Summer seems to be sneaking through and we are nearly in August already without feeling like we've had lots of sunny summery days. I haven't spent nearly as much time sitting out on the balcony stitching into the evening as I wanted to - in fact I think this photographed occasion was my only one this year so far! I must get out there again. I love watching the sun go down, it is absolutely the best bit of our flat with the tremendous view from the window.
Even when I'm not sat out on the fire escape, I'm usually positioned on the sofa where I can still see the fiery show through the window (ignoring the little grubby handprints left on the glass during the day).
Here I was working on the Lakeside Stitchscape Swap cards as I'd been inspired by going camping with the Guides the weekend before. We took them for two nights and it was absolutely horrendous weather! The poor things managed, just about, to cook a breakfast of eggy bread and bacon on open fire but it rained the whole time, took two hours and we used up so much wood to keep the fires going. My raincoat is still imbued with the smell of wood smoke. Of course on the day we were packing up to go, having endured leaking tents and high winds, the sun came out and it was beautifully hot and sunny - but it was a shame that the fine weather hadn't arrived earlier!
I've taken lots of artistic license with my cards though and made beautiful white felt tents, with not a rain drop in sight - more on those in another post.
In the height of summer the sun sets behind the tree as you can see in the above photo, but in winter it doesn't make it that far and sets much further to the left of where it does now. Which means that our living room gets bright golden sunlight at about 4pm in winter. Currently we get deep red light at about 8.30pm if the conditions are right and it honestly makes my heart sing.
My Guides and Rainbows have broken up now for the summer holidays which means I get a bit of a break and my Tuesday evenings back. We still have a few activities planned - an activity day for the Guides in August to help one get her gold award (the highest award you can get in Guides), a carnival making day to make decorations for our District carnival float, plus the carnival itself in September. I love being a Leader (apart from the admin and training side) and really enjoy seeing the girls grow and make friends and gain in confidence - we've just said goodbye to six of them who are moving up to Rangers who have been with us for the last three years. They joined us at the tail end of the Covid pandemic and started out their meetings online over Zoom! So that was slightly bittersweet as they are such a lovely bunch and I will miss them at Guides.
It's still nice to have a break from it though.
We've been trying to take advantage of the better weather days and go outside more and take Baby F on adventures. We've been to Pevensey for a friend's birthday party and played at the seaside. He was not at all keen when the sea swooshed in and he ended up sitting in a wave but got over it when we changed him and set him off to play cars and digging with his little friends.
The water was so calm it was like a pond!
My uncle mended my wooden floor stand for me as well which was very exciting! One of the dowels that held the head of the stand on snapped several months ago and I was going to take it to the tip but Reece said he'd fix it so it was sitting in a heap for a little while (one of those jobs you just don't get around to) until I mentioned it to my aunt, who mentioned it to my uncle, who went and bought metres of dowel (the smallest piece he could get!) to fix it. I like to have two projects on the go, usually a smaller piece that I can take on the bus, and a larger one which sits in the floor stand for the evenings.
This chicken Stitchscape has been coming around with me on the bus whilst I didn't have a stand, but really it didn't appreciate the travelling and the fabric ends are a bit scraggly so I'm pleased it has somewhere to sit whilst it waits its turn to be finished off. It's nearly done, I just need to add in some plants and scrub I think to help with the perspective and push some chickens back into the landscape.
And a few weeks ago we welcomed a new member of the family to our home - little Arlo! He's fitted right in with us, although it's taking him a while to get used to Baby F's excitement over having him here. Each week sees an improvement in his confidence though and he'll now go right up to Baby F if he's sitting quietly so hopefully in a couple of months they'll be fast friends.
Arlo is definitely a little goofball though and it's hilarious to watch him have the zoomies around the flat in the evening - he definitely likes to get himself into mischief and squishes into all sorts of places, but he's an absolutely sweetie and we love having him around.
What are you up to with your summer?
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