There’s an engine at the bottom of my garden….

Today’s blog title sounds a bit like an old-time music hall song I think…

“There’s an engine at the bottom of my garden

It’s sitting there all big and round and black

I’m hoping the conductor and the driver

Will come and take their big black engine back”

Or something like that anyway.  But there is indeed an engine at the bottom of my garden!  As you may know we live in the old Station Master’s House alongside a working steam railway.  Earlier this week a new engine arrived ready for restoration and it’s currently parked in the sidings at the bottom of our garden.  I had actually gone down to the end of the garden to try to take an artistic photo of the rising full moon (inspired by some of the wonderful images I’ve been seeing on Instagram and other sites)…

Sadly I don’t think my photography skills are up to it!  It really was the most beautiful evening and the moon looked much more dramatic than this image would suggest!  Anyway, perhaps it’s time to move on from my poor photography and even worse poetry(!) to something you may enjoy a little more…

And a question for you… what does Sleeping Beauty have in common with an alpaca? And darning in common with Mary Queen of Scots?  The answer is – they all appear in my new series “A Stitcher’s Alphabet” beginning in the February edition of the Bustle & Sew Magazine in which we discover all sorts of (possibly) little known facts about textiles, fibres and embroidery….

Did you know, for example, that in Victorian times there was a craze for embroidering with fibres taken from the aloe plant?  No, me neither!  The Stitcher’s Alphabet will run over the next 10 issues and will cover all of these and much more besides.  I do hope that you’ll enjoy it.

If you’d like to learn more about the Bustle & Sew Magazine please just CLICK HERE to learn about subscriptions, or you can purchase back issues from the Bustle & Sew store.