Pull your Christmas Stockings up and dance your way to Christmas!

Yippeee! It's Friday! I am really looking forward to the weekend, but I have no particular reason, I just do do! Today, despite the fact that I am fast becoming  an old leg of mutton, I feel like a spring lamb chop! Isn't life wonderful, yes full of wonder! Despite feeling somewhat like the tin man in the Wizard of Oz, in need of an oil can to fix my creaking, I have a definite spring in my step.

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My followers seem to have come back from their trip into cyber space, and everything seems back to normal on the old blog, so, good, good!

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This week I have been so busy again, thank goodness though, hey? I have been busy with another commission. This time a christmas stocking, requested to be mainly stitchery, in deep pinks, purples and gold.

First I made a pattern

Next I roughly sketched out a drawing.

Then It was very carefully traced onto the fabric (calico) using a high tech method.....taping it to a window!

This is where I am up to so far, sewing away busily! Those gold threads are slippery little blighters!

I was thinking of putting these buttons I have covered with fabric into the design somewhere.

While I was sewing I was thinking of Miz Mollye over at Shezadoosey

I was happily reading her blog (it is great, go and have a look, she is witty, funny and warm and her writing is addictive!) which was about dancing, and how her Mom and Pappy used to dance. I left a comment about my Grandparents, to which she replied...write about them! So......

My Grandparents died quite a few years ago now, but I remember them both with such warmth and love.
Pop was a chemist, a strong, tall and dignified man, who always had something to amuse us children. One of the many wonderful sayings and rhymes he would say was..."It wasn't the cough that carried him off, it was the coffin they carried him off in!" There was another one that I loved him to say, but I won't bore you! It could actually go on for ever, as it is about Antonio who asked to be told a tale, and the tale was about Antonio who asked to be told a tale.....You get the idea! Again, again we would cry! We never tired of his tales and funny remarks!

Nanny and Pop, at somebody's wedding. Hmmm, let me see....Yup it was mine, sadly that one didn't last!

Nanny (sometimes also called No No!) was a truly talented woman, she just seemed good at everything she turned her hand to.... sewing, painting, drawing, baking.... She made the most gorgeous meringues and coffee cake, and her home made bread was to die for! When she sewed clothes, they looked professional, and she even made hats!

Me wearing a dress Nanny made. Yes, I really did have to dress up like this every Sunday. Strangely enough I wasn't too keen on Sundays, can't imagine why!!!

Her house was always interesting, with many curios and bits and bobs. I used to love playing with her buttons which resided  in a very pretty tin! Talking of tins, there was a big one in their kitchen cupboard, and it was crammed full of licorice sticks and chocolate! Now and then their dog Boo Boo, or sometimes Boozie, would sit by the cupboard...hoping!  Outgoing and always busy, she lived a full and happy life!

 This is Nanny's sewing machine,which I am lucky enough to have now in my workroom.

Going to America! Nanny made the little stripey dress that I am wearing at the station with Mum and my brother. Dad was obviously taking the photo!

They were both keen gardeners and grew vegetables, and even had a small orchard. You know the kind of memory that actually comes with one of the senses? Well I have one, it is about their huge long shed, which had a sliding door. I used to pretend I was running along a train track and would slide open the door and jump onto the moving train (very exciting , you know!) and each time you slid the door open you were hit witha gloriously strong smell of stored apples! I can actually smell that every time I remember it!  They used to make home made wine too, they called and labelled it 'Jungle Juice', and my goodness they weren't joking, that stuff could knock your socks off and your wig too, if you were wearing one!

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Anyway, I better get on to the part I was writing about! I could just go on and on for pages about them both, they were so wonderful! I think I could just go on and on full stop!

They married in the 1920's, and my Aunt has a beautiful photo of their fantastic 1920's wedding. Sadly I haven't!
Not long after they married, Pop opened his chemists shops in Cleveleys, anyone local may remember, Croppers Chemists. It was in those days, a traditional chemists, cabinets with tiny drawers, shelves with medicine bottles in blue and green glass. It stayed like that for a long long time and one of my early memories is of the smell, quite unique!

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Of course, later, with that wonderful invention, progress, it was all ripped out and modernised. What a shame! All that character and history, replaced with metal and plastic! The front of the shop which is now plastic upvc and flat, used to have beautiful curved glass windows and intricate woodwork.

Anyway, in those days it WAS beautiful and Nanny and Pop lived over the shop at first, until they could afford a house.
Nanny told me that they used to roll back the carpet upstairs and dance! They loved to dance!  Everytime I go past the shop now, I look up at the upstairs windows and imagine them dancing in the 1920's early 30's, imagining those times, the clothes they would be wearing, the furniture. Oooh, I just love those times, just like all those old movies! Well thats how I imagine it anyway!  Miz mollye says that perhaps her Mom and Pappy and my Nanny and Pop are all up in heaven dancing together! Thats a lovely thought mollye!

 I love the 1920's! The dancing is fantastic!

My only sadness, is that I didn't get as much of them as I would have liked, as a lot of my childhood was spent in Canada, but then I think it made me appreciate them so much more when we came back here. Although they did come over to Canada once to visit.

This is my brother Grahame and I in Canada, My Mum is sat in the car. Best place... Look at that snow!

Pop was more the sensible one, and although Nanny was outwardly dignified and respectable (she was always dressed immaculately), she was a corker, a real character! One of those rare people who stays young in thought and deed, childlike and way before her time in her outlook. Do you know someone like that, no matter how old they get, no matter how wrinkled, they just never ever seem old.  I really admired her!

Nanny died in 1989, aged 81, and Pop in 1995, aged 89. The world could do with more like them! Sadly I never knew my Father's parents, as they had both died before I was born, so I don't really know that much about them, as my Dad didn't really speak of them that much.

I think it is so important to remember our loved ones, it keeps them alive in our hearts. It is funny but I seem to remember them more the longer it is since last seeing them! Memories really are so precious aren't they. Even unpleasant ones are, as those are the oneswhich offer an opportunity to learn. After all life is a series of lessons (Miz mollye's post this week!). You can't have light without dark, joy without sorrow....I just feel  that I want to embrace all of life, good and bad, happy and sad, just as it is,  life.   All of it is equally interesting!

Does anyone remember Rowan and Martin's Laughin? Very, Interesting......!

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Well...Enough! I can't seem to post without examining everything in great detail. My Dad always used to tell me that I analize everything too much! He said, not only do I look at each side of every coin, but I have to examine the sides as well! Maybe he was right.

Sometimes examining something very closely offers a new perspective!

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Have a wonderful, wonderful weekend and following week everybody!

Lots of love to you all, Suzie. xxx :)