A busy Tuesday

I seem to have been in motion all day today.  Having spent Saturday at an open day for potential students I had several chores I needed to do. First I needed to pick up my new glasses. I'd had my old frames for several years and needed a change but choosing new frames is very difficult as I'm very long sighted which makes seeing how they look a bit of a problem. I try on far too many styles and take ages to make up my mind. Collecting the new glasses is always a worry because I convince myself that I made the wrong choice and I'm going to look awful in the glasses. I collected my glasses and  love the way they look and they make everything so clear. 

Next up was to collect pet food for Scamp and Picasso and then time to walk Scamp. Normally we would walk over Wandsworth Common but today I needed to pay a deposit for a holiday we are planning for next November so we followed the road instead. On the way we spotted a blue plaque.

The plaque is on the wall of Nightingale House, a large care home for members of the Jewish faith.  The plaque is to Ted 'Kid' Lewis who was born Gershon Mendeloff. (1893 – 1970) He was an English professional boxer who twice won the World Welterweight Championship.  He is a member of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

Next stop the travel agents. This particular travel agents specialise in Pilgrimages and the one we are going on next November is to Ethiopia. This has been organised through the church we belong to so we will be travelling with people we have known for some time. This is important to me as it's a two week trip so I want to be with people I know I get on with. Having finished all my treatments I decided it was safe to start organising some exciting activities. I'll give you more details in another post.

Once home I cut the binding and got it stitched to the right side of the advent calendar. Using my binding clips I turned the binding to the back and I'm ready to get it all stitched down.1

I've been slowly stitching this evening  but a long way to go. That was after I took Picasso to the vet for his annual checkup and immunisations. He is always very interested in everything that's going on and seems to enjoy being the centre of attention.

So a day with a little stitching. My next stitching day is Thursday but for now I need to go to bed as I have work in the morning.

Lyndsey

Cezanne and sewing

Friday was a fun day. In the morning I went to Kingston with Richard and John to do a little shopping. I didn't have anything specific to buy but I wanted to get some small items for the Christmas stockings. Whilst there we enjoyed a tasty lunch and I got some good ideas for presents. John and I had arranged to meet Katy after she finished work to go to the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of Cezanne 's portraits. I've seen a lot of his landscapes but very few of his portraits.

I liked the Boy in a Red Waistcoat.



and this one of his father reading a newspaper



There were just too many to show you here but go on Google to find more. Having enjoyed the exhibition we went for dinner with Katy and Olly. A fun day but very tiring.

On Saturday I had to go into work for an Open Day. The day was for potential students to visit the university and have an opportunity to talk to the teaching staff about the courses they are interested in. Saturday evening I just chilled out in front of the TV. I can't even remember what I watched but it was the perfect end to a busy day. That brings me to today.

Today was my sewing day. Whilst in Kingston I'd visited the fabric department in John Lewis and bought an advent calendar panel and a metre of Christmas fabric, some of which I'll use for the backing.

I started by pressing both fabrics and then carefully cutting the advent calendar panel. When I saw the panel I thought of my younger brother Alex. Earlier this year he split up from his wife. He bought himself a canal boat and is now living on it so he must need an advent calendar to help him get into the mood for Christmas. I must admit I found making the pockets rather fiddly but I got it all sewn together and wadding and backing attached. It is now waiting to have the binding added.

I'd just grabbed my camera when Picasso settled himself onto the edge of the piece. I'm planning on getting this finished tomorrow evening. I'm using the same fabric as the backing for the binding. Whilst putting this together I remembered that I'd bought another Christmas panel last year to make up for displaying in the hall.

I just need to remember where I put it and then I can get it made into a quilt sandwich and quilted. Oh that and I need to buy some more wadding.

I had to repair Lucy's work skirt as she had caught the seam slightly but that was soon done and I was able to find the bag lady for November. This month is Thelma and the information with the fabric tells me she is the cookie lady of the club. I must say I love her hair and the silver 'T' for Thelma. When I've finished writing this I'll make a start on stitching her. Maybe this month I'll manage to get her finished.

Scamp wasn't impressed when I got Thelma out to take the photo. He'd been waiting quite a while for a snooze on my lap and now I planned to do some hand stitching. In the end I got him to move and here is Thelma.

I'm linking this post with Kathy for her Slow Sunday Stitching Go and see what evryone has been stitching.

Lyndsey

Continuing the Capital Ring

Whilst receiving my cancer treatment we put completing the Capital Ring on hold but on Tuesday we restarted it again. When last we walked we had reached Finsbury Park. This is one of the largest open spaces in north London.

The park was developed from the old Homsey Wood and it opened in 1862. It was very tempting to kick through the fallen leaves.  From here we crossed a major road and continued our walk along the New River path. The New River isn't new and also isn't a river. It is an artificial watercourse that was completed in 1613 so that fresh water could be brought to London from springs near Ware in Hertfordshire. Originally it was a 40 mile course that followed the contours of the land and dropped about 2 inches every mile. Gravity moved the water along.

After crossing Seven Sister's Road we reached Stoke Newington's East Reservoir. As we walked beside it with modern apartments on our right we came across these lovely characters. First there was Mole,

and then there was Toad.

I kept hoping we'd come across Ratty but we didn't. However as we walked alongside the West reservoir we came across a giant silver ball water feature

The light on the ball and the reflection in its surface makes me think of a large Christmas pudding. If I'd taken the photo from slightly further to the left it would have appeared to have greenery on the top.Behind the ball was a second water feature.

On the wall of the apartment block this creeper gave a great autumnal feel.

I took a minute to look across the reservoir

As we came to the end of the stretch of walk along the water we came across a disused pumping station. This was built in 1855 and is known as The Castle. It's now an indoor climbing centre.

I loved the towers and turrets on the building. From here we walked along the road a little way until we came to Clissold Park. This park was named after the Reverend Augustus Clissold who was a local parson in the 19th century. Against the wishes of her father, who hated parsons, he courted Eliza Crawshay in secret. Mr Crawshay owned the mansion which was known as Paradise House and after his death when the Rev Clissold and Eliza married they renamed the mansion Clissold House. The house still stands in Clissold Park.

 The arms of the benches in the park are very cute.

As we were leaving the park we walked past St Mary's Church Stoke Newington, whose spire of 220 feet sores above the park.

Down the road from the church we came across a plaque to mark where Edgar Allan Poe went to school.

In the 17th and 18th century Stoke Newington was a refuge for dissenters who were excluded from the City of London. One of the dissenters was Daniel Defoe (1660 -1731) Defoe was a writer, political activist and a secret agent and his life is marked by a blue plaque on the wall of his house in Church Street.

Not far from this house we entered Abney Park Cemetery. The cemetery was laid out in 1840 but never consecrated which meant religious dissenters living in the area could be buried there. The cemetery is also a nature reserve. There are over 300,000 graves and one of them is the tomb of William Booth (1829 - 1912) who founded the Salvation Army and his wife Catherine.

The war memorial in the cemetery is maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission which was set up in 1917. 

This derelict chapel was close by the war memorial, built in 1840, it's at the centre of the cemetery

It would have been interesting to have a good wander round the cemetery but the weather was quite cool and rather drizzly so we left by the main gate and followed the map until we came to the Lea navigation where it flows with the River Lea. The Capital Ring joins the path beside the Lea Navigation for 3 miles.

Springfield Marina was full of narrow boats.

As we walked along the bank I spotted the Belted Galloway cows. 

On our right was the Lee Navigation and on the left the Walthamstow Marshes Nature reserve. The marsh is one of the few remaining areas of natural wetland in Greater London. Having passed under the bridge carrying the Lea Bridge Road the navigation and the river part company and we continued to follow the navigation. Behind a long brick wall are the former Middlesex filter beds which is now a nature reserve. We went into the reserve to see the Hackney Henge. This is Hackney's version of Stonehenge. It's formed from the concrete blocks that provided a base for a pumping station

As we continued along the towpath we passed the 2012 Olympic Stadium. The area has since been redeveloped.

On the opposite bank were restaurants selling street food.

I liked the artwork on this building.

The main Olympic stadium which is now the home of West Ham football club.

Here we left the Capital Ring to take a short detour to the station. This is where we will start the next section.

It was a great walk although I found it rather tiring. I can't wait to do the next section but we haven't set a date yet.

Tomorrow is a sewing day, I can't wait.

Lyndsey

Lots of things going on

Wow I didn't realise it had been a couple of weeks since I last wrote a post. I'm not sure where the time has gone but it has simply flown by. I've had the chance to do some sewing in that time, taken a long walk and been away over the weekends. First a quick update on my radiotherapy that I started on 21st October. Today was my last treatment and it has gone very well. I was warned I would be tired partly due to the treatment and partly to travelling to and from the treatment centre. Probably because I've worked all the way through my various treatments, and work involves quite a bit of driving, I haven't been any more tired than usual. Staying still in one position during the treatment is tiring and sometimes quite difficult. Yesterday morning I developed an itch on my nose but couldn't scratch it until it was all done. I so wanted to move but that would have added time to the whole thing. Anyway all completed and now moving on to regular checks to make sure I don't get a recurrence or develop it in my other breast. All the scans before I started treatment back in February showed it hadn't spread anywhere else in my body so it should all be good. Thank you all so much for your encouragement and support through this year, it helped me stay positive through the experience.

I decided that I needed to catch up on some mending, not my favourite job. I had several buttons to sew back onto some shirts and a trouser hem that had come undone. There was also the Rainbow bear. This is our unit mascot and she gets a lot of love and hugs but also gets thrown around and one of her seams had developed a hole.

This doesn't look a very large hole but when I looked at some of her other seams there were several more holes.  She had lost a lot of the beads that helped her to sit up but fortunately we had gathered these up and I was able to put them back. A little while later she was her usual happy self and ready to go back to the Rainbow unit.

This was the fun bit of my mending.

I made my quilt sandwich for my mariners compass quilt. This quilt finishes at 80 x 80 inches, so not massive but still big enough to be a problem to handle. I decided it would be easier to do on the floor but that was decidedly uncomfortable on the knees so I switched to the table.  John gave me a hand and in the end we had it pin basted in record time.  We folded it neatly ready for me to start quilting next week.

The oval shape of the table makes the job more difficult than it needs to be but I love this dinning table. I'm really looking forward to starting the quilting.

I also did a little conservation work on a small framed embroidery. It had got very dirty last year when we had some work done on the house. I'd put it away to sort out some time in the future but hadn't got round to it. Last week seemed like a perfect time to clean it up.

The embroidery itself measures 2¼ by 3 inches and is done over one thread on the even weave fabric using a single strand .of embroidery floss. It took some time to get the dirty marks out of the fabric and then I needed to repair a few stitches where it had been damaged. My eye sight was much better when I stitched this way back in the good old dark ages of 1980 and now I was very grateful for my magnifying light.

The fabric that has been exposed to the light still looks a little yellow but it's a lot better than it was. Now all I have to do is re-stretch it over the mounting board and put it back in the frame.

I've also spent some time knitting but I haven't taken a photo as there isn't much progress to show you. I need to get John's jumper finished as we move towards winter. Once I've done that I need to knit another Christmas stocking so Olly has one this year. I didn't finish Abigail last month and haven't looked to see who the bag lady for this month is, I really must do that tomorrow. I was away for the last two weekends and on both occasions I took my camp blanket with me to sew on more badges. I still have a huge number to add.

I got my machine out to make a Christmas present but I can't show it here as the intended recipient reads the blog. I can't even show you the fabric as they'll guess it's meant for them, so those pictures will have to wait. I'm starting to get a little excited about Christmas and it's still early November. One of our neighbours put their decorations up on November 1st and on our walk on Tuesday we saw another home owner who loves Christmas.

It's a shame it wasn't darker as we walked past.

Tomorrow I'll show you the photos from our walk but It's bedtime and it's been a long day and quite emotional with finishing my treatments so I need some sleep. Tomorrow is also my chance to catch up on reading the blogs I follow. I'm really looking  forward to that as I miss finding out what you've all been doing.

Lyndsey