Patchwork, Pyrex, Plates and Stuff

Morning chaps! And by the looks of it it's shaping up to be another nice day. Hurrah! Today I have plans to drag a sunlounger out and bask in it all afternoon. Quite handily, my garden faces west, so if I spend most of the morning doing all the boring stuff like changing beds, emptying the dishwasher and running over the Co-op for things, I don't feel like I'm missing out on the sun. I'm not actually a mad sunbather, but the combination of this horrible weather we've had and my legs being the colour of milk bottles has brought on this need to try and get a little bit of a tan. Plus Miss EF The Younger, the one who is coming on holiday with us only has to open a curtain and she's brown and she's been out there for two days solid and looks like she's had a month in a very hot country and I have some catching up to do on the tan front.
Right, a bit of business before we start, a big hello to girls who are following and thanks for your comments on the award post. Which leads me to this, after I did that post I kept thinking, 'oooh I could have passed it on to this one or that one' and I started to feel all rotten that I hadn't. So, I'm sorry, to all those ladies whose blogs I read and enjoy that I didn't spread it about a bit more. (and there are blimming loads, believe me.)

Let's have a photo shall we?
I think I'll start with my new craze. The English Paper Piecing. See me, even using the right name now...

I have actually cracked on a bit more with this and I have another row of the blues and have sewn the two blocks together. I decided that if I kept it to the nine squares I could stay in control of it, it would be easier to manage and it would be portable enough for me to take on holiday and do round the swimming pool if I fancied it. I won't sew the blocks together any more, I just wanted to see what they looked like. (And kiss it a few times and carry it round the house showing everyone and telling them how clever I am and that I never thought I would be able to do this until they all ran away and hid.)

The colours look clearer on this one taken in the garden. I think I will have to find a thicker white linen than the one I used here, it looks a bit see through. I will find another pair of gone at the crutch trousers to cut up.
I had a small disaster with the papers, well it felt like one to me, when I spent a good hour on Sunday evening using some 1cm square graph paper as a template to cut up some more and then realised I'd made them smaller than the lot that I'd spent hours tacking on to the last batch. I didn't cry, and I pulled myself together amazingly quickly, nothing thrown round the room, no swearing or anything. I just decided that instead of 8cm square blocks I would now be making them 7cm square and sat in the garden for an hour yesterday undoing all the tacking to start again. I told myself that us patchworkers have to remain patient at all times, mistakes will be made but they can be put right in a serene manner without tantrums.

The squares I did before the disaster. Some of them anyway. I have decided to make my tacking stitches bigger because they are barks to get out otherwise, so a lesson learned.
Right, moving on from the sewing before we have patchwork overload and you all run off screaming. Last Saturday Miss EFTY and I spent a nice afternoon in Leigh on Sea. It is my nearest lovely place and we go there quite a lot. There are lots of charity shops there but it is a rare thing that I find anything good in any of them. I'm talking toot now, not clothes. There could be good clothes but I don't always look when I'm there because there are so many shops to look in it would hold me up. I think the reason there is a lack of good stuff is that the people who live there 'get it' and also there are a few vintage shops there and I imagine they are buying up anything worth having before us lowly punters get their mitts on it. Which is fair enough and what I would do myself. What I mean about 'getting it' is this. Even though it's only a couple of miles up the road Leigh has its own vibe. Poncy word but I'm using it anyway. Where I live is very nice indeed but I get the feeling that most of the inhabitants, if they're not really old, like to buy their homewares in Next and shops like that. Nothing wrong with that and I applaud them because it means my local three chazzas have better stuff for me to buy because nobody else wants it. Indeed they are probably laughing at me for wanting to buy things in them. It's like a dirty secret and I look both ways in my village before I go in them in case anyone I know sees me. But in Leigh, it is different. It has an almost Whitstable feel about it but not so posh and distinctly more Essexy in parts. People go there to buy nice things and live there because it has rows of gorgeous Victorian terraces (murder for parking though) and lots of bars and restaurants. Anyway this is what I bought in Leigh. Not even in a charity shop.

He was one of three but I thought buying them all would make him look naff because I think with the other two it made up that see no evil, speak no evil thingy and I didn't want that. On his own he just looks like he's calling his mates to come out to play, or shouting  'Oi... you, get the hoover out and sort this gaff out pronto.'
I find I'm quite into cherubs at the moment, but I think too many would probably be overkill.

While I was in Leigh I went into the material shop there and was all excited at getting my hands on some fabric and batting. Did that, but came out quite deflated at the non -helpful and unfriendly attitude of the women who worked there. I will go in there again because we are short on fabric shops round here but I won't enjoy it.

You know the other day I said Pyrex was a passing fad with me, well I might have been a bit hasty.

Aren't they dinky? Well they are dinkier than they look in this picture and regular and long time readers might remember that I bought a bigger one of these some time ago. I actually left them in the charity shop twice and then woke up in the middle of the night in a hot sweat (that might have been an age thing) wondering why I had been so stupid and ran back and bought them. See that's the people round here for you. They were in the window display for days but when I ran in there, panting after running from my car, to buy them they were inside on the shelf and no one had bought them. Meant for me, see, waiting for me to go in and buy them. Same with this plate.

I had to ask the woman if they still had it and she went out the back to get it for me. Why I didn't buy them in the first place is a mystery. I think I must have been on a not spending so much money mission. £3.25 the lot so I wouldn't have been able to do much more with that money if I hadn't bought them. Silly mare.
As well as the charity shop stuff I had a little dabble on ebay too and got these.

I've had to stop myself from taking these to bed, I'm so in love.

This one was 99p. Really. 99p. I had to pay P&P which was about a fiver but still bargaintastic. And it came in a box with French writing on it which I have obviously kept because I am a mentaller.

This one came in at about £9.00 but still good I thought for French enamel. Please note we are on a different garden table here, when I went out this morning to take pictures, the leavings of wasp poison were all over the other table. I had more fun than I should have yesterday watching a man (no, he was old, and a bit too flippant for my liking) tog up and spray a wasps' nest up under the eaves. I was waiting for a swarm but my  sister later told me that apparently they go back in to die rather than coming out. I had to find that out from my sister, not the man who charged me £48 and then left his pump up my side alley and had to come back. Anyway, I digress, French enamel jars with all their rusty bits,I love them and will be looking out for more on ebay.

So that's what I've been up to this week. From today I intend to start The Holiday Ironing. The worst part of a holiday I reckon apart from the washing when you get back. I'm not an ironer. I don't go out with my clothes all creased, I'm an every day ironer, I only I iron what I want when I want it, I can't be doing with hours spent in front of an ironing board thanks. Too boring and too many more interesting things to be doing. My wardrobe obviously looks like carnage. Creased clothes all over the shop and gear stuffed in the top where I can't be bothered to find hangers. One day, when I grow up, (and can afford an ironing lady, my sole ambition in life) I will have a lovely organised wardrobe, with colour co-ordinated rows of perfectly pressed garments. I will be able to get up in the morning knowing I have a selection of outifits at my fingertips and not have to start dragging things out and then finding other things to go with those things and then ironing them before I can even go over the Co-op to buy a pint of milk.(And that's along with doing my hair and putting on some mascara and blusher so I don't look dead.) It would make life much easier if I took up doing the ironing but I won't. Apart from before a holiday and that's only just in case the suitcases fly open at Gatwick and a bundle of creased rags falls out causing thousands of holidaymakers to point and laugh and whisper behind their hands about my slatternly ways. So today I shall be ironing in the garden. Probably.

Have a lovely day wherever you are and for the people who live in England, enjoy the sunshine and get your flags out for The Olympics! And by the way, I know I could be on my own here but how excited am I that TOWIE is back? More excited than I should be that's how excited.

Laters.

xxx