An award and a parcel

Saturday was an eventful day.

I received an award from Totty and the Monkee shop opened.

I am still concidering who to pass the award on to, so more about that at a later date.

In the Monkee shop, I managed to secure a pouch.

A parcel arrived this morning.

This is what was in it

Can you see who it was from?

This is what I bought from Monkee Maker

See, original Monkee Maker item

With monkee of course

But see what was hiding inside!

A lovely cupcake.

Somebody spotted the envie this morning, but more on that story another day, I am off to continue my deliberations about the award.

My visit to the patchwork shop

yielded quite a few fabric pieces for my stash. They are a mixture of fat quarters and bolt ends. There are also a couple of bigger pieces for backgrounds.

What do you think? Did I do well?

A Birthday outing

On her birthday, Mum had decided that she would like an outing to the museum in Skagen, a small town at the very north of Denmark, 40 Km north of where Mum lives.

It is the museum's centenary this year and they have managed to get an exhibition of 600ish old paintings from the area together.

The town of Skagen was very well known to painters in the latter part of the 19th and early part of the 20th century. When I was a child, we always had an annual outing here to look at the paintings.

Here are some of my favourites

My absolute favourite. It is an enormous painting. Description can be found here.

We now have a print of it on our corridor wall here ;o)

After the museum, we went for a drive to the west coast. I had been told that they had demolished a very picturesque church as it was in danger of toppling in to the sea due to coastal erosion! I would rather they had left it alone.

You can see photos of what it used to look like here and here.

I could not take any photos as it was very windy and the wind was full of sand; I did not want the camera sandblasted!

From the church, we could see this

The pointy bit at the top of the sand dune is a lighthouse, again you can see more here. All the buildings are now covered in sand!

We drove a bit closer

We did not leave the car due to the sand, but I managed to get this photo of the sand coming over the top of the dune. We are in the car park at the foot of the dune.

We had thought we might have a meal out, but in the end we went home and enjoyed a smoked salmon sandwich instead.

A look around

Friday, Mum and I went for a drive.

First we went to my Dad's grave with some flowers.

Mum thought he would be wondering why he was getting flowers this time of year. Normally she only puts something on around 1st December, a winter decoration which lasts until after Christmas.

I think she has forgotten that I normally put something on when I am there. She is excused, as she cannot easily get there herself.

Looks quite nice like this, doesn't it?

This fellow appeared to be on guard duty

After the churchyard, we went to the Patchwork Shop, more on that in another post.

Driving back into town, I spotted something on the skyline over the harbour that I did not recognise, so we went to investigate.

This was what it turned out to be

Further investigation around the (very empty) harbour, found this

It seems that the harbour is now

known for scrap, rather than fishing

These were the only fishing boats we could see, apart from 2 rusting hulks waiting to be cut up for scrap.

We also found this

Which really had me puzzled for a while

The telly is still there on it's wall bracket

furniture is still in place on the bridge

What happened here??

but then I looked at the front end

And realised that is where the two sections had been cut from.

I still wonder what happened to the ship, as it seemed to have been abandoned rather suddenly, judging by the "stuff" left lying around in the rooms.

By now, we could hear the coffee pot and the lovely cake we had bought earlier calling for us, so home we went

Mum and some of her presents

Now, what do you give a 90 year old, who has a small flat full of the content of at least 4 households and who never throws anything out?

I could not think of anything, until I started knitting a test piece with Noro Blossom. It then occurred to me, that last I was home, I noticed that the cosmetic pouch Mum was using for her knitting/crochet accessories was falling apart. There was my answer; make one with this skein of Blossom.

I lined it with a nice "froggy" fabric from the US

Put two zip pockets in one side along with some small pockets

A bigger pocket and more little ones on the other side

Here is Mum, having just unwrapped the purse(?), but Mum being Mum, she is busy carefully folding the wrapping paper, just in case. I do wonder how much I am going to find when the day comes and I have to clear her flat.

I have really no idea if she liked the purse, she never said! She did however, like the hat I had knitted her (can't find the photo). Giving her a card was a waste of time. She opens the envie, looks at the card, reads the inside, and returns the card to the envie, where it will stay forever! At least I didn't spend ages making the card, but bought it in a shop.

I will put other photo's from Denmark in a few other posts

Did a workshop today

Making fabric postcard. Though I wasn't really interested in making postcards, I could see possibilities for the idea.

This is the postcard I made, we had to make one with this design, after that we were allowed to make what we wanted. 

I decided to make some folded notecards for my Mum as a birthday present, she is 90 on saturday

I love this little fellow, works really well on this background fabric

The stitching on this girl is actually gold thread, very striking

I think this cat is not very happy to be on this card

and this fellow just want's to play

I am off to Denmark in the morning, returning Monday, yes, for Mum's birthday.

I hope I will have time/money for a visit to the patchwork fabric shop I discovered last time I was there.

Away again

but not quite a holiday.

I am volunteering as a helper on a camp for disabled adult women. I did this last year too and it is great fun, even when the weather is rather wet and cold, like last year. At least the forecast this year doesn't look too bad, compared to what we have had recently.

There is usually some sort of crafting going on on camp, though what crafting we can come up with to the theme WATER I am not sure. This theme was decided in the spring when we believed the weather would be nice this summer! I did suggest "wool" as a theme!

If you want to see what sort of camp/place I am going to, you can look here

Camp: http://gmb.orpheusweb.co.uk/camp/index.html

Place: http://www.woodlarks.org.uk/

I will be back next Saturday lunchtime