AS: Cool Britannia (sort of): the British thread 2019

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  • Sunny here this morning, I was out for my walk at 8am and back at my desk for an early start at 8.30. I’ve managed to get all my emails and forums done super quick so I’m taking a tea break before tackling the weekly admin and communications. Alas, this afternoon is full of marking but that may have to wait a while as I can hear the neighbours’ builders drilling again. Might have to take an afternoon walk instead.
    Have a good Monday, all.
  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    A little welcome sunshine here too - I’m off to the garden centre for puppy training. It’s ideal, open stairs, a glass lift, lots of people and covered walkways outside so we don’t get wet.

    I’m going to choose a houseplant for my daughter-in-law’s birthday.
  • Sunny here.
    Monday tends to be the day for LAUNDRY so am tackling that at the moment, interspersed with some gardening. When the sun goes it will be time for IRONING and then a DRINK.

    Meal tonight will be something simple - grilled sardines with salad or similar; whatever it will go with red wine which is not indulgent but healthful!
  • As, indeed, St. Paul saith....
    :grin:
  • Dressmaking over the weekend as my daughter is making along with The Great British Sewing Bee on Instagram - and this week the challenge is reusing/re-purposing/recycling. She is tagging the hooded sweatshirt she's just made re-purposing a petrol blue top she made last year, at the peak of prednisolone bloat, and a sweatshirt purchased at M&S when reduced to £6, cheaper than fabric. The M&S top was a very weird shape, dark green with a ginger net skirt, so we were not surprised it was still there for the last reductions. The original plan was to remove the skirt, but it didn't fit. The new hoodie is made to a children's pattern, including bits from both garments, and hand embroidery by me to cover the holes made removing the silver sequinned bird. As she put it up we realised that we had re-purposed and recycled more clothes over the last year:
    • a grey cotton skirt for me from a pair of trousers that had worn through at the top of thighs, copying one I saw Nancy Kerr wear. I so shouldn't cycle in good clothes,
    • a denim skirt for my daughter from two pairs of old jeans - that was a complete remake to fit from hipster to waisted, there's also a pair of shorts and bag out of those jeans, and probably some fabric in the patching pile;
    • a short sleeved shirt from a beach wrap for me;
    • a quilt patchworked from old t-shirts, an old sheet and an exploded pillow
    and I'm inspired to do something with a jumper that's now too loose.
  • I'm worried - the yellow thing has been out for a couple of hours now, and it isn't hailing. Have increased the chances of the latter by putting out the washing. Considering copying Monty and pruning some more buddleia (have already done 3 before he mentioned it. Only 4 official and all the interlopers to do).
  • SarasaSarasa Shipmate
    @Fredegund , I've joined you in risking putting out the washing. After a weekend of nearly getting blown off my feet on Saturday and hailed on yesterday it was lovely to go for a walk this morning and be able to take my hat off.
  • HeavenlyannieHeavenlyannie Shipmate
    edited March 2019
    Curiosity killed - I’m big fan of refashioned/upcycled clothes, I used to sell refashioned clothes at Greenbelt years ago. I’m on a clothes buying ban at the mo and I’m waiting for my workload to drop a bit so I can get my sewing machine back in business and use up some stash. In the meantime I’m doing some small altering jobs; on Saturday I turned some M&S straight tweed trousers (too long and I’m too short for this style) into a natty pair of spring knee length shorts to wear with tights.
  • I have a couple of projects for upcycling - a pair of cream cotton trousers that need remaking into shorts or a straight skirt. They fall off me* and I've cycled in them so taken out the inner thighs, but there is masses of fabric in the wide legs for recycling, and a jumper that I like but needs narrowing, mostly at the front, possibly into a jacket/cardigan. Plus I do need to dressmake as I lost so many clothes in the great purge last year†.

    * Apparently I've lost 2½ stone since I was at my biggest - I was weighed at my asthma check up on Friday.
    † when we were desperately removing the weed fumes
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    I'm in awe of all you sewing ladies! My mum was a good seamstress - she made my wedding dress - but I didn't inherit that gene, so my clothes have to be bought.

    We got a wedding invitation the other day - D's organ scholar from our Newfoundland days, who's now the vicar of a church about an hour-and-a-half's drive from here. I'm not sure whether D's expected to play for it or not, but it'll be a nice wee jaunt.

    And (of course) I really ought to get something new to wear - my current "wedding outfit" is over four years old and has already served for three weddings (one in Orkney, one in Kent and one in Edinburgh, so not being seen by the same people). My niece is also getting married in August (Edinburgh again), so I think a new outfit can be justified. I've seen a dress that I like on the interweb, and I think I'll order it.

    * * * * *

    The plumber's just left, having mended the kitchen tap (it needed a new part, which took all of about 10 minutes to fit), and (bless him!) he only charged us $80 (about £45), which is a fraction of what we might have expected.

    And the dishwasher's working again! <yipee!>

    It's a beautiful, cool day, so we might take a little spin out later.

    Oh, and the PIE was very nice.
  • I lost 10% of my body weight last year on Michael Mosley’s blood sugar diet and 10 000 steps for 8 weeks, then carried on with a carb diet and steps and had lost 20% after about 6 month. So I bought some new clothes but I am still altering stuff to fit me.
    And I have to be able to sew for re-enactmentment, I had to make my own authentic Tudor clothes as well as a WW1 nurses uniform and a crinoline and bonnet for Victorian Christmas. (I hasten to add that my husband also makes his own re-enactment clothes and made doublet and puffed hose for my son.)
    Tired tonight, I was marking til nearly 8pm. I’ve just had chicken with roast pots and veggies and now I’m going to watch iPlayer with my crochet.
  • I’ve been making accessories for a teddy bear from scraps - I’m in the middle of making a jeans leg into a baby sling for the bear, to be worn by a small child whose new sibling is due in a couple of months.
  • daisydaisy wrote: »
    I’ve been making accessories for a teddy bear from scraps - I’m in the middle of making a jeans leg into a baby sling for the bear, to be worn by a small child whose new sibling is due in a couple of months.

    Awwww! How cute!
    :smile:
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    What a lovely idea! Why not make (or buy) a smaller bear too, so that the teddy gets a wee brother or sister as well, and make him (or her) some "baby" clothes?

    After all, you can never have too many teddy-bears. 🐻

  • @daisydaisy that sounds lovely
    @Piglet My sewing machine didn't love fur fabric when I made a soft toy - that one was a tiger. And I would recommend patterns, rather than making them up as you go along.
  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    edited March 2019
    Piglet wrote: »
    What a lovely idea! Why not make (or buy) a smaller bear too, so that the teddy gets a wee brother or sister as well, and make him (or her) some "baby" clothes?

    After all, you can never have too many teddy-bears. 🐻

    It could be ‘teddies all the way down’ 😂

  • shamwarishamwari Shipmate Posts: 48
    Another day! Yesterday was quiet # a recovery day from travelling. Meeting up with Zim friends who used to be in my congregation at All Sould in Harare. They live an hour outside Cape Town.
  • shamwarishamwari Shipmate Posts: 48
    Just back from good lunch with old friends from Zim days. very pleasant.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited March 2019
    Happy Days, obviously, south of the Equator!
    :grin:

    A mildish day here in SE Ukland. My weekly Pilates session has, as usual, left me feeling Feak and Weeble (but Undeterred). There is Tomato SOUP, crusty Bread etc. to look forward to for supper.

    I am afraid I am (alas) not strong enough ( :cry: ) to attend Mass and Lent Study Group tonight......
  • Piglet wrote: »
    What a lovely idea! Why not make (or buy) a smaller bear too, so that the teddy gets a wee brother or sister as well, and make him (or her) some "baby" clothes?

    After all, you can never have too many teddy-bears. 🐻

    Well, the teddy bear does have a tiny cuddly hedgehog. The idea is that when mum is tending to the new baby, the toddler can tend to his own baby. I’ve made reusable nappies too, and found 2 new-born baby-grows and a hand knitted cardigan too, so the bear can be changed. I also made a fabric carry-cot so it can be squished small when not in use.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited March 2019
    This recalls to me a Family Service many lustra ago at which I preached on the subject of the Prophet Jonah.

    A lady of the congregation, noted for her ability to make knitted toys, puppets. etc., kindly made for me a Glove Puppet of the Great Fish, together with a little knitted Prophet Jonah, which I was able to deftly eject from the belly of the Great Fish at the appropriate point in my sermon.....

    O such Larks! Well, I remember it, even if no-one else does - but, by the grace of God, that lady (now nearly 90) is still a stalwart member of that church, and still knitting...!!
    :grin:
  • la vie en rougela vie en rouge Circus Host, 8th Day Host
    I am in the middle of assembling all the necessary papers to apply for French nationality.

    Today I arranged to get a sworn translation of mine and my parents’ birth certificates. How does it cost €120 to translate three tiny little pages of text? (and that was one of the cheaper ones…) I also have to shell out €110 to take an exam to prove that I speak French which I slightly resent because I speak it better than some French people :naughty:.

    Having got hold of my Dad’s birth certificate, I was rather delighted to see my Grandad’s profession listed as “colliery waggon repairer”. Does that job even exist anymore? It also indicates Grandad’s social ascension in a Welsh village – by time my Dad was born, he’d managed to work his way up into a (relatively) cushy job on the surface, instead of being underground digging coal.
  • I guess Grandad's profession as a 'colliery waggon repairer' would indeed lift him above the humble toilers at the coal-face!

    It would have been a vital part of the colliery's work to keep the 'waggons' (a delightfully archaic spelling), and the coal, moving to the surface, so that the Black Gold could be quickly transferred to railway 'waggons' for onward transit.

    If any hand-worked collieries still exist (I know there were some, in Wales - and in Ireland, of all places - not so long ago), someone able to turn their hand to a variety of different tasks will still be of Great Value.
  • Using that as an excuse, my paternal grandfather's occupation is listed in the census records as 'bolt maker' in one of the Clyde shipyards. It's a long time since there was one of those around. He may even have gone back to the times when a bolt thread was hammered out using a sharp edged hammer - a skilled branch of the blacksmith trade.
  • If any hand-worked collieries still exist (I know there were some, in Wales - and in Ireland, of all places - not so long ago), someone able to turn their hand to a variety of different tasks will still be of Great Value.
    This might be of interest: http://www.hopewellcolliery.com/. I think the only working Welsh mines are open-cast and mechanised.

  • If any hand-worked collieries still exist (I know there were some, in Wales - and in Ireland, of all places - not so long ago), someone able to turn their hand to a variety of different tasks will still be of Great Value.

    The mines of the Forest of Dean 'freeminers' might be the last hand-worked coal mines in the UK.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    My maternal grandparents were going to emigrate to America in the 1920s (they were married at Ellis Island). D. and I visited the ancestry centre there, and got the ship's manifest listing Grandad:

    Occupation: Joiner (so far, so good)
    Nationality: Scotch :mrgreen:

    They didn't stay long: I don't think Granny took to it and they came back to Greenock, which is why I'm not an American piglet (and at the moment, very glad of that).

    * * * * *

    ION, we did go out for that little spin; unfortunately D. took a wrong turning which took us on to what I hope is the worst road in New Brunswick, doing God knows what harm to the Pigletmobile's suspension and my nerves. We did, however, put the wind up a flock of eight wild turkeys, who were crossing the road - they were really rather handsome birds, without the wattles that make their cousins look so unattractive.

    We eventually made it to the nice little caff I've mentioned before, where I had battered prawns, D. had SOUP and we both had fruit PIE.
  • balaambalaam Shipmate
    Nationality: Scotch would be historically correct, that was how the Scottish referred to themselves back then. Try reading some Walter Scott, a lot of Scotch there that had never been in a barrel.

    Today it was my task to look after the thirty odd month old ball of energy and joyfulness that I call a granddaughter. It's a hard life. :grin:
  • If any hand-worked collieries still exist (I know there were some, in Wales - and in Ireland, of all places - not so long ago), someone able to turn their hand to a variety of different tasks will still be of Great Value.
    This might be of interest: http://www.hopewellcolliery.com/. I think the only working Welsh mines are open-cast and mechanised.

    Just down the road from our corner of the Deep Dark Woods! We haven't made it there yet; by the time we thought about it, they'd closed for the winter.

    My maternal grandfather was a miner in the South Wales coalfields till the glaucoma stopped him, but came from the Forest of Dean originally; I think that probably means conditions in mining in the Forest were even worse than in the Rhondda.

    Mrs. S, glad those days have gone
  • Wesley JWesley J Shipmate
    Speaking of the Forest of Dean: 'Mark Steel's in Town' about, and from, said location is still on the BBC Radio 4 site for a few days, or also on YouTube. - Quirky and fun, as always. :)
  • Fascinating to hear all these grandparents’ professions; mine were all Lancashire cotton mill workers, male and female. Bar my maternal grandfather, who was a regular soldier in 1938 when he and my grandmother turned up on her sister’s door step to say they needed a quick wedding. My paternal grandfather was also illegitimate, of an unmarried mother. He was embarrassed about it and used to say instead that he’d been adopted out as child, but we think he was brought up by relatives until his mother married someone much later.
    Oh, and further back via my maternal Grandmother I have a more famous relative who was a Dorset labourer - my great great great grandfather was George Loveless, leader of the Tolpuddle Martyrs.
  • Right, I’m off to start work early, I’m getting a couple of essays marked before the builders arrived next door and start drilling. Then I’m going for a long walk.
  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    Art club today. The puppy comes too and learns to settle, like he will have to do at work with his owner.

    I enjoy art class and the teacher is excellent, kind and encouraging. Today we are using old fashioned dip pens with coloured acrylic inks.

    :)
  • Boogie, that sounds lovely. I used to make my own Celtic cards with those pens. Perhaps I might try again. It can't be any harder than making prayer ropes with cats hanging on the ends.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    balaam wrote: »
    Nationality: Scotch would be historically correct, that was how the Scottish referred to themselves back then. Try reading some Walter Scott, a lot of Scotch there that had never been in a barrel.
    Hang on a minute - Walter Scott died in 1832 - a bit before my grandparents' time! :mrgreen:

    It's another lovely day - it's finally beginning to look as if Spring is thinking about springing - although we've got a Special Weather Statement for Friday mentioning Rain, Snow and High Winds approaching from Trumpsville.

    Not time to put the snow-shovels away quite yet ...
  • HeavenlyannieHeavenlyannie Shipmate
    edited March 2019
    Very productive day here. Although the builders were early they weren’t so noisy so I had a mammoth marking day and caught up with my work. So now I can have a complete day off tomorrow, as I should (well, other than a meeting in the evening).
    Just cooking some stir fry chicken and grated courgette with coconut, with rice accompaniment, followed by baked papaya and blue berries - yum! And a nice glass of Bordeaux.
  • I'm on leave this week so I walked (actually walked, instead of catching a bus!) to our local Aldi and bought some veg to make a chilli beef stir fry for dinner. Exercise and a fit of Domestic Goddessness (TM Piglet) in one day!
  • balaambalaam Shipmate
    Piglet wrote: »
    balaam wrote: »
    Nationality: Scotch would be historically correct, that was how the Scottish referred to themselves back then. Try reading some Walter Scott, a lot of Scotch there that had never been in a barrel.
    Hang on a minute - Walter Scott died in 1832 - a bit before my grandparents' time.

    My sincere apologies to your grandparents.
  • To use up the Guinness left over from making Chocolate Guinness Cake for my visitors last weekend, we had shin of beef, slow cooked in Guinness for dinner tonight. Served with mashed potato and cabbage, of course.
  • Left over Guinness??? I don't understand this concept.
    :confused:
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    Piglet wrote: »
    balaam wrote: »
    Nationality: Scotch would be historically correct, that was how the Scottish referred to themselves back then. Try reading some Walter Scott, a lot of Scotch there that had never been in a barrel.
    Hang on a minute - Walter Scott died in 1832 - a bit before my grandparents' time! :mrgreen:
    I have a letter by my great grandfather (an Edinburgh and Berwick Scot who died in 1958) written in the 1890s which uses ‘Scotch’ in this way as does (IIRC) John Buchan.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    Fair enough - but it made us chuckle!

    My only attempt at goddessishness today was making a pot of chicken-and-veggie SOUP for tomorrow's lunch, after which we did a spot of grocery shopping and - HALLELUJAH! - they had lamb-shanks.

    <happy dance>

    They were a good bit smaller than the ones we got a few weeks ago (they really were huge, and we still have one left), but with the judicial addition of lots of veggies and a mountain of mashed potatoes, one should feed us both for Sunday lunch.
  • Wesley JWesley J Shipmate
    edited March 2019
    The Lambshank Redemption!

    I'll get my coat :) - speaking of which: it is truly and literally freezing outside in these 'ere climes, now in the early morn, and with that lovely huge and bright full moon. Very pleasant sunny day yesterday.
  • shamwarishamwari Shipmate Posts: 48
    Very warm today and now sitting by the pool in the sun getting tanned. Bit of retail therapy yesterday and this am went to Kistenbosch gardens which are a tourist heaven in CapeTown. Summer is still with us! Long may it last - or at least for the next week.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited March 2019
    Piglet wrote: »
    Fair enough - but it made us chuckle!

    My only attempt at goddessishness today was making a pot of chicken-and-veggie SOUP for tomorrow's lunch, after which we did a spot of grocery shopping and - HALLELUJAH! - they had lamb-shanks.

    <happy dance>

    O FIE! You have said (or at least typed) the H-word (twin brother to the A-word) in Lent !!!!!!!!!!!
    :fearful:

    Do not be surprised if the Meat turns to Dust and Ashes in your mouth....
    :warning:

  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    edited March 2019
    Well, that was eventful!

    I was happily walking the dogs with my friend. It was near the end of the walk. Zaba, Tatze and Spencer were happily zooming around.

    I was chatting and not paying as much attention as I usually do. Spencer came from behind and bumped into me - I fell headlong and passed out! 😵

    My friend insisted I shouldn’t drive so she put the three dogs in her car and drove me home. Then she took Mr Boogs to get our car. He then insisted that I go to A&E so I did. While waiting at reception I passed out again. They’ve just done a brain scan!

    I’m awaiting results but I must say I feel fine. Every nurse and doctor has been lovely.

    I’m super vigilant with adolescent pups after Twiglet knocked me down several times - but, this morning, we were chatting so avidly I lost my usual vigilance!

    I’m sure all is well, I feel fine and I’m now bored bored bored. Lol

    🤪🤪
  • That does sound exciting @Boogie but that you also do need to be checked out, however boring A&E is (I'm doing my very bestest to avoid A&E currently)
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    edited March 2019
    {{{Boogie}}} Hoping all is now well - look after yourself!

    It's a nice sunny day here too, and warm (9°)! It was clear enough here last night for that lovely bright moon too: with it at one side and a spectacular sunset at the other, it was a beautiful evening.

    @Bishops Finger - any day when we can find lamb-shanks is a potential feast-day! :smiley:
  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    All is well - I’m home now and my brain is still intact. The bruised ribs are hurting ‘tho.

    Thanks for your good wishes 🙂
  • SarasaSarasa Shipmate
    @Boogie glad you are OK (apart from the ribs).
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