View allAll Photos Tagged Stuff
Explore # 397 on 18 march 2008
20080315_0626-b
Opgezette vos in het Natuur Historisch Museum Naturalis Leiden, 15 maart 2008
De meet-uppers:
This was the first souvenir we ever found with Violet's name on it, so we of course had to buy it. (They'd actually embroider any name you wanted, but we were amazed to find a Violet already done. We also found an Everett bear, too!)
found this cool garage full of stuff out at the farm and had a little fun with photoshop and an anaglyph tutorial (you need a pair of those funny red and blue glasses to see the photo right)
Stuffed to the gills!
A5 Raspberry Finsbury
Blogged about here: simplifytosave.com/2011/05/13/my-filo1/
boil mini red potatoes until a fork goes in easily (but not so long they start to lose their skins or fall apart!). Let cool, then slice each in two, scoop a bit of potato out of each half (not too much, or again, the potato will fall apart), and reserve scoops in bowl. salt the potato halves.
mix potato innards with salt, pepper, sour cream, chopped chives, and 4-5 strips crispy bacon, crumbled. top potato halves with scoops of filling, then sprinkle with extra chives and paprika.
adapted from articles.sfgate.com/2008-08-20/food/17124394_1_party-tips...
Whitman 1954 Big Big Paint Book
Hello everyone! Since some of you may have children staying at home, I thought this was a good time to share scans of one of my vintage coloring books, in this case paint book. The book is large and has a lot of pages so it will take me several days to post over 300 pages. I love the art work in these old books.
Except for the title page, I tried to whiten the others so they did have a tan hue.
Stuffed Strawberry "Carrots"
Instructions/tutorial here:
www.1finecookie.com/2012/03/stuffed-carrot-garden-cupcake...
🌈 🌈 www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZT73SdhXok 🌈🌈 Suggestion: Open the Live Music Stream Link Above in a New Tab, Then Listen & Enjoy the Music While Viewing Flickr. 🌈🌈
Four stuffed dachshunds, all gifts. Three are for upcoming family babies and the fourth is for a little boy who will soon be a big brother to one of those babies.
This was my first time working with fleece and my first time making a stuffed animal. The fleece scared me but it turns out it's incredibly forgiving -- my seams weren't pretty but you'd never know it. The pattern was easy to follow and by assembly lining the making of these it was quick too. To line the ears I used four different colours of a Cotton and Steel basics print. I thought it would be fun to give a stuffed puppy and a matching pair of these slippers to each of the babies.
The pattern is Darcy the Dachshund by Abby Glassenberg of While She Naps.
There was never any doubt I would go to Rob's funeral. Rob was born just two weeks before me, and in our many meetings, we found we had so much in common.
A drive to Ipswich should be something like only two and a half hours, but with the Dartford Crossing that could balloon to four or more.
My choice was to leave early, soon after Jools left for work, or wait to near nine once rush hour was over. If I was up early, I'd leave early, I said.
Which is what happened.
So, after coffee and Jools leaving, I loaded my camera stuff in the car, not bothering to program in a destination, as I knew the route to Suffolk so well.
Checking the internet I found the M2 was closed, so that meant taking the M20, which I like as it runs beside HS2, although over the years, vegetation growth now hides most of it, and with Eurostar cutting services due to Brexit, you're lucky to see a train on the line now.
I had a phone loaded with podcasts, so time flew by, even if travelling through the endless roadworks at 50mph seemed to take forever.
Dartford was jammed. But we inched forward, until as the bridge came in sight, traffic moved smoothly, and I followed the traffic down into the east bore of the tunnel.
Another glorious morning for travel, the sun shone from a clear blue sky, even if traffic was heavy, but I had time, so not pressing on like I usually do, making the drive a pleasant one.
Up through Essex, where most other traffic turned off at Stanstead, then up to the A11 junction, with it being not yet nine, I had several hours to fill before the ceremony.
I stopped at Cambridge services for breakfast, then programmed the first church in: Gazeley, which is just in Suffolk on the border with Cambridgeshire.
I took the next junction off, took two further turnings brought be to the village, which is divided by one of the widest village streets I have ever seen.
It was five past nine: would the church be open?
I parked on the opposite side of the road, grabbed my bag and camera, limped over, passing a warden putting new notices in the parish notice board. We exchange good mornings, and I walk to the porch.
The inner door was unlocked, and the heavy door swung after turning the metal ring handle.
I had made a list of four churches from Simon's list of the top 60 Suffolk churches, picking those on or near my route to Ipswich and which piqued my interest.
Here, it was the reset mediaeval glass.
Needless to say, I had the church to myself, the centuries hanging heavy inside as sunlight flooded in filling the Chancel with warm golden light.
Windows had several devotional dials carved in the surrounding stone, and a huge and "stunningly beautiful piscina, and beside it are sedilia that end in an arm rest carved in the shape of a beast" which caught my eye.
A display in the Chancel was of the decoration of the wooden roof above where panels contained carved beats, some actual and some mythical.
I photographed them all.
I programmed in the next church, a 45 minute drive away just on the outskirts of Ipswich, or so I thought.
The A14 was plagued by roadworks, then most trunk roads and motorways are this time of year, but it was a fine summer morning, I was eating a chocolate bar as I drove, and I wasn't in a hurry.
I turned off at Claydon, and soon lost in a maze of narrow lanes, which brought be to a dog leg in the road, with St Mary nestling in a clearing.
I pulled up, got out and found the air full of birdsong, and was greeted by a friendly spaniel being taken for a walk from the hamlet which the church serves.
There was never any doubt that this would be open, so I went through the fine brick porch, pushed another heavy wooden door and entered the coolness of the church.
I decided to come here for the font, which as you can read below has quite the story: wounded by enemy action no less!
There seems to be a hagioscope (squint) in a window of the south wall, makes one think or an anchorite, but of this there is little evidence.
Samuel and Thomasina Sayer now reside high on the north wall of the Chancel, a stone skull between them, moved here too because of bomb damage in the last war.
I drove a few miles to the next church: Flowton.
Not so much a village as a house on a crossroads. And the church.
Nothing so grand as a formal board outside, just a handwritten sign say "welcome to Flowton church". Again, I had little doubt it would be open.
And it was.
The lychgate still stands, but a fence around the churchyard is good, so serves little practical purpose, other than to be there and hold the signs for the church and forthcoming services.
Inside it is simple: octagonal font with the floor being of brick, so as rustic as can be.
I did read Simon's account (below) when back outside, so went back in to record the tomb of Captain William Boggas and his family, even if part of the stone is hidden by pews now.
I had said to myself, that if I saw signs for another church, I might find time to visit. And so it was with Aldham, I saw the sign pointing down a narrow lane, so I turned and went to investigate.
First it looked like the road ended in a farmyard, but then I saw the flint round tower of the church behind, so followed the lane to the church gate.
There was a large welcoming sign stating, proudly, that the church is always open.
St Mary stands on a mound overlooking a shallow valley, water stand, or runs slowly, in the bottom, and it really is a fine, fine location for a church.
I pushed through the gate and went up the path to the south porch, where the door swung open once again.
The coolness within enveloped me.
An ancient font at the west end was framed by a brick-lined arch, even to my untrained eyes, I knew this was unusual.
There were some carved bench ends, some nice fairly modern glass, but the simplicity of the small church made for a very pleasant whole.
I no longer watch TV much, so was unaware of the view and indeed church being used in the TV show, The Detectorists.
One of Suffolk's hidden treasures, for sure.
I had selected the list of churches to visit from Simon's list of 60 best Suffolk churches, choosing the ones that seemed near to Ipswich.
I had one more on my list, one a little bit out of the way, but I thought I had time, so set off for deepest, darkest Suffolk: Kettlebaston.
The trip took me past my old stamping grounds of Bildeston and Kersey, where I used to take Mum and Dad each Easter once I could drive, but once past Kersey, I still had twenty minutes to go.
Up the hill from Brent Eleigh into Kettlebaston, where the village was more of a dogleg in the road than anything else. I drove through slowly hoping the church would be obvious.
It wasn't.
It was playing hide and seek.
I programmed the church into the sat nav, and followed it back to the village, where beyond a small grassed area was a wall of a mature yew hedge, with the only way through a way so overgrown I had to stoop low to get through.
On the buttress at the south eastern corner of the Chancel, a painted panel showed the Coronation of the Queen of Heaven.
Clearly, this wasn't your normal parish church.
I am an atheist, its just the way I am, so these different "flavours" of Christianity do confuse me somewhat.
Even I knew when I walked in that this was a high church, high in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, with two altars either side of the Chancel Arch, the first such I think I have seen in a parish church.
I post these shots here and on a Churchcrawling website on Facebook, I might skip this one as it will draw lots of comments I think, not all positive.
I guess what saddens me is that they worship the same God, no? Is being right about how to do it that important? When wardens ask me what I think of their church, or should they put a glass door in instead of the ancient wooden currently, I say, it is a living church, your church, changes can be reversed if needed too. But it is your church, you have to live with it, it has to be suitable for all.
Despite all the above, there was much evidence of the ancient church: the font, paintings around a window among other features.
--------------------------------------------------
I always look forward to coming back to Kettlebaston. It is likely that anyone who knows the churches of Suffolk well will have Kettlebaston among their favourites. The setting is delectable, in the remote Suffolk hills between Hadleigh and Stowmarket. The building is at once elegant and interesting, the interior memorable, but most fascinating of all perhaps is the story behind the way it is today.
In 1963, in the thirty-third year of his incumbency as Rector of the parish of Kettlebaston, Father Harold Clear Butler sent a letter to a friend. "You are right,"he wrote. "There is no congregation any more." In failing health, he relied on the family of a vicar who had retired nearby to carry out the ceremonies of Easter week that year. In 1964, Father Butler himself retired, and an extraordinary episode in the history of the Anglo-Catholic movement in Suffolk came to an end.
There may have been no congregation, but St Mary at Kettlebaston was a shrine, to which people made pilgrimages from all over England. Here was the liturgically highest of all Suffolk's Anglican churches, where Father Butler said the Roman Mass every day, celebrated High Mass and Benediction on Sunday, dispensed with churchwardens, flouted the authority of the Anglican diocese by tearing down state notices put up in the porch, refused to keep registers, and even, as an extreme, ignored the office of the local Archdeacon of Sudbury. An entry from the otherwise empty registers for October 2nd 1933 reads Visitation of Archdeacon of Sudbury. Abortive. Archdeacon, finding no churchwardens present, rode off on his High Horse!
Father Butler came to this parish when the Anglo-Catholic movement was at its height, and survived into a poorly old age as it retreated, leaving him high and dry. But not for one moment did he ever compromise.
Kettlebaston church is not just remote liturgically. You set off from the vicinity of Hadleigh, finding your way to the back of beyond at Brent Eleigh - and then beyond the back of beyond, up the winding roads that climb into the hills above Preston. Somewhere here, two narrow lanes head north. One will take you to Thorpe Morieux, and one to Kettlebaston, but I can never be sure which is which, or even if they are always in the same place. Finding your way to this, one of the most remote of all Suffolk villages, can be like finding your way into Narnia. Once in the village, you find the church surrounded by a high yew hedge, through which a passage conducts a path into the graveyard. On a buttress, a statue of the Coronation of the Queen of Heaven sits behind a grill. It is a copy of an alabaster found under the floorboards during the 1860s restoration. The original is now in the British Museum.
One Anglo-catholic tradition that has not been lost here is that the church should always be open, always be welcoming. You enter through the small porch, perhaps not fully prepared for the wonders that await. The nave you step into is light, clean and well-cared for. There is no coloured glass, no heavy benches, no tiles. The brick floor and simple wooden chairs seem as one with the air, a perfect foil for the rugged late Norman font, and the rich view to the east, for the fixtures and fittings of the 20th Century Anglo-Catholic tradition survive here in all their splendour.
The two major features are the rood screen and the high altar. The rood screen is the work of several people, having been added to over the years by a roll-call of prominent Anglo-Catholic artists. It was designed by Ernest Geldart in the 1880s. It was painted by Patrick Osborne in 1949, apart from the figures, which are the work of Enid Chadwick in 1954. They are: St Felix as a bishop holding a candle, St Thomas More in regalia, St Thomas of Canterbury with a sword through his mitre, St John Fisher as a bishop holding a book, St Alban in armour and St Fursey holding Burgh Castle.
To one side, the Sacred Heart altar bears the original stone mensa from the high altar. The table itself is the Stuart Communion table. To the other, a Lady altar. All of these are either gifts or rescued from redundant Anglo-Catholic churches elsewhere. The elegant grill in front of the rood loft stairs is by Ninian Comper. Stepping through into the chancel is a reminder of how the clearance of clutter can improve a liturgical space. Here, the emptiness provides a perfect foil for the massive altar piece. The altar itself was the gift of Miss Eleanor Featonby Smith, consecrated by the Bishop of Madagascar in 1956, in one of those ceremonies conducted in the labyrinthine underworld of the Anglo-catholic movement. The altar sports what is colloquially referred to as the Big Six - the trademark six candlesticks of an Anglo-catholic parish. Behind them, the rich reredos is also by Ernest Geldart, and was also painted by Patrick Osborne.
At the west end of the nave is a display case holding facsimiles of the Kettlebaston alabasters, an oddly prosaic moment. But Kettlebaston's medieval past is not entirely rebooted, for the chancel was sensitively restored by Ernest Geldart in 1902 with none of the razzmatazz of his church at Little Braxted in Essex. The east window was rebuilt to the same design as the original, as was the roof. The late 13th Century piscina and sedilia are preserved, and on the north side of the chancel survives an impressive tomb recess of about the same date. The sole monument is to Joan, Lady Jermyn, who died in 1649. Her memorial is understated, and its inscription, at the end of the English Civil War and the start of the ill-fated Commonwealth, is a fascinating example of the language of the time. Is it puritan in sympathy, or Anglican? Or simply a bizarre fruit of the ferment of ideas in that World Turned Upside Down? Within this dormitory lyes interred ye corpps of Johan Lady Jermy it begins, and continues whose arke after a passage of 87 yeares long through this deluge of teares... rested upon ye mount of joye. And then the verse:
Sleepe sweetly, Saint. Since thou wert gone
ther's not the least aspertion
to rake thine asshes: no defame
to veyle the lustre of thy name.
Like odorous tapers thy best sent
remains after extinguishment.
Stirr not these sacred asshes, let them rest
till union make both soule & body blest.
Not far off, and from half a century earlier, a rather more cheerful brass inscription remembers that:
The corpse of John Pricks wife lyes heere
The pastor of this place
Fower moneths and one and thirty yeerr
With him she ran her race
And when some eightye yeres were past
Her soule shee did resigne
To her good god in August last
Yeeres thrice five hundredth ninety nine.
And yet, you notice, we never learn her name. Above, the roofs drip with hanging paraffin lamps, the walls have their candle brackets, for this little church still has no electricity. You sense the attraction of Benediction on a late winter afternoon.
St Mary is loved and cared for by those who worship in it. There are rather more of them than in Father Butler's final days, but they are still a tiny, remote community. Since 1964, they have been part of a wider benefice, and must toe the Anglican mainstream line, as at Lound. But also, as at Lound, the relics of the Anglo-Catholic heyday here are preserved lovingly, and, judging by the visitors book, it is not just the regular worshippers who love it, for Anglo-Catholics from all over England still treat it as a goal of pilgrimage. I remember sitting in this church on a bright spring afternoon some twenty years ago. I'd been sitting for a while in near-silence, which was suddenly broken by the clunk of the door latch. Two elderly ladies came in. They smiled, genuflected towards the east, and greeted me. Together, they went to the Sacred Heart altar, put a bunch of violets in a vase on it, and knelt before it. The silence continued, now with a counterpoint of birdsong from the churchyard through the open door. Then they stood, made the sign of the cross, and went out again. Father Butler looked on and smiled, I'm sure.
Simon Knott, October 2018
Detail of dd's stuff. London. March, 2013. A shelf in one of our cupboards. I've put the location of this as Greville Street, Prahran in Melbourne, which I think is where I bought Blueboy after a lunch with Martoon many, many years ago. Like so many of our little figures, the quiff has broken off :-( But unlike our South African TinTin we still have it attached. The small blue book in the background is a book that dd made me of nice things to do in 2012. We did most of them!