Family Art

This weekend saw me hanging (badly!) two new pictures onto the walls of our sitting room.   The walls are getting a bit full but I managed to find spaces for these two special works of art.  The first one is from my mother-in-law to DH.  One of her recent pieces which was inspired by the Devizes to Westerminster canoe race that DH did twice when he was younger.  I love it and I love her work, usually she is creating gorgeous gilt boxes or paper mache bowls that are so fine and delicate that they could almost be china.

The second picture was one of my late grandfather's paintings of a scene in the South of France.  The picture used to hang above my grandparents sofa in their bungalow and so it has memories of their last home together as well as reminding me of all the tales they used to tell about their times in the south of France.  On the cold summer nights we've been having recently I've been trying to imagine myself there, on the harbour, on a warm evening, eating a delicious meal! Ahh, what a talented family I've got . . .!

Wet Tuesday

You could insert any day of the week at the moment and it would ,sadly, be true.  Being a nation known to like to talk about the weather I tend to resist that topic - but what weather!!  Cripes it has been horrendous!  So much rain has fallen in the last two months it makes us laugh in the face of the hose-pipe ban earlier this year!  My veg growing has been very disappointing and the only thing that seems to be going well at the moment are my tomatoes in the greenhouse.  Courgettes, beans, peas, potatoes, beetroot, carrots, lettuce -  all very disappointing.  The allotment is faring no better - hopes of self-sufficiency are fading.  I just keep thinking Thank Goodness we aren't totally dependent on the food that we grow!

In other news someone has taken up residence in our garden.  We are not sure who he or she is or who he or she might belong to, but we've all started thinking about how much we miss our pussycat and how we might be tempted to get another . . .!!

Passing down

It's been a bit of a year this year.  I sadly lost one of my grandmothers at the beginning of the year and I fear my other grandmother may not have too long left with us either.  Both women had a huge impact and influence on me.  Both were extremely crafty in their different ways and I'm terribly sad that one of them isn't in my life anymore.  Yet they will always be with me and I'll carry with me all my memories of them and the times we shared together. 


Part of my sadness comes from seeing my parents having to dismantle my grandmother's life and it has made me think a lot about why we humans (of course I'm generalising massively here and I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who don't!) collect things and hold on to things and want things around us for whatever reason.  As amongst other things it leads to the problem of what to do with those possessions when someone dies.  I'm terribly sentimental and would have wanted to keep everything but the reality of it (my grandmother was a terrible hoarder and literally kept everything!) is that it is just not possible.  So I've contented myself with a few items that meant a lot to her and mean a lot to me, one of which is her sewing box.  It always sat beside her chair and as a child I was fascinated by the contents and how the box folded out to reveal trays beneath.   It is a little time capsule into the 60's, 70's and 80's craft paraphernalia, all the original packaging and some things have never been used!  I feel slightly scared to use any of them but then I know I must and that she would want me to to.