Ruby

I like the way anniversaries are named. I wonder where the tradition came from, and expect I could look it up, but for now just a few pictures of yesterday. Forty years ago my aunt and uncle were married. We joined them to celebrate these years. I don't often see my family-cousins and aunts and uncles, so it is lovely when I do. We went to the 10 o' clock service which was an experience in itself, as I am not a church goer. I enjoyed the service-a thought provoking and quite funny sermon, singing hymns, hearing what the children at the Sunday school had learned, and listening to the vicar somehow managing to compare a forty year marriage to a mature cheese! Frosted rubies of yew berries greeted us in the beautiful churchyard.

It was a warm and sunny day-as was the wedding day itself.

As we had coffee and biscuits after the service, I noticed that teddies go to church too.
I took a photo of the wedding photo but it has the refelction of the church window in it-completely covering my aunt-my Dad's sister on the right.

From left to right

My Dad and brother, Mum, aunt's sister, me(looking the wrong way!), the happy couple, my sister, my aunt and my Gran. I have no memories of the day, but seeing the photo, I had a memory of the fabric of my dress. I have always loved fabric!

After the service we went to another beautiful village for a meal-in a pub and restaurant that my aunt and uncle have been to each year since their marriage.

A lovely day!

Disparate

This weekend has been busy and pretty sociable really (despite lots of work!) I have chatted to strangers (about knitting socks, vintage buttons, buying beads in Afghanistan, and coming from Maidstone)-in a junk shop and on the market. My brother came up, as he was riding his tandem in a charity event today-for stroke victims. He had his friend who had had a stroke, on the back of his tandem. They survived the day-it sounded pretty hard work to me as half of it was just my brother riding the bike with a heavy passenger. Good thing to do though! He was telling us about something he hopes to compete in next year in Colorado, called the Leadville 100. ("Where attitude meets altitude")It is a run of 100 miles high up in the mountains. He did a similar thing in Scotland last year-45 miles-with his friend who wants to do it. Apparently it is invitation only but his friend has a plan! We looked at the stats of the 2009 race and I was actually quite excited on his behalf-and in awe as I could never do anything like it.

This animation isn't about sociability-well unless talking to dolls counts as being sociable or is it just a bit mad? Anyway, Apeironia, the second doll in the TDP I have worked on, is finally done and packed ready to leave. This is the little postcard in progress that I made to go with her. The animation makes me think of the brain teaser thing that Kat sent me on Friday to test my brain age-it is 41-yes! (I am a secretly very competitive person) My real age is 45 ha ha! Here is a link, should you wish to measure your brain age! There is a game where you have to identify what is changing in the picture you are looking at-starts off quite easy-not as much so as my animation-but becomes very difficult quite quickly. A fun way to spend 2 minutes.
I made another sale-I get very excited when I sell something-and very grateful that I am not trying to make my living through making things! Little felted horse is off to Connecticut tomorrow. Weird to think these things end up in houses of people I will never meet, in places I most likely will never go.

I keep meaning to get some business cards made, but never get around to it. So each time I send off something I have sold, I improvise. Today I used this lovely old postcard of Buckingham Palace, with a pogo photo of the horse on the back.

I love the way the trees frame the building.

These roses are a gentle and lovely thing to calm you before you see what comes next. As I said-it has been sociable-today Andy's Mum was at his Aunt's en route back from her holiday. We popped round to see her and his Aunt. His sister was there, and also cousins, children and some visitors from Malawi. We had a lovely lunch and a fun time. Andy's cousin is taking a practical nursing exam on Tuesday and he had this doll to practice on. It is an amazing piece of equipment-with a peelable front revealing organs, holes and places to put tubes and things, injectable bits and a scarily realistic mouth. I was interested in it as a doll I suppose-it was semi ball jointed. What makes it so disturbing I think, is the fact that it is really big, yet to me it looks like a baby. I wish I had tried to see if the legs could go in any other pose. I was so busy poking and prodding it, and being shown its innards by the four year old son of Andy's other cousin, that I didn't think of it.

Beautiful Bonsai

These are the rest of the photos I took of my Dad's Bonsai trees. he has a whole tiny forest! Next time I visit I want to take some dolls to pose amongst the trees. I did try to grow one myself once, but I didn't really know what I was doing so it didn't really work. I would love to have one though. I was tackling the real garden today, after being inspired by some gardens we visited yesterday, as part of the open gardens scheme. I will share some photos tomorrow. The last place we visited was like my dream home. It was the studio and home of a sculptor, and was full of her work, and all sorts of collections of interesting things. It had a little roof garden overlooking a kind of log cabin house, and the house to which it had been gate house in the past. The garden part was entered through a small gate set into a larger one, and was walled. It was up a little out of the way lane called The Hermitage. All of the gardens were in the area near to Horniman Museum which is on top of a huge hill, so they all had amazing views.

Bald Doll and a Visit

This is one of two dolls I am working on at the moment and I love how their faces are turning out. They are based on Queen Anne dolls. I am going to experiment with ageing them, but I quite like the clean look of the paint now. I am going to use very shiny varnish on their eyes to try to make them look like glass. I like the bald stage of a doll. I never really plan how to do the hair and then I get to this point and think 'Oh, hair, hmm, or shall I just leave them bald?'

Today we visited Dad and Joan. We had a lovely walk down to the village (on this website the google street view is the road we walked down!) to see an exhibition of Kent artists' work, have a quick browse in the bric-a-brac and a half of bitter in the pub. Then back for a delicious lunch. This is one of Dad's bonsai trees. He is a man of many interests, and bonsai has been one for a long time, so he has a great collection. He is a really good gardener so I don't know what happened to me!

This is the enticing entrance to the barn where the exhibition was held. The barn is about 600 years old. It makes a great exhibition space. This is the view from the barn across the pond. There was a variety of work as you would expect. I didn't get a catalogue so cannot link to any artists apart from this one. She made lovely circus themed ceramics and paintings which I really liked. I also took a fancy to a painting of a lobster, and a raku cat. No purchases were made today though!

I hope your weekend is going well!

Cake, Tea and Flowers

My simnel cake, which I am very proud of. It took three hours to bake and had a collar of brown paper and string. I only had room for eight disciples, and all my fruit sank to the bottom, but it tastes good! My Mum and brother were here today for Easter lunch. Andy cooked while we went for a wander in Greenwich. Delicious lunch and I managed to come second in scrabble rather than last.

Another tall, thin painting, representing the many cups of tea drunk today.

I have missed shadow shot Sunday again, but these would have been perfect. I do like green flowers. I have Euphorbias and Hellebores in the garden, and also a variety of tulip called Spring Green-if it appears again. Snowdrops have that little flash of green too. These are from the flower shop and are teamed with another green flower and two pink roses with green tinges.

Fish, Flowers, Felines

Tin Fish from Rye.
Imagined flowers-after looking at a book of Chinese watercolour techniques.

Handmade Easter card from my Mum.

Yellow ochre cover of

"A Treasury of Kittens"

which I noticed on the shelves last night.

Bye Little Car and Other Bits and Pieces

Here is Antony, about to drive away in my little Nissan Micra. His car, which I now own, is the black one on the left. I had a terrible hangover this morning (birthday drinks for my friend Clare last night), so was later than I intended setting off to my Mum's house to do the swap. Then, having arrived safely I was recovering before having some lunch, when I swore out loud, inadvertently, because I had left the log book, my cheque book etc in the hall at home-it was all ready to go, but I forgot to pick it up! So, about an hour and a half later, I drove my car back to London, followed by my brother and we did the exchange here! We had a drive around tonight in the new car, and I am getting the feel of it, but driving very slowly while I do so. It is slightly wider and slightly longer than the micra so I want to get to work early tomorrow to secure a parking space requiring no skills to get into!

I kept my little bear keyring. He is so old his stuffing is coming out.

I love this wrapping paper I bought for Clare's present-I have a piece left and might frame it.

Tulips from a lovely shop just up the road from here. It has beautiful flowers, plants, candles, soaps, flower lights, little hand made things, and does beautiful seasonal displays. It smells gorgeous too and has great cards and wrapping paper(see above) It is called Passion Flower-so if you are in the area of Blackheath Standard ever-go and visit!

Tulips displayed in lovely dark green charity shop vase, on the free trunk in the hall! I have never had somewhere to put flowers in the hall before-how exciting!

The painting is from Greenwich market-years ago. It is of a courtyard somewhere hot-I love the mysterious feel to it and the chipped and battered edges. It is on a piece of hardboard. As I think about it, I have quite a number of (bargain) original works of art, bought over the years, mainly in Greenwich. I shall do a post one day on them.

The thing next to the girl is some kind of dog, but looks odd. An odd dog.

Here is a 2 second snippet of my car leaving home today! Hope your weekends were good and

your week is even better!

A Few Days

A few photos from the last few days-Christmas has come and gone again! This is Bertie, one of my Mum's cats (Bert and Ernie after the muppets) He and I had a battle for the chair he is on and he mainly won. He stares up into your eyes with a look of love.

Our Christmas day game. It is called 'Connect' and we have had it since we were children. It is a simple but strangely fun game where all you have to do is make connections with the underground map-like pieces. Usually everyone plays scrabble except me as I don't really like it(and am not very good at it!) but this year we played connect and then junior trivial pursuit-from the eighties-so very dated current affairs and sports.

On Boxing day we went to Antony's and had a walk into town which was really busy. This is an unusual lamp shade in his house-one of his drawings. I did a few doodly face drawings and then remembered this lamp and made them into candle shades. I have ordered some of those led tealights for a safe option though!

Antony is still in the process of clearing out the stuff from his house and I have relieved him of quite a lot of it. This tray was one I missed on our last visit-it is really 70s Christmassy I think. The counters were being thrown out at school and I rescued them.

On Sunday we went to my Dad's for lunch.

This is the view from the back of his house. I love the stark tree against the blue cloudy sky. This is Oskar. He belonged to the old man that Joan, Dad's wife, cared for for a long time. When he died, Joan and Dad adopted Oskar. He is a sweetie!

A deliciously scented hyacinth. I love these flowers.

Pizza and a stroll along the Southbank

November the 1st is Andy's sister's birthday so we all met up for pizza at the Pizza Express on the southbank. We were actually early so had a little look around a delicious smelling food market near the restaurant. I bought more cake glitter and some Chai tea and Andy got pomegranate molasses and wild sumac-which smells lovely and is a gorgeous deep rusty red colour.

We walked back to London Bridge. I love walking along this part of the river. It is so pretty. Yesterday I noticed that the benches have lights under them. I wonder how long they have been like that?

I was strolling as I took some of these, hence the blurs!

The Oxo tower. We have been in here once only for cocktails. So expensive but so tasty. There was a most amusing full length glass door which fooled everyone drinking on the balcony into thinking it was not there (me included so I feel ok about being amused at the others!)

Art under a bridge on Southwark Street.

More art. This one was rainbow coloured which I liked better. As we were getting near enough to take a picture it changed to red! It gives the photo a much more seedy feel. I think it changed with the hour as it had just got to 6 o'clock.

The moon popped right out seconds later!