Sunday, June 28, 2015

First walk at Hadrian's Wall today.


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Thursday, June 25, 2015

From Common Prayer.net today

Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador asked, “A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed — ​what gospel is that?”

Listen to your children praying, Lord. Send us love, send us power, and send us grace, that we might hear what you are saying and do it. Amen.

Monday, June 15, 2015

Baby knitting

I can share these now they've been posted to their intended recipients.


Puerperium cardigan in King Cole acrylic yarn, with long sleeves and  my own cables on the front. Wooden buttons from eBay.


Eli Baby Dress turned into a cardigan. In more King Cole acrylic yarn, shell buttons from eBay. Bonnet pattern of my own devising. 

Both knitted up very quicky, took me ages to get buttons and post off. Hope they'll still fit.



When Jo and Sarah came to stay...

I love having these guys to stay. They stay up late drinking gin and talking politics and theology. I also got to do some fun wedding planning with them as well. They helped us move furniture without complaint - and didn't even mind us not having a working bathroom. What great guests!

We started on the Friday with putting up our new curtains, dinner in Pho Vietnam in Portswood, and ice-cream from Scoops.

On Saturday after a gentle breakfast we scooted down to Bitterne Station and picked up tickets to Ryde (*groan*). Tickets to Ryde Hoverport no less! For we were off to the Isle of Wight.

The Hoverbus that connects Portsmouth station to Southsea Hoverport doesn't hover by the way - just in case you got excited as us at that prospect.

The hovercraft was awesome - only 10 mins! It goes so fast, and isn't very bumpy. We arrived in Ryde, took in the seafront and had a tasty meze lunch in a little restuarant.

Then it was time to go on the tiny 1930s tube trains that make up the only mainline railway on the island. We were off to Shanklin. They use the tiny trains as the tunnels are so small on the island.

When we got to Shanklin, we walked along the beach soaking in the sunshine. Up the hill to the village, and we enjoyed an Isle of Wight icecream at the Strawberry Thatch tea garden before making our way to the magical Shanklin Chine. Whilst we were too early to see it lit up, it was still dreamy making our way through the cool misty ferns. A quick pint at a pub at the end of the Chine and it was back on the train to Ryde.

Tom and Sarah had bought Hovecraft I-Spy books from the hoverport, so there was lots of competive spotting of Isle of Wight landmarks throughout the day.

We had a fab fish and chip supper when we got in and drank strawberry collins into the night between moving furniture.

Sunday was lazy mornings, our first Sunday roast in the dining room, toasting their newly arrived niece before waving sad goodbyes! Roll on our next visit.
























Diy update

So the bathroom looks a bit different now. We've actually got sanitary ware and tiles up, but I've not got a picture of that yet. The builders are on week 3 of the quoted 2, so I'm not too worried. I've learnt to be really specific on what you want from your builders. If you're not, they'll do what they think is best, which may be different from what you think is best. Not always a bad thing, but if you have specific ideas, say so. 

Thanks to help from Jo and Sarah when they visited, the bedroom is done! Carpet in, furniture moved in and curtains up. It's so nice to sleep in something so lovely and peaceful and restful. Next up is junk shop and antique shop shopping for bedside tables, chairs and wardrobes, but there's no rush on that.

We've been thinking about bathroom and living room paint - interestingly, so far in the process, my gut instinct on paint colours has been right. And aren't paint names ridiculous! So far, we've got Heather Climb and Milky Pail (*groan*) from Dulux in the bedroom, Tribal Headdress from Valspar for the bathroom and probably Mojito from Crown for the living room.

Finally, we've bought a lovely Stonehill 1960s coffee table from eBay for the living room. I love it's atomic style lines, and think I'll base all our style decisions for the living room on it.