Internet back again!!

Hello everyone hope you all had a good weekend.

Apologies for my absence last week, my internet provider was having problems with the broadband and TV connection and I had sporadic use of both for a few days, very frustrating, but then did catch up with the washing and cleaning!!!  Well here we are, another week, and what can only be described as a bleak Monday weather wise, all grey and half lit, didn't stop me walking to the village shop and enjoying every minute of it, the other plus side is the sun isn't showing up my dirty windows which I cannot clean until the fuchsias move into winter mode and I can get to the windows.  I spent the weekend gardening, walking and making yet more chutney, a batch of beetroot chutney and two jars of pickled sliced beetroot from a lovely bumper crop of beetroot from my brother in law, I think that may be enough chutney for the next year.  Standing over the chutney pan took me back a couple of years to the time when I was bottling jam and chutney as if it was going out of fashion for the Country Market Stall (ex WI) and peeling onions for pickling, good fun and rewarding if a little tiring.  

I have had an ongoing battle with the sewing machine, have threaded it, loaded the bobbin, checked it all works mechanically and apart from a duff light bulb (hardly a problem) seems fine.  However, and here's the but.....  when I use the machine, the thread in the needle does not pick up the bobbin thread. I cannot make out whether it is me, or if the machine is faulty, I have checked as much as I can, but cannot see where the problem actually lies, think this may be a job for the Quilters group on Saturday, someone may see what I am doing wrong.  Still I have plenty more avenues to research, like cheap supplies of remnant materials, and relieving anyone of their unwanted items to turn into quilts, reviewing and building my website enough to keep me occupied for now at least.   

I would like to share another of my favourite poems with you, once again from my school-days, but hauntingly reminiscent of this quiet road on a half lit day.  have a lovely day today wherever in the world you are, I look forward to hearing from you, one person regularly contributes and I enjoy her emails.  Thank you Jo.  Anyway back to the Listeners by Walter De la Mare  speak to to tomorrow internet provider permitting.

Listeners

Walter De la Mare

'IS there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor.
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
'Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,' he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,