£15,000

I visited Hillier’s Arboretum, Braishfield, Hampshire last Saturday, with my very dear friend Linda.

We have been members for quite a few years. For us this is a great place to meet. Linda and I are not shoppers, we only shop for a purpose.

We love to chat. We enjoy our 21 year friendship, having met when our boys were just 5 years old.

Linda loves to drink coffee in the morning and tea in the afternoon.

Visiting Hillier’s allows us to do all the things we enjoy ... we start by having coffee (Linda) and a glass of milk (me). I so wished they would put toasted tea cakes on the menu, so that I could also have breakfast at the cafe.

Next, we go for a walk round the winter garden and beyond.

Returning to the cafe for lunch, we normally have a baked potato each and then in the afternoon we walk the other half of the arboretum, which takes us through the bog garden, the Ghurkha’s memorial and up to centenary walk.

This Saturday there was a wedding.

The swanky wedding car parked in front of Jermyn's House.

During the summer months, there is always a display of Art.

Every summer we pick up the price list and as we walk around the garden we try to guess the price of each of the pieces of art.

Normally we are way off, however Linda did extremely well, but we didn’t guess this one; a pregnant lady made of Portland stone.

She was smooth and warm to touch, her arms carved into the back of the stone.

Price: £15,000 for the garden

Year End

Last week was very much a hard week at work, however this was off set by lots of playing, it seemed that all the things I do, had come together in just one week, why does that happen; for weeks you have no social live and then it all comes together in one exhausting week?

I was getting up extra early in the mornings to do any chores and to arrive at work for 7:30am; this gave me a little bit of quiet time before the all the woodworking machines got turned on.

I needed to accomplish 4 major tasks, that had to be finished by the Friday, however to be able to do these tasks, several other jobs had to be completed first, like having every account reconciled from the bank accounts, credit cards and loans, you name it, it had to be reconciled.

If you do wages as part of or all of your job, then you will have had to submit all the P.A.Y.E., submissions for ‘year end ‘ 2007/08 by Saturday May 31st. (Note for me : NEXT YEAR IS THE 19 MAY - REMEMBER 19th!!) For me this means writing out 40 P60’s by hand, with no mistakes, or if I do make a mistake, I have to start a fresh one.

I was able to complete the on-line submission with no issues what-so-ever, unlike previous years by Tuesday afternoon, then on to finalising all of May’s worked hours and calculate everybody’s pay and submit to the bank for paying. The next big task was to make sure that all suppliers invoices, tallied with the appropriate suppliers statements. May is also work’s end of VAT quarter. Normally as soon as the invoices are sorted, it is just a short job. However QuickBooks has completely upgraded their VAT software and I could not get it to calculate properly – groan, however after much shouting at the computer, I managed to find before and end figures, did some math’s and have submitted a hand written form.

Every quarter, Gary and I have a small competition to who can get the nearest to the amount that has to be paid to HM Customs. This quarter I won, which means Gary meant a pound in the Prospect Hospice Box.

My final job was to submit all the bill payments for the bank to make the BACS payments.

I did it all and I am sure that the fact that I had such a lovely week helped me through.

Monday night, I finished Noel's socks off, I had completed the first sock including a terrible example of kitchener stitch, however sitting very quietly by myself, in the small gap between me getting home and everybody else on a Monday evening, I sewed up the second sock - quiet is the answer, I did a much better job.

Noel's socks - taken at this angle, so that I could use the wall as a back drop!

Tuesday I decided to join a Monkey Sock KAL on the CTnY Forum and that evening, I cast-on and knitted about 7 rows of the rib and then realised that it should have been twisted rib, so I frogged it all, again.

Wednesday evening, Poppy was sleeping over Kaan’s, so Noel suggested we go out to dinner, we decided to go to the local pub, the Iron Horse, because at 8 pm at this pub is where I have a fortnightly village knit/craft get together. It also happens to serve nice home-made food. We had a lovely meal together and then Noel, disappeared (he didn’t want to bump into any of the group) at 7:50 pm, I carried on knitting. I re-cast-on the monkeys and this time remembered to do the twisted rib and managed to do; 2 pattern repeats.

Thursday, started with me following Noel to the garage to get his car MOT’ed, then Noel dropped me off at work, and he went back and collect Kaan and Poppy; as they were all going to spend the day together, starting with the cinema and watching the new Indian Jones film, which they all really enjoyed, then on to Pizza Hut for lunch before going climbing together.

After work, we collected the car, it had passed, such a relief, with just the cost of a bulb (and the four new tyres we had bought the week before!!)

Thursday evening, I met up with Kate and Louise at the pub, (none of us had heard from Sprite64, which is a shame as we were then not sure what to do – hope you are reading this Sprite and you can let us know if you still want to join in), a lovely meal was had by all and a great time while we did ‘show and tell’. As we are all members of the forum, out came 3 monkey’s, which made us giggle, Kate’s were a plum with a splash of pink colour, Louise’s were a white, black and beige colour and then mine.

Friday afternoon, a bit later than planned as it had taken me longer to sort the VAT out, I went round to Ruth’s and caught up with all the family and showed her this blog!! Noel and Poppy went off to climbing the wall at West Swindon’s Leisure Centre and came back and picked me up at 5 pm. We had a relaxing evening at home together as a family and I carried on knitting.

And then Saturday, which broke with glorious sunshine, I travelled down to Hillier’s Arboretum, Braishfield, Hampshire to meet Linda. We had a lovely day together chatting, we are members of Hilliers, it gives us some where to go, when we just want to chat, away from husbands, children, ironing etc etc ... you know the sort of place. In between eating, drinking and walking I took 160 photographs of the plants; this is just a selection of what I took ...

More knitting ...

Yesterday was spent relaxing and knitting (progress photo below), while we watched the DVD; The Golden Compass. Poppy explained to me that her daemon was a Monkey, so I thought I would see what mine was; you can agree or disagree by following this link:


It was also the first day that all three chickens had laid eggs on the same day! One egg was so fresh that it was sticky and very warm.

My monkey sock as of going to bed Sunday evening!

Gallery

A selection of photographs I have taken over the last month;

My guys relaxing, while watching TV - I suppose this is one way of sitting on the sofa together.

and Hannah, who is not in the mass bundle but she is still sat on my knitting and books.



Snow : We woke up to this, on a Sunday morning, the 6th April, you would not believe the English weather, this weekend (10/11 May) we had temperatures reaching 28°C (82°F) (Sunday).



Hannah, who has seen it all before



and Buddy, who at first dropped down on the patio before the urge for a wee got to great and then there was stopping him!!



The Dog House - only used by the cat!



But what was interesting the roads were completely clear, no snow what-so-ever, very peculiar.



The view from my bedroom window:

Right



Left



A trip to the nursery - Saturday 12 April



I am gradually working my way through gardening books and picking shrubs that will hopefully grow in different situations within the garden; from dark and very wet to hot and sunny and very well drained. (I did keep the list so that I could let you all know what I had bought - I have obviously put it in a very safe place - so much so that I can't find it.)

The start of making the border larger - Saturday 19 April, it was just a foot wide (30 cms), but all the original plants have now matured and it is time to expand and give more depth and variety of foliage and colour.



Starting to erect the fence for the arrival of the chickens - Saturday 26 April:



Well he does insist on posing and my shutter is very fast – he is brave or is that ‘stu-pid’!

A little bit of colour - a not very 'in focus' tulip.



The Tree - April

All or Nothing

Oh dear I do not seem to be any better at blogging than I was writing a diary, so please accept my apologies, I will try and get better ...

To start with I would like to share my first Forest Canopy Shawl (FCS), I used brightdyes yarn, which I purchased at a knitting day I organised in my local church hall, last month. I knitted the shawl on 3.75mm needles, I started with straight needles and then progressed to a circular needle when the stitches got pass the 200 mark. I completed 15 pattern repeats, which is more than the pattern required however as I used smaller needles than the suggested 5mm, I had to make up for the size shortfall.

I very quickly learnt the pattern, even though now and again I would forget to do a ‘yo’ (yarn over) and had to do some backwards knitting to make sure there were no mistakes, that being the perfectionist in me lol.



The first picture is of the shawl blocking, this is my first attempt at blocking! I first had to make sure that Toby (my son) was not going to be coming home for a couple days. I placed two white towels across the double bed, primarily to protect the mattress but to also absorb any remaining moisture. I then used long pins with large coloured heads purchased from Fabricland, to pin the shawl into shape. The final step was to walk out of the room and close the door tight, due to not wanting the dogs to get into the room and jump over the bed, didn’t want any pin pricked paws.

The yarn was a delight to knit with, however; the colour changes on this occasion did not do justice to the pattern, saying that, the shawl has been knitted as a christmas present for Toby’s girlfriend; Louise, and are colours that I have seen her wear on many occasions, so let hope she likes it.



The shawl took approximately 24 hours to dry in a centrally heated room.

I enjoyed knitting this shawl so much that I have started another one, using Maiden Yarns in the colour; Forest.



I am a member of Crafty Threads ‘n’ Yarns Forum; last month I joined a Christmas Tree Decoration swap and this is the beautiful decoration I received from the very skilled craftybernie.



I wanted to make sure the tree, (sorry it is an artificial tree; however, with 1 x African Grey, 1 x Cat and 2 x Dogs, one of which is just five months old, a real tree is just out of the question) was all decorated, to show the decoration off to it best. The tree was decorated by Poppy (my daughter) and her friend Kaan at the end of last week and here is a picture showing Hannah (Beaded Collie, aged 4) and Buddy (English Springer Spaniel, aged 5 months) in front of our 2007 tree.



I made a Christmas indoor wreath using quilting techniques for my swappee – however the numpty I am I didn’t think to take any pictures of my work !!

Last but not least today, like the last few mornings and going by the BBC weather site for the next few days to come, Jack Frost had visited. I have to say, I love mornings like this; where I can wrap up in thick socks, a hat, scarf and layers of warm clothes and then go outside and crunch through the ice. The drive up to the farm this morning was beautiful and here is some pictures to show it all off.

A tree that I am taking through the seasons, it is covered in ice.



A winter scene.



Some thick ice on some over grown weeds.



Just after I got back in the car a brown hare ran round the field but I wasn’t quick enough but it was great watching him a lovely start to the day.