Today my daughter and I took the train to Filey for a day out. If you're not from England, Filey is a traditional seaside resort on the Yorkshire coast.
It was pretty cold and windy but the sun was shining through the clouds and we warmed up walking along the beach and exploring rock pools.
This is the view in one direction along the promenade. As you can see there weren't many people about.
In the other direction the sun in the clouds makes it look quite late in the day but it was only noon.
At this end of the beach the rocks were covered in mussels
and there were rock pools to explore but at this time of year they mainly contained sea weed, mussels and limpets.
I've been thinking of what I could do with a big card of lovely lilac ric rac that I got from a car boot sale. I've used some of it to make this brooch which also uses one of the buttons I got from the charity shop. The blue fabric is left over from a top I made many moons ago.
I've also been making a couple of mice to put in my Folksy shop. The first one is made from fabric left over from a skirt I once made.
The other day John said how giving your hens spaghetti was good for egg production, and it looks like the new batch are the longed for girls as we've had eggs from all of them except Rosetta, so I thought I would try them with some. I think Rosetta is a girl as well by the way as she keeps going off and sitting under some brambles but I can't get into them to see.
The spaghetti went down a treat -
And here is the second helping coming up, our cat who's name is Spaghetti!
She was a semi feral rescue cat and already had the name when we got her. She was very shy when she first came and we only got the occasional glimpse of her but after a few months she would let us stroke her and now she's settled right in.
If you remember the other week we swapped some cockerels hopefully for hens. Well Octavia went missing for a quite a while today and when she reappeared I went to see if she had laid an egg. There was nothing in the nest boxes but I eventually found her nest in a bag of hay. There were two eggs so she must laid before, and they were blue!
We've been keeping hens for years and have only had brown eggs before so it was quite a surprise.
Here are the eggs
and this is the lovely Octavia
Who's a clever girl?
I got a wonderful haul of buttons from the charity shop today for 80p
I love these brown and tortoiseshell type ones
The reason for buttons twice in the title of this post is due to an incident a few years ago.
When the kids were young we went to see a pantomime every year (I probably enjoyed them more than they did because I love the audience participation).
One year it was Cinderella, and Buttons was on stage at the beginning introducing it. He had a bag and when he left he hung it up at the front of the stage and said if anyone should go near it, the audience had to shout 'Buttons' and he would come back.
Of course as soon as he'd gone someone else came on, noticed the bag and was walking up to it so we all started shouting 'Buttons'.
Can you believe that I was the only person in a full theatre that thought he meant keep shouting until he came back?
I let rip with 'Buttons, Buttons, Bu...' and everyone else just did one, so my second 'Buttons' was to a completely quiet auditorium. The kids were so embarrassed, but it got a laugh!
Ever since then if buttons are mentioned it always has to be said twice.
