A walk in the woods

Hello,

I am stripping very old wall paper from our hall today. I am really quite ashamed of our 

hall. We have lived in the house 15 years and we have yet to decorate the hall. 

Sadly, the hall looked pretty shabby when we moved in, badly applied wallpaper, which 

overlapped in places and painted a dirty beige. Over the years we have even stuck photos 

and Christmas decorations up using blue tac which then took away some of the paper 

when we tried to remove them!! So you can imagine how bad it looks.

Anyway, this morning while stripping paper the sun just kept calling me to go outside, 

to go outside and enjoy the bright day. So that is what I did!

We live in a town in  the Midlands: our house is almost at the top of a hill. 

The hedge at the bottom of our garden marks the boundary for the town. 

This is the view of our back garden (goals, rebound nets and washing lines included!). 

My destination was the wood at the top of the picture. You can just make out a greenish
path working its way diagonally across the field from bottom left.

 So I'll take you with me on my walk into the wood.

This area will be a carpet of blue once the bluebells are in bloom. 

I'm pretty sure this tree must be home to some of the woodpeckers we see in the garden 

(green and lesser spotted). They are such shy birds. 

For some reason we always walk round this wood anti-clockwise, 

today we 'branched out' and walked it clockwise! 

We can't be accused of not being adventurous!

Reminders that we are not far from urban life. 

A short diversion into the science park. 

I must come back when the daffodils are in bloom.

What a super place to sit in the summer at lunchtime and contemplate...

Back into the woods. 

The sight of this tree brings back memories of the children and how they used to love to climb on it and make the horizontal branches wobble.  

Tiny homes for tiny woodland folk.  

We are very lucky to have such a beautiful wood so close to explore and enjoy.

And for completeness, here is the view from the front of the house. 

We can see right across the roof tops of town to the countryside beyond. 

It always feels like we live in a house which has its front in town 

and its back in the country!

I hope you enjoyed that short walk, making the most 

of the winter sun and our local wood. 

Wishing you an enjoyable weekend.

Has it been sunny with you too? 

xXx

Red, red robin!

Hello

Firstly, thank you to everyone who left comments on my last post - you made me realise 

that despite my aim not to purchase more crafty supplies, buying from a charity shop did 

not count - and I shall remember that next time I visit town! Thank you!

So I started another little cross stitch project last week, although it has been growing very 

slowly as I spent a couple of days on the sofa, feeling a bit sorry for myself while suffering 

from a cold.

I wanted to add another little cross stitch project to the winter ones I have already sewn 

- a little sheep and a snowman (who's still waiting for the final sew up, poor man!).

 

 This time I thought I'd stitch a robin and after a quick perusal through my cross stitch magazines

 I decided on the little chappy featured in the above issue of Cross Stitcher. I had a bit of a 

shock when I realised the date on this magazine was December 1994 - my goodness it's 

20 years old! 

On the right of the photo is my completed version of the robin which I sewed many years ago.

 Here is a close-up of him. Not bad considering I was quite a novice cross stitcher then.

 And here he is hanging on my bedroom wall beneath another little cover 

kit I sewed, also again many years ago - in fact you can just see that it says "97"

 in the bottom right hand corner .

 

 Some time ago I'd bought some spotty evenweave and I thought this would be a good time

 to try it out with the aim that it would look like falling snow. 

Here is an early "in progress" photo. Umm.....

 

And here is a slightly later photo - I'm not convinced about the spots yet. 

What do you think? I think I'll persevere and complete the project and then

 make a final decision on the spots. 

If I don't use this eveneweave for snow-effect I'm not sure what I will use it for and boy do I

 have a big piece of spotty evenweave! Perhaps I could just use it as a backing fabric for 

some of my other little cross stitch ornaments. We'll see - the jury's still out, as they say.  

 Hope you have a good week and thank you for popping by!

xXx