Dear Sheddists,
I know many of you reading this blog will either have received or been a member of a family that has received one of my dear wife's amazing quilts.
Quilting has been part of her life for so many years. Indeed, when a significant birthday milestone was reached a few years ago, we celebrated by visiting the Amish community in Pennsylvania, famed the world over for their fantastic quilting skills.
Click on this link for a short piece I wrote at the time. It describes an enthralling Amish Quilt Auction held annually in Strasburg, Pennsylvania to raise funds for their local fire-station. Needless to say, my wife contributed one of the quilts for sale.
Her charitable activity on the quilting front doesn't stop there. She's a volunteer with Project Linus UK a charity that provides home-made quilts and knitted blankets to comfort sick and traumatised babies, children and teenagers.
So what do we find here, hanging on our familial washing line. No, it's not a collection of exotic lingerie, perish the thought, it's my Christmas present to my dear wife. A patchwork quilt kit she will be putting together over the next few months.
I hope to bring you up-dates as the quilt progresses but in the meantime I would like to dedicate this post to my wife, a fantastic lady with whom I very much remain 'sew in love'!
Yours as ever,
electrofried(mr)
Dear Sheddists,
the venue for last week's Photo Group shoot is the site of Curzon Street Station, a famous but rather overlooked gem in Birmingham's architectural history. It's tucked away at the rump end of the city and is the oldest extant railway building in the UK. The station is now poised to enjoy a fresh lease of life as the gateway to the new HS2 train-line.
We start and finish in style at the legendary Woodman, just opposite. Fortunately this is also to be spared the bulldozers. Instead it will be incorporated into a massive new station development centred around the Curzon Street entrance.
Regular readers may remember a visit I made to the Woodman two years ago. It's reassuring to know the rich heritage of this great pub will be preserved for future generations to enjoy.
The Woodman's fine bar-man introduces us to a splendid collection of specialist ales, lagers and ciders. Before long our group is engaged in light banter with two delegates to a conference elsewhere in the city.
Another pint is pulled and another pint is enjoyed!!
All the best,
electrofried(mr)
broken light
They came across the border,
wreathed in tape
and bearing strange tickets
cast into wizened grass.
Ghosts from the past,
flooding the broken barrier
between our worlds.
Listen to their voice.
Clear light
spilled
over stone and metal.
It reclaims love from hate.
They fall,
one by one,
to the ground.
Cemented in time.
Strange faces etched in blue.
A death's head silhouette across scorched earth
which pins us to the ground
in shards of falling light.
The sleeper has fled
and in the end
all that remains
is
this.
