Up up and away

Just back from a fab day at the Gransden Air Show.

I was there as a stall holder in the craft hanger, quite a change from the regular marquee!

This was our home for the day.

So lovely to have the space to spread the Land Cuckoo wings out a little! Excuse the aviation pun!

The police helicopter was the first to arrive

Or was it the parachutes?

I can't remember now and my legs are 'singing' like they do when I've been standing on them on concrete all day!

There were loop the loops and acrobats by many different skilled pilots. As I was there on my own I didn't get out to take too many photos but we did have a good view from our hanger.

You can see how close we were to the planes even though we were still behind all the crowd. The plane is taxying along behind the ice cream van. The ice cream van was not taxying, it didn't fly.


A by-plane, probably an important one, lots of them were.

If you can see on this picture the signs telling you which way is which - why don't more places have these? Would help me out no end!

And there's my truck in its rightful place, off road, in a field! It is so much fun to drive it as it should be done, even for just a little while in someone elses field!

Must go and eat dinner now and put feet up.

Have a wonderful bank holiday those of you who are going to have one!

Take care

Sarah x

And the award goes to......

Hubby got a package today.

Looks a little like a miniature urn containing the leftovers from a fire....... Oops I nearly mentioned the Ashes again. I do need to go and check how we fared with Ireland, however, as last I heard it wasn't so good!

Ahhhhh it is the award for outstanding commitment to Wifey! By the way it was stipulated on the award ceremony invite that wood chopping clothes were to be worn.

He has been practicing this type of thing for a while!

Champion!

Take care all

Sarah x

Up the Downs

Firstly, my faith in my driving and finding places ability has been restored! I got to (and home again) the Downs with no deviations or mistakes!

So, yesterday I was up at Dunstable Downs as part of their Food Festival week of events, well to be more precise I was at the Chiltern Gateway Centre which is at the top of the Downs. The centre houses a great cafe which can hold plenty of people and is a great place to fly a kite, walk across the countryside or just watch the gliders.

It is spectacular up there, not to mention windy! The view is fantastic as you would expect when you are at the highest point in the East of England! We don't have mountains here so this is special!

This has to be the best view I have ever had from a marquee! If I could paste together all my pictures I could show you the 180 degrees panoramic view from here, but I don't know how to do that, sorry!

Inside the marquee, which also housed the beer (poor hubby opted out of coming with me, he could have enjoyed a day sampling the beers and watching the view!) we had plenty of room and I tried out a round table set up for a change!

A few of my hearty goodies! The patchwork hearts have a wonderful scented blend inside them.

Just one of the beers on offer, there were varieties from Potton Brewery, Tring, Dunstable and Chiltern.

Back outside and there were plenty of kites flying.

If you look closely at the middle of the picture, you may be able to make out two white objects (they looked bigger in real life!) these are actually an aeroplane towing a glider, but we were higher than them!

Being this high up and with such a great panorama to watch, it is easy to see the weather coming! We watched this creep closer and closer to us in the afternoon, and it did seem that it may just carry on through the valley and leave us alone.

But it didn't! I could only take a picture through the window as it was such torrential rain you couldn't get near the doorway with out getting wet! Plus the fact that it was thunder and lightening with avengence and being at the highest point in the East of England certainly makes you feel like you are actually inside the storm!

Just as a comparison, this is what I had been seeing through the arch window earlier in the day!

Unfortuately this is a poor photo but the carpet is not actually specked with white and there is no bright sunshine outside - that is hailstones!

As quickly as it had started, it stopped! All the people who had been taking shelter in the centre re-appeared and the kites came back out!

If I was going to be anywhere, even in a thunderstorm I think I would choose here again, it was simply stunning. What a great place to work, you would never tire of watching the views change, just a danger of not getting any work done due to looking out the window!

Take care all, til tomorrow

Sarah x

Road to nowhere

Morning folks. Thanks for all your lovely comments which I shall reply to at some point but I am having a little computer trouble, most frustrating.

I hope you all had lovely weekends. Mine was a bit of a Lewis Hamilton one as opposed to an England cricket team one! (woohoo! we won the Ashes!) In so much as it started off all so well, I had a good run on most things and then, oops made a little error which wasn't my fault (well ok, in my case it was my fault) but hey ho we got to the end unscathed, just rather annoyed!

Yesterday I was supposed to be going to an event in Essex of which I was very much looking forward to, a little day trip with my stall, a change of scenery and new people to introduce to Land Cuckoo, not to mention the chance to see some more talented people and their crafts. So checked the route on Saturday, no worries, went to double check it and make sure I was leaving in plenty of time on Sunday morning at which point the computer decided to give up. Not a problem, I just used the map and guessed how long it would take to get there.

So off I set with car loaded, lunch packed and directions all written out in really big writing so I could see at a glance. This is my usual procedure and it is fairly fool proof. That is until the fool driving (that'll be me again) sees the sign to the M11 and promptly gets on the motorway going in the wrong direction! Clearly I wasn't concentrating and suddenly I was off and going my usual route to the beach!

On realising my mistake I had to look for a suitable junction that I could turn around and get back on the motorway going in the other direction. Hmmm this was not so easy as every slip road led straight onto another road, but I eventually saw one and darted off to the roundabout. Only to be foiled again and posted straight onto another road of which I didn't recognise and had no idea in which direction it was going! By the time I managed to get to somewhere to stop so I could consult the map I had travelled in completely the wrong direction so far that I was too late to get to the event in order to set up!

I was so cross with myself, such an un-necessary error and I hate letting people down, I guess next time I am going somewhere different I shall be leaving excessively early to allow for driving in the wrong direction!

So, did I mention the Ashes?

Off to plan my next journey to the unknown!
Take care all
Sarah x

Festival of Quilts again!

Thank you for all your lovely comments about the photos yesterday. It was an amazing display and I have some more piccies for you today.

Sorry but my ability to tell you about these is non existant! There really was so much to see that I didn't have time to read all about each piece, which I shall rectify next year and go for the 2 day option!

These quilts were amazing, more like paintings, so detailed. The one on the right has lots of detail (which you can't see in this photo very well) all down the arcade.

Had to stop and look at this one, it was huge and so bright, not to mention it has twinkles throughout the quilt and I am quite partial to a bit of sparkle!

This is another by the same designer and you can just make out the sparkles.

This quilt was made for the millenium by quilters in Bedfordshire and it is kept in the museum. Unfortunately it is not out on show and the exhibitors asked us to contact the museum to see if enough people wanted to see the quilt on show permanently it may happen.

There is the Cardington Hangers

Clophill, Clifton and Willington.

The Swiss Gardens, Whipsnade and Old Warden. Now I am going to have to go and find out about the windmill as I don't know about that! Right, just done that and apparently there are about 13 windmills in Bedfordshire (thanks to this website for the info), and going by the pictures I am going to guess that this one is in Stevington.

And after having typed 'windmills in Bedfordshire' into my Google search I am now happily singing away about windmills in Amsterdamn and little mice with cloggs on, well I declare, going clip clippety clop la la la la la la..............

And lastly this one, has to be my favourite for a few reasons. Firstly it is called 'Away with the Fairies' which some would say is rather appropriate for me!

Then I spotted this in the details - just like my little feathered ones!

And as if it were meant to be, who else did I spy in amongst the treasures!

So, did I buy anything? Oh yes, it would have been rude not to!

Some great green pears and red apples just ripe to be made into memo boards

Boosting my collection of pinks


A little more to add to the seasonal collection

My first Amy Butler fabrics, not had any of her designs before.

A few must have mini buttons

And last but not least, my new ornament! This roll of beautiful fabrics (American Retro from Maggie at Sunflower Fabrics, where else!) is just far too gorgeous to even unroll just yet. I will keep it close to my work desk and look at it regularly until it is time to open it and use it!

Talking of work, now I must go and do some, having spent the morning cleaning the house and pickling that lovely beetroot I got from the farmers market earlier in the week. I've never picked anything before (unless you count excessive red wine consumption as pickling!) so we shall see how that turns out!

Take care all and have a lovely weekend

Sarah x

Festival of Quilts at the NEC

OK, so I have lots of pictures!

I have never been to the Festival of Quilts before, it is huge! International sellers and displays of such special work I think next time I may have to go for 2 days!

Lets start with Maggie's stand from Sunflower Fabrics, it looked fantastic. I couldn't get great pictures as there were so many people looking at all the wonderful fabrics she had available.

The quilt to the foreground and right of the picture (underneath the Sunflower Fabrics quilt) is Maggies new pattern using the Valley Forge collection of fabrics which I am rather liking for this winter.


One of the beautiful treasure boxes of fabric, buttons and threads that are colour co-ordinated to give you all the inspiration you need to make something lovely.

People, people everywhere!


This was part of the collection called Celebration of which different countries had entered quilts built from strips of different designs.

The detail in the work is just amazing.

I did fail to note which country had entered this particular quilt, oops sorry, but it is very good.

This was from the UK with the fourth panel from the right being tea cups - very appropriate!

And this is the detail from the third panel in, it had the words by William Blake used in the hymn Jerusalem, written along the length of the panel.

I want to say that this is from Spain but I cannot tell you if I have just made that up or if it was!

On closer inspection of one of the panels, I notice the flag from the top of the champagne bottle is more likely Swiss!

This is some of the detailing from the Happy Birthday panel, the flowers are beautiful colours and embellished with beads.

Just to give you an idea of the size of some of the quilts I took this picture with people in (plus you can see how hard it was to get a people-less photo!) to give the idea of scale. These weren't even the biggest quilts on display!

But if having a beautiful quilt on your bed is not enough (so I don't believe for one minute that any of these are used as a throw across a bed where a muddy pawed cat can roam!) you could wear your quilted wonder!

A summer dress perhaps?

But given the changeable weather we are having, you'll probably need a coat too!

Complete with ladybird on the pocket!

I'm going to put the rest of the pictures on tomorrow as I think that is probably enough for today! Off to get inspired with new fabrics.

Take care all, til tomorrow

Sarah x