Meanderings and makings

It's Monday when a lot of people in blog land look at what they're working on this week. Several weeks ago I started my Tuffet. A tuffet according to Mr Google is either a tuft or clump of something or a footstool or low seat. My tuffet once made will be a low seat rather than a footstool. Not a footstool because I don't want folks putting their feet in their dirty outdoor shoes on it. The fabrics in the top are Kaffe Fassett and far too pretty to rest shoes on. Anyway my tuffet top is half made and so it's time to get to work on the other half. If you remember when I sorted my fabrics I divided them into 8 groups. Counting from the left the fabrics in the first group are the same as the fifth group, 2 and 6 are the same  and so are 3 and 7 and 4 and 8.

I've made four of the sections and have 4 more to make. These will need pressing before I stitch all 8 together as they've been squashed in a project box.

I fused the remaining 4 foundation pieces to the muslin. This took a little longer than needed as I had forgotten to write down the iron temperature I used last time. Eventually this was done and I was able to get on with the sewing. Again my brain played a few tricks and I couldn't remember how I had stitched the fabric to the foundation pieces but a quick read of the instructions and it all worked nicely. I will try to finish the four pieces off tomorrow and I can then post a picture.

On Saturday John and I went walking in London. We had started walking along the Regents canal path but we had about 6 miles to do to complete and join up some of the walks in the one area so we decided to do this on Saturday. The day was warm and dry, basically perfect for walking. We started at Limehouse Basin (again) Loads of walks have this as the starting point. It's a good job it's an interesting area. The basin was fairly full with various types and sizes of boats.

There was also quite a lot of algae here and along all of the water we passed today. The weather here  in London has been very hot and humid. As you can see there has been a lot of building in this area with more apartment blocks still under construction.

We followed the Regents Canal for a while . The coot family was lost amongst the green

and this lock was completely covered. You can make out the water level looking a bit like grass.

There were flowers. I loved the colour of these ones and they were so delicate.

In Victoria Park there were two sculptures that we saw. This one is titled Bird. I didn't get the name of the artist.

The second one was titled Skyscraper.

The pond also had a fun fountain and I liked the reflection on the water. The wind began to blow towards us so we got a little wet.

I also spotted this pagoda across the lake.

We stopped in Victoria Park to enjoy a tasty and refreshing coffee. Further on we rejoined the canal and later the Lea Navigation. All waterways would have originally had quite an industrial feel as it went through the city since they were used for transporting goods. Now many of the old warehouses and other buildings are being pulled down and new apartment blocks or offices are replacing them. You can see some yellow cranes in the background on another building site.

I had fun taking pictures of trees to get the amazing array of greens on display. I loved the bright green of this tree.

In several areas planters were filled with flowers, brightening up the community.

We came across some wooden sheep grazing happily.

At Three Mills we took time out to investigate the tide mills. A Tide mill is a water mill that is driven by the rise and fall of the tide. At one time in the past there were 76 such mills recorded in London.

At this point we walked between two parallel waterways, the Lea Navigation and the Limehouse Cut. The area between the two was quite narrow. There were a lot of wild flowers along the bank of the cut.

A little further on the Lea Navigation went off to the left and we crossed this bridge to follow the Limehouse Cut back to our starting point. The cut is the water to the right of the picture

Almost finished and John took time out to enjoy the view.

We also took a slight detour to visit The Grapes, a pub that is nearly 500 years old. It is steeped in history and to bring it up to date one of the leaseholders is Ian McKellen of Gandalf fame. We enjoyed a pint of beer before completing our walk

We walked around the sides of the basin that we hadn't walked before. Lots of accommodation and lots of boats, mostly canal boats.

As always we enjoyed our walk and it filled in bits of London that we hadn't visited before.

Tomorrow work during the day but I'm hoping to finish the tuffet pieces. I may be being a little over ambitious but I'll give it a go.

Since the alarm goes off early I'm off to bed. Take care.

Lyndsey