The Night Watch by Rembrandt being cleaned, love the t-shirts
Miniature kitchen in one of the dolls’ houses
I Love this jacket!
Taken from the Eurostar on the way home after a brilliant holiday with our very good friends.
The Stedelijk Museum was fascinating, I’d been looking forward to seeing the Karel Appel works, 
We later found a wonderful painting bursting with joy, Bal Tabarin by Jan Sluijters.
and discovered a room full of protest art work.
When in the gift shop, I found the perfect gift for Sue-next-door who looked after our place while we were away. I bought us a miniature egg box full of seed bombs too. Today, I have followed instructions and ‘planted’ them. We’ll look forward to seeing what comes up!
Today we have bought our third piece from an exhibition in Gallery 89, a fabulous small gallery in Redruth with ever changing exhibitions. 
I fell in love with a wonderful textile piece which is, as the artist Carolyn Young says herself, made of – “little bits: threads, fabrics, fibres, paper and found natural materials. Creating intuitively, I piece, knit, stick, felt, weave or stitch fragmented parts together to become whole.” Sadly, it was both too big and too expensive to bring home.
Calling Back Her Joy by Carolyn Young
Detail
Detail
The beautiful painting we did buy is Horizon by Lizzie Moran and can be collected tomorrow – so I’ll show you tomorrow.
When I was eight or nine, my Granny went to Austria and brought me a lovely wooden bracelt with paintings of flowers. It no longer had the elastic threaded through but I do still have the pretty wooden beads. 
In the bag with the beads were a collection of buttons some of which also came from my granny.
The sun shone this morning! The beautiful book I was given last week had 99 words for rain and one for sun.Here it is. 
Sending love to all my Dear Readers on this Valentine’s Day.
We finished the streets of London jigsaw.
It was hard but was lovely to remember walking those streets in the early days of our being together . We even found the street where we came upon a junk shop and there in the window was a painting of Truro Cathedral! How serendipitous was that, it being my home city? We had met at the end of October, found the painting while I was with my lovely Mr S in early January and then we agreed to be married on January 4th, just ten weeks after meeting!
We are just home from watching a fascinating film, The Lost Boys of Carbis Bay, about a group of men who explore and climb around in the old tin mines of Cornwall, incredibly dangerous but obviously very fulfilling for those involved.
Window spotted in Hayle
Window bow seen in Hayle
We are amazed at the growth of our Ammaryllis.
See how tall it is!
Bud getting colour
A second bud has appeared
Regular readers may be surprised to see my birthday cards still up. We have a family tradition. My cards stay up for a month to be replaced by those for my lovely Mr S on February 1st. Those cards always stayed up until the beginning of March which is our eldest daughter’s birthday.
The growth on our Amaryllis is amazing. I’ll try to remember to post a photo every Monday.
I went back to choir today and absolutely loved it. As Claire, our choir leader suggested, my chest felt much better by the end of the session. One of the songs we are learning is a South African one, Azikatale, arranged by Peter Hunt. The harmonies are gorgeous as each part joins in. I’ll try to get a recording next time.
Penzance Library has recently acquired the most glorious Story Chair.
https://freerangingdesigns.com/collections/storytelling-chairs-collection
For some reason today, I remembered a beautiful little book, The Call of the Sea, and found it. It was printed in 1907 and is in a very delicate state. It fell open at the page, Night in a Cornish Port so I’m thinking, since this book was my Mum’s, she must have loved this excerpt about Newlyn from Eden Philpotts.
Leather cover
Painted frontispiece
End leaf
I love the thought that my hands are touching something loved and touched by my beloved Mum.
One of my birthday cards is a cut-out greenhouse, just delightful!
Inside the colourful crackers made by LiveWire no 4 were some delicious and very beautiful hand-painted chocolates. They were not quite as big as the photo suggests!
I love this new word celebrating the joy of listening to bird song.
The winds have settled for us and we have been remarkably lucky. All around us, friends in local villages have suffered power outages that are expected to last until Sunday. Many trees have come down and blocked roads but we have been able to stay safely indoors.
Commentator Award
