Chatham, Cape Cod

In early November, I went to Boston MA, for an international meeting for work. As I'd visited Boston in 2013 during my travel fellowship, I decided to spend a few days seeing a different part of the state. My colleague E and I left London on the Friday before the meeting so that we could spend the weekend exploring Cape Cod.

After collecting the car at the airport, we made our way south (old school style without a sat nav and just some printed instructions from the car hire company). After a few wrong turns when we reached Chatham, we finally found the lovely inn where we spent two nights.

The New England fall weather lived up to expectations with a beautifully sunny day...here are some scenes from our stay in Chatham...

Handmade Christmas decorations...using black(red)work embroidery

This year, I made some handmade Christmas decorations for my mother to give to her friends. In the summer I did a two-day course learning blackwork embroidery at the Royal School of Needlework. Although we were learning traditional blackwork techniques, we worked the sampler with red embroidery thread. At the time, I thought it would be a nice effect for Christmas.

Using one of the sampler patterns, and worked on white belgian linen, I embroidered each of the individual motifs.

Each of the decorations was backed with a red fabric with white stars.

And then stitched together with a 2mm satin ribbon loop

Turned the right-side out and pressed, ready for their filling and finishing touches

Filled, and a small ribbon bow added for decoration.

I think they look quite festive!

Venice - St Mark's Square and Murano

Part of wanting to re-visit Venice, was the opportunity to visit some of the places for which it is renowned and of which I had such limited memories of my previous visit. So early on Saturday morning, I left our apartment and wandered towards St Marks hoping to arrive before many of the tourist crowds. My route took me over the Accademia Bridge with the above view of the Grand Canal.

After about 15 minutes I reached an almost deserted St Mark's square. For anyone who has been to Venice, this is a rare occurrence...but at 8am on a Saturday morning, there were only a few other tourists and quite a few joggers.

St Mark's Basilica - the bench like structures in front of the church are the boards that are laid around the city during the aqua alta so people can still get around when areas of the city flood.

I had been into St Mark's Basilica on my previous visit, but hadn't been to see the Doge's Palace - which was my main destination for the morning. The pink and white marble exterior is exquisite.

The palace opened at 8.30, and so I was also able to explore without hundreds of other people. The palace also afforded some wonderful views across Venice.

After I left the Doge's Palace, I queued briefly to go into the Basilica. It feels far smaller than some other European and English cathedrals, but the mosaic work is incomparable.

As I left St Mark's Square the crowds were beginning to build, so I made my way back across the Accademia Bridge for views back towards the Doge's Palace and the Campanile.

I met up with my friends for lunch, and as the weather had become so lovely, we decided to hop on a vaporetto and spend the afternoon on Murano (with an obligatory gelati!)

My last view of Venice as we caught the vaporetto back to collect our bags and make our way to the airport. I am so pleased to have had the opportunity to return to visit after so many years, and explore such a wonderful city properly...

Venice - a wander through the city

Last weekend, some friends and I spent the weekend in Venice. Earlier in the year I had been talking about how I had once spent 24 hours in Venice about 17 years ago. Unfortunately, that one day was in mid July, the temperature was well over 40 degrees, and we shamefully spent several hours sitting in a fast food restaurant as it was the only place we could find that had air-conditioning. Ever since, Venice has remained on the list of places I wanted to re-visit to explore and appreciate properly. After mentioning this over drinks one Friday evening, momentum took hold and our weekend trip was planned.

My friends had also been to Venice before, so weren't keen to visit the very busy tourist sites. So on our first day we simply wandered from our local area (we were staying in an apartment) across the city, trying to stay off the tourist routes, and exploring the less busy areas.

We stayed in Dorsoduro which is the university quarter. It was a great spot to stay in terms of local bakeries, cafes and restaurants...but we were also able to get a real sense of how Venetians go about their daily lives.

On the canals, we passed produce stores, garbage collection boats and everything in between.

Our footsteps took us towards the Rialto bridge which also afforded us our first daytime view of the grand canal. The local market was still in full swing, with an amazing array of fresh produce for sale.

After exploring the market, we quickly crossed the Rialto bridge and once again headed away from the regular tourist haunts to avoid the large crowds.

This last photo is actually a modern, functioning hospital! By the end of the afternoon we had walked over 8 miles, so we caught a vaporetto back to Dorsoduro and enjoyed an evening of enjoying more Venetian delights (Aperol spritz and cicchetti).

It was a lovely day and a wonderful start to the weekend...

Life lately...

Well, I didn't intend to neglect this blog for a month - work has been continuing on small jobs around the cottage...it is just that many are still only partly complete.

I did spend a weekend in Dublin at the end of July to attend a friend's wedding. I lived in Dublin in 2002-3, and used to visit several times a year to catch up with friends. However, it has been quite a while since my last visit. The wedding was lovely (if somewhat of an endurance event!). The service started at 1pm, and I left the reception after 1am and it was still going strong! However, on Saturday morning I had a chance to walk through some of my favourite streets in Georgian Dublin and have my fill of beautiful doors, before venturing into a very sunny St Stephen's Green.

On the home front, I have recently purchased a couple of items of bargain furniture, so the last few weeks have been spent giving them each a makeover. Two are now complete and so I will show you the updates very soon, and one is almost complete.

I've also started the redecoration of the bathroom. Unlike other rooms wherever I've done all of the work in one go, I am spreading this one out a little (both from an energy/inclination and a financial perspective). I've been sharing some of these snippets on Instagram, but to date I have...

Started covering the dark blue wall paint with white primer. It has had one coat so far, but I think I will do another before the final wall colour.

This actually resulted in a bit of indecision regarding wall colour. While the walls had been dark blue, I was convinced that the wall tiles were white. It transpires that they are actually a beige colour (with a small hint of pink). So my extensive range of Little Greene colour pots came out, and I think I've decided on Wood Ash (top right swatch).

The plumber has been and replaced the modern towel warmer with a more traditional style radiator. 

And this weekend's task is to strip the paint from the cast iron fireplace. I think I will likely re-paint this, but it had so many layers of poorly applied paint, a lot of the detail was ill-defined. The test will be tomorrow when I try removing the peel-away paint stripper.

In other (negative) news I had to call out an emergency plumber this week as I arrived home on Tuesday to find that my water-tank in the loft was leaking, and dripping through to the upstairs landing. The plumber was able to come within a few hours but I have sustained some damage to the hall ceiling and the ceiling in the second bedroom. It also must have been more water than I thought as I discovered yesterday that the water had also made its way down to the bottom floor through the hall floor as I have damp stains on the dining room ceiling. So I'm giving it all a chance to fully dry out, and then some ceiling re-painting will be added to the 'to-do' list.

But in other (positive) news, the UK food network channel has started showing some HGTV programmes - you may recall I became a little addicted to HGTV when I spent a month in the US two years ago. So, I can now have a daily fix of Rehab Addict and Fixer Upper - which both certainly help to keep me focused on getting on with my own projects...

Braving the lean-to....

When I moved into my home last year I opened this little door, and very quickly closed it again. Finally, a year later, I have braved the mess that lays beyond this old door with its peeling paint.

This brick-built lean to is at the back of my home - it is part wc and part a small pantry that can be accessed from the kitchen. In the long term I hope to knock down the lean-to and extend the kitchen out into the garden. So, I've no plans to 'renovate' this space...but I decided that I at least needed to clear it out and ensure that it is maintained in a reasonable condition (in order to protect the integrity of my home).

So, this was the sight that greeted me when I opened the door:

This is what was left in the space by the previous owners. Pieces of broken up old furniture, an old radiator, and the remains of their wood pile. It was also housing copious amounts of spider's web and the spiders themselves.

I pulled everything out so that I could sweep out all of the dirt and mess. This is the pile that subsequently made a trip to my local council recyling centre.

Hideous, I know...

But, whilst this space is never going to win any decor awards, it is at least reasonably clean, and can function as a wood store until I am ready to plan a future extension.

It was a satisfying, if somewhat unedifying job - so I'm pleased I finally completed it.

And to ensure that this post contains some slightly more attractive images, here are my hydrangeas coming into bloom in the garden.

I had long planned a garden with white hydrangeas, so I'm delighted that it has come to fruition.

And in other, completely unrelated news, I spent last Saturday morning baking. I've made friands several times before usually using a citrus and poppy seed recipe. This time I tried a new Mary Berry recipe, which resulted in these delicious raspberry and almond friands...fortunately, I took them with me when I visited a friend that afternoon, otherwise more than would have been advisable would have been consumed!