Feb 23: Crafting in Edale

Friday 17 February

Wendy, Siobhan, Sue, Judy (for her first schoolie trip - welcome!), Sally, Jeanette, Carol, Chris, Trisha, Linda, Janice.

No Carole unfortunately as she was given a last minute cancellation for her hip replacement - great news for her but we missed her 😘

Sue, Carol, Judy and I decided to go for a walk in the morning before we went to the house.

We tried to walk up Mam Tor but it was far too windy. Even the seasoned walkers were turning back. Sue consulted her map and found some lower level paths.

About 7 miles.

Lunch was eaten in the relative calm of the church porch watching the trees swaying whilst the leaves swirled madly round the gravestones.

Our rambles eventually led past the pub so we popped inside to catch our breath and have a drink. It would have been rude not to!

A short walk took us back to the car park and off we went to find the house - we'd already passed it on our travels.

The house was spacious with two sitting rooms and a huge room games room which proved to be very useful for both eating and crafts.

.. and it contained a bar which we immediately made use of, filling the fridge and shelves with bottles and mixers.

Beautiful views from the house even in the mist - but even more spectacular with the sunshine and the scudding clouds.

Our first evening meal together was Carol's curries - delish 😋

Our first daft comment or malapropism uttered by someone at the table elicited shouts of laughter and we said 'must remember that for the blog'. But of course we didn't 🙄

Then it was time to set up the tables in the room ready paint the milk cartons for crafting. The plan was to later turn these upside down and decorate them with faces, scarves, earrings etc so that they could then be used as planters.

Linda looked like she was summoning something out of the light fitting with her paintbrush 🤣

I'm sure that people will recognise Chris's tabard.. 🤣

Trisha was obviously countering Linda's summoning of the light fitting demon with her own quietly reflective ommm spell.. 😁

Painting brought some interesting comments...

Chris: 'oh, I've put my brush in my wine!'

Trisha: 'you get better results with long strokes'

A bit of light tissue paper pom pom making as an experiment for Jeanette's daughter Julia's wedding.

Then it was time to gather in the larger sitting room with drinks and chocolates to catch up on the gossip and eventually attempt to play some games.

This involved looking at a picture clue to try and work out the artist and song title.

Lots of lateral thinking was needed at times so we mostly failed quite miserably - but we had a laugh in trying 🤣😁

U2 One (two ewes 🙄😳)

Sheep and pigs seemed to appear a lot in different guises 😁

Nine Inch Nails March of the pigs.

Money, money, money. Abba. (A baaah - geddit? 🤣🤣)

Itchycoo park - Small Faces. Easy when you know the answer and then realise that the cow is scratching 🤣🤣

Saturday 18 February

Jeanette's morning routine doesn't change. 'See you later' she said as she popped on her face mask for a bit of meditative ommmmmm...

Chris, Janice and Judy walked into Edale to the cafe managed by the friend of Chris's son.

The rest of us stayed in to chat and eat cake.

.. whilst Carol crocheted on..

.. and Trisha went solo to apply the second coat on the bottles. Taking one for the team 😁

Most of the bottles were white but several were painted in an ethnic hue of Urban Slate - Jeanette's fence paint.

It was soon time for lunch - tapas with tortilla - where we were joined by Pam who was our teacher for the glass fusing class.

Once tummies were filled to our satisfaction (not that we ever had even the slightest hunger pangs over the weekend - as Chris says our weekends are 'never knowingly under-catered' 😂) we made our way to the craft room.

Pam gave us our 'elf-n-safety' talk - about the need to wear safety goggles when using the glass smoothing machine, how to hold the glass cutters, how to safely crack the glass etc.

And we added one of our own - no drinks on the table in case of flying/pinged glass from our enthusiastic attempts at cutting!

Pam did the demo and we were off!

Lots of different types and colours of glass to use.

Busy as little beavers and totally engrossed in what we were doing 😁

Lots of different types of glass so loads of opportunity for colours and textures. Lots of names for the different types too - pretty sure the different sizes of bobbly lumps used for raised work weren't called Fritz but I liked it so I stuck with it 😁

Carol won Pam's charity raffle.

The pool table came in useful to spread out all the small pieces of glass so people could have a look for the colours they wanted.

Linda managed to cut a curve. Proud moment 😁

Everyone's work was very different but all very beautiful. Then they were taken by Pam to be fired in her kiln.

Evening meal - chicken or salmon by chef Chris 😋

Chris drained her drink and then burst out laughing. She showed us the bottom of the glass..

Inside, and totally wedged, was a slice of lime. It had gone through the dishwasher like that so at least it was clean 🤣

An interesting evening of games 😁

Eleven of us. So two teams of four and the last team of three - Sally with no glasses, me with no hearing aids and Sue the only one with all her faculties 🤔

We played the Logo game which necessitated either hearing the question or looking at the picture of the brand or logo. Not good for our team 😃

But it made for a very interesting evening with lots of shouts of 'ooh that's one for the blog' as we cried with laughter at some of the things we'd misheard or mis-seen.

Of course noone wrote these little gems down and obviously noone could remember any of them the next morning so once again more of our little gems disappeared into the ether 🌫️

But a great evening filled with belly busting laughs 😂🤣😂

Sunday 19 February

We were up and organised for our second attempt to climb Mam Tor.

Siobhan kindly dropped us off at the car park and took a photo of us before we began our walk.

First attempt at tasking a photo...

Siobhan: Carol close your mouth..

Second attempt...

Siobhan: Carol open your eyes

The third attempt was successful 😮😆

Off we went.

Stunning scenery.

The trig point.

Short refreshment stop in the lee of the hill out of the wind.

Fabulous scenery round every corner.

Over 6 miles.

Our accommodation in the middle distance

We arrived back at the house looking forward to a bottomless brunch starting with Sally's smoked salmon scrambled eggs and a glass of prosecco, segueing seamlessly into tapas and cheese.

Nope. The eatery was shut and the chefs had naffed off to play pooh sticks and go to the cafe in Edale! 🙄🤣

They soon arrived back and it was time for our lunch of tapas and cheese. So we didn't starve 🤣

Then it was time to have fun decorating the milk carton planter faces. Once again the pool table proved its versatility 😁

Even the pool cues were used to prop up the finished works.

So creative and such variety. Great work! 🏅

Can't wait to see them with plants in!

The views from the house were beautiful and the sunset was glorious.

As some people went home there was a smaller group left in the evening so we used the table in our breakfast room for our meal as it was warmer in there.

Quiche and jackets 😋

No idea what was happening here 🤷

Time for more games in the evening.

We were now down to the last 8 so we split into two teams of 4.

Our team squished up together on one sofa. It was a tight fit and I said we'd all need to cross our legs at the same time - so we did. In fact we turned it into an artfully prepared routine of lower body gymnastics complete with mexican leg waves.

We will be expanding our performance routines and plan to release our own fitness video in the near future 😂😁

We did manage to play games as well. More of the Logo game which we'd quite enjoyed.

Our team won. You may be able to tell 😁

So that was our last evening. Jam packed with the usual giddiness and chaos which seems to happen every time we meet up 😁

Monday 20 February

The usual organised chaos as everyone packed their bags, emptied the fridges, stripped the beds and washed the pots.

Another great weekend spent putting the world to rights and offering each other support/ shoulder to cry on/ hugs/ well dones - or whatever was needed at the time - and which we all do so well.

Think I might leave the last word to Carole who was still in hospital when we left..

Update:

Several days later...

Carole well on the road to recovery and our glass pieces fired and out of the kiln.

The first pic is the finished, fired piece and the second pic is the contrast between unfired and then fired - interesting to see how much some of the colours have changed!

Siobhan