Monday Sevens #101

Here is this weeks “Sunday” Sevens post, linking up to Natalie to give a snap shot view of how the last week has gone.

So somehow May got away from us! I’m not entirely sure how that happened but we have been up to a lot during the past month so here is a much shorter round-up of what we have been doing starting from the 7th of May.

The first week, not a huge amount happened but we were getting ready for our Grandfathers funeral. Neither Nikki or I particularly like the idea of cut flowers for a tribute so we made ourselves a living tribute. The first step was to shop for some plants then created a “basket” from an old wooden drawer that we have had for years in our house (without a bottom) but I thought was too nice wood to throw away (and had sanded previously). I few coats of oil proved me correct and after adding a bottom we set about creating a fitting tribute.

At the weekend Nikki travelled on down to Devon ahead of me as I had a previous sailing commitment. The weekends sailing conditions proved to be two very different days with absolutely no wind on the sat, which resulted in playing board games in the pub and gorgeous (if cold) conditions on the Sunday.

Sunday evening was spent collating photos to be displayed around the hall at the service on Monday. Thankfully the weather on Monday was gorgeous and the whole location and service was a lovely and fitting tribute to an amazing man. The only photo I have of the venue was my MMMay photo showing the room that we had refreshments in. Check out that ceiling!

After all of the other guests had left and we had had a chance to return all the remaining flowers displays and plants* back home we returned to the Dartington Estate and had a picnic next to the river with some of the leftover sandwiches 🙂 which was a gorgeous end to a tough but lovely day.
*we had a living arrangement, from which every guest was allowed to take a pot home, to serve as a living reminder.

We returned to Portsmouth the next day so that A could go back to work in the afternoon. I spent the week chilling out and focusing on things at home, spending time with A, topping up my art supplies a little, packing for sailing at the weekend and having physio.

Nikki, on the other hand, had a very busy week visiting 5 counties in 5 days. In amongst this she made a birthday present for our Aunt, an oilcloth bag and a handmade card. This mini IKEA bag was made with a waterproof outer and lining following our tutorial.

During the week Nikki split her time doing lots of computing work and spring cleaning in the garden with a bit of help doing some house refurbishment. But did manage to nip out and enjoy some of the beautiful weather. She also found some “graffiti” that I put on the floorboards 20years ago!

For me, the weekends sailing conditions were challenging to say the least. Just getting to the start line for the race required navigational aids as we couldn’t see anything and light wind seemed to be the theme of the weekend. We raced to Yarmouth (IOW) and back again in very testing conditions and spent a lovely evening in the sunshine in Yarmouth.

The next week I started in Southampton, travelled to Poole and ended in Portsmouth. I finally managed to block my Riddari sweater, finished my Fruit Salad Socks, cooked dinner for Mum to celebrate my birthday early and finally attacked the overgrown back section of our garden!

Arriving in Poole I saw my Nan, fixed the electronics, started some birthday sewing and hid from the suddenly wet weather, waiting for A to arrive (which took about 3hours longer than expected due to his train breaking down!)

Friday we had my birthday celebrations and decided to go for a walk to Upton Country park. We had a lovely wander through the gardens before grabbing a sandwich and coffee in their cafe then hopping onto a bus into Poole for the evening. Wandering through the town down to the Quayside, having a cider in the old customs house, watching all the high-performance race boats arrive for Poole regatta. Wandering along the waterfront we encountered some very odd weather, watching the fog roll in in just a few minutes, we could see it blowing off the water over the pavement. It was very eerie and reminds you of just how dangerous the water can be.
The evening was rounded off in the Stables with a bucket of molten cheese and Pizza and a lovely sunset on the way back to the bus 🙂

Saturday started quite lazily testing out my new paints (birthday present) but peaked by ripping out most of the overgrown grass in the fruit bed. Sunday was mostly travelling back to Pompey, via Southampton, this time so that I could start work on Sunday evening.

Monday was a bank holiday in the UK and Nikki was up in Norwich spending some time with Philip. They had a very lazy weekend doing some typically Bank holiday activities; multiple picnics, a trip to Cromer beach including mandatory take away chips and buying new “garden furniture” for the balcony.

The rest of the week was spent doing work and preparing Philip for a conference in America. Lots of list making and picking up some bits of shopping. They nipped into Reading for some shopping and visited a lovely coffee shop by the oracle called workhouse coffee. If you are ever in Reading it is well worth a visit!

Meanwhile, I was working all week with Sunsail, taking teenagers out during half term to teach them some basic sailing. We had a week with some very varied weather conditions and a lot of Fog for 5days on the water! I started a new blanket and made some progress on sketching.

At the weekend A and I went for a nice short walk on the Sat around the headland at Fareham Creek and a lovely pub lunch in the Cam Mill, an old tide mill. This walk was only a short 4.5km walk but having spent a week on a yacht not walking far my knees didn’t like it that much, so we decided to just do a short walk on Sunday. Or at least that was the intention! 10km later we had walked around the headland a Tipner Lake, found out the Hillsea actually had a Lido, investigated Hillsea Bastion Gardens and found another local pub and then relaxed on the porch with Rum Punch when we returned.

Although me-made-may is now over Nikki attempted to keep up with it for most of the month, you can see summaries for her first and second weeks here, I will be posting my summary post soon. But she doesn’t really have that many me-made outfits. So in little bits of downtime over the past two weeks she has tried to put together a few more patterns so that she can expand her wardrobe. These include the ginger jeans and Sasha trousers from closet case patterns and a number of seamwork patterns (Julia, Neenah, Adelaide) as well as another self-drafted top pattern.

Hopefully, this means in the next few weeks there will be a few new garments to show off. Although this might be slowed a little by the fact that she has her PhD viva coming up soon… eeek. Hopefully soon she’ll be a doctor!

You can click here to see the rest of our Sunday/Monday Sevens posts.