a great week.........

But not a lot to show you I’m afraid. i forgot my camera!

Wednesday i met a friend in London and we went to the summer exhibition at the royal academy. I'm afraid i wasn’t as excited as she was at the modern art but a very pleasant couple of hours was spent in this wonderful building. In the main, modern art isn’t my thing, you know what I mean, 2 splashes of acrylic across a canvas doesn’t constitute art to me. the Tracy emin pics were frankly bewildering but the Damien Hirst statue of St Bartholomew was intriguing and quite womderful in all its glorius silveryness!. ( oh how we giggled as the lady describing it to her partially sighted friend suddenly realised what was draped over his arm. 'ohmygodohmygod', check it out if you don't know what i mean. a bit of a whoa moment).





However next on the agenda was Fortnum’s for some delicious treats then on to a dim sum restaurant that had been recommended by a colleague. Ocean city and its excellent food....... great value if you’re in Chinatown.

Then we walked up to Liberty’s before home. I hadn’t been to there in quite some time and I found the haberdashery dept a bit disappointing. its moved now to a bit of a dark corner and I know the fabrics are wonderful but there didn’t seem to be any else that was special, or tempting. It will be a different matter I know if I get into quilting which I would like to try later in the year.

I bought these 2 little children’s colouring books at the royal academy.





Aren’t they sweet?

I thought they would make little stitchery projects at some point.
This lovely lovely book was waiting for me when I got in..all the way from Japan. Funnily enough I saw it at the Japan centre in Piccadilly but it was a lot more than I paid directly from Japan.

On the stitching front I saw these beautiful blue wools in the local shop and had to have a dabble with them. Am rather please with the results but I think I need to get my stitches a bit neater.
We are rather lucky in this little town to have a little secret art gallery that specialises in the work of Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious, whose work I absolutely love. Today they had a coffee morning to raise funds for a new study centre so we went along to gaze at these wonderful prints. Some other work was on sale so we bought this little picture by David Weston. Then it was home to watch the next stage of the tour du France. We were in this area on holiday 2 years ago so it was familiar, and having been up mount ventoux in a car we could appreciate what they were doing. Amazing stamina. What hearts and lungs those guys must have!

a rather nice day with an early start and some finishing....

rather a nice day here in the small town.......terrific storm last night, more like the autumn than summer, woke about four am to see the trees outside really moving in the strong wind, with the rain lashing at the windows. i rather like it. went downstairs for a mint tea and started to potter......had about 6 hours to myself just doing that. love it. so I managed to finish the crochet flowers cushion, which I'm very pleased with. A big thanks to http://www.blogger.com/rosehip.typepad.com/rose_hip_blog/ for the pattern.

Then I started another little crewel embroidery just playing with colours. i rather like these blues but not sure what else to put with it. Tended the beautiful orchids.

these are such good value in terms of how long the flowers last and are so so beautiful. (Very cheap in our local market at the minute!)

This afternoon was my idea of bliss. Eldest child, having come back from Ibiza yesterday came in from work and went straight round to see the boyfriend, just as youngest child went to work at our local up market food store. (those with the snappy green uniform.) Herb played golf, so i did minimum domestic chores and settled down with the hoop and a Bette Davis on the TV. i am a huge fan of black and white movies but my favourite is Miss Davis.All that angst and melodrama and dresses to die for.

Finished with a nice dinner with wine. Having friends over tomorrow for lunch, should be a lovely relaxing day with old friends good food, the papers and some nice wine. A perfect weekend me thinks.

lazy sunday.......some crochet and crewel embroidery

well the end of a perfect day............have literally done nothing domestic except cook the chicken dinner and put the washing on the line. the rest of the day I have devoted to the radio,



crochet,

checking favourite blogs, flickering, embroidery,



the papers





and the daughter ( in small measure....only really delivering food and drinks on a regular basis!). in other words, me. which I have to say is happening more and more as the children don't need me as much, husband is fully occupied with whatever the current sport is on TV ( the ashes as you probably know). eldest child is in Ibiza on her first all girl holiday. I have had some texts so i know she is alive. have to shut my mind to all things negative and trust she will come back in one piece brimming with wonderful experiences. which I'm sure will be the case. happy days

...and back again

Am back……..it was a lovely relaxing easy holiday for me and the girls. Herb on the other hand had a dreadful time. He'd hurt his back before we left and (its an ongoing problem) and it just got worse and worse. On the day we were flying we should have had a lovely easy start but a) his back was the worst it had been and b) the m25 was shut just where we needed it not to be. So it was all panic, levered him into the car and bombed down the motorway. Luckily the motorway had reopened so we got to Gatwick as the check out opened. Result. I am I admit someone who likes to get to these places dead early, just in case. The kids hate it.

The flight was very painful for Herb and we tried to be sympathetic as we munched on sweets and listened to ipods. I had downloaded audio books which I would heartily recommend for a long journey. So Alan Bennett's Talking Heads got me through. But poor Herb suffered. Top that off with a 45 min drive from Pafos airport up in the hills in the dark and we were more than ready for the wine waiting for us. The new day brought lovely views down to the sea and the bluest sky you have ever seen. And that’s the way its stayed for 11 days, getting hotter and hotter. I went out with the girls every day. To the beach, the famous pafos mosaics, which were wonderful. Ice cream sundaes by the harbour. And all the time with those wonderful views. If you’ve been to Cyprus you will know how very British it is and the development is every where, with very little of old Cyprus left especially where we were. But hey, it was a wonderful relaxing time. I did lots of my crocheted flowers and some crewel tapestry which I am really in to. We ate nice food and drunk some very good Cypriot wine from local vineyards. We managed to prise Herb into the car on a couple of occasions but he only really began to enjoy himself a couple of days before we left. Never mind we shall return and do more exploring another time.

Hows this for a small world. On the last day we left the girls and got in the car to escape the heat.( I know it was hot here but 40 plus is too much for me) and headed up the hills to get the breeze. We stopped in a little restaurant I had my eye on in the middle of nowhere because the terrace had the most amazing views and were soon joined by an English couple who clearly wanted a chat. And you can guess, they have just moved to cyprus permanently from our small town. I love it when thing like that happen don’t you