A very special castle

May 6, 2012May 6, 2012 stitchesoftime3 Comments

As you know I love castles and post lots of pics of them. But this is a very special one as this is where my wonderful, talented and very clever daughter Ellie will be living for the next year.

As regular readers know she is due to finish her degree in Archaeology, Heritage and History soon and she has just got a fantastic first job. She will be doing a one year internship as a Conservation Assistant at Powis Castle in Wales , which is owned by the National Trust.Ironically it is one of the few castles in Wales that we haven’t visited but I am really looking forward to visiting her there.

It is an amazing opportunity as she will have training in all aspects of conserving the collections and I am so proud of her. She has been working part -time as a Conservation Assistant at a Tudor house in Worcester while at Uni and has also been volunteering at that property and at the local medical museum where she has been helping with archiving material.So all that extra work plus her academic work has really paid off.

So she is busy finishing off her last two assignments at the moment. She has already handed in her dissertation and she and her friends celebrated this week. Here they are in their hand – made celebration t-shirts and below that they all are outside the hall of residence where they lived in the first year.

Only seems two minutes since we dropped her off .The pic below shows on her very first day there.

Very well done sweetie – ‘may the sun always shine on you’.

Where did the time go?

April 1, 2012 stitchesoftimeLeave a comment

Hello everyone, I hope that you are all having a lovely weekend.

We are and it started with lovely daughter Ellie’s 21st birthday on Friday. I can’t believe that she is not only celebrating her birthday but also that she is nearly at the end of her time at Uni! It only seems a few weeks ago that we were dropping her off at her halls.

As I type she is sitting writing her dissertation, she is doing very well and is about 3/4 way through this. She is also applying for jobs in the heritage industry so I am keeping my fingers crossed for her as she has worked so hard.

She is still volunteering at Greyfriars, the National Trust Tudor house in Worcester where she worked as a Conservation Assistant last year but has also been doing voluntary work archiving material from the old Worcester hospital.

We were going to go to Leeds on a day out and visit Temple Newsam house but got sidetracked by some new charity shops in town so had a day of retail therapy instead which not only gained us both lots of new clothes (including some lovely tops for Ellie’s work wardrobe) but also donated some funds to charity! A win win situation. I love shopping in charity shops, we have some fab ones in our town with some really expensive labels at a fraction of the cost.

Ellie does not really want to be 21 and out in the big wide world – she would rather be a Disney Princess so I bought her lots of Disney gifts for her birthday – here is her pile of pinkness and her and Jake posing , they look very 60s hippy chicks here.

We also had a Disney fairies birthday cake with a sparkler in.

One of her presents, from my sister -in- law Amanda, was this beautiful blackwork picture.

She also celebrated with her friends in Worcester – in fancy dress of course – the theme was Army Girls.

So have a very happy 22nd year – we are all very proud of you!

My Mum also arrived on Friday as we are off to the Italian Lakes on Wednesday – lucky us.

So take care and I will see you all in a week or so!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year …..

March 25, 2012 stitchesoftimeLeave a comment

I have decided that I really do like Spring best out of all of the seasons. I like all the others for different reasons but there is something about the start of warm sunny days after the cold of Winter that makes you very happy! I have had a very lovely weekend and I hope that you have too.

I have been very relaxed this weekend which was wonderful, I had a quiet week at work as I was only in the office for one day after getting back from China on Monday and as I have felt very tired and jet lagged I had not planned anything for this weekend beyond a bit of sorting in the house and garden.

As it has been very good weather I have spent a good few hours in the garden and we had our very first BBQ of the year this evening, in March – a minor miracle!

As you may remember we had our very last BBQ of the year last October the 1st and it was so lovely this afternoon we thought we would seize the moment. The clocks have gone back as well so we had another hour of daylight so I pottered round the garden a bit more.

I have had to do some major work as well as the general post Winter tidy up as the very high winds in Jan meant we lost quite a lot of the trellis. I had taken half of it down some months ago meaning to replace those panels later but the rest has gone so I took it all down this weekend. Sadly I have lost quite a bit of the lovely clematis and ivy but the good news is that my camellias are blooming for the first time in 5 years!

I think it looks just as nice without the trellis – pity my neighbour’s cat Henry will have nowhere to climb and scare the birds now! I found a lot of pigeon feathers underneath the laurel bush so I think someone met a sticky end in his paws.

Also took some pics of my lovely Virbunum plant which looks so pretty at this time of year.

I have also been working on all the Chinese pics so that I can publish the page later on in the week, I took so many pics that I have spent a long time choosing which to use and resizing them.

I am set to have a nice relaxing week at work then I am teaching for a couple of days before we leave for our holiday in Italy! We are off to Lake Como the first week of April, lucky us.

Mum is arriving next weekend and Ellie arrives midweek – just in time for her 21st birthday! How did that happen, my little baby being 21? This is the first of the special birthdays this year as Jake is 18 in mid June, I am 50 at the end of June and Nana is 100 mid July.

I do hope you all have a lovely week ahead with lots of sunshine and nice things, take care and thanks as always for visiting.

Winter Exchange

February 4, 2012 stitchesoftime3 Comments

Well how are you all and are you lovely people in the UK snowed in yet? We have had small flurries on the hills all week and today the promised snow arrived with us – very timely as this morning I had a lovely parcel all the way from Australia (where of course there will not be any snow!) containing this wonderful ornie from Lisa V.

Lisa must know my tastes very, very well as what she stitched is perfect for me and as you can see looks very good hanging next to the little stocking on the doors with the snowflake stickers.It is Heritage Stitches design and is stitched on hand dyed Silkweaver fabric.

The snow was just starting when I took the above pic put we are nice and white now – good job I am holed up indoors tomorrow!

My exchange piece was sent this week to the USA and as soon as I hear that it has been delivered I will post pics of it.

I decided that I would make a Spring ornie for me this week rather than a Winter one as it had got a bit milder outside (the bulbs are all coming through in the garden) so have finished all the stitching on one of the Quaker Tree ornies that I mentioned last post. Just got to add beads and turn it into a little pillow ornie.

I will leave you with the some recent pics of Ellie on her nights out with friends Hannah and Becky – she did mention that there have been no pics of her for a while so will have to rectify that! The theme for one of the fancy dress nights was ‘bugs’.

Hope you are all keeping warm (or cool!) depending where you are.

Take care and thanks for visiting.

Disneyland Christmas !!!

December 28, 2011February 6, 2022 stitchesoftime1 Comment

Hello there

I hope that you are all well and happy and that you have had a very good Christmas. We had an excellent time at Disneyland as we expected to and thoroughly enjoyed our first Disney Christmas. Thanks to my very lovely children I have now have a new camera which they let me open before the trip so was able to take some very good pics.

We arrived back safely on Boxing Day evening despite high winds that made for a bit of a bumpy landing and since then have been relaxing (I am on leave for the next two weeks which is wonderful!)

I have finished my latest stitched item, this is a gift for my aunt who lives in Spain. She loves antique style frames, I can’t remember where I got this one from but I have had it for a while and the blackwork design is from an old copy of New Stitches magazine issue 106.

I am off to Spain at the weekend where it is nice and sunny and am really looking forward to it. Hope that you all have a very happy New Year wherever you are and see you in 2012!

A very merry Christmas to you!

December 20, 2011 stitchesoftime3 Comments

christmas pic for blog

Well this is my last post before we set off for our little trip to the Magic Kingdom so I just thought I would wish you all a very happy festive season. I hope that your Christmas is everything you want it to be, that you spend lots of time with the people you love the most and that you have joy and peace and happiness in your lives.

Take care and see you all in 2012!

Jazz Time Again!

October 11, 2011 stitchesoftimeLeave a comment

I have had a lovely weekend at the Marsden Jazz Festival, this was my second year helping out and this year I was running the box office. We had a very good time, despite the horizontal rain on Saturday and Sunday but it didn’t dampen enthusiasm, even the street band on the Sunday played on despite the very soggy conditions.

The pics of the village here were taken on the Friday when it was lovely and sunny! This is the little festival shop with a display of our t-shirts for this year.

The festival takes place in all the pubs and clubs in the village and this is one of the banners outside the very nice Riverhead Brewery pub – lots of real ale brewed here plus very nice food. It is also right next to the village river so is a great location, especially when it is nice weather.

This pic is of one of the very cute cottages in the village, I love the flowers over the door and the disused post box in the wall – very picture postcard!

It was very busy so didn’t get the chance to see many of the bands but did get to see a bit of the late night Saturday gig by the wonderful Submotion Orchestra whose CD I have now bought and am listening to as I type this post. They are fab – the vocalist Ruby Woods has the most amazing voice and I am going to see them live again as soon as I can. Really soulful music with excellent lyrics. Go and watch their video at the band’s web site .

Not a lot of crafting going on due to the weekend away. I have just got my Autumn Exchange piece so will photograph that to show you next post.

Meanwhile hope that you are all well and happy and thanks for visiting.

London Life Part One – the bit where we see famous people!

July 10, 2011August 23, 2011 stitchesoftime1 Comment

We have just got back from a very lovely, very busy trip to London and I have so many pictures of beautiful places to show you I have had a hard job editing them down to a few to post.

We visited the British Museum, the Museum of Natural History, the British Library and Hampton Court as well as Canary Wharf and Leicester Square on the evening of the Harry Potter premiere.I will post the historical venues later on in the week but meanwhile here’s what we got up to at the premiere.

We knew we had very little chance of getting near to see anything much as we only arrived on the afternoon and there were people who had been camping out for days. Here is a pic of the kids at one of the blocked off sections of the square by the publicity hording.

However we were lucky enough to get to the back where the stars were arriving in their cars (the largest collection of silver Bentleys with blacked out windows in the world!) and peek through the hoardings surrounding the square to be able to see lots of red carpet activity.It was very amusing trying to work out who we might be seeing – we realised the next day when we saw pics in the paper that we had seen Helena Bonham Carter (recognised the hat!) We worked out we probably saw everyone arrive but since they were all behind their blacked out windows can’t really saw we saw them!

Sadly we did not see the main stars but we did meet a lot of very lovely people who were very excited, like us, just to be there and Ellie and Jake got interviewed and broadcast live on BBC Radio London which was fab! The pic below shows them with the reporters.

I can’t find the live interview but here is a link to the earlier interview the reporter did with them that went up on Twitter and the pic from the Twitter site.You can just see one of the fans peeking over the top trying to see who had arrived!

http://audioboo.fm/boos/406900-harry-potter-fans-gather-at-trafalgar-square-for-the-final-premiere-of-the-series

Later on in the week we went to Comicon – a Sci – fi film and magazine convention where we did see lots of very famous people from TV and movies close up, there were stars from films such as Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter and TV series like Buck Rogers, Doctor Who, Firefly as well as loads of fans dressed up.

We saw some very nice Storm Troopers, a Charles Xavier (Professor X from X Men – we have just been to see the new movie which was brilliant), Wolverines, a Klingon, a few R2D2s, some Disney princesses and too many Dr Whos to keep track of – more Matt Smiths than David Tennants and only a couple of the older Doctors – sadly no John Pertwees who was always my favourite doctor (probably because most of the people at the convention were not born when he was the Doctor!) Anyway it was a really fun day and the kids were very excited – the same as I was at Hampton Court. I have started watching all the Tudor series again tonight in homage.

As it was London and we were living the glamorous city life we had some very nice meals out and had a special picnic on the train on the way back from Marks and Spencers including this very lovely little glass of wine, you may remember that last year I posted about portable wine containers in my post on Glamping. This plastic glass full of Chardonnay came from the chiller cabinet with a peel off lid! Very useful.

I made good progress with my fabric Xmas ornies before I went away – I now have about 20 in various stages of completion – here are some pics of the crazy patchwork ‘sheet’, the cutting out and one of my newest finished batch in case you want to use this method to make your own.By careful placing of the heart I managed to get 8 cut out of this sheet. The final pic shows the backing fabric I have used as well. I added a small Xmas tree button to this set from the packs I bought at the Malvern Quilt Show a while ago.

I appear to have solved the problem with the fabric pics on my posts being wavy lined, I thought it was my old camera but realised that when I looked at them in slide show preview that wasn’t happening , it seems it was my photo editor software, am using another one now and pics are a lot clearer!

I spent part of this afternoon working on the Makower farm animal quilt which needs to finished in a couple of weeks for a family birthday present. Am making up my own pattern so it is very challenging – think I know what I am doing but am being very careful cutting out!

Don’t forget to post a comment on my giveaway post if you would like to win an ornie. Thanks for visiting.

Listography

July 4, 2011 stitchesoftimeLeave a comment

While looking at the other contributions for this month’s Scavenger Hunt I came across a post about making lists that I liked from Ellen’s Blog. The list is ‘Top 5 decisions you are glad you have made’ so here goes.

1. To have kids – without a doubt my best ever decisions as they are wonderful – we have had such fun together ever since they arrived and still do, they are such fun to be with and we get to go off and have adventures together – like London tomorrow!

2. To move to Huddersfield – I came here to study for my degree and I had various options for where I might end up, I am very glad that this one was the one I chose as I have been very happy here, loved the degree and have loved living here since then.

3. To buy a house in Spain – a big decision but like the Huddersfield one somewhere I really, really love to be and I am so glad to be able to spend more time there with my family.

4. To apply for my current job – it is a very demanding job but I love it , the students and the staff I work with are really great and I get a real buzz out of doing it – and have been doing it for 10 years now.

5. To take life as it comes and look for the joy and the positive aspects of every situation. I didn’t used to be very mellow and tried to have everything planned out but a few years ago circumstances changed and I decided that I was going to try to ‘roll with it’ a bit more and I am very glad I did. I am far happier now than I used to be and am having a lovely, lovely life!

See you all soon.

Thanks for visiting.

Birthday and the Bard

March 28, 2011March 28, 2011 stitchesoftimeLeave a comment

This weekend we went to visit Ellie in Worcester as it is her birthday this week. For her birthday treat she wants to visit London and do some more museum visting (goodie!) which we will do later in the year.On Saturday we took a little trip to Stratford-on-Avon so we could visit some of the Shakespeare houses.

For Ellie this was not only a day out but of course a field trip, she is doing a module on musuems at the moment and is very interested from a professional point of view about how things are displayed and how the information is presented. She is currently employed as a conservation assistant at a Tudor house owned by the National Trust in Worcester so was also very interested in how they were looking after the houses and was not impressed by the cobwebs and dust at one of them!

It was a bit dull and cold so apologies for not having nice sunny pics to show you. They also did not allow interior pics in Shakespeare’s house so have only got exterior pics to show you here.

Stratford 1 — Primulas outside Shakespeare's house

Stratford 2 — More arty pics from the garden

Stratford 3 — Beautiful carvings on the Griffin Inn

There were also very few textiles, there were some bedhangings and clothes in the house – Shakespeares’s father was a glove maker so there was a room laid out as his workshop but most of the textiles were very utilitarian apart from some lovely painted linen wall hangings which were very impressive. I did find a lovely blackwork coif in one of the other displays – apologies as it is a bit dark!

Stratford 4 — Seventeenth century coif with insect embroidery

We also went out for a meal with Ellie, my sister, nephew Sam, Jake and her friends. She really liked her birthday pressies which I hoped she would, I bought her Cath Kidston’s Stitch and Sew books, another craft /quilting book Simple Sewn Gifts by Helen Phillips and some pretty material and cup cake decorations and cases.

Simple Sewn Gifts — Look at those cute little patchwork hearts!

It is brilliant having a daughter who enjoys the same stuff as I do and I am looking forward to borrowing the books as well when she comes home in the summer! I can’t believe that she will be 20 this week (she can’t either!) she is so grown up now and very lovely!

Ellen b day 1 — Ellie with her birthday cupcake fixings

Ellie b day 2 — Can't fit that many candles on the cake so she had to make do with the words instead!

I have finished the red chunky wool hat so will get some pics of me modelling it – it has been so nice and warm here that hopefully it is going to straight into the drawer. I managed to get lots done to the garden last week and it is lovely and sunny again today, it is so nice to have an extra hour of daylight in the evenings now so I will have chance to do a bit more pottering later on. I am planning a trip to the garden centre this Sun (as it is Mother’s Day) to buy myself some pretty primulas and lillies for the empty pots.

I am working on a cross stitch exchange for Spring so won’t be able to show you that for a while but have also made a good start on my next Xmas ornie – am doing the JBW Xmas pudding – bit late with this one as it was supposed to be the March finish but better late than never!

JBW Plum pudding — It is stitched over one using a single thread so is coming along fast

Hope that you have all had a lovely week and thank you for visiting.

Stitches of Time

I have created this blog to share my interest in all forms of stitching, quilting, sewing, knitting, medieval re-enactment and costume making – particularly my love of historical embroidery. I also love travelling,especially when it also involves any of my other interests.

Tag: family life