FNWFs October

 Storm Amy is passing through and from where I am sitting I can see the trees on the green swaying in the wind. We had rain most of yesterday, Friday, and a lot overnight. So yesterday was a perfect day to stay home, bake, paint and sew.

As always the first thing on my list was to work on my Stitch Journal and Friday's contribution was the red black and yellow woven crosses centre right. This picture shows my work for the week

and these the month of September.

After the hot dry summer, our fuchsias now have a new lease of life and the flowers are fabulous. I started a small watercolour of the flowers on one of my plants.

These flowers need more depth of colour and then I shall move on to the leaves. Time passes quickly when concentrating on this.

Then in the evening I was working on my Chookshed Challenge which is coming along nicely. I am having to pace myself here otherwise it would be finished in no time!

Philip has been clearing out the greenhouse now that the tomatoes have finished  and I was asked! to remove 4 solar dye jars which I had forgotten about. So far I have emptied 2 and these are the results.

Sambucus berries. Looking a little washed out in this picture, the silks have taken on a delightful purple colour while the other fibres are a pale purply green. Unusual but pretty.

Rosemary leaves. Again slightly washed out but the silks are a lovely pale yellow.

We had a lovely day out earlier in the week. We were given vouchers for the West Somerset Railway last Christmas and finally got around to using them. The train starts at Bishops Lydeard, just a 15 minute drive from home and the line goes out to the coast at Donniford and then along the coast to Minehead. This is the engine that pulled our train, the Odney Manor.

All the stations are beautifully looked after and most of the work is done by volunteers.

First glimpse of the sea.

We decided not to do the full journey to Minehead but to get off at a favourite place - Blue Anchor. Although we have visited Blue Anchor many times we had never walked up onto the station so it was nice to get off there and have a wander. There is a small museum showing the history of Blue Anchor and the railway line.

As always the station was beautifully kept and the flowers stunning.

It was a lovely sunny day and we had a good view across the Bristol Channel to Wales and three ships queuing to get into Bristol Docks. Here is the view left to Minehead

and this to the right towards Watchet which is around the headland.

As is traditional lunch was a bacon sandwich - not photogenic but delicious.

On the crochet jumper front, I have made another start with a larger hook and the next size up but I can see that it is not going to work so my next move is to measure up a jumper that I have which is a simple shape and make something the same. Maybe I will have something to show next week. In the meantime, happy stitching.