Christmas in Hay-on-Wye - pt. 1

After we had been to the auction at Brecon yesterday, we drove on to Hay-on-Wye (this is starting to become a monthly habit now!) for a bite to eat and to look around the shops.  I am not in to town glitz and baubles - I prefer to see how individual shops have dressed their windows.  Here is Marina's wonderful shop (such an eclectic mix inside). 

Two doves nestle in the window.  Aren't they lovely?

Cats!  I couldn't resist taking a photo of this display inside.  Gosh, I wish I could find things like this to sell!  Mind you, I think I would probably KEEP rather than sell . . .




Round in Backfold, this pretty little cat was so friendly, and her wedge-shaped face suggested Burmese or Siamese genes.  A happy little soul.



She soon had my OH wound round her paw!



A nice display in front of the little Backfold flower shop.

Hay Castle.

More photos later.  Wish we were shopping in Hay instead, as it was SO lovely there yesterday and we walked around and chatted for a couple of hours.  I might just have bought a book from The Poetry Shop . . . an Edward Thomas type of book in fact, but it's to be wrapped up for Christmas.

Christmas List: Mistletoe - Tick

We went to Hay-on-Wye today and found this absolutely splendiferous branch of Mistletoe for just £5!!! I think we shall be tempting any passing Druids at this rate . . .

Pottering along

I've recently done a couple of evenings at a pottery class held up in Brechfa Village Hall.  The suggestion for our first piece was a cup.  However, my hands seem to have different ideas and I ended up making this tilted leaf-shape bowl.  When it came to glazing, I wasn't sure what the colours would look like glazed, but now I have a better idea of how many layers to apply.

This little dish is on ball feet.  The flower petals are just a brush pushed down onto the base to make a design.  Once again, I hadn't a plan to start with, this just evolved.

This bowl owes more than a nod to a Carlton Ware design from the 1930s.  The specks in the middle are made with a special glaze pencil.

I am looking forward to going back in the New Year and learning a bit more and improving my techniques.

Meanwhile, we have a viewing on the house coming up between now and Christmas.  Originally we just had 24 hours' notice for a viewing, which would have meant pretty well staying up all night to get everything straight.  Fortunately that has been altered, but we have still been working flat out to get everything ship-shape again.  Every dry moment has been spent outside, sweeping up leaves, weeding, scouring moss on an area of rough concrete in the yard, moving recycling piles out of sight until we get to the Tip at the weekend.  The stable yard is now tidy, and the front driveway, and I hope to carry on with my Autumn garden tidy up which had ground to a halt with day after day of rain.

Of course, when I went up in the attic, there had been another Cluster Fly invasion - it looked like one of the Plagues of Egypt up there and took me 3 hours with the vacuum to sort it out.  Yesterday afternoon, though bejeebered after spending 2 hours in the stable yard with my OH, a broom, and a hose and a never-ending pile of leaves, I tidied up the Junk Room so you can actually see an area of carpet again (!) and then went down to The Old Dairy, which became mum's flat.  That is now all ship shape too, so I am getting there.  Cleaning our many windows is very time-consuming, but I will get them all done this weekend.  I've done the Velux windows in the roof so far.  At least it will be tidy for Christmas : )

A knickers-on-inside-out sort of day . . .

We've all been there - slept badly, got up too early, wanted to go back to bed but when you do, sleep evades you.  Yup, that was my sort of day today.  I had just gone back to bed when our eldest daughter phoned, on the way to the train station (a meeting in London, which did little to encourage my nerves to relax), and as my husband obviously couldn't hear it, I had to throw back the bedclothes, grab my dressing gown and hurtle along the landing in a state of undress which is not at all seemly in someone my age and shape!

We talked and talked, because she's feeling stressed and worried at the moment and when I finally returned to a hot bed (having had the presence of mind to switch the electric blanket up to 3 as I was galloping past the end of the bed), I had freezing cold feet and they never warmed up, I never got back to sleep again, and after 20 minutes or so I gave up trying and got dressed again (in the dark still as the heavy curtains were still pulled).  This is where the knickers-inside-out part came to pass.  Ah well, it is meant to be unlucky to notice and change them before midday (WHERE did I get THAT gem from I wonder?  School days I suspect.)

Anyway, my guilty conscience soon had me wrapping up presents, printing off Amazon gift vouchers from the internet, and sealing up parcels to send (MUST book the My Hermes ones in a minute).  I took a couple of parcels to the PO to post and ticked off the card list.  What slows me down is writing the little catch-up notes for more distant friends or relatives who we are only in touch with at Christmas.

I managed a little bit more of my x-stitch pattern, and have nearly finished the lighter green Mistletoe leaves, then it will just be the Merry Christmas underneath to stitch, and to sew it up into a tree hanging. The colours aren't true in this photo, but you get the general idea.  I'm going to do a couple of little house ones next.

I have also spent a couple of hours this afternoon photographing and describing some stuff to go on Fleabay.  One item in particular had to have proper research done to validate its military connection. That was the fun part of the day.

No meat for tea, although I will be having fish, and I have frozen the pile of vegetable fritters I made last night and will have them again with a spicy chilli tomato sauce to give them some flavour.

How has your day been?  I hope you achieved what you set out to.  I had a new Phil Rickman book arrive (well, a novella, which means I could read it very quickly and am tempted) so I'll read the first few pages of that after tea.

Needing a few more hours in the day

At the moment, life seems filled with "things to do" - and all these "things" seem to have my name on them.  I am sleeping erratically as if I wake in the night, these mental lists keep re-writing themselves and gibbering in my ear until I drag myself out of bed, feeling wrung-out but with sleep evading me as the lists perform figures of eight in my head.

I will feel better when I have finally got all the Christmas cards and parcels posted.  I think.  I hate having jobs waiting in the wings too, and there is a beautiful little Arts and Crafts ladderback chair sat in the hall, awaiting completion of re-rushing the seat.  Whilst the Gothic table was behind it, it was easily overlooked, but now I have no hiding place and hope to get on with it this morning.

As the back is narrower than the front and side struts, I started putting the seagrass corners in a month or so ago, to balance the front and the back before replacing the seat in seagrass.    Here it is in its completely stripped stage.  I'll show you an "after" photo when it is done.



Here's another project, a little 1930s child's deck chair.  I have the material.  I have taken the rotten canvas off.  It's now lurking in the Junk Room  . . .  It's a summer type thing to sell though, so no great rush with this (that's procrastination talking again I think!)

When we were in town yesterday, I bumped into Maria (Dotty's Daughter) and her husband.  It was lovely to see her and be able to say a proper thankyou for the lovely chart booklets she sent me.

Sorry for such a boring post, but no recent outside photos due to the persistance of the rain (though nothing like they have suffered in Cumbria and up North, poor souls.  No cake baking either, though I hope to get some stuff done for the Christmas freezer this week.

Anyway, I am away back to my bed for half an hour as my brain is on a go slow from lack of sleep.

Oh, I CAN do a photo of part of our stand at a recent Militaria Fair.   Don't get too excited though!

A show and tell moment

A few weeks ago my good friend Pam gave me a bag of Crab Apples.  Somehow they had something put on top of them and I suddenly discovered them this week and thought oops, I'd best be doing something pronto.  Half a dozen had "gone over" so to speak, but I still had a pound of fruit.  I just washed them off, removed stalks, cut into quarters and stewed up with about a pint of water, then put in the jelly bag.

It didn't make a great deal of juice, so I sat myself down on the sofa with a box of saved cooking apples from our trees, a knife and a bowl of cold water and cut up a couple of pounds more, stewed them up and added them to the jelly bag.  Both lots of apples gave me a pint of juice, which I combined with a pound of sugar next morning and boiled up briefly.  The result is in the top photo and I was delighted with the clarity.  Two of these are show quality I think - the small one has a little bit of cloudiness right at the top where I encouraged it through my straining funnel - it was setting as I was pouring it.  Anyway, more in the way of Christmas provender is made.

I also unearthed the latest batch of cider vinegar from the depths of the airing cupboard.  It had a good mould on top, and smells the biz, but is still pretty cloudy now it's been strained, so I will have to do what I used to do with the wine and rack it next week.  It's mainly for cleaning, but it would be nice to have some as good as the first batch I made, which was a stunning colour and NOT cloudy.

We went into town first thing to take back the BT Call Guardian phone which didn't work, and got a refund.  We have bought a cheap replacement for the moment, but will do some research into a more reliable model for the future.  It was a frustrating few days though.

Now I am thinking ahead to Christmas and planning some baking.

I have Christmas magazines which I have saved down the years too, so I shall be spoilt for choice.

I like to make some bakes which are different from my normal year-round ones, and of course, some of  these are destined as gifts.

The wind is howling about the place today (as it was in the night), but we have lit the log burner and are about to be snug by the fire, watching the racing this afternoon.  I will carry on with my Mistletoe x-stitch design and perhaps some of the mini-hexi runner.

Don't put off til tomorrow . . .

what you can do today.  Oh gosh, that really is the story of my life!  Every New Year I tell myself I will be a reformed character, but life seems to get in the way.  Well, that's my excuse anyway, as is, I'm an Aries, what else do you expect?!  I could get a PhD in procrastination.  I'm not lazy, just disorganised and busy . . .



Yesterday was a good catch-up day.   I  had a small bag of crab apples I had been given which had got "lost" in the kitchen. I found them last week and thought, I really MUST cook them up. Yesterday was the day.  They cook up into a tart pink jelly, but their colour was greatly helped by my jelly bag having been used for Elderberries last time, and though it has been washed and well-scalded since, the colour remains.

Later on, as there wasn't much juice there, I sat and watched tv and peeled and chopped some cooking apples to make some extra juice to go with this, and left it to drip overnight, so I will boil it up with sugar this morning.

We finally got around to another job which needed doing.  This particular projects has been waiting quite some for me to start work on it.  It was bought in better condition than this!  (It's a chess box, with expensive glass chess pieces).  It had been covered in a grey sticky-backed covering, but this had been torn and worn around the bottom, so that all had to come off so we could recover it.

These were non-negotiable.  Nailed into place over the original covering, we had to meticulously cut the new black Fablon round them.

Slowly getting there.  The bottom had a hole in one corner (puppy having fun judging by the look of the splintered wood and teethmarks!)  So we bought a sheet of black mounting board and restored that and then Fabloned over the top of it.

The finished box.  Not perfect by any means but smartened up no end.  This has been waiting since, ahem, August for me to "get around to it" . . .

Yesterday I also programmed our new telephone - a BT8500 Call Guardian - we had to replace the one we had as the battery wasn't holding.  I thought I'd got it right, but not according to my eldest daughter, whose phone numbers were carefully put in (along with all those who we are happy to speak to) and - I thought - allowed (as it's one of these call blocking phones to get rid of cold callers).  Unfortunately it seems to be getting rid of EVERYONE!  Back to the drawing board . . .

Update: this is going back to Tesco's as the blardy thing blocks ALL CALLS and doesn't even ring! We can only hear an incoming call on the ancient BT phone still plugged in up in my office.  Friends and family complain they can't get through (by email!!!)  So that's it, I want my £47 back.  About to plug the old one in again.  I know they are useless because I looked up bt's advice page and there are pages and pages and pages of complaints about everyone having the same problem and about it not being fit for purpose.  So be warned, and don't get one!  Guaranteed you will get no nuisance calls - in fact, you will get NO CALLS AT ALL!!!

I also got around to reading all the instructions on my Instant Pot, and I used it on the Slow Cooker function to make a chicken curry for tea.  It worked on that setting, so I will have to give it a whirl on the pressure cooker bit and see if it really is as speedy as it says it is.  Yoghurt making is also planned.  Do I HAVE to use those EasyYo sachets or would it work just as well putting a dollop of Bio yoghurt in some milk?

Oh, and can I pick some brains please?  I hate Date Syrup in the cupboard.  When I want to substitute it for sugar, does anyone have ideas of amounts?