Where did January go? I know we have been busy - a week in Bath and a weekend in Leicster quilts being made, sandwiched and quilted, sitting for grandchildren etc but the month of January seems to have just disappeared!
The week we spent in Bath was a lovely break away after all the hassel of Christmas. The hotel we stayed in was a pretty, private one, close to the city. So we walked every day into the city to explore. It was very cold that week and we just wrapped up warm and of we went, finding places to warm up and have hot food when we needed to. We have been to Bath once before and had done most of the main touristy things then, like visiting the baths and the pump room, Jane Austens house and the house that is 'open' in the Crescent, so this time we went to the Assembly rooms and the exhibition of Fashions, to the Cathederal and the museum in the crypt (fascinating) .
We had a lovely walk along the river and round the outskirts of the city and came across a glass blowers.....what a lovely way to keep warm we thought....so we went in and watched a demonstration of men blowing glass and making the most beautiful blue glass vases and jugs. There in their display cases were over 100 small pigs.........these were done by the children of a school in the city, each pig with a different decoration.....
We kept on hearing about the 'Pigs' and while walking through a covered market we came across a full size one - then a second one. Apparently last year they had these pigs everywhere! they were plaster casts that had been painted by various groups, shops and individuals etc and they were put on display all round the city. In the autumn they gathered them all up and did a few repairs and put them up for auction for charity.
We had such a lovely holiday that we were reluctant to come home, the journey was a bit hair-raising as there was a freezing fog and the temperature was -5 on the M4....froze the windscreen washer bottle! So we had to keep stopping in service areas and pulling off the motorway to clean the windscreen! The ride home was very pretty though with the hoar frost all over all the vegetaion........trees and shrubs like fairy tale grottos, all silvery and sparkly in the weak sun that was trying to penetrate the fog.
The weekend in Leicester was to celebrate the 60th Birthday of a neice! can't believe she is that old. It was nice to catch up with the other side of the Bailey family for a while. Pat is the local Vicar of Cosbyand we thought she was also retiring but apparently not so, her contract keeps her there untill July, when there will be 'discussions ' about her next move.... My sister-in-law looked well, but she had decided not to drive herself up to Leicster and had been brought up by one of the other neices. Laura lives in Sidcup and even at the age of 86 still drives round that area, but she thought that the drive North would be too much for her! some woman that one. She always frightened me when I was younger and terrified my children.
Since then I have been doing a lot of sewing. A friend of mine had a stroke in October and has been very lucky in that she has only limited damage to one side of her lower body. It has curtailed her freedom though and she has always been a very independent woman and has found this very hard to cope with. She was looking particularly distressed one evening and I gave her a hug, but thought perhaps she should have a permanent hug in the form of a quilt - so- I made her a lap quilt in the colours of her sitting room. She is usually the giver of gifts and has found this pressie (unexpected and unasked for) very hard to accept. I gave it to her on one of the evenings that several ladies (we are lace makers meeting in her house every Wednesday evening) meet together and they all persuded her to keep the gift (she wasn't going to accept it as it 'cost too much and took such a long time to make') . I hear from one of the other ladies that she uses it a lot so I am glad that I have done this for her. She has had us in her house every Wednesday for many years - without her our group would have broken up long ago.
