Thank you and giveaway

Firstly a huge thank you to all those lovely bloggers who kindly too the time to suggest ways to solve my blogging problems.

I have now deleted the magazine blogs I no longer require - I think I wasn't signed into something or another so wasn't getting the right menu to stop following. Tick.

I understand the html business but am too scared to delete codes if I am not sure which ones are spaces and which ones are somthing important but I will try it out again later. Tick.

Icon - well nobody seems to know why i am a grey square and not a coloured photo on peoples followers lists but maybe I am a grey blob so we'll leave that. Tick.

Scanning - well I spent all evening yesterday scanning and trying to upload as a jpeg file my document and although I got it on the blog it was too small to read properly but no problem you could click on it and read it larger that way except that page 2 wouldn't work like that so you'd have been left with page one read and page 2 requiring a magnifying glass to see! So in the end I deleted the post and went to bed in a thoroughly bad mood! Not yet ticked!..

So on to this morning - blue skies - aren't Autumn skies amazing? I seem to be much taken with skies lately and today the sun is shining and the sky is this brilliant blue - stunning.

Little butterfly enjoying the sunshine on the fence

I picked the last of the sweet peas - or is it? I keep thinking that there will be no more but although they have very short stems and take several days to appear they are bravely flowering still.

This was the document I tried to share with you last night - I can let you see the text but I cannot as yet show you the illustrated version as here - I will try again sometime but for now for those who are interested in my stories here's another memory post - skip this if you wish and go on to the give away below!

Fuchsia—especially the common or garden variety always take me back to the time when my mother and I lived in the Forest of Dean and we used to occasionally take the bus to visit one of mother’s aunts (one of her mother’s sisters) and her family who lived in nearby Bream. They lived in a double fronted stone house with a lovely cottage garden which backed onto commonland and just inside the front gate was a big fuchsia bush which in September would be covered with the startling cerise and purple flowers dancing in the breeze. As we used to get the bus home from just outside the gate we spent quite a bit of time standing beside this bush although it couldn’t have been in bloom every time we visited.

There were 3 cousins, 2 sons and a daughter and the sons worked with their father in his monumental masonry business – they all died eventually of silicosis since even though they didn’t go down the coal mines they were constantly breathing in the dust made when they carved the memorials for those who did! They had a much nicer house than Grandfather’s with electric light and even a television but their toilet was still down the garden, though much later they did install a proper bathroom with an indoor toilet. Great Uncle Len kept ferrets which I found endlessly fascinating, I loved their silky velvety coats and their long lithe bodies, their bright beady black button eyes and also their little needle sharp teeth! He also had a flock of geese which roamed free on the commonland behind the house and in the spring when the goslings arrived I was besotted with them too. Oh how I wanted one, they were so fluffy and yellow and cuddly. “When they are big enough you can have one” said Uncle Len “and then you can eat it for your dinner at Christmas”!! Like that I didn’t want one at all but it was eventually decided that we would have 2 - one for me and one for mother and mother could eat hers if she wished. I adored those geese and they followed me everywhere like puppies. We kept them in the shed and they had the run of the piece of garden to the side of grandfather’s house, which we were able to fence off, and we fed them on scraps and bran. They got up to all sorts of mischief too and one day my mother had been dyeing my brownie beret navy blue for me as I was about to join the guides and new berets were too costly, and she inadvertently left the pan of navy dye outside and the geese found it and tried drinking some of it! It didn’t seem to do them any harm except that they had purple bills and tongues for ages afterwards and looked very peculiar. Of course to get to the toilet we had to go through their enclosure and once when my cousin, who was about 10 the same age as me, was staying with us (where did he sleep I wonder?) he was so frightened of them that I had to go to the toilet with him – he did so want to be macho and brave but the geese were a step too far. They made excellent guard dogs too since many people were afraid of them when they were fully grown for they could be quite fearsome so they were quite useful. I don’t remember any eggs but perhaps we had two ganders! Of course we couldn’t eat them but they did get sold at Christmas time a year or so later since we were going to stay with my mother’s brother in Liverpool and there would be nobody to look after them – that was what I was told anyway, so I dare say they were eaten but certainly not by me nor by my mother!

Now I promised to do a GIVEAWAY if I reached 100 followers and that number has been reached so... I must try and think of something that I could give that might be of interest to you all - not easy since I know you have very different tastes and interests. So this is the choice: the bag ladies amongst you might like either of the 2 bags shown here - one is knitted and the other felted and both have been seen on my blog at the time of making.



Or you can choose something in crazy patchwork such as a needlecase, heart, camera case (for this you'd need to give me measurements), knitted heart or little Friendship hanging


Or a tiny cushion like this blue one about 3 inches square or a 12 inch cushion cover along the lines of these two which I showed you recently.

I'd add a couple of lucky dip bits to whatever the winner chooses to make up the giveaway package. All you have to do is leave a comment saying which gift you would prefer and what colour schemes are your favourites if I am to make something for you and I will draw the winner this time next week. Gift should follow as soon as possible afterwards although if you choose anything other than one of the bags you will obviously have to wait for me to make it!