Trip out to Tintagel and other things.

Other things first. This little lady,Daisy, lost one of her nine lives last week when she unwittingly ate some rat poison!  That is to say she ate something that had eaten poison. Unbeknown to us there had been rat poison put down in the outbuildings next to the house, luckily I spotted the signs and whisked her to the vet where she had to spend two nights, poor little thing she is such a tiny girl compared to her brother and always seems so fragile.  We didnt sleep for those two nights but thankfully she came through it and a week later you would not think she had been so poorly.  But how do you tell a cat to not do it again!  It would have broken our hearts to lose her, poison is such an awful thing I would never use it, better to trap them if you do have to get rid of rats at least its quick.  

On to Tintagel now, we had a lovely trip over to the castle, we had never been all the time we have been coming here and living here.  It was a nice day, bit chilly but bright and there was hardly anyone else there so we got a real feel for the place.  What a place to have lived, lovely in the summer but I wouldnt fancy it on a cold stormy winters night!  We were trying to figure out how they managed to build it on those really high cliffs and how many people fell while doing it.  

This is the main part where the great hall was, on the right.

View through a window in one of the only bits of wall left. I wouldnt mind waking up to that in the morning!

Ooh eeerrr. A long way down, and the steps a bit scary.

View both ways, lovely and wild up here on the north coast.

View out of the front door! You wouldnt want to carry your shopping up here!  We enjoyed wandering about the site and wished that there was more of the buildings left as it was hard to really imagine just what it was like. Recommend a visit but not for tiny children or the unsteady.

And now for something completely different.  Last week this lovely lady, Diane, came round with a mutual friend, Sue who introduced me to her a while ago with a view to her taking some courses for us.  She makes amazing rag rugs and wanted to show me some of her work and have a look round the space we have here. I am glad to say the she has agreed to do some teaching for us, she is such an interesting person and a real sweety.  She very kindly showed me how to hook a rug when I went round to her house a couple of days later. I did mean to take my camera but forgot and wish I had as her home is packed with her work and lots of other lovely stuff, a treat for another blog soon!  Well I am now Hooked! Excuse the pun and am cracking on with my own bits that I will show you when there is more of it finished, its great fun and at last I have something I can do while watching TV of an evening.

This is Diane, NOT ME (I do not like to appear in photos), with one of her recent pieces, based on a lovely memory of being kissed in the snow and feeling lovely!  Aahh.

And who wouldnt love a tea cosy like this!?  This is one of the project she will be teaching on the courses. Sue the mutual friend is also running some great courses for us too.

Do have a look at our courses website as we now have a diary of all the courses running this year.  There are some really brill things going on including a Teddy making course with Jayne of Country cottage chic!  Go on pop in and have a peep.  

Having a go!

This week I have been having a go at some altered art, it has been great fun looking through all my bits and pieces and Im sure I spend to long choosing what to use and getting sidetracked reading bits in books.  It has been really good to get back to creating something. I have been very uninspired the last couple of weeks since doing the accounts and the tax returns it was as if that had sapped all my enthusiasm  and creativity and I spent quite a few days sat at my desk just doodling rubbish! 

The little girl in this piece is actually E's grandmother born in 1894, he inherited a large number of old photos but sadly we do not know who most of the people are, E can remember his gran telling him who they all were but he didn't take it in and she never wrote on the backs of the photos, such a shame.  We have figured out quite a few of them and it freeks me out a bit that we have a photo of his great, great grandmother born in 1796!

I just loved this photo of the little girl playing her lute in her pierrettes costume and I just happened to have some old music from Harlequine so they went together well.

I was going to show you this little shrine/cabinet that I made E for christmas when I got my present from him.  Let me explain, this is the christmas present he started to make for me Christmas 2007!  And he still hasnt finished it!!!!! I do hope to get it in the quite near future though.  Well anyway I hid away in my room and made him this, he likes Zebra's and has a treasured  toy wooden one and I decided to build around that.  A copy of an old print is on the doors, the dots on the domino add up to the number of years we have been married, the shell one we found on holiday years ago.

Inside is the toy zebra, a secret message (of Love) and an old jar containing a million kisses, in case he needs more! The two drawers are for him to fill with secrets.

And because I have not had my present yet here is one he made earlier!  My beautiful Egg Emporium.  It has a little 'emergency' egg door in the door where one egg can rest and inside it holds five dozen eggs! we did used to have a LOT of chickens. Its made mainly out of an old door that has the most amazing layers of paint on it.  As you can imagine when he finished this, another Christmas present I didn't get till Easter, and gave it to me at about 12 o'clock at night (I had to wait up till he had finished it!) I was absolutely speechless, its one of my most favourite things, ever.

A Happy Day!

 Most of you out there have had plenty of snow but down here in Cornwall we were only lucky enough to have one days worth!  There are not many things I love more than snow, yes I know to most people it is a real inconvenience but if you don't need to go out anywhere and you've enough food, drink and you can keep warm what can be better than a day of snow?  The snow came in the night and fell soft so that it stayed on all the trees and we woke up to a dazzling winter wonderland.....I got out there as soon as I could with my camera as I knew it wouldn't last the way the sun was shinning and I will now bore you with yet more pictures of snow, like you haven't seen enough of it!

Everywhere I looked was a photo opportunity! This is looking along the valley by the river to the woods.

The woodshed by our front gate.

Looking up the lane.

Over toward Golden Woods. (shame about the telegraph pole)

This is through the two glass panels in the top of our front door, I have always loved the view out of these windows the patterns of the trees always changing through the year.

Now I have got that out of my system, Im sorry I could not blog last week, our internet connection has been really bad for about the last 10 days and kept going off after we had only been on line about a minute, very frustrating.  

So I want to thank the lovely, lovely Helen over at A Time to Dance for another award, thanks Helen. I hope I can now spend some time visiting all my favourite blogs and catch up on what you are all doing. 

And finally HELLO SARA!!