Yarn bombing in Brigg

Such a lot of work has gone into decorating the town of Brigg. It all looks quite amazing. Many hours of crochet and knitting. It must have taken almost a year, and hundreds of yards of wool to create this display of loveliness. Brigg is a market town with lots of small independent shops. This is a pedestrian bridge over the river. 

The bandstand looks amazing. 

A hanging basket at the sewing shop. I went inside to chat to my friend Sue who works as a seamstress there. 

You've seen the pictures, now watch the movie. 

I treated myself to a portion of chips and a small pot of mushy peas and was quite shocked at the price. £4.10p. Good job I only do this once a year. I have lost touch with how much it costs to eat out. Mind you there was quite a lot of chips. I ate a few of them sat in my car before I went home. Then microwaved a few more for my dinner last night. I had more chips for breakfast this morning, and again for lunch, and added some to my dinner tonight. I still have some left for breakfast tomorrow. 

Nearly time to go to bed. I'm chilling with a glass of wine. Thanks for popping in.

Toodle pip.   ilona

Cakes in Brigg

Good morning my little Bloggerettes. There is a fun display of yarn bombing at the moment, in Brigg town centre. I went yesterday. Here is a taster, yum. 

Photo's and a video to come. Now I have to wash my hair and get ready for Coffee Morning. It's gone 9am and as usual I shall be late. Catch ya later. Toodle pip.   ilona

Lovely weather

A memory from six years ago. 

What I woke up to this morning. 

View from the back living room window. I hang CD's to stop the birds crashing into it. 

View from Mayze's window. 

Hoooray, the hedgehogs are back. This photo is from last year. I put cat food out last night, it's close to the back window so I can shine a light onto it to check if they are about. YESSSSSS, a hedgehog almost cleared the saucer and was having a drink of water. The first sighting of the year. I refilled the saucer before I went to bed, in case any more came. This morning there are several little splodges of poo, they must have had a party. I can see I will have to stock up on Purina One dry kitten food, the one in the pink bag. They love it. 

Today the Post Office comes to the church. I want to get an art project finished so I can move on to the next one. I will go for a walk later. We are approaching the end of the month. The target is 168 miles for the two months. I should just make it, fingers crossed. 

Thanks for popping in. Spread love not hate. Toodle pip.   ilona

PS. New post added to the rabbit hole. 

Three Lincolnshire churches

Twas a lovely sunny day when I went for a drive in the Lincolnshire countryside. Destination Bransby Horses, but let's have a look at the villages along the way. Through Scunthorpe, through Scotter, and turn left at Blyton. First stop, Springthorpe. The Church of St Lawrence and St George. As I was taking photographs a cyclist stopped and got his camera out. We had a very pleasant chat about our interests of cycling and walking. 

Check out Wiki for more information on Springthorpe.  Here is some information about the church. 

The next stop was Heapham. This is All Saints Church. Just as I arrived the key holder of the church turned up, so I was able to look inside. It stands alone in a field away from the road, down a grassy track. Check this web site for the church history. 

The warden gave me a leaflet. I photographed it and left it there. She was very keen to tell me all about the church. 

There is a huge tree stump not far from the front entrance. They had to chop the tree down because it was in danger of getting blown down and causing damage. 

On the way back from Bransby I stopped at Stow in Lindsey to have a look at St Mary's Minster Church. It is very big for such a small village. I was lucky to find it open. 

Check out the Wiki page for info on this church. 

I love bimbling around villages. Can't resist stopping and having a look. 

Thanks for popping in. Toodle pip.   ilona

A visit to Bransby Horses.

Bransby Horses has 298 equines in their care. These include horses, ponies, and donkeys. It was a lovely sunny day when I visited yesterday. I arrived a bit late, they close at 4pm so I only had an hour there. 

Let me show you around. 

Bransby is near Saxilby, between Lincoln and Gainsborough. There has been a lot of flooding in that area and they had to move a lot of the horses to higher ground. There is plenty to do there for families. A playground for the children. A restaurant/cafeteria with full meals and snacks. There is a gift shop, a book shop, and a charity shop which also stocks everything you need if you keep horses. You can walk around the fields on hard standing footpaths, and there are plenty of benches to sit down for a rest. Take a picnic if you like and make a day of it. 

Here is a link to their web site.  

I stopped off at a couple of villages on the way there, and another one on the way back. I'll put the photo's and a video, on here tomorrow.

Thanks for popping in. Toodle pip.   ilona

Come fly with me.

We had blue skies and fluffy clouds today. I have been meaning to visit Bransby Horses for a while now, today was the day. It's a few miles south of Scunthorpe and not far from Gainsborough. I take a country road route through several villages. I stopped to have a look at Sturgate Airport to get a few pics. I heard buzzing overhead as a light aircraft took off. Apparently it was very busy there today. Quite a lot of aircraft flew in from other parts of the country. Shame I missed that. A couple of them were parked up 

I heard one taxiing along the runway getting ready to take off. 

There she goes. 

I made a couple more stops to take a look at churches before I got to Bransby. I'll post more photo's tomorrow, and I have two videos to upload. 

Catch up with ya soon. Toodle pip.   ilona

What's new in the town

I went to town yesterday afternoon, to have a mooch around and maybe take a few photo's. I don't need to go to the town, but I needed to walk on tarmac, rather than muddy fields. My intention was to photograph the less than glamourous streets and buildings. Maybe look at them with an artistic eye. Maybe there is something I haven't noticed before. A good starting place is Church Square. 

This new building still under construction is where the old market hall used to stand. It is not far from the bus station at the bottom end of the High Street. I do believe it is going to house a brand new Police Station. There will be shops below, with student accommodation above. 

The building on the right is the older North Lincolnshire Council Offices. This was closed through lockdown as most of the staff worked from home. I think some of the staff have come back to the office as I can see some movement in there. 

The white building is the new North Lincolnshire council offices. It is also a drop in point where people can go if they have any queries about the services they provide. 

The 20 21 Arts centre which I often mention is inside this church, which as you can see is undergoing a massive restoration project. The Arts Centre is still open, but limited to the newer parts of the building. 

To the right of the church is a fairly new college. 

After a chat with Nikki inside the Arts Centre I had a walk up the High Street to the top end of the town, in search of more photo's. Imagine the opposite of brand spanking new buildings in a nice open plan setting, to then find the further I walked the more run down it became. I didn't take any more photos. It was quite depressing to see rubbish strewn around empty shops. Shutters down, with whole blocks of shops abandoned. My artistic head could see nothing to photograph. Perhaps I didn't look hard enough. 

I think this scenario could well be similar in a lot of English towns. People have given up. It is my conclusion that no matter how much tarting up you do, at an enormous cost to the tax payer, all they are doing is papering over the cracks. 

They have to tackle the problem first of finding out why people are so disinterested in their surroundings. Where has the community spirit gone, which allows the deterioration to continue. Our governments have failed us over the years. They are now riding roughshod over all of our lives. I didn't want to go down the political route, but when our leaders are not ruling the country, but are being led themselves to feather their own nests, the book stops with them.  

I see Heckmondwike is going to get the same treatment in their town centre. There are plans there to demolish their own old market hall. I wonder where they are getting all the money from. 

My stomach is telling me to eat, then I will go outside and get my vitamin D from the sunshine. 

Have a good weekend. Toodle pip.   ilona

It's curtains.

The first thing I see when I get up in the morning and go to the bathroom is the curtain at the top of the stairs. The sun comes up at the back and makes a beautiful kaleidoscope of colour. 

If you caught a glimpse of a picture on the wall to the side of the curtain, here it is. I found it in a skip. It is part of a childs wardrobe. The rest of it, a mangled frame with the other three sides in tatters, had been discarded. I rescued the front panel. 

At the bottom of the stairs is Mayze's hideyhole. Only one curtain here, the window is small. 

 Patchwork curtains are easy to make. Start with a centre piece, and keep going round and round adding more pieces until it reaches the size you want. Here is a blog post on how to get started on the patchwork. I used an old curtain liner to stitch onto. And here is another blog post about making up the curtain and the finished article. Perhaps you might like to have a go. Sewing machine needed. 

Amazing, the sun is out, I wonder how long it might last. I did my shopping last night, so I am stocked up once more. 

See ya soon. Toodle pip.   ilona

What's normal?

Monday was sunny. The wild garlic is making an appearance. The sun lifts my spirits. 

A flock of gulls came down to rest on the flooded fields. 

Tuesday was sunny, I did a Billy dog walk. Tuesday tea time there was a beautiful sunset. I caught a glimpse of it from my bedroom window. 

Wednesday was raining most of the day. I did a late village walk when it finally stopped. 

Today I woke up to more rain, heavy, little streams running down the road. Now it has stopped which might provide me with a window to go out. 

There are people who say that there is nothing unusual about the weather patterns for this time of the year. I think they are very unusual. It's almost as if there is someone planning what kind of weather we are allowed to have. It's like they have a finger on the button. These rich people flying off in their private jets to have a meeting about how much sun we are allowed to have. How much rain they can dump on us. How often they can flood our homes, and disrupt the growing patterns for farmers trying to make a living. How they decide when to dump hundreds of tons of snow to block the roads so we can't go out because events have been cancelled, and we can't get any petrol for our cars, and the buses stop running.  It's almost as if they have an on and off switch for the sun. Let's make it so hot in the summer that the crops in the fields wither and die. The world goes into meltdown because there is nothing to eat, no water to drink, vehicles catch fire because their tyres are melting on hot tarmac. 

This is not normal. Nature is being engineered. 

Toodle pip.   ilona

 

 

Coffee chat with Richard

I haven't got time to make a coffee chat video today, so why not go over to Richard's gaff and have a coffee with him. He lives on the south coast you know, near the seaside. He makes a much better job than me of getting to the point and tying everything all together. My waffles take ten minutes and I forget half of what I want to say. 

Actually, I composed a blog post before I got out of my bed this morning, it was all in my head. It's a coincidence, but some of my thoughts are directly in line with what Richard is saying. To save me hours of getting it all down with the keyboard, I will hand this post over to him. 

His title is very apt. Corporate Britain, and Corporate the rest of the world, has ruined everything. There is no going back. Take heed of what he says. Take back your sovereignty. Claim your right to freedom as a human being. Stop being a sheep.  

I went to Coffee Morning this morning and enjoyed the face to face aspect of conversations. The rain has now stopped so I'll go for a walk around the village. I will be cheerful and say hello to everyone I meet. I will buy an ice cream from the local shop. 

Catch ya tomorrow. Toodle pip.   ilona

Bossy Mayze.

Mayze lives on the stairs. She sits in the window looking out over the garden. She sleeps on the window sill. Her litter box is at the bottom of the stairs. I serve her food to her on the stairs. She yells at me every time I walk past, telling me she wants some more food. I was hoping to catch this on camera, but she only started when she saw the food about to arrive. 

Meeeeeow. Toodle pip.  ilona

Daniel and his new bike.

Today I went to Crafty Club and had a natter with the ladies. This afternoon I did my five mile normal walk. The ground is still a bit boggy in places, but the boots coped well as I plodded through it. 

I have just sat and watched this video while eating my dinner. I put it here because it is great entertainment.

I have been following Daniel for a long time. He had a smallholding in Ireland called Mossy Bottom.  Now it's all change, he has a partner and a young daughter, and they have moved to Finland. If you are looking for some light entertainment for 32 minutes, I can recommend you give this a try. Much better than the awful soaps they put out on the old telly box. 

I have noticed that some yoootooobers are making big changes to their lives. Remember Andrew Ditton, the caravan and motorhome expert. He lived on the Outer Hebrides, and after watching his videos I had a holiday on the Islands. I met up with him at Whitby last year. Well, he has moved down south, and gone back to his old job. He works on the Eurostar, so if anyone is going through the tunnel look out for him. 

Heidi who lives on her narrowboat is on holiday at the moment. She also has a campervan and she is somewhere down in Portugal with her friend Sandra who has her own van. She will be back on her narrowboat sometime in the spring. 

Pat Dickinson who I have been following for ages, usually makes camping and exploration videos, has just put a new one out. He has adapted his little car and kitted it out for car camping. He is going to sleep in it when he has an early flight to wherever he fancies going. Drive to the airport the night before, leave it in the car park, and off he goes. His first trip is going to be a day out at Barcelona. How cool is that. 

Liam and Janine are still in India. They have donated their Tuktuk to a dog shelter. They will use it to ferry the dogs to the vet when they need treatment. Their next video should be coming out shortly. I wonder if they will continue their tour using some other means of transport. 

Sarah and Willie who moved to the Isle of Skye, have a new doggy. They are a lovely couple. Their drone shots are fantastic. 

My list of watchable videos is growing. I don't need a telly.

One more to watch before I go to bed. I've got ice cream in the freezer. Perfect. Just like being at the cinema without leaving the comfort of your own home. 

Toodle pip.   ilona