Another Busy Week

Thank you so much for all your lovely positive messages for Imogen, she's doing much better now, walking around as normal and exercising hard at her physio. I think the fact that Hull Fair is around this week has helped with the motivation to work hard at her exercises!

Hull fair arrives every year for a week in October, it's the largest travelling fair in Europe and has been coming to Hull for over 700 years! Here’s a snippet about its history

This carnival of merriment is the largest travelling fair in Europe and one of the oldest. The fair celebrated its seven hundredth anniversary in 1993. The first charter granting permission for a fair to be held, from 9 to 23 March, was granted in 1278. The anniversary celebrated by Hull City Council dates from 1293, when Edward I allocated six weeks in May and June for the festivities. By the 16th century the festivities had become a 16 day fair, with 20 September as the start of the annual feast after an additional Charter was granted by Charles II.

It's an interesting piece of local history and you can read more about it here.

I don't feel I've done much craft wise the last week. We've had a friend from America staying with us much of last week, only leaving yesterday and there was lots to catch up with. I have finished decorating my 'C' with a lick of paint and some pretty flowers for my craft room.

A soft, fleecy blanket for my gorgeous grandson that he used for the first time when he stayed late one evening. It was a lovely piece of fleece that I bought when Holly was pregnant and was just sitting waiting for me to hem it. As we'll be looking after Zack 2 1/2 days a week as well another babysitting duties, I'm keeping his fleece here to use when he comes to our house.

Not much progress on my cross stitching from the last time I showed you, may end up being for next Christmas rather than this one if I don't get a move on.

It's been a tiring week and weekend so today has been quite restful before this weeks schedule starts tomorrow with Imogen's parents evening, my first mammogram on Wednesday physio appointments and the telephone engineer coming to finally upgrade us to fibre.

Take care
xxx

Daffodils and The Deep

Thank you for all your lovely messages of support regarding my dad, they're very appreciated. When my son and his girlfriend (Holly) took Imogen to visit their grandparents last weekend, they took Andrew's old telescope with them. Andrew had upgraded to a different telescope and my dad was absolutely thrilled with it. Mum says he has perked up considerably and is enjoying tinkering with it, which is fantastic news as his mood was dipping.

As I've mentioned, Hull is the UK city of culture this year. There seems to be lots going on most of the time, but what caught my eye over Easter was a wonderful display of lego daffodils. These are some of the pictures from the internet (the ones I took were full of people).

Isn't this cute with a little bee settled on it

There were more than 1700 individual flowers there, all made from lego, how brilliant! When the display was over, the flowers were taken down and all of them were given out to people who queued up to have one, what a lovely idea.

Even a watering can to help keep the flowers fresh

Yesterday was the last day of the Easter holidays. We were looking Holly's little girl for the day as both Adam and Holly were working, so thought it would be nice to go out. We went to The Deep, a place that was as much fun for adults, a 14 year and 7 year old alike. There was so much to see as well as things to do, stroke the starfish and touch the sea anemones, follow the turtle trail and lots of interactive things to do.

the view from inside The Deep over the River Humber

some very large starfish

This pool was amazing, there was a member of staff walking through it feeding the fish, it was fantastic to watch

The corals in here were so colourful, so beautiful, I could have quite happily just sat and watched it

Sharks swimming with these fish

I wasn't very successful with this photo, it was a tank with lots of Clown fish (like Nemo) swimming amongst the sea anemone, oh and starfish.

These were strange little critters, water eels popping out of the sand, very odd looking swaying about... I wasn't too keen.

A very big fish

There were quite a few penguins, they were the sweetest things to watch, marching about with their flippers out to balance themselves. In another part you could watch them as they swam about and dived for their food.

More sharks...

Even a shark outside.

We were in there for a good couple of hours and all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. As an added bonus, we can use our entry tickets as often as we want to for a year, I think we shall definitely be going again especially as they have 2 new turtles which we didn't really see much of this visit.

As an extra treat we thought we'd take a drive out the seaside, Hornsea. We had fish and chips for our supper.

Andrew and I ate ours in the car looking out to sea while Imogen and her little charge ate theirs outside before having a good runaround and collecting some pretty stones.

It was a lovely end to the Easter holidays. Imogen is making the most of the weekend before going back to school on Monday.

Take care
xxx

Planting Seeds and a Weeping Window

Hello lovely people, I do enjoy my time in blogland, reading blogs and getting a glimpse into other people's lives. Today it gives me the opportunity to show something else happening in our city of culture. A weeping window made of poppies in Hull city centre.

I went to see it yesterday, it was amazing. Made of the ceramic poppies originally seen in London pouring from a window at the Tower of London.

A cascade comprising several thousand handmade ceramic poppies, Poppies:Weeping Window was originally seen pouring from a high window to the ground below at the Tower of London as part of the installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red.

I didn't see the display in London, so it felt really special to be able to see the poppies in Hull and I really do recommend coming to see them if you can before they're taken down. There's some more info if you click here.

It's been good to see some sunshine this week. It motivated me to get into the garden, tidy up the greenhouse and get some more planting done.

I planted some californian poppies, cosmos, lobelia and one other flower that I can't remember right now, it's a good job they're labelled!

There are plenty of peas, lettuce and some sunflowers planted.

Cauliflowers, butternut squash, cucumbers and sweetcorn

These next photos were only taken a few days later, lots of the flowers have already germinated, sending teeny shoots upwards. I'm quite amazed how quickly the germinating has happened, I wasn't expecting them for a week or so yet, it is nice and warm in the greenhouse though.

They weren't very evenly sown were they, a little crop of poppies poking through

I need to keep the sunflowers in the greenhouse for a while once they start growing, otherwise the pesky slugs and snails tend to munch on them, the sweetcorn seems be a favourite as well. Sunflowers just starting to germinate now... happy times.

Andrew's planted up few sacks with potatoes outside, so hopefully we'll be eating fresh potatoes in the summer too.

We also bought a couple of roses, one for each side of the pergola, both highly fragranced. I meant to take photos them too, but forgot! There isn't a great deal to see at this point though.

Take care
xxx

City of Culture

Hello lovely people. Thank you for all the beautiful comments, I can see that Ethel and Ernest is quite a popular film, I'm so glad I have a copy. I've noticed that I have a few more followers, thank you for coming and sharing my space with me, it's very appreciated. I would love to say hello back, but google no longer gives me a link back if you have a blog, very frustrating! If you want to stop by and say hello or drop me an email, I'm always thrilled to hear from people.

Did those that celebrate it have a lovely Valentines Day? We don't celebrate it, we say "I love you' a few times every day to each other and never end a day, visit or phone call without telling each other, so no cards are usually sent.... but this year I received a card, to our pack leader...

It was a card from 'the dogs', how sweet was that!


Hull in East Yorkshire is the city of culture this year, 2017. It started with a bang on the 1st of January with fireworks and an amazing light show projected of the city's buildings (here) every evening for a week. Hull has so much history and is even famed for playing it's part in the start of our country's civil war when it refused to open it's gates for the king. Hull was also the most bombed place after London during the second world war, much of the city was decimated.

I really wanted to see the enormous wind turbine blade that has placed in Queen Victoria Square. It's there for 3 months, all hand finished...

It's quite a spectacular sight to see, 75 meters long. You can read more about it here. There are so many things planned throughout the year and so much to see. I really recommend a trip to Hull, even if you've visited before, you'll notice how much has changed. I'm so proud of my adopted city.

I've been doing a bit of crochet this week, so will have some photos to show you next time I hope.

Take care
xxx

Boo... it's Halloween

Thank you for all the lovely comments congratulating Imogen and all the well wishes. Everyone here is much better, just coughs and colds which are gradually going.

Imogen went back to school after half term today so we had a meander around town. There's lots of work going on at the moment, lots of preparations for 2017 when we'll be the City of Culture, all very exciting. I was hoping to be inspired with some ideas for stocking fillers for son and husband (always the hardest to buy for), but nothing caught my eye. While we were out we popped into Waterstones to see their new cafe, grab a cup of tea and a bacon butty.

A little milk bottle, just like being back at school (I actually used to dread the school milk, I really don't like milk).

I saw these really cute little cacti candles, I thought they were so sweet that I had to take a picture with my phone.

Happy Halloween! Imogen loves to dress up and used to love to go trick or treating, but being a bit old for that now she decided to help out at a party instead on Saturday evening. Dad helped with the scary smile

She wore a scary necklace that made her throat look like it had been cut. An old school shirt that she ripped and used fake blood to make the whole thing more gory - yuck!

Imogen had a wonderful evening and managed to scare some people too, which made her very happy! This evening she's gone to the yearly Halloween fair at the park, they do a 'spooky walk' as well which she loves... yikes!

Take care
xxx