Brenda's Card

Brenda was born in Canada, but has lived here most of her life. You know the latter as soon as she speaks, she has a thick Geordie accent. She sits next to me at the sewing group and for many weeks insisted on making my coffee.


Then she wasn't there for a quite a while. About this time last year her husband was diagnosed with lung cancer. Brian died a few months ago.


So perhaps the wish for a happy birthday is fairly futile. On the other hand she's pretty tough and pragmatic.


She just shrugged her shoulders one of the first Tuesday's after the funeral. She said, "What can you do? You just have to get on with it." I think these ladies can teach me a lot besides crafting and sewing.


It's nice having her back with us.

Shelleys House Etsy Shop

You may or may not have noticed the Shelleys House Etsy* Shop added to the column on the right. I've meant to do that for absolutely ages. It took me a full year to get those hangers made, figure out how to open the shop and then how to add the shop to this blog. I'm thinking the photos could have been a bit better, but improvements will have to await a sunny day not already filled up with meeting other deadlines.

Yes, I do recognise that the hangers are a bit odd, but as I said in an earlier post, they really make me smile. So I thought they might make someone else smile, too. I love making them.

On the other hand, I may be at risk of being listed on a new website which makes fun of the odder items on Etsy, called Regretsy [Handmade? It looks like you made it with your feet!].

I'm not linking to it, you'll have to go find it for yourself. Before you do, be warned it selects some of the very weirdest items listed in Etsy, items I had no idea were there. I think of Etsy as being full of cute, cuddly child-friendly stuff mostly made up by SAHM's. These are not like that. Some are perhaps classed as 'adult'. Personally, I think there should be a category for 'certifiable', these items are disturbingly insane.

That's not all she lampoons, though. She, "Helen Killer", is fairly cruel to some of the listings by some possibly rather naive shop owners (perhaps I am one?). There's also lots of just plain silly stuff and her scathing comments are a riot.

Strangely, however, most shop owners are mainly concerned that she links to their items to give them more exposure -- and many apparently are sold. If I worry about the mental state of the creators, I certainly hope never to meet any of the buyers alone in a dark street. Creepy stuff aside, much of the content is hilarious and I did laugh a lot.

So one does wonder if it's best to get into Regretsy and increase the traffic to your crafted items; some of these items have been viewed like 6000 times.

Hmmmm....neh. I think I'll leave that as a last resort, eh?

*Etsy is a weird name all by itself and apparently what it means is a secret...

Some Feedback

I'll warn you the rest of this is a rant, so you may want to stop here. I see I need to capture some more pictures to illustrate my complaints, so will add those later!

I thought there was huge room for improvement in the way this business operated. For one thing, the foreman wasn't there more than 5-10 minutes morning and afternoon, just droppping off and picking up crew. I had issues with the brick layer, who was seemingly in charge otherwise. I wasn't very impressed with most of his work.

I didn't have a drawing or anything in writing detailing what Bill had agreed with the boss who bid the job. In spite of this, the guys were asking me what they were supposed to be doing. I managed spend another £250 of Bill's money with just the wave of an arm and 'I think all that goes.' Bill wasn't unhappy with the result, but it frightened me to have made an expensive change so unintentionally.

The brick layer seemed to be thinking that half the concrete slabs were supposed to remain, which was completely daft. He had a drawing on which he relied, but it was wrong. Bill came home early that afternoon to help sort it; he found the measurements on the sketch that showed what was actually supposed to happen.


This company does decent brick paving, but I think they trashed my brick walls. One morning the brick layer pointed out a problem with the front wall in that the old brickwork on one side of the gate wasn't level with the other; he was going to have a problem making the brick wall level at the top enough to put the capstone back on. I'd made it clear from the start that I liked my old, coal smoke stained capstones. He was saying that to do a half-course of brick would add a couple hundred more to the cost of the job. He told me this first thing one morning. My initial response was "Why are you asking me? You are supposed to be the professional here!! What the hell do you mean it will cost more?!! Don't you think you should have spotted that problem before you ripped out half the wall, not after?!!" I remember opening and closing my mouth several times, and finally came out with "I haven't really had enough coffee yet to have any ideas here. I'll phone Bill and see what he wants to do." Bill, fortunately, was up to the challenge. He proposed leaving the post in place, which would alleviate the problem of matching the brickwork on the other side. So we have a gate with a post on either side, like before, plus another extraneous post with a matching capstone (which cost extra). It looks a bit strange, but it's not a big deal. The brickwork and the capstone look a bit wonky to me, but I don't look at it much.


The house is on hill and this slope was a apparently problem for them. They decided to put a big step in to make the back and front join up; big as in the long side of a brick. When Bill did his usual evening perusal, he asked me to see if they could sink the bricks about half way to lower the step and he suggested a place where they could make a second step if needed. I explained this to the brick layer but it didn't happen; they lowered it a bit, but not much. It did seem to me that if Bill stayed to talk with them in the morning or came home early to talk in the evening, things worked out. If I relayed the information, it got ignored.

The worst casualty, I think, was the brick wall at the back. They took it down carefully and re-used as many of the bricks as they could. Unfortunately, the brick layer didn't have the skills to maintain the slope of the wall and it looks strange. When I complained that it didn't look right, the brick layer and the foreman both told me it couldn't have been done any better because the bricks were old, etc., etc. When Bill got home the first thing he did was to put a level on it. As I understand it, the first and last principle of brick laying is that the bubble needs to be in the middle; this is not the case. I try not to look at that very much either; I'm thinking about growing some ivy over that section.

Bill paid the first half of the bill at the end of the first week, in cash. He made out a receipt for himself and had the foreman sign it; otherwise, I doubt he would have got one. Bill then expected to receive an invoice at the end of the job and to send a check for the balance, as with every other builder with whom we've done business. Turned out they wanted the balance immediately, like 5 minutes after they finished at 3pm on a Friday. The check was to be made out to their supplier so they could take it there on the way home. I wrote a slightly warm check that Bill covered via electronic transfer. Then I got a call from their office saying they were still short £50 and would I write another check. I did, but it was just another thing on the list about which I wasn't very impressed.

I took the foreman around, since he was there, and gave him my opinion about the work, ie all of the above. Had I been paying for this job, I think I would have been way pushier and I certainly would have had something in writing to fall back on. However, the boss who bids the jobs spends 6-7 weeks at a time 'off-shore', which usually refers to work on an oil rig in the North Sea. Given that I don't normally associate brick paving and oil rigs I don't know what to think, particularly as his children go to school with one of our neighbour's children.

I rang his office today, as suggested by his secretary, to schedule an appointment with him. I want him to see the work his crew did and to see if he will put the brick walls right. Turns out he's only in the country for tomorrow and the weekend (he doesn't work weekends). She was only in the office for another 30 minutes; the office is closed until further notice, possibly even through Christmas, because there are no jobs. I don't know what to think about that. If he's not in the country he can't bid jobs; if he's not going to bid jobs, why put up a sign to advertise? I'll chase his office for a while longer -- a phone call a month isn't very hard. If worst comes to worse, I can always send him a letter with photos -- or a link to this post even.

Still, I thought I'd share all the excitement, not least the eye candy. (I'm referring to the brick paving, of course.) And there will be more to come next week!

A Solution

They showed up at 8 am on the appointed Monday (and every other morning). A whole army of them (well, 6 or 8). They didn't knock on the door or anything, just came through the gates and set to work. With jackhammers.


And, given our corner location on a well used road, of course they were keen to put up their signs.


I never did figure out why they have a teddy bear on their truck, but Bill says it's a British thing.

I had asked the woman in the office who scheduled the job whether we needed to do anything in preparation and she said no, they'd move everything. On the other hand, they needed to be told where to put things, like big planter pots and the like.


I wasn't going to get to just sit in the house and let them deal with everything. I don't think the square foot garden will ever be quite the same, not that I blame them -- there just wasn't enough room for all that junk and all those men and equipment. I asked them to put aside a dozen or so of the concrete paving stones. I thought they would make a better path in the square foot garden than the red wood chips that kept blowing away.

Then came the questions, "Are you American?" What part of America are you from?" "What is it like in Oklahoma?" "Have you been here long?" "You don't sound like you've been here that long, you still have your accent; it's lovely." "Do you like it here?" "Why would anyone live here instead of in America?"


It's rather strange having three or four muscular young men, hang on your every word. I had got used to people's interest when I was out in the work world, but it's been a couple of years, so this caught me off guard. I finally managed to extricate myself back into the house with, "Well, best let you get on with things; no work is getting done at this rate!"


In the two weeks it took, they almost got used to me taking pictures. I almost got used to the constant noise: jack hammers, chatter, radio (and singing along), trucks dropping off supplies, picking up skips.

After a couple of days I was made aware that it is customary to provide workmen with tea and coffee several times a day. According to Bill, supplying the kettle, the condiments and the cups wasn't appropriate; I had to do the waitress thing, taking and filling orders. I didn't mind too much, it was just something else to fit into the schedule and they just had to do without on Tuesday mornings when I was at the sewing group.


The garage door stayed open to allow access to water for the concrete mixing. The 10-year old trampoline I've never used was a convenient lounge at lunch time and the bike seats were coat racks, of course. I kept finding apples in the garden with only 2 bites removed and kept wanting to explain this was not the way to make their 5-a-day, but I guessed they didn't want a mother, just a tealady. They rang the door bell increasingly often, to use the toilet, to get access to the water outlet, to ask advice about the job.

At the end of the day it suited them to leave wheelbarrows, mixers, etc. in the garage and the back yard. They put down paving stones leading from the front and back doors across the mud for me, after I stacked up a supply of shoes in the front and back porches. All the hard standing was removed at once on the first day to put in the skip for re-cycling (and cheaper disposal costs). Once that was all gone and the ground was more or less leveled, the paving work began.

Bill had asked for the brindle coloured bricks as they would best blend with the house, but we were surprised by the fancy charcoal edging. I wasn't sure I liked it at first, but soon found I didn't really notice it. Truth be known, I much prefer lawn to bricks, but that just wasn't realistic given the position of the house and the amount of work either Bill or I are prepared to do in the garden; we do well to keep up with the green areas such as we do.


The process of creating the design with the


bricks and of marking and cutting the puzzle pieces with a huge circular saw was interesting to


watch and I thought the result was a big improvement on what we had before, though Bill didn't get quite what he thought he would.

Oh, and by the way, it's Guy Fawkes' again. No doubt the fireworks will be going most of the night.

The Problem

When we returned from Australia, the next big thing was having some construction work done around the outside of the house.

Bill has long wanted to do something about the damp problem in the garage, which was a later add-on to the original house built in 1920. Also to address the mish-mash of hard standing around the house, which included cracked and


mossy antique concrete, a quaint (well, I thought so) but too narrow little rock path and some mouldy concrete paving slabs. There was also this weird break in the side wall, dating back to when the present breakfasting kitchen was a small kitchen and a scullery and before there was a garage at the back of the house. I suspect our garden was fully enclosed by the brick wall, just like our next door neighbour, Dorothy's is, except that the black wood part was the entrance into the scullery.


He met with the builder and organised for the workmen to come on a Monday after our return. Bill showed me the plan and I asked about the possibility of moving our front gate over. So we got the builder to come back out and he saw at once what I had in mind.

The house faces west-ish with the long side to the north-ish. The evening sun is by far the best hope for sitting in a warm outdoor place but it being in the front there is no privacy. Bill hates, hates, hates the leylandii shrubs and whacks one down whenever he thinks I won't notice; I think he'd find a way to inflict pain and suffering on them were such a thing possible. It's no joke that space, sunshine and light are in such short supply here in Britain that neighbours have legal wars over these fast-growing, potentially tall trees. I just see shrubs. Bill sees...something else.

He promises me there are other shrubs and plants that can grow 6 feet and higher to provide just as much privacy and so I'm resigned to losing what was once a solid green wall.


It always had the shortcoming in that the gate was right in front of the front door and with that break in the shrubbery, every passer-by was given full view of the front door, the bay window and the two postage-stamp-sized patches of lawn. If said gate was moved further along, the view would move to eventually (with new tall plants) include less of the front of the house and down the north side. So that was the plan.

I skittered around and snapped these 'before' pictures to help explain The Problem.

Crafty Stuff

Bill mentioned the other day that he thought it was time to come home from Australia and I suppose he's right, I can't blog about it forever and we have been home now for over a month.

On the other hand, this seems the best time to show you the card I made Ruby.


(Oh, gosh, I wonder if I gave it to her without clipping apart 'a very'... oh well, too late now).

As Ruby and Jane have the same birth date and we were obviously going to be out of town on that day, I gave this to Dorothy the day before we left to deliver for me. This means I was working on Jane's card along side of Ruby's.

I really dragged my feet making Jane's card, and I don't really know why except that I didn't figure it would be good enough. However, as Bill had asked me to make one, I thought I ought to at least give it a try; he doesn't often ask me to do things for him. I usually wake up about 4 am for the first few days we're in Australia, so I was thinking I'd be able to work on it then! I ended up getting up in the wee hours when we were at Avoca, since I wasn't sleeping anyhow, and that is when I finally finished it.


As usual, I didn't quite manage the outcome I wanted, but I was pleased with the fabrics and the colours.

I think Jane appreciated the effort that went into it, in spite of its imperfections. I couldn't for the life of me get decent photos of it.

I expect I will be making this type of card for a few more months -- the sewing ladies have all come to expect these, I think, but then I'm going to work on some other ideas for a less demanding way of making cards with fabric.

While I'm on the subject of crafting, I need to show you the hanger that Sharon made for me! Knowing I have this thing about hangers, she got a crochet pattern to do this black swan, which is the bird of Western Australia. I was really impressed that she took the trouble to make this. She also gave us books about Australia and Australian poetry and a cute apron with a black swan on it.



Sorry about the lousy photos -- that's what happens when you don't use natural lighting, and there just wasn't any sunshine to be had that day.


Finally, one of the days we were in Sydney, Jane took me down to her sewing room in the downstairs (formerly Tim's bedroom) and we pored over her stacks and stacks of fabric samples. Daughter Jenni works in an interior decorating shop that used to throw away the sample books when a line of fabrics was being discontinued. This seemed to her to be a shameful waste (which I whole-heartedly second) and so she began bringing them to Jane. As other shops have heard Jenni's mom does charity projects with these, Jenni seems to get more and more fabric. Jane sent me home with 2 shopping bags full -- all that the spare suitcase would hold -- and they are so lush I can't wait to do something with them, but it has to be something good.



We made notes of her most common sizes of samples in inches:

16.5 x 18
11.5 square
26 square
26 x 24
23 x 17
24 x 17.5

Jane has made quite a number of simple but very effective quilts with some of the heavier velour squares and copied a doorstop she saw in a posh shop here in Newcastle. However, she's always on the look out for other crafty ideas, I think preferably ones that aren't too fiddly. She hasn't actually got a huge amount of spare time after her volunteer work and running two households.

I did a bit of internet research and found these websites:

http://www.freepatterns.com/content/content.html?content_id=604

http://www.amazon.com/Shirley-Botsfords-Decorating-Fabric-Crafts/dp/0873416775

http://www.outsapop.com/2008/12/trashion-crafts-resource-fabric-and.html

http://coolkidscrafting.blogspot.com/search/label/Find%20A%20Use%20For%20Fabric

http://www.ehow.com/how_5363153_recycle-wallpaper-sample-books.html

http://www.ehow.com/how_4507023_make-wallpaper-covered-frames.html

http://www.craftstylish.com/item/47783/make-a-quilted-bag-and-tote-your-laptop-in-style

http://www.craftstylish.com/item/48756/upcycled-custom-drapery-panelgo-green

Some are specific ideas, others just general and some talk about using wallpaper samples, not fabric. I Googled using terms like "fabric sample books" and at some point hope to try searching on the specific size dimensions.

Anyhow, I thought I'd put this out there in case anyone has other ideas for Jane (and me).

Happy Halloween

Little Bo Peep - 1959 - Pink net skirt and hat, cerise velvet* bodice and trim, crook is net-wrapped concrete rod, Lambie-Pie* was gift from family friend.

*50 years on, I still have Lambie-Pie and swathe of cerise velvet.