Alisonb2’s Weblog
Just another WordPress.com weblogBe back soon!
Yes, I will be back soon, I promise, but for the moment I don’t really feel like blogging. Anyway keep smiling and hooking and sewing and knitting and doing all those wonderful things that brighten up your space and I will see you soon! I think there should have been some commas in there!!
I have been busy – honestly!!
Well, here we are again! Time to show you some shots of our garden. I have been spending quite a bit of time pottering around it and the flowers are now coming out a treat!
The strawberry pots are blooming and producing our first crop of strawberries.
The irises are very majestic and magnificent.
The foxgloves are home to the bumble bees.
The peony flowers are so big and blousey.
And the canterbury bells are the tallest I have ever seen them!
So from pots…
to paths…
to rocky areas…
and golden birds…
to hooking!
The backs have been carefully sewn.
The flowers positioned and embellished.
But why so many brooches?
I am making them to raise some money for the Sun Shine School in Israel. This is a small Christian school in the Arab area just outside Jerusalem. The teachers have 59 children from 14 different nationalities all aged between 2 and 6 years. The children are taught in English and are very bright and cheery, despite the physical size of the school. It is in the ground floor flat of a small building. The newest teacher has just graduated from Cambridge and she looks after 6 little 3 year olds in what was the stock cupboard! If I had been living out there I would have helped in the school, but I am not, so all I can do to help is fund raise and that is what I am doing! I am very grateful to Lucy of Attic 24, who has let me use her posy pattern. Sun Shine goodies will soon be packaged and ready to go to their first venue. Brooches, cards, note-lets, sewing kits and eventually a series of little books where a bear visits the sites of Israel! Now where did that idea come from………??
A glitch!
Hurray! I’m back! I am able, at last, to access my blog little world! It has been here waiting for me. Waiting for me to sort out the glitch. Well not me personally but my right hand man! The router wouldn’t work. So for nearly the last two weeks, he has been tweeking and pressing keys left, right and centre to try and get us up and running again! And he has done it! We are here!! Yippee!!! So tomorrow I will be back with photos and blurb about all the things I have been up to, and there has been a lot of hooking and sewing! See you tomorrow.
Just one more!!
Don’t you just love colour! Bright blues, sea greens, shocking pinks, zesty lemons. At the end of last week I sorted out my double knitting wool so that I could continue making my brooches, and over the weekend I got carried away – as you do! I have been looking at Sarah London’s blog and at her granny squares/hexagons. It is such a riot of colour. So I started. Just a little hexagon. Well one more round! You know how it starts!!!
A bit more. Oooo I like that colour. What next? Well one more round, of course!
Until yesterday, it looked like this.
Yes,…. errr,…. well,…. it is wavy! I like the colours, but I am disappointed. Perhaps the cushion pad will make it right – let’s hope! Anyway it will make a splash of colour on the seats outside. A plumped up treat for an aching back!
Then while I was finding the right photo to show you, I spied the photo of the carousel from York.
Look all the colours are there! I took this photo because it reminds me of Dad. He loved carousels and fairground organs. He always cried when they played. He would have been 90 last Thursday. So this cushion will remind me of you, Dad. And somehow I’m not so disappointed!
Short and Sweet!
The sun is shining and the sky is blue. Everything seems ‘hunky dory’ as they say! So last night after standing and ironing – yeah, I’m up to date!- I settled down to a bit of hooking and The Home Show. George is such a gentle man, and his ideas are usually spot on. I love the way he sprays the whole house white. I could definitely get into white with accents of colour! Ooooo… ideas, ideas!
Anyway back to my hooking. Little flowers. Little blue flowers.
Seven little blue flowers in the round.
Seven stems gathered together.
Knotted tightly with a ribbon…
and tied in a bow.
The Grand Old Duke of..
Yes, we have been to York! A few days in the sun shine, soaking up the heat (and a little bit of rain!) and relaxing with friends. We have done this every year for the past 15 years – relaxing with friends that is – visiting different places as long as they are within 2 hours driving time. It is good to get together for a laugh and a chat and some quality time. So where did we go…
well into York and a visit to the Minster. We stood here to watch a noisy, colourful short parade.
The National Railway Museum. I liked the way the light was catching this very old engine. Contrast it to the gleaming one beside it.
Then in the Shambles we met this colourful character…
and a window full of smiles!
Put them together and you have my favourite flower, a purple Pansy.
This one is reminds me of Georgia O’Keefe.
At the entrance to our camp site we oooooooooooooed and aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhed over these lovelies.
There must have been 6 or 7 foals.
I’m not really a horsey person, but you have to oooooo and aaaaaahhh, don’t you?!
The relaxation took the form of a magazine…
and lots of hooking…
Flowers in red, and
yellow and green, and
blue.
A primary colour spectrum. Very satisfying!!
Relaxing!
I have had a few days relaxing at home with my Mum… some quality time… some me time! We have been chatting and hooking and sewing, and watching the Chelsea flower show. Dreaming of beautiful gardens while looking out at a jungle! If only it would stop raining long enough to dry the grass up so I can cut it!!!!
Flowers and bright colours have featured a lot. The six little gnomes have been delivered to six little people. Tiny hands clutching tiny bodies and having a cuddle. I even spied one of the Mums stroking the yellow one while cuddling her little bundle of joy! Shhhh! Your secret is safe with me!! and you, of course! But you want to see some pictures of the highs.
Close ups of long standing favourites.
Unusual seed heads. Interspersed with fun and laughter from Joe and Alan!
Methodical rippling. Watching the hook going in and out. Very therapeutic! I am about half way now.
Browsing and oohing and ahhing at the beautiful things inside. Flowers again!
I have sooO many ideas for No.4, but sooO little time to make them happen at the moment, But I will!
I just love these storage boxes.
Like I love these buttons. I have been looking for these for ages. Sadly Mr Heath didn’t have a full range, but I will keep my eyes open when we visit York soon!
Then Lucy of Attic24 said ‘Yes’!! I was thrilled when she agreed to my using her posy pattern for a very important project. One that is close to my heart at the moment. (More of that later). So last night I started..
and finished up with 18 tiny little florets! Thank you Lucy, you are a gem!
Yet more!!
Remember the gnomes? Well this is number four..
five…
six..
Six little gnomes sitting in a row!!
Six little gnomes lying in a row!!
And six little gnomes lying in the round!!
Tears and a whistle stop tour!
Our walk around to the Garden Tomb followed the outside of the walls of the Old City.
Out of Jaffa Gate, passed New Gate and beneath these marvellous palm trees.
Across the road from the Damascus Gate, the Garden Tomb is in an oasis of calm in a garden. In the hustle and bustle of a busy noisy city it is amazing that you can cut it all out and relax.
The path meanders through the garden believed to be that of Joseph of Arimathea, and leads you to a fence over looking a cliff face. It is known as Skull Hill.
“And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means the place of the skull)…. they crucified him.” Matt.27 v33
“And Joseph took the body. and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock; and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and departed” Matt. 27 v 59.
As you enter the tomb you step over the gutter in which the large stone was rolled and stand in the large weeping chamber. This area is typical of a tomb of the 1st century CE, and as with many before me I cried! I cried that he died for me, but then I smiled that he was not there, that he has risen!!
“The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come see the place where he lay.’” Matt 28 v 5, 6.
This shows the head stone inside the tomb.
Many people visit the garden including Barnaby,
He came with us wherever we went…
to Ceasarea..
to Megiddo National Park..
where both King Solomon and King Ahab built palaces.
Driving along in the bus..
through Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee..
Visiting the Jesus Boat..
and the Western Wall in Jerusalem..
Down the Jordon valley to the ruins of Masada..
and David’s Waterfall in the middle of the desert at En Gedi..
and lastly, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls..
One amazing holiday!! We hope you have enjoyed the tour!!
Now, crocheting. ONE…
TWO..
THREE..
little gnomes from school!!
Herod’s palace.
Across the road from the Guest House is the marvelous sight of David’s Tower/Citadel. At the end of the 1st Century BCE Herod the Great built a large palace on this area. It is probably to this palace that Pilate sent Jesus to Herod Antipas.
“When he (Pilate) learnt that Jesus was from the region ruled by Herod, he sent him to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem at the time.” Luke 23 v7
The bottom courses of stone are from Herod’s time. He built three large towers to rise over the city and the view today is breathtaking. The old city of Jerusalem is small and can be seen in its entirety from the viewing platform at the top of this tower. We just stood and marveled at the sight.
You could say we were ‘gobsmacked’!!!
The photos do not do the view justice. The sun was extremely bright and the first thing you saw was the dome on the Temple Mount.
Behind are the seven golden onion domes of the church of Mary Magdalene built by Tsar Alexander III in 1888. Even Barnaby was stunned!
Today, the citadel that you see dates from the Crusades, and houses a museum of 4,000 years of the history of Jerusalem. Imagine being in and surrounded by so much history!!
These two pictures show the inside walls of Herod’s palace, with newer stones on the top.
The exhibits, completed to a very high standard, show the work of the Romans
and their mosaics and standards,
The Crusaders,
the Temple Rock,
the Ottoman period,
when the minaret was added,
and goes on to record the declaration made by General Allenby at the British capture of Jerusalem after the First World War. It was following this that a lot of the archeology was discovered, for example, the stones for the slingshot..
They are SO round!!
My feelings? One of wonderment, and of being over awed. Here was I staying in the Guest House at Christ Church opposite to Herod’s palace, sitting drinking coffee in a courtyard that was on the possible site of Herod’s lower palace, the place where Jesus was questioned. The last days of His life was played out in and around these walls – boy!!! I feel very small.
On another note, I actually did some crocheting last night and made my first little man……
just five more to make!
