price tags out for the crafts, jams and jellies and sheets of wrapping paper.

Whilst it perhaps wasn’t quite as busy or successful as I had hoped I still shifted a fair amount of stuff. Monday saw me to-ing and fro-ing to Lochgilphead in three different cars offloading boxes hither and yon. We made donations of books to both the hospitals and the MS centre, and bric-brac and books to the Bosnia shop and then bric and brac clothes and books to the Red Cross shop.
I had also pledged 10% of the takings to the British Kidney Patients Association and also Stobhill Kidney Patients Association. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have an empty garage at last!

Then a trip to the tip with the recycling saw me coming back home with this great tin trunk someone had chucked out.

Needs a clean and a bit of a bash with a hammer to sort out the lid then it will be great.

B really doesn’t ‘get it’, as I had just recently bought this trunk

from the Bosnia shop. Well with a house move in the offing and not knowing where we are going storage is paramount – for my sewing and crafting kit anyway!

It only has one handle but a piece of rope will sort that out, And the locks don’t work ~ but hey I’m not going travelling with it.

Don’t you just love it’s stripy insides? Again a bit of TLC required then bingo some more storage – for £4 and a bit of elbow grease!

More anon

CKx


PS Sorry a bit more Paarrrp Paarrrup Parpaty parp as on Friday I went to the dentist for the first time in years. Not because I am worried about going quite the contrary, but I haven’t had any problems and just haven’t got round to it. It’s taken something like 5 or 6 months on the waiting list to see her but never mind I was in and out in under ten minutes! No problems, no fillings, a wee bit of a scale and polish to be done and advice to use a softer tooth brush. What I thought might be a hole is just a sensitive bit from over brushing! I am dead chuffed and still at 39 have no fillings! Paarrp Parrpty Trumpety trumpet!
CKx

Milly-Molly-Mandy Memories

When walking the dogs round the bay in the rain the other day I spied a bush with small black fruits on it. Couldn’t think what it was initially and it had me pondering for some time. Finally came to the conclusion that the very spiny spiky bush was a Blackthorn therefore the shiny bluish black fruits were sloes. Now I love Sloe gin, don’t have it often (enough!), only at Christmas. I have made a blackcurrant equivalent but there is nothing as gloriously warming and glistening jewel like in the light of a fire than a glass of Sloe gin. I knew I had to go and pick some but have been thwarted by the weather this last week or so. The thought of doing battle against wet bracken even for the end result was just too much to contemplate. Today the sun is shining and the bracken brown and dry so I grabbed a cotton bag on my way out with the dogs to see what I could forage.

Whilst I was there climbing through bracken that was 10 or 12 foot high (I am Not exaggerating) and reaching carefully through the spikes to get the sloes I regretted not thinking to bring a curved handled walking stick with which to pull the higher branches down. I was reminded of the blackberry expedition chapter in the Milly-Molly-Mandy books where our heroine goes off in search of blackberries with little-friend-Susan.

“… Milly-Molly-Mandy and little-friend-Susan set out with big baskets (to hold the blackberries) and hooked sticks (to pull the brambles nearer) and stout boots (to keep the prickles off) and old frocks (lest the thorns should catch).”

Now I certainly wasn’t in a dress old or otherwise but I did have boots on and my ‘basket’ was a long handled cotton bag which I hung around my neck (like a nose bag) so that I could use both hands to pull the branches down and pick the berries.

There weren’t as many as I had hoped but I managed to collect a pound and a quarter with which to make this delicious tipple. They are now rinsed off and in the freezer (so that the skins split when you pour the gin on them release all the juice, saves pricking each one with a pin) then an equal amount of sugar is added and the whole lot covered with a generous quantity of gin (or vodka) shaken daily the sugar will dissolve and the gin darken from pale pink to deepest ruby.
Strain,
bottle,
pour,
drink,
enjoy!
Preferably in front of a real fire with the lamps turn low and the Christmas tree lights on……….
(also good over ice cream for a really decadent pud!)

Picking these got me in a Milly-Molly-Mandy avenue of remembrance. Does anyone else remember these books about a little girl in a pink and white striped dress and her friends Susan and Billy Blunt and Toby the dog? They were written and illustrated by Joyce Lancaster Brisley and first published in January 1928. Reading the frontispiece of the oldest copy it says that the stories and most of the illustrations first appeared in the Children’s Page of “The Christian Science Monitor”. I don’t think I have noticed that before.

Mums copy, printed in May 1949, is a little orange hard back that has long lost its jacket.

I was given the other stories in paper back

And as you can see I still have the books as well as the memories. I have a certain number of children’s books whittled down now to a favourite few that I just cannot let go, ‘Tales from End Cottage’ and ‘Wind on the Moon’, and all the Malcolm Saville Lone Pine series and Swallows and Amazons adventures. Just a small collection but a collection that somehow make me feel safe and comfortable and so they live on a shelf in my sewing room, making me smile should I come across them.

Mum’s copy of the Milly-Molly-Mandy-Stories has colour pictures – coloured in by a naughty but very talented little girl, she stayed within the lines with her paint brush.

MMM got up to all sorts of things many I wanted to emulate. She gets her own little room tucked in up under the eaves of the house, they have a picnic in a tree house and go on an exciting car journey. She was accidentally shut in her bedroom and dropped a little basket on a rope out of the window which was filled by the various members of her family with small treats. She makes her mother a patchwork tea cosy feather stitching the pieces together – I wonder if this sowed the seed of my fabric and embroidery passions. They eat ‘Potato lids’ something I was always trying to get mum to make but asking too late in the day for the potatoes to be baked. She knits a little hat for a friends baby and made little sailor girls out of folded paper. And of course she goes Blackberrying.

MMM & LFS setting off on the blackberry picking expedition where they didn’t get any blackberries but did rescue a rabbit.

MMM who never seems to get older, is always having a very jolly, very innocent time with her friends and family, Grandpa, Grandma, Father, Mother, Uncle, Aunt who all live in 'The Nice White Cottage with the Thatched Roof'.

A map of the village is printed on the fly leaf showing the houses and all the characters that populate MMMs life, Mr Smale the grocer, Mrs Hubble at the Bakers, The Big House where Mrs Green and Jessamine live

When we had chickens a few years back they were called Milly, Molly, Mandy, and Susan! Now to put memory lane away, I won’t stop to re-re-re-re-re-read them all…. Just now anyway as dinner is waiting to be made and I need to do something

With the last of the cooking apples, I think Eves pudding tonight or perhaps a pie or maybe a crumble I wonder if there are any blackberries left a the top of the lane excuse me whilst I collect my big baskets (to hold the blackberries) and hooked sticks (to pull the brambles nearer) and stout boots (to keep the prickles off) and old frocks (lest the thorns should catch).

More anon
CKx

Play Away Days

After a week of being thoroughly out of sorts and nothing going right, a catalogue of small ctastrophes, and inspite of a nice evening out with B and my folks to the Screen Machine to see Harry Potter I was feeling very cross for no particular reason, however I am now feeling a lot better and thinking that perhaps things could get done and finished. I never get to the end of my to do lists but I have done some of them this morning. One reason for my improved temper is that I had two days playing away from home this weekend. Sunday saw K from Crear & I going through to Stirling to the Craft Trade Fair at the Albert Hall. When we arrived after our three hour car journey we decided to fortify ourselves with large toasted BLT’s and hand cut chips whilst we looked through the programme to see who we ought to pin point then decided that we were in no hurry and would see everyone. It wasn’t unfortunately quite as good as we had hoped. One stand gave us some inspiration, several others (I won’t name and shame) gave us some raised eyebrows as we wondered WHY? But then we found Jane at Snapdragon and all was forgiven. I had found out about the Fair from Jane’s blog as she said she was going to it. Her stand looked professional and individual and had a charmingly homespun sense that makes her work such a delight. So nice chat with Jane about what could be done and how she was getting on. I do hope she went home with her order book bulging satisfactorily.

After a wander around the Thistles shopping mall – my idea of hell although it was useful as I was able to get a new sim card and mobile phone to replace the one I lost last week, just one of the mishaps in my catalogue of disasters’ that made up my bad week. We then decided to head back home. Stopping off at Drymen (no wet men here! That was my naive joke to my then new boyfriend - now husb so he forgave me – the first time I came across this small village. It is actually pronounced Drimn so he didn’t get it at first! Oh my Englishness!) We had a look around the Pottery and a gallery then back on the road, calling in at the Mansefield Gallery http://www.mansefieldstudios.com/ in Arrochar which for me was probably the highlight of a slightly fruitless day. It is a lovely space with gorgeous things in. Tom’s beautiful ceramics are paired perfectly with Isle of Skye soaps and bath goodies or marmalades in beautifully presented gift boxes or stashed in satisfying stacks in the glass fronted cupboards. Also on display were elegant shawls knitted by Yungi and tartan gifts by the Tartan Company http://www.thetartancompany.co.uk/ . It is fabulous and well worth a visit should you ever find yourself in this neck of the world. I had a lovely chat with Toms wife who very kindly gave K & I some complimentary tickets to the Country Living Fair in November so we are looking forward to going to that.

(You may have seen Tom and his wife a couple of years ago on “Location, Location, Location” when Kirsty & Phil found the couple a big house – for renting out and a little house which they have now extended - for living in, stables for Toms ceramics studio and space for the gallery. http://www.mansefieldhouse.com/ )

Monday dawned grey and rainy – and you know what …. It didn’t matter! Mum and Dad and I (unfortunately B didn’t feel up to coming) went to the Cowal peninsular for its Open Studios Event. www.cowalopenstudios.co.uk/

I don’t mind wet weather (just as well living where we do!) and strongly believe in the saying – there’s no such thing as bad weather only the wrong clothes. So suitably suited and booted we set off down the side of Loch Fyne

Which was a symphony in greys – I think rather beautiful.

To catch the Ferry to Portavaddie

(This isn't the ferry but a view from it!)

It was rather like being on holiday as we always had at least one ferry journey when we came up to Scotland for our annual fortnight under canvas.

Dad & I fooling about, which mum found most amusing!

This reminded me of being at Art College where I was in the University Women’s Sailing Team. We sailed in weather like this all the time – I loved it, the adrenalin generated by big waves and wind when you’re in a little boat is something else! I’m not a fair weather sailor – that is quite boring in comparison!

Then it was on to Cowal and off to Tighnabruach for the first of the exhibitions. Phillipa Elliot was showing some interesting photography at the Kames Hotel http://www.philippaelliott.com./

Ann Hewitt is self taught and has only been painting since they moved up here seven years ago. She was showing some really nice work http://www.artforanimals.co.uk/ I especially loved this fat bottomed pair.

Entitled When the Ploughing is Done

The Tighnabruach Gallery was closed for lunch so we went and had ours too. Eyes as always open for a bargain I spotted a little second hand shop popped in for a nose and came out four pounds lighter with four large balls of wool (three of which have already been knitted up in to a scarf for a birthday present) some linens and a lovely knitted rafia bag with flowers embroidered on it.

Then it was on to Otter Ferry to see NicolaWilkes www.nicolawilks.com/ who was sharing her studio space with Susan Smith www.susansmithart.co.uk/

We met Nicola last year and mum and dad have become friends and met up a couple of times since then. They chatted whilst I made friends with Toulouse. I have lost my heart to Toulouse.

Well wouldn’t you?

She has a couple of friendly spaniels too but it was this lovely little fellow I really wanted to take home with me.

Not normally a small dog person – don’t forget we have a wolfhound – but I have added Wire-haired Dachshunds to my wish list for sometime in the future

We called in to see John Kingsley www.jkingsley.com/ and Jaqueline www.jacquelineorr.com/ who were showing together, but we didn’t like very much – house was nice though with a lovely loo!

Then we stopped at the Creggans Inn www.creggans-inn.co.uk/ to look at the exhibition there. They are very supportive of the event and had turned over their large drawing room over to the exhibition. Examples of everyone’s work were hung in a semi domestic setting; this meant that you could easily imagine a piece hanging on your wall at home. Testament to this theory were the number of red 'sold' spots on the frames.

Then up the road to Cairndow where we met Peter and Sarah Sumsion – also friends from last year. They don’t unfortunately have a website and I’ve no pictures of their work Peter paints and Sarah is a weaver and does some beautifully intricate work on the various looms in her workshop.

Then it was an hour and half drive home for dinner which had been cooking in the slow-cooker all day and so as ready when we arrived. B came up and joined us and finally I got back home really quite tired at ten o’clock.

It's taken me a week to get this posted! I'm fully recovered now.

More anon
CKx

Was this a warning for the speed of the Squirrels??

A nice surprise

Arrived in the post yesterday and immediately ended up on a hat I was going shopping in. It was a very blustery rainy day yesterday so it was on with a woolly poncho and a dark blue wool felt hat. Just as we were leaving I spotted the post – paused to open it and found that the PFG who has been crocheting flowers recently had honoured me with her first crocheted flower brooch, and a lovely card too. The flower was just the perfect thing to adorn my hat, and I wore it out straight away despite B asking if I have joined the French Revolution - MEN!!

In pretty 'opal fruit' oranges with a white centre finished off with a jolly button.  In such soft wools and I think cottons I spent some time just holding it!

Such a lovely surprise & I was am so flattered and touched and completely coincidentally something is headed south for her!

Rothesay thought it was pretty good too or perhaps he was contemplating it for a bed, assessing it for comfort? Watch out chum there is a pin in there!

Just a short blog today …. phone calls to make, things to do and just for once it isn’t the ironing, but does include booking tickets online to see Harry Potter at the Screen Machine (that’s not the title of film you understand… it’s the venue! A travelling cinema that comes around every three months or so) in Lochgilphead tomorrow night – if they aren’t sold out already…..

More anon
CKx

Coming to a blog near you .....

Announcing the launch of my new blog shop

CALICO KATE ORIGINALS.

After much Umming and Ahhhing as well as some pondering and wondering and seeking of opinion I have finally decided to have a ‘blog shop’ rather than a website. It was quick – ish; free - always a consideration; easily updated and allows me to witter on about each item.

It can be found here:

http://www.calicokateoriginals.blogspot.com/

Cushions today up cards tomorrow and more coming ever so soon.

Please do let me know what you think, and thank you for taking a look.

More anon
CKx

A weekend of picking up apples and dropped stitches.

At one end of the garden we have what I grandly call ‘the orchard’. It is fact only four fruit trees, a cooking apple, an eating apple, a plum tree and something else that hasn’t had any fruit on it. Three are about 30 years old and the cooking apple and the eating apple are prolific fruiters, the plum had three last year and whilst it has had a few more plums this year following a prune I did earlier in the year the wasps got to them before I did. The little tree hasn’t had anything – flowers or fruit and so I don’t know what it is, quite healthy just barren.

The plum tree does a sterling job of holding up one end of the washing line though! This was taken earlier in the year, though you could be mistaken for it being taken today it has been a gloriously sunny day.

On Saturday I was picking up and picking off as many apples as I could reach in an effort to save as many as I can from the birds and the slugs. So now I have a large box filled with a mixture of eating and cooking apples. Mum & Dad have had a bag full, the Technician who was here today to look at B’s machine has had a bag full and I am taking some when we meet C the Boat & 2p for tea this afternoon with her Maw & Paw, and there are still plenty left on the tree. As we now have more apple jelly than we can possibly eat in a year I don’t want to make any more so I think I will be gently stewing some for the freezer, some mixed with brambles and some with English plums which are in season in the Co-op.

With this in mind on Saturday I called in to the Scottish Hydro shop to look at small freezers. I wasn’t planning to buy one I thought I would just pop in to check them out. Only they had exactly what I was looking for at a reasonable price so I bought it, cash, there and then! A small fridge sized chest freezer, which will arrive on Wednesday. It will live in what we refer to as the ‘Cats Room’, as there isn’t room in the kitchen and will hold things like a lot of frozen apple, brambles, runner beans, soup perhaps some ‘spare’ cakes etc. We have another freezer but that has ‘ordinary’ food in and doesn’t have the capacity for holding ‘gluts’ of things. So I am very excited about having a new one and being able to fill it almost immediately.

Saturday was a bit of a ‘squeaky’ as in Kate squeaks with excitement, kind if a shopping day. First the new Country Living the first of the autumn magazines, then the freezer, next I went in to the S.I.R. shop where I got half a box of umpteen balls of wool, two books but most excitingly of all an original, so very vintage, cream and green ‘Tala’ cake tin. The word cake is very faded, but even so I am SO happy with it.

I’ll have to bake just to put cake in it, at the moment all we have is some not terribly exciting Malt loaf which doesn’t seem quite the thing. Perhaps a rich fruit cake or sticky ginger bread, a lemon drizzle with home made lemon curd, or maybe a Victoria sponge, raspberry jam oozing from the sides and dusted with icing sugar. Hmm I will need to bake THREE things to put something in each layer. Oh dear my poor waistline or what was my poor waistline!

Having finished making and hemming mums curtains for their holiday Cabin (although two have just come back as I got the measurements wrong and will need to redo – oops Sorry!) I was allowed to borrow her knitting machine. She wouldn’t let me have it until I had done the hemming in case I got distracted! I have wanted to have a play for ages actually years. Ever since I saw someone in a shop called ‘Ginger’ in Arisaig, near Mallaig making the most beautiful cardigans and jumpers and full length knitted coats, it must about eight years ago or so since B & I met her. And I am thrilled to discover, as I have just Googled her, she is still there HERE and still doing gorgeous knitwear. It’s been that long since I have wanted to have a go and haven’t got around to it. Then recently my lovely cousin in Glasgow asked if I would be interested in one as a lady at her church had one she no longer wanted. So I thought I would try mums out.

Well, what fun! The knitting grows incredibly quickly inches in just moments and although I seemed to spend an awful lot of time picking up stitches once I had got the speed and pressure right it was great.

I discovered that you can’t go to fast or stitches get dropped, neither can you lift the weighted hem end to see what it looks like relaxed as all the stitches fall off and have to be picked up again, neither can one get ones shirt cuff caught in it as yes you’ve guessed it the stitches drop off! I am learning from my mistakes! I set it up to do 50 stitches which when you drop them feel like twice as many to be picked back up again. But I managed to do two panels using two different wools and two different settings. The pink is Aran weight and is a wool I love having used three all to hand knit a scarf last year, I used a whole ball so just knitted until I got to the end or at least until I had just about go to the end as my shirt cuff got caught up and all the stitches fell off I decided my piece was long enough and put it all on to knitting needles to cast of. The blue panel is done in a chunky weight which was much more like hard work to push the handle a long requiring an “oof” at the end of each row, rather like a tennis player! So I used about half the ball. Little fact for knitters out there: Did you know that if you start knitting with the inside of the ball end it unwinds smoothly and doesn’t jump around? I didn’t but I do now.

There are things I don’t understand – like casting off which seemed very fiddly only courtesy of the shirt cuff incident I did it on needles for the pink then deliberately so for the blue although my tension was tighter than the machines’; I also haven’t worked out the hem end yet and think I need to re visit the instruction book! But at the end of a couple of hours I had the front and back of a small cushion cover,

which I sewed it up whilst watching the X-Men with B. I will add a couple of vintage buttons and will make some cord using a ‘knitting dolly’ tonight then - et voila! A small cushion cover in an evening. Not bad! It would have taken me a month to hand knit it! I think everyone might be getting a cosy scarf or woolly cushion for Christmas this year!!

Just as I was writing this B came in asking when had I ordered a box of books. Well, the answer was Friday. I have ordered some sewing books from Amazon that I have got a bit squeaky about too, lots of sewing and Christmas ideas, (more in another blog perhaps) but I wasn’t expecting them just yet. Then I caught sight of ….

Followed by …..

O(U) big squeaks! The course work has arrived………

I signed up a couple of months ago for the A125 Creative Writing Course with the OU, giving myself - I thought - time to change my mind, only to put it to the back of my mind. In the last week or so letters & emails of information, a new email address and password have been arriving, an invitation to an open day in Glasgow and info about the Student Union, I hadn't really considered what I was doing, but now the ‘real’ stuff has arrived. The books, the calender of assignment deadline dates, CD's and so on. All very exciting but decidedly nervous making too. The course officially starts in 2 weeks time and I may begin to regret that comment about yearning to write I made in my last blog, I’m not going to have any choice in the matter shortly! So maybe people won’t be getting machine knitted scarves for Christmas after all.........

More anon
CKx

"Lashings & Lashings of Ginger Beer"

Well, hopefully, that’s the plan anyway. Whilst reading a new, to me, blog: Down to Earth. Rhonda Jean talked about bottling up a batch of Ginger beer from the ‘plant’ she had made last week. It reminded me that the other day I noticed lurking in the back of the larder the Ginger Beer ‘kit’ I had bought for B’s Christmas stocking, ooo lets think, two years ago?! I should think so. So I have no idea if the yeast will still be viable but I thought I would give it a go.
With much washing and sterilising of a large pottery jar and locating of a spotty saucer lid, my yeast, two teaspoons of ginger powder and of sugar are now residing in here.

I’ll let you know how it turns out or if the yeast was too old.

On Tuesday B& I went to play for the day in Stirling nothing much to take a photograph of though we did catch this waterfall

just before I pulled away at the lights on the Rest and Be Thankful. Not long afterwards I think, the land slid again and deposited 600tonnes of earth on the road. I was v glad we weren’t anywhere near it at the time. I do hope no-one was hurt though I am sure we would have heard by now if that were the case. By the time we came back that way the road was closed and we did another 100miles of a detour before getting home. Oof but I was tired when we got back though we did have delicious fish and chips from Oban which was very necessary by the time we got there and meant that there wasn’t any cooking to be done when we got in, so I flopped then went to bed to read for a while.

Virtually no purchases except for some rather handsome fabric from Laura Ashley’s remnants sale which will become cushions for M&D

the back is the dark colour with a velvet pattern on the front. Mum wants me to make the cushions double sided.

and a role of pretty wallpaper that I liked and it was only £1.50 though don’t yet have a designated use for it, and some books from a second hand shop but no linens or china or anything ‘interesting’ etc. rather disappointing.

What I’ve been reading in bed: The Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (what a fabulous surname!). I’m probably the last to read this but if you haven’t read it do. I finished it regretfully, and tearfully, last night. What a superb read. Made me itch to do some writing.

Now I am going to see what Land Girls on the BBC is like – I rather like this era so I hope it is good – got a decent review in the Times though it questioned the odd broadcast time which I would do too, have some curtains to hem so had best get on with them.

More anon.
CKx