A haircut, snowballs and a hike.

The last couple of days have been a bit of a whirlwind. Friday morning I had tutorials booked so had to go into work but in the afternoon I had arranged for Scamp to go to the groomers for his spring haircut.  Here he is enjoying a snooze with John on Thursday,

As you can see he is rather scruffy and shaggy. Following 2 hours at the groomers he is a much sleeker dog and now looks like this. He'll love going out for his walks now as he can move more easily and doesn't get so hot.

Yesterday evening I got on with the snowball blocks for the quilt along at Terry's Treasures The quilt calls for 49 snowball blocks and 50 nine patch blocks. I have finished sewing the 49 snowballs but still need to cut off the triangles and iron the blocks.

I'm going to have a lot of half square triangles in my scrap bag once these blocks are all trimmed. So that will be another project. I'm hoping to get a lot of the nine patch blocks made tomorrow.

Today John and I had planned a hike with our friend Tony. Currently we are walking the Thames path. We have got as far as Maidenhead so today we were walking from Maidenhead to Marlow. The Thames path is a long distance path that follows the Thames for 184 miles (294km). We are walking it from the estuary to its source. 

We travelled to Maidenhead by train and headed to the starting point for this section. On the way we passed the alms houses.

We started in the park by the river and I couldn't resist taking a photo of the fountain.

Along the path between Maidenhead and Cookham we came across this poem set into the edge of the bank.

Old Father Thames goes gliding by.

As ripples run he winks his eye

at Golswold cows and Oxford dons.

Nodding to Windsor's royal swans

He bears our nation's liquid crown

by lock and weir to London town.

May all that know and love his banks

Pause here a while to offer thanks.

There were flowers,

Lesser  Celandine

and this pretty purple flower that i don't know the name of. All the trees were coming into leaf.

I loved these fabulous willows blowing in the breeze and...

there were lots of balls of mistletoe on a variety of trees. We saw a lots of bird life although I only got a photo of these swans. Several times throughout the day there were Red Kites circling over head.

At Cookham there was an 11th century church.

It was a very pleasurable day in the warm sunshine..

This evening I've spent some time sitting and hand stitching some hexi blocks. Scamp has slept on my lap and Picasso has curled up on the back of my chair. A perfect end to an enjoyable day. I hope you've had a great Saturday

Lyndsey