Tuesday 31 March 2009

My Old Quilt.

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I have had this quilt for quite a number of years. I did not make it myself but bought it at a salerooms in Alnwick, Northumberland. when I live in Amble in the 70's I used to go to the salerooms regularly. I bought quite a few quilts but over the years they have dwindled away. This has not been made the normal way. The top has been made out of large pieces of fabric and topstitched onto the middle layer. Not sure what the middle layer is though.

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It has been bound in a rose print fabric very crudely.

 

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And this is the reverse side plain and checked materials. I assume it was made in the war years more out of necessity than as a work of art. Maybe its from the fifties I'm not sure.

It now covers my light coloured settee, so our black haired dog Lucky, doesn't make a hairy mess of it.

Flowers, flowers and more flowers

 

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Our walk along the cliff tops on Sunday was most interesting. The flowers were beautiful and blanketed the green areas in lovely colour.

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SV202252So many flowers it was unbelievable.

This last two photo's are of a plant with lovely markings on its stems

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After our walk we sat on the beach and soaked up the sun and ate sandwiches and drank juice. We had a very enjoyable day.

Tuesday 17 March 2009

Heating and hot water, yes please!!!

 

Our solar panel was delivered last week but then they realised that the coil for the central heating was not there so they had to order a part. We have spent a week with no hot water or heating and it has been cold here at nights. Luckily we were able to borrow a oil filled radiator to warm us up a bit.

Yesterday morning the phone rang and hey presto, they had the part. The guy  delivered it and fitted it. Ian filled it with the required fluid and the water.  Then the sun went behind some brewing clouds.  Isn't that just typical!SV202180

The guy fitting the heating coil.  He also told us that the plant with the yellow flowers growing in our garden can be collected before the flowers open, boiled then put into your omelette. (you can just make them out if you look through the top two rungs of the ladder)

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My dear hubby putting in the fluid. The fluid helps the water heat up.

Next was to connect all the central heating pipes and let the water flow through into the central heating wood burning stove and radiators. There we were getting all excited and then it happened. We sprung a leak!  No not one but three. The system was all drained back down. We were a bit deflated to say the least.

This morning he got up had his breakfast and then set about fixing the leaks.

With the joints all taken apart and soldered back up again we filled it up again. No leaks! Excited I laid the fire in the stove and put a match to it.

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And boy didn't it go. Heat at last!!!!

The sun was shining most of the day so we also got hot water free.

Monday 16 March 2009

FLOWERS AND VEG

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Went shopping for vegetables and treated myself to some lovely Freesia. They smell divine.

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These are some of the vegetables that I got. Tomatoes and peppers

What is this?

These greens on the right of the photo. The ones on the left were given to me by our next-door neighbour. Do you know what they are?

I made some chutney today as well. It is supposed to be Green Tomato Chutney but as you can see there is red in there too.

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And this is what it turned out like. Looks yummy to me, thing is, you are supposed to wait 2 weeks till it matures before you eat it. Think this will be quite hard to do. I got the recipe from the internet and it turned out to be a blogger that I follow. http://greenforks.com

On the Wander

 

We moved into our house in Vrisses last Friday and today was the first time that I had time to take Lucky exploring the area.SV202165

We  walked through the olive groves and when we came to a clearing I looked up and could see our house in the distance. Had I walked that far?It was well worth it though, just look what I saw, even if it was uphill all the way back.SV202161

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These pretty white camomile and hiding amongst them anemones and this splendid plantSV202163

I,m not sure what it is called but there are a lot of them about reaching about 2ft or more tall.

 

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There where trees loaded with blossom not sure if this is almond or a cherry.

Wednesday 4 March 2009

A Walk On The Beach

After spending all morning packing boxes for our move on Friday, we went to Malia to get somethings my husband needed for the house. We took our little dog Lucky with us, as we like to take her for a walk on the beach. She hates the water but loves the sand. Thought you might like to share some of the things that we saw there.



The rocks here are very jagged and sharp. Just look how they are formed.















There are small ridges. I think it was caused by volcanic action many millions of years ago.














A strange feature out in the water.

















This looks like a fossilised tree root.












A rock pool. There is lots of life in there and some pretty colours too.















There are a lot of round holes in the rocks. I think this was formed by molten lava.















Pretty flowers blooming away to themselves.















Its well seen that the sun has been shining for the last few days
















Everything is bursting out.












I know this one, it is a century agave, it is about 30 to 36 inches high. They supposedly live for about a hundred years then flower and die. The flower spike rises over 10ft in the air. There was a lot of small plantlets around the base of this plant as they send up offsets.

When they are fully mature they are really wide. On the leaves there are sharp spikes so beware. Well we enjoyed our walk and thank you for coming along with us.

Don't forget you can click on the pictures to get a full sized version so you can see the detail more clearly.

Monday 2 March 2009

Knock Knock.





At long last we have a door to our upstairs bedroom. This door leads out onto the roof from which we have lovely veiws. You really got to see this door, it's great and I'm very thankfull to the person that made it for us.




































Look at the workmanship on that lock. I love it!

















These are the veiws from our roof. It will be lovely waking up in the morning and just walking out onto the roof.

Thanks Geoff.
(Jude's husband.)







My Cretan Life