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Another lamp got some treatment today. This one was bought at auction, together with the brass carriage lamp shown on the previous post. The two totalled just over £30 and the carriage lamp was my favourite at the time. But today I realised that this was a Vesta Duplex and deserved a clean up. It was tricky to take apart for cleaning because it had been forced into an incorrect connection but once in parts, a bowl of vinegar and some wire wool and an old tooth brush did the first round. Then a quick soapy wash and some brasso and a dry cloth did the rest.
Well it's not quite that simple...lots of elbow grease and enthusiasm is essential and D supplied that. I hope you can clearly see the difference in this pic between the cleaned and uncleaned sections. I need to buy a glass chimney and replace the glass shade, which unfortunately has a crack. It was an original mustard glass globe. Not a trendy colour these days but so popular then. I have been knitting. I got some tops from the Wensleydale Longwool Sheep Shop
The natural brown spun up really well and is shown in the above pic and so did some white wool which had been randomly dyed in shades of purple and some orange. I knitted the two lots randomly in mainly stocking stitch. There was much more of the brown. When I ran out of the coloured yarn I cast off. I then searched for ages for something to fringe it with. I could have used more of the brown which I still have but I wanted something to "lift" it.

I try not to be precious about the origin of the yarns I use. Just as well because after quite a lot of looking, the only yarn to colour-coordinate was an acrylic eyelash yarn from the LYS in Newgate Street in Bishop Auckland. There is no website for this shop but it is a friendly and helpful place and has a moderately large and varied stock for its small hinterland. It isn't trendy, just practical and serving its market well and with a smile.
I think the yarns work well together. Perhaps it is an attraction of opposites but there is no clash because the colours are so close. The fringing and the thin line of embroidered eyelash yarn are all that have been used. The rest is the natural brown and the shop dyed coloured wool. The "throw" is well over six feet long and about three feet wide. It was knitted on circular needles, not in the round but backwards and forwards, so that each long row could be contained on the needle. Stripes of colour and variations of stocking stitch and garter stitch were used at whim until I ran out of the shop dyed wool. Then I cast off, blocked it and added the fringe and embellishment.

I must now finish the one I started nearly a year ago using the wool I had dyed from the plants in the garden at Raby House.
It will probably be about the same size but in shades of green from the lurid to the dull.
Dreams are that these "FINE OBJECTS" will find a market and that they will sell for enough money to finance the continuation of the hobbies. Selling is yet to be done!!! Ebay is being considered, so is stalls at fairs and so is selling to antique shops and dealers. Other ideas are very welcome.
Cheers Gillian

Posted by Gillian at 14:08 4 comments: Links to this post 

Posted by Gillian at 14:44 3 comments: Links to this post There are worse places to have a coffee. 

He didn't like it and escaped.

There is also a museum well worth visiting. Monday, 17 August 2009 I was very worried about Tigger while I was away. She needs people. She needs to hear voices and music and TV, and she follows the sounds around. I bought her a quacking duck from Hawkins Bazaar and treated her to her new toy after I picked her up this morning.

She was not amused at all. She howled horribly all the way home.

She showed no fondness for her clockwork duckling, no little frisson of excitement at all. I might as well have thrown a lump of old bread at her.

She is keeping very close to me and is watchful of my moves as you can see. She has tried my lap, my laptop, my bed, my sofa seat and of course the table. Luckily, I have a large table and there is room for her at the other end and on the chairs under the table. I gave up on the two velvet cushions in the snug, which had built up a thick veneer of cat fur and I could not get it off. I threw them away and bought two new ones!!!

I picked up a bag of plums from my sister's tree yesterday. I have made some into bases for plum-crumbles but the pot of stuff is still a bit runny. I know that I have three options.

* Cook it more so that the liquid is reduced, this could turn it into jam.

* Add cornflour, or preferably, arrowroot which is translucent.

* Turn it into jam, sponge fillings etc.

I will not throw it away. I will make it into something, somehow. Any advice would be great because there is another bag of plums and they are still firm but ripening up. They will probably become Plum Butter and the recipe will follow. You don't need a recipe for the above. It is just pitted plums, fried in butter and then add vanilla essence, star anise, cinnamon sticks, red wine, syrup and sugar. My result is still very runny so I will do some dodgy stuff tomorrow. I think I will try arrowroot. I think it thickens but stays translucent, whereas cornflour makes it all go cloudy.

Any other advice on thickening up the plum stuff so that the sponge/crumble/cobbler topping won't sink into it!!!

Posted by Gillian at 10:26 3 comments: Links to this post After spending a week in Brittany eating Moules et Frites, sailing on the inlet, drinking copious amounts of wine, riding bikes, walking the coastal path, visiting the villages, towns, shops, megaliths etc. and thoroughly enjoying the company and the weather... we headed home. This is my sister and her husband in the sailing boat taking us out on the ria. Their house is just to the left behind the fir tree. We motored out for half an hour and then sailed back in with all three red sails up to catch the air. Deft manouevring to avoid the oyster beds is necessary. They are marked by sticks in the water which show the extent but not the depth of the beds. The days were much like this and the holiday was wonderful.

We queued for a space on the ferry from Cherbourg to Portsmouth behind David Cameron, who was also returning from a holiday in France. We have certainly had a much better week since our return than he has, as Tories continue to speak out of turn and whisk him straight back into politics with a small p, let alone the rest of the stuff. We were in Dorset and the sun shone, the clouds decorated the edges of the sky and we took the chain ferry from Sandbanks to Studland Bay. The worst thing we did was walk to the top of Old Harry Rocks and frighten one another by going not-very-close to the edge of the cliffs. Buddy the dog scared the living daylights out of his owner the day before by doing this off Old Harry. He perhaps had the worst week!
Posted by Gillian at 11:02 2 comments: Links to this post 

My first taste of snails.

My first sail in a proper sailing boat.

And my first real bike ride. 

"Si tu prends ma place, prends aussi mon handicap"

Posted by Gillian at 08:55 3 comments: Links to this post 
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