Cats in the Kitchen, Flora in the Garden

This is a postcard I have made for Robyn's Chocolate Swap that I am participating in,I'm not going to show anything else that is going in the parcel I am making but I wanted to show you this. I love the idea of the little girl sitting primly in the hope of being rewarded with chocolate. Having made this card, it is postcard size, I have now had some ideas for a series of them, the images are buzzing about in my head, better get back to my work table. One other thing I have to say about the swap, is that the chocolate bar part of the swap I bought first, when I was doing my shopping. I'm afraid I have had to go out and buy another one, for days I resisted temptation but after my Autumn cleaning spree, guess what? I just had to have chocolate and ate it!

I am back on the Daisy Fae project today, and I can't help but laugh, standing at the back of my work table are a little line of stuffed pairs of legs, they look really surreal, a sort of chorus line without top halves. They make me giggle every time I look up and see them. It is very dark and has been pouring down with rain all day but I am happy and busy. I have nominated this week Van Morrison week, as it's his music I am working to at the moment. I love to be upstairs at my table and happily trying to scat sing behind his vocals. Good job we have thick sandstone walls!



I haven't told a local tale for a while, so this is a tale about something that happened to me when I first moved into the cottage. My memory was jogged by a recent posting of Ms*Robyn's, so I thought I would share it with you. All I will say before I start is this really happened, as far as I am concerned, you must make of it what you will.

When we moved into this cottage it had been empty for a while. We finished taking up residence late on a February evening. We were very tired and the cottage felt very cold so we concentrated on making our main living room really warm and just slept downstairs in there. The next day was spent trying to make some semblance of order and by late afternoon, the cottage was livable and all warm and snug. That evening I was to be by myself at the cottage until the next morning, for various reasons. Having had an exhausting day I had a lovely leisurely bath and retired to bed. I fell deep asleep and awoke to feeling the bedclothes lifting and my husband, at least that is who I thought it was, getting into bed, I just thought he had returned early. I suddenly realised becoming awake properly that it wasn't, the room was pitch black, I couldn't see anything but felt the covers moving. My heart beating rapidly I said out loud 'No, this is not your cottage anymore, please don't bother me, I love this cottage and will take great care of it but please go away.' I put the lamp on and the room was empty. I went back to sleep, the lamp still on.


After living here for a few years I discovered a few things. Our cottage is one of a row of six, cottages of all shapes and sizes, although three are connected then we, being the fourth, have a long narrow gap on one side and are joined to the other side, which is a mirror image of our cottage, then a tiny cottage on the end. One of the cottages seems to have been an inn possibly a coaching inn at some time. This cottage has a night time visitor to the bed in one room and footsteps are constantly heard walking the long corridor upstairs and stopping outside one of the rooms. The owner is not bothered by all this, her partner is, he will not stay in the cottage overnight by himself. Next door but one occupants, have been known to hear a latch being lifted on the door and footsteps tramping up and down the stairs and out again, when nothing is there. There is an old stable building, partly derelict outside these two cottages, where it is said that horses were stabled to change teams on the coaches that went past, we live on what was an old toll road. A neighbour has heard horses neighing in this tumbling down stable.

I am not making any assumptions about what I have told above. I was told them by very reliable people, I have had that experience when a newcomer to my cottage, and they are all old houses. Perhaps, more will eventually turn up when more local history research has been done.

The book, that I am still reading, is The Time Traveller's Wife, I am really enjoying it. I don't know if any one of you have read it yet, but the thought has occurred to me that if when he travels backwards and forwards in time, he meets himself, and he does and is very friendly with himself, surely if there are no bad effects from that then he could possibly meet more than one of himself, in fact he could meet himself ad infinitum? Don't blind me with physics, but do you see what I am getting at? Perhaps, I am thinking too hard.