WEDDING OF THE YEAR

Hello everyone

How disappointing the weather has been again this week.  We had fingers, paws and even eyes crossed for most of the week hoping that the sun would shine on Saturday for our eldest nephew's wedding.  Sadly, the sun didn't shine, but neither did the forecast rain fall - thank goodness for that.  The dark clouds threatened the arrival of rain throughout the day, but we think someone had put a very, very big umbrella over the church and reception venue.  The wedding was lovely and I have added a few photographs below.  The reception was held at beautiful Wimpole Hall in Royston and as often happens with weddings (and sadly often funerals) it was good to catch up with family members who we had not seen for a long time.

The bride and groom, Sarah and Simon.  Sarah's dress was a gorgeous creamy colour with a long train.  The front of her dress was covered in beads.  

The lovely car that Sarah and Simon travelled in from the church to the reception.

Wimpole Hall, Royston.  The estate was given to the National Trust in 1976 by the daughter (Mrs Bambridge) of Rudyard Kipling.

A photograph of the partere at Wimpole Hall - sadly, not a lot of colour, but lots of great planting schemes.

I couldn't resist taking a photograph of a beautifully shaped laurel tree - oh, how, I wish I could do that with the massive bush that is over-hanging one of the boundaries in our garden.

No card makes to show this week, but I do have a couple of pictures of one of the pottery pieces I completed recently:

I had been waiting a long time for this to be fired.  I wanted it done at 1140 degrees and because this is not often used, I had to wait until a kiln-full of pottery was ready for firing.  My reason for choosing this temperature was that I wanted to maintain as near as possible the colour of the brown and yellow slip I had used for the trickle decoration.  A firing at 1250 degrees would have changed the yellow to a wishy-washy cream and the brown to a much darker colour.  

Unfortunately, and very disappointingly, whilst being fired or placed in the kiln, silica sand had dropped onto my dish from the shelf above.  This had created several rough/scruffy patches and although I tried to remove them by lightly sanding them, I abandoned this as it was scratching the glaze.  However, I am pleased with this piece and will give it another go using similar techniques and make sure this time around that I leave a note requesting care be taken when placing it in the kiln.

Over to Handmade Monday now as it is time to catch up with everyone's 'doings' for the week - don't forget to have a look as there are always great blogs to catch up on.  I will be back next weekend, Milly will be here on Wednesday and in the meantime if you would like to be a guest blogger here, please do get in touch on christmaspiecrafts@virginmedia.com.

Have a great week and let's hope the sun shines sometime soon.

Jill