I've been creating again!

No, not chaos! Nice things!!!!

I have been having a few online debates with my facebook buddies about 'old lady' crochet. Now, I don't want this to sound derogatory or nasty - it's just my description of the sort of crochet that I remember being sat on the sideboards of the various elderly relatives we used to go and visit. Doilies and the like.Lacy, frilly stuff. Both of my grandmas were into it. Mum's mum used to crochet the lace edging for the priest's vestments - this sort of thing... (NB this is not one of hers, just the sort of thing she used to do)

Courtesy of Christ the King linens http://cklinens.tripod.com/

A few weeks ago I treated myself to a gorgeous set of crochet hooks in a little case...

 
I know, I know, but I had to do it. I only had the one (which came with Auntie Bo's bag pattern) and so I wanted to get a better collection. I bought a set which went from a size 5.5mm right down to 0.6mm (that's quite small!) and I have also bought some thread (thin string) which is suitable for crocheting little tiny things!

Anyhoo, I grabbed a small-ish hook - 1.75mm -  and here's my 1st attempt...it's a bit of lace edging...

Pretty dinky, I think you'll agree.

Well after having worked out it was just about the same as normal crochet, but with more squinting, I launched into my 1st doily - strictly speaking it's a coaster.

Here's a bit of close up detail...

Edging

Centre

And being me - I couldn't just stop at the 1st one, now could I?

Just so that you get an understanding of how much smaller this work is compared to the bags I've been making, this is an extreme close-up of the 2 hooks - one is 3.5mm and the other is 1.75mm...

What do you think of my granny crochet?

Dad's 70th

Oh Grandma, what big teeth you have!

It doesn't seem possible that Dad is 70! He doesn't look it - 70 used to be 'old' for goodness sake! This man is still clambering up ladders and is out in the garden 8 hours a day!

Anyway, it happened! His birthday party was fancy dress, of course, and the theme was 'R' ~ anything beginning with the letter R, thus leaving quite a few options open to all and sundry.

Dad of course came as himself - R for Roberto


I came as 'Little Red Riding Hood' which was a bit of a stretch - the funny thing was that there were another 2 red Riding Hoods in the building (one to be spotted in this pic sitting down to the left!)


Mum and Dad's (slightly mad) guests came in all sorts of costumes - most of them cleverly contorted into titles which had the letter R...

On the left here we have R-Dan ...

...with his arm around the aging Rock star Ringo Starr!

A double whammy for the RRRRRRRs there - although by the end of the night he had been renamed Juan Lennon (the lesser known Spanish sibling of John!) as the person behind all the hair is none other than our lovely friend Jose Ramon Torres Castro!

Then we have the famous backing group The Robettes Dad's fan club; who came in waving a banner and singing!

In this next picture we seem to have a man in red chatting to a Racer who was actually Valentino Rossi, and they are passing the time of day with a Ranger!

 In this slightly more crowded shot, we have (from Left to right)

A lady in Red, one of the Robettes, dancing with the Rhinestone Cowboy, another Red Riding Hood, a Rani, and then we have a Rep sitting down in front of the aforementioned Ringo! On the right you can see the long red cloak of the 3rd Red Riding Hood

Next we have a red-head and a Rabbit - can you spot the family resemblance????







I reckon Uncle Ste's legs are as good as Mum's!






And here is the Rasta Man...(bringing cakes and trifle!)








Finally, and I have to say, the best costume of them all - was Janey's. Can you guess what she came as...?

Roberto on one side, and Roberto on the other. That makes Snap!

A slice of life

Guess what Dan bought me (us) for my birthday?????

Super duper slicing machine!

It's something we've been thinking about buying for YEARS...we love salami and sliced meat and usually buy it ready sliced, but there's nothing quite like freshly sliced - and of course they keep much longer as the whole product than the sliced version.

Earlier on in the year, we asked Zio Vanni to see if he could get us a Parma ham when he came over in April,  and he actually brought us a 1/4 ham - and then refused payment. We love him!!!!!!

So, it's taken us until now to get the slicer so that we could do it justice! Parma ham cut thickly is disgusting! It *has* to be paper thin! So, last night we broke out the slicer, and cut the seal on the ham!

Opening the ham

Close up - YUM!

It's going to take a little while for us to create that smooth edge you need to get whole strips, but we definitely got as far as 2 thin strips - which (both) tasted great!!!

How professional?!?!?!?!

This is what the finished product looked like.

Tasted as good as it looked!

Something not quite right?

I was trying to do the 2nd slipper and concentrating so hard on remembering the right no of rows and stitches, that I've only just noticed that although the counting is spot on, I've used completely the wrong stitch!!!

Mum and Dad came over!

It seems like a long time ago - but the Aged Ps popped over to Yorkshire for a swift visit!

I had the day off on the Tuesday so we went over to Fairburn for a wander. Somehow in all these years and MANY Fairburn visits, we'd not quite managed to get them there.

As we walked up to the 1st hide - the one just behind the visitor centre looking west over the next lake, the people inside were shusshing us and beckoning us forward. The kingfisher was sat there on a twig. Gorgeous. There are no pics of him as we were a bit too far away and I only had my phone camera, but this is them smiling afterwards!!!!

Yay! Just seen the kingfisher!

We then wandered up to the path that runs along the side of the long lake...

I had to stop the children from fighting!!!

...and we sat for a while in the hide which is in the middle of the long lake...

...admiring the view...

We were getting a bit peckish so we stopped off at The Chequers Inn in Ledsham which is literally just around the corner from Fairburn.

Mum and Dad were REALLY impressed with the place - the menu, the surroundings, and, the fabulous food!!!

Check out the fishcakes Mum and I had, and the fabulous venison Dad had!

We sat out in their lovely pub garden!

A thrush was nesting in the ivy over our heads and was nipping in and out as we ate!

It was a really lovely day out!!!!

Well hello there, you can call me Ray.

It's been a while! I've been busy, you've been busy - you know how things are!

What have we been up to?

The last post was showing the details of the walk that Janey and I did in Derbyshire. We'd gone camping to a lovely field behind a pub (no that's not cheating!) which I'd discovered when on Lucy's hen weekend a few weeks before..this is the Hens sitting in the very pub garden...

And here is the view of the pub garden taken a couple of weeks later, from just about beside that shed you can see behind Lucy Hen, looking back towards this table, and over towards the campsite...

It was a cracking location, and as you can see from the previous post - a great place to start for a walk.

I'd arrived quite late on the Friday night (thank you M1) but fortunately, with the joy of our pop up tent, within 20 minutes we were unpacked and ready to rock and roll!

We had booked dinner in the pub The Royal Oak which is pretty much famous for its food, and I have to say, we were lucky to get in - the place was HEAVING and the food was delicious. Janey had a Butternut Squash Lasagne and I had Cajun Roasted Salmon. Yum!

It was a good idea to book in for food as it meant that we didn't have to worry about getting provisions or cooking for that evening. And as it turned out it was a bloody good job as I had forgotten the cooker!!!

Honestly - I'm not good to camp with if I'm a bit stressed - last time we went away with M&D it was the weekend before going off to the USA and I forgot the tent pegs!!!! On that occasion, Dad (being the original boy scout) happened to have enough bits of stuff around to make pegs out of. On this occasion we didn't really have too much hot food planned (sarnies, fruit and crisps being the main stay of camping kitchen), but in the morning we REALLY wanted a hot coffee. So, after verifying that yes, there really was NO cooker, we started trying to think about what we could do to heat a cup of water up for coffee.

We initially tried candles in a pan with another pan on top (they kept going out, and they were the lemony ones you use to keep insects away) we didn't have any night lights or other fuel source. Then I remembered an video I'd seen on one of the 'how to' websites I frequent.

Bottle Cap Burner Really Cooks! - The most amazing home videos are here

I think you'll agree it's a bit impressive.

When Janey and I were having dinner the night before, we were laughing as we BOTH had brought our hand sanitizer gel with us. You have to understand that Dad had us using this stuff YEARS before it became mainstream and we we laughing about how indoctrinated we were. So as we were discussing possible fuel sources for our coffee heater, this video popped into my mind.

We had no tins to make the little stove with BUT we did have tin foil and (of course) we had wine bottles with metal caps, so quite quickly 2 stoves were fashioned, and we also made 2 little foil cups. They were filled with water and the stoves were lit...

You can see the pan with the 4 anti-mozzie candles in it which was our previous attempt, there in the background! So, with about 1 and a half capfuls of gel, we managed a nice, hot cup of coffee!!!

Janey smiling now there has been a caffeine infusion.

And here I am with the tools of the trade - tinfoil and hand gel...

You can call me Ray (Mears that is!)