There comes a time ...

One beautiful wedding.....

The big day finally arrived on 1st June. All sorts of primping and preparations took place in the house in the village of Willebroek, marked by this beautiful shrub in flower.

These two wonderful people are Sofie's parents, Sonja and Benny. We were welcomed into their home as great friends, and we will always remain that way. They are two very hardworking Belgians, very generous, and sharing a great sense of humour.

It is customary for the groom to arrive at the bride's home with the flowers for the wedding. He waits with her bouquet as the bride walks up behind him.

The first big moment arrives.

Meanwhile, we made our way to the venue for the wedding, both ceremony and reception.

Then after the ceremony...

We were so happy to have been part of this happy occasion.

Ypres...city amongst The Fields of Flanders

After finding Uncle Henry...

... we (Sofie, Hans, Les and I with Hans at the wheel) drove back to Ypres (the English spelling of the French term for Ieper, which is the official Dutch name for the city) to see beautiful buildings. These were very visible from the town square which is still officially the Grote Markt or Market Square. Ypres is officially a Belgian municipality in the Flemish province of West Flanders (West Vlaanderen). Dutch is the language spoken everywhere in Belgium, but most people also speak French, Flemish or English, sometimes all four!

Ypres is the home of the magnificent In Flanders' Fields Museum.

This building is simply massive. There are some very good internet sites which describe its history really well. This is one such site.

www.greatwar.co.uk/ypres-salient/museum-in-flanders-fields.html

St Martin's Cathedral has the most magnificent interior.

After lighting our prayer candles...

...we looked at a display in the cathedral, set up by first year school children...The Shepherd with His Flock. Very familiar.

As always, there was little time for visiting and taking note of every building and every thing. I took this picture as we walked past, of a beautiful courtyard amid the greater buildings around it...

...and one of this man getting off with his wife's handbag as he gave her the "hurry-up". Now they don't do that in Oz do they?

Finding Uncle Henry...

Many of us have lost dear relatives in wartime. My Grandad lost his only brother, killed in action in Flanders. The fields of Flanders, poppies and war graves stir deep emotions in me that I was unaware of until I began looking for my relatives on Ancestry.com. Every time I made a connection with someone from my ancestral past, the someone became a reality, a real figure, a person walking beside me.

And so it was with Uncle Henry. He was a sergeant in the British army, a Royal Engineer and married to Elizabeth. They were the parents of three small children. I know all this because Uncle Henry and two of his children are in my grandparents' wedding photo. Aunt Cissie (Elizabeth) was still in hospital at the time after having given birth to their third child.

After flying to Amsterdam from Heathrow, we took the train to Antwerp in Belgium where we were met by our friends Hans and Sofie. In the following days, we visited beautiful Belgian cities and villages. During our conversations, Hans told us that he was aware of the war graves, not far from where they lived, and so we journeyed to Flanders.

We drove through lots of farmland, saw lots of Belgian Blue cattle, fields of buttercups dotted with the odd poppy and finally arrived in a small village where lots of white headstones stood in perfect lines just as the soldiers who now lay there, had done.

We found Uncle Henry's headstone very quickly, not believing we had actually found where he is now, but so happy that we had. There are many sites like this. There are at least two British cemeteries, an Australian, a French, a Belgian and others we couldn't reach because of time restraints.

I have so many relatives in England, but know only a handful really. An important task now is to research Uncle Henry's family, his descendants. I know there are some, but just how many is still a mystery. My grandfather named one of his sons Henry Redden, after Uncle Henry. Recently I have contacted and I am getting to know the only daughter of the second Henry Redden.She is my own cousin. I had never known her but it has been the greatest reward.

At the Queen's Place...and the Royal Mews...

Our walking tour of this part of London was so unplanned. That's what was intended and we are glad now.

Guards came and went as we walked along towards Buckingham Palace (the Queen's place, as the kids call it) presumably taking their turns at practicing and upgrading their skills just as those we had previously seen, had done. My Great-grandfather, George Lewis, was foremost in my mind as we watched.

The palace gates and the balcony were familiar from various scenes on TV.

There were people, but not too many. There were still intermittent showers but we were able to dodge most of them.

Queen Victoria's statue is quite spectacular. People gather on the steps around the base of it to gain a vantage point so I was careful not to photograph them. We were very interested to see where the horses lived so we took the opportunity to go around the back of the palace, and sure enough, we found the way.

These are the stables of all those horses we had been watching earlier. Each stall is complete with its occupant's name, fresh wood shavings and beautiful fittings.

It was truly well worth the visit.

The coaches are all housed here at the mews.

The simply beautiful gold coach, Great Brittania, is presented with all its pomp and ceremony, taking two days to remove from its shelter when it is required.

The indoor arena at the Royal Mews is used not only for training purposes for the royal horses. Police horses are trained here too, and we were lucky enough to see some in action, and to actually stand alongside some of these horses. It's then that we realized how tall they really are.

These are slightly blurred because there was no time for fiddling with lenses!

We consider ourselves extremely lucky to have been in the right place at the right time, to have seen and captured the action. The next day, we flew to Amsterdam then caught a train to Antwerp where we met our young friends in readiness for their wedding.

All the Queen's Horses.....

Has been a couple of months at least since my last blog. I have a lovely new MacBook Pro to continue my blogging, (my old computer is nearly ten years old and well past successful blogging). and as many of our friends have asked to see pictures of our trip, I thought I would do it this way, in instalments.

At the end of May this year, we went on an exciting holiday which we had been planning for the past twelve months. The holiday included a wedding in Belgium, a visit to relatives in England, a road trip by car around England and Scotland, some time spent in Germany and a visit to friends in France.

When we first arrived in London, our accommodation was not too far (just across the street) from Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. We don't mind long walks so we set off through intermittent showers with our brolly.

We were unsure of the lay of the land but a few signposts and buildings helped us to find some very interesting places and goings-on. I had never seen a chestnut tree before, so this was a first.

A painted duck was simply beautiful. It dabbled away in the water while I took its picture.

White swans were very friendly and didn't mind my camera...

...but the geese were a different story!

Then we noticed a practice session across the park.

My great-grandfather was a Queen's Guard for Queen Victoria, so we were really interested to see these guards on their horses being put through their paces.

We couldn't believe how lucky we had been to be there at just the right time.

Victoria and Albert Monument loomed through a shower in the distance...and another track led us towards Buckingham Palace.

Seems like a good place to end our tour through Kensington Gardens, to prepare for the next story.

Red, Yellow and sometimes Pink...

Summer flowers are coming to an end, but the butterflies still love them, and so do I

Red zinnias and yellow marigolds are favourites of mine and of the butterflies.

This lady was very happy to pose for a few pictures before flying to try her luck elsewhere.

There have been red blooms on our dining room table for months, in fact the first of them graced the table for Christmas. I cut the rest of these today.

Pink gerberas are just beginning to flower. Each season brings with it a different bloom in its own colour. I wonder which butterfly will drink from these?

...My busy crochet hook...

I've been to many flea markets, garage sales and closing down sales in my time. I can't resist beautiful wools, threads and laces so I collect them until I have "enough". Most often, a plan will come to mind, as one has with these lovely tapestry wools.

I have a plan in mind but no pattern.

My plan tells me I will need 24 of these motifs...

 

...but I may need to supplement my collection with some extras. I wont need many more though and Im really happy with the way they look together. Now I need to look through my stash to select a colour for the outside row of each motif. This colour will also be used to crochet the squares together in the final plan. Charcoal, grey, blue-grey or navy perhaps! Wonder what I will choose?

I'm looking forward to planning for this colourful lot now.

All I need is the time to bring my plans to life!

A New Quilt...

It's getting to that time of year when an extra layer is welcome at 2 o'clock in the morning!
Over the years, I've finished many sewing and stitching projects, keeping the leftover pieces of fabrics I particularly love. In recent years, I've discovered that squares (with their variations) put together as patchwork are my very favourites. I used to think that I loved all patchwork patterns, but the very contrived designs are not my cup of tea at all. The exceptions to squares are hexagon designs such as Grandma's Garden. Dear DIL has a handstitched hexi quilt put together by her mum. I love it.

During a recent weekend of sewing with my friend Sharyn (while the blokes fished) I dug out those collected pieces. This is the result so far...

I cut 6inch squares to make the most of the beautiful roses and other flowers on the fabrics.

Deep musky pink is for the backing, green for borders 1 and 3, and smaller squares for border 2.

Firstly, border 1...

...then border 2...

...and finally border3.

This is how it will look when it's finished. I plan to do some fancy quilting on the green borders and I have a lovely rose fabric for the binding.

This is my favourite kind of patchwork but it took a while to make the decision!

...back to the sewing room...

Dear DIL asked for a special needle-keep for her birthday, so I happily obliged by putting her favourite colours together...

...to make this to hold her cross-stitch needles...

...with a personal touch.

...'twas the week before Christmas...

As our children gather their own children, inlaws and outlaws, it becomes more and more difficult to gather as one big family, around one Christmas Tree. Because we are a family of families, we decided quite early in the latter half of the year that we would all (well, as many of us as possible)  take our camping gear to our favourite beach and set up Tent City... and we did.

Each day began with fishing in the early morning light. Not a moment could  be wasted.

As the mornings lightened up and mundane camp duties were performed, more fisher-people-animals appeared on the beach.

"Got one," could be heard all along the beach.

Re-baiting of hooks happened regularly...

... a little too regularly for the man in the middle of all this activity!

This...

...and this.

I prefered to keep my distance, making sure camera with zoom was readily aimable and a comfy chair was at hand...

...under here.

Great memories.Roll on Christmas 2013.