Vintage Rally

Last week some of us went to a vintage rally at Newton House in Dinefwr Park, Llandeilo.

                                           It rained quite a lot.

One of the grandsons came with us who is 5 and has a passion for tractors.

We went inside the house, which is large, and looked around. The atmosphere is really nice, you are free to wander about unattended, to sit on the chairs and to play the piano.

This is a second hand bookshop in one of the smaller rooms. It was cosy and relaxing. The screen over the fireplace was showing a film of the local wildlife.

No one serves in the shop, there is just a box to leave the money in. I bought Thomas Hardy's The Trumpet Major for £1.

PORTAL 2011

Portal 2011 is an exhibition of the work of 13 graduates from the applied arts. It takes place in Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre in Cwmbran until the 12th November.

The show was opened by Rhys and Eggsie from the fantastic Goldie Looking Chain.

Unfortunately I did not get photographs of all of the work, which is beautiful and diverse, but Llantarnam Grange have some lovely images on their site and on facebook.
The artists taking part are Hollie Anderson, Anna Backman, Roisin Daly, Carly Dugdale, Sheila Madder, Elle Plummer, Lucy Slade, Gwennan Thomas, Anna Watson, Sara Jane Williams, Masazumi Yamazaki, Suet Yi and me.

MAKING INK

 

The grandchildren and I have picked damsons from the hedgerows and the garden. Most of them will be made into jam, but I am making ink from some of them. It is not something which I have done before, so I am following instructions from books and web sites. So far I have extracted clear juice and added vinegar and salt. I must admit that my measurements for the salt and vinegar are guess work, so I might end up with an odd concoction. The other berries such as elder, blackberries and sloes should also produce some kind of pigment. How effective they are as inks depends of course on how light fast and durable they are, so lots of tests will follow.

 

This is such an inspiring time of year, especially when there is such an abundance of fruit. I have never seen so many apples on our trees before. Weather conditions must have been ideal, although there are very few rose hips so far. Three of our apple trees were grown from the pips of eating apples, planted by the children about fifteen years ago. Two of them are like crab apples but the one pictured above is absolutely delicious, they are about 5cm in diameter and quite sweet. 

The blackberries, damsons and sloes are also doing really well. Hopefully I shall have time to make some jam this year.