A Celebration of Ceramics

 It was a hot morning last Friday at Pot-Fest - a celebration of  clay - held at Haughley Park near Wetherden - not many miles from home. (Also held in a few other places in the country during the year)

I didn't stay long as the dusty grass made me cough. Just long enough to admire the 100+ potters showing and selling their creations.

Raku firing - we know what it is thanks to The Great Pottery Throw Down which will be back for  series 10 early in 2027. 

The potters come from all around the country with all sorts of different things. There were lots of people looking at everything.. and being in the way of good photos .....  so just a few of some of the things on show.

It would be very easy to spend several £1,000 - no trouble at all! 

Last year I got the bird seed feeder on a stake for the garden and this year I spent even less and bought this below. 

It has a use - can you guess what? It's less than 2 inches tall and wide and I really could use a dozen. But being sensible and still trying to spend less............ saving for a possible home move sometime, just one came home with me.

Answer tomorrow!

And just for comparison this is how green the grass was at the same time  last year at Haughley Park 

First Food (Not a Haul) Shop of August + More Heat

 An Aldi shop on the way home after  deciding to have a look at the mid-week car-boot sale for a change last week. Just 20p spent at the boot sale and £22.50 at Aldi.

Cauliflower (from their special 6 offers) 79p; Cheese and onion rolls £1.69; 2 x ground coffee @ £2.49 each = £4.98; 2 x Peanuts @ 59 each = £1.18; 1kg Nectarines £2.39; 3 Tins plum tomatoes @ 43p = £1.29;400g  Extra mature cheddar cheese £2.45; This week's treat - 6 Choc mouses 85p; Egg Noodles 95p; Self Raising Flour 70p; Plain Cooking Chocolate £1.59; Butter  £1.99.

Thinking there were still several left in the fridge when there weren't, I didn't get eggs so had to pop to the village shop on Friday so adding another £2.29 for half-a-dozen.

Total food spend for the first week of August was £24.79

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The East of England is due to be one of the hottest parts of the country later this week with temperatures in the +30℃, possible 36 - yikes! That's very high 90's ℉. This is the 5th official heatwave of the year and is unheard of. I found a fascinating page all about recorded heatwaves on wikipedia. And this is what determines a heatwave here. 3 consecutive days above..................

28°C: London and parts of southeast and central England

27°C: Parts of the Midlands and East Anglia

26°C: Lincolnshire down to Dorset and parts of Cheshire

25°C: Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, southwest England, and northern England

The rain that was forecast for the 17th has gone from the charts - nothing there until 21st now and that's less than 50% chance.

I think any food shop I do this week will be Very Early morning!

The First Week of August

 There's a very strange old woman staring back at me from my new bus pass card which arrived in the post this week. ED helped me with getting it when she was here last month as I kept getting stuck moving photos from one place to the online form.  It won't get much use while I can still drive, we only have a couple of buses each day passing through the village. They go to all the wrong places and take three times as long as driving and I don't really enjoy bus travel anyway - did years of it in the past-  but it might be handy sometime.

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I'd been waiting for this pepper to turn red. It's from the plant  bought from a boot sale when my own plants were so slow to get going.

Shouldn't have waited because when I sliced into it some of the inside had gone black. No idea why - but I'll blame the weather. A little was usable and went into a quiche.

I'll bring  in two others that are not quite red later today and chop them for the freezer, if they are OK inside.

My four home grown pepper plants have a few peppers on them but they're still green.

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The rain that was forecast for Mid Suffolk for the 13th has disappeared from the weather charts, now there's nothing until perhaps the 17th and the long range forecast says above average temps and below average rainfall right through until September.   With the constant heat I seem to have sunk into weeks of achieving nothing much..................and I don't know how I'm going to get out of the slump- it's very worrying and feels like depression creeping in. 

All I've been doing is reading, doing all sorts of different puzzles in my puzzle books, going to exercise group, occasional bits of food prep in the kitchen  and shopping and too much TV again for company. 

I decided......had to force myself............. to go out yesterday to Pot Fest - a celebration of potters, sculptors  and their work. I went last year and enjoyed looking at all the creations. It was very hot and dusty there so I didn't stay long - photos next week.

Grass on the park was  dry as dust

Hope you have a good weekend, there doesn't seem to be anything interesting to go to so it will be just the boot sales  for me again then.