A Happy Christmas to the great and many

The staff are in the kitchen (granny and husband) dealing with the goose and the sprouts and the parsnips and what not. They are not dealing with the red cabbage as there was a red cabbage crisis in the shops around here.

Hooray - I am delighted to report that our gas came back on yesterday morning. Apparently the entire supply of gasmen had been drafted in to our village to assist and we are all mightily grateful. Thank goodness it wasn't the electricity that was cut off. The gallant men in vans were applauded heartily yesterday evening as some of the villagers ventured out on their annual pagan ritual - blocking the road with sticks and fire as they made their way to the recreation ground where some recreated, no doubt, and also sang carols. (I myself couldn't be bothered to go and stayed at home with the dog. I was wrapping presents and making the dinner, and the dog was lounging around and looking for scraps in the kitchen.

Aha, - a glance at the clock and I think it is about time to offer round this year's new to us drink which is I think called Kir Royale - cassis and fizzy wine (Banrock Station Pinot Noir on special offer from Sainsbury's). I don't much care for white wine or fizzy wine generally but as an aperitif on a special day I think it will be just the thing. Then we've got some Rioja (favourite at the moment) and a sweet pudding wine (Gran Barquero Pedro Ximenez) that you would probably only want once a year. I had been looking for the Banyul Rimages sweet French wine, but unsuccessfully.

Your Good Health!

Pebbles rag rug

This is my latest thing. It is made using old woollen jumpers from the jumble sale but I think I am going to run out of the purple/mauve wool and I might have to change the white markings later but I shall see. There will be five pebbles in all.

White horse machine embroidery

I'm still doing the weaving but ALSO a machine embroidery. This is the white horse at Uffington and is a sort of homage to Eric Ravilious. It is not near completion.

The horse is just paper at the moment and I need to change the tail. I'll probably cut him out of pelmet vilene and hand embroider it in white for texture.

The river/sky is not sewn on and I might add some beads or change it completely. It is from my indigo tie- dyeing project last summer.

The background is woven pieces of acrylic-painted calico I tore into strips, along with some hessian and some silver mesh.

The two photos were taken with and without a flash - the background is quite yellow in truth, so the top photo is more accurate for colour but I notice it is blurred.

Another time I'll post a picture of the rag rug I've just started. Holidays are here. Hooray.

Synchronised digging

For this week, while a new bridge is installed, our road has become the main thoroughfare around here. To coincide with this planned road closure, some other workmen decided to dig up our road to install a non-urgent cable for a project due to complete next summer. To compound their unpopularity these workmen dug through the main gas pipe yesterday and now five hundred homes (including yours truly) have no gas. Fandabbytastic - we've just come to the end of an unusually mild spell to be plunged into bitter cold, both inside and out. and outside is abuzz with the entire traffic for the village, the non-urgent cable layers and gas repair vans.

There was a blog interval in November ...

didn't blog ..........because, well, still don't know what I was going through and my time was running wild and in dead end streets and - everytime I thought I'd got it made I found the taste was not so sweet, so I turned myself to face me but I never caught a glimpse of the .......no acually, I just couldn't be bothered.

Poor Little Nell

I misheard the newsreader the other day. She had actually been referring to one of the murdered women in Ipswich whose name was Paula. The story from Suffolk is certainly very grim and Dickensian. It seems obvious to me that the right thing to do would be to let the drug addicts have access to NHS equivalents and then they would not need to work in this degrading trade. The men who use these women are taking advantage of their addled state.

Incidentally, I was just thinking to myself this morning that the new particular reports of this case sound very much like the details of the plot of P D James' Devices and Desires when they mentioned the same on the radio (Today Radio 4, of course).