Sorry We've been away.

Well, its been a while, we have been busy decorating and now all the bathrooms are finished, apart from the fun bits concerning window seats, roman blinds and towels, pictures etc.
Paul Adshead has been here for a week decorating  (many thanks to Judiths parents for the wherewithal, take a bow Jean and Harry Werrell)) doing a sterling job on the hall and stairs/landing which now looks great, even though we still don't have the carpets down yet.
 The cat has been really put out as the stairway was her personal romper room and sun palace, and the cold hard reality of uncarpeted wood was really a change too far so she put up a dirty protest and peed on the bottom step! Out with the feliway spray and chuck her in the Catnip bush and now she's a happy as Larry.

We had some friends Kate and Martin round for dinner recently and I set Judith the task of cooking a whole Rainbow Trout . Apparently you cut off the head and tail, cook the rest , then join torso back to head and tail using the magick of culinary artifice (prawn sauce) . Only don't go out of the room leaving the head and tail to the mercy of a hungry cat though! Nobody noticed ...

 

 

 

We have been very grateful to the previous owners , the Adamses, for leaving the potato plants behind, there has been a bit of a glut. Now, neither of us are gardeners exactly, but we had to laugh as Judith did not understand that the potatoes fell off the root as you pulled them up from the ground. The first one she dug up did have some still clinging, so she naturally expected all the others to behave in the same manner. Naughty potatoes! She pulled one up and the root was bare, so, looking dejectedly at the ground she said 'this ones a dud too' We eventually found the missing spuds a few inches below the soil surface. Very satisfying eating your own veg. Tasty too.

This is Paul Adshead, the chap I met down the social who is a semi-retired painter and decorator. He did the whole job in 4 and a half days, even repairing the old doors.

 

John came back from his holiday bringing his son Lucas as a helper to do the last minute snagging. Nice lad, brilliant at languages and the apple of his dads eye.

I had to take up the carpets and these things, gripperrods I think they are called. Rods of the devil more like. they have very sharp spikes that help stretch the carpet and keep it down on the floor. Don't sit on one though. My arse looked like a pin cushion.

I have had some fun and games putting up the ceiling roses and 3 small chandeliers in the hall/stairs/landing. Thank god for no more nails. I tell you, the house will fall down before these roses come unstuck. This is the one in the newly decorated landing looking out to Joan's garden via the lovely window. We had Paul take down the curtain pole and paint the window frame. Its all looking very clean and now without the curtains and the yellow below the dado rail, I like to think we are restoring some of the original feel to the place. And that Waring and Gillow bannister looks splendid.

Its not all work though. We went for a walk to Langcliff and the weir there behind the mill. I wanted to check this out before the salmon start leaping some time in September.

 

This is the salmon ladder , but I have seen YouTube video of them leaping right over the big drop too. There's lots of water at the moment, I hope they can get up when the river is in spate.

Know that saying 'calm as a millpond'? Well this is where it comes from. Its about 2 meters above the level of the river Ribble . About 30m wide and half a kilometre long. Stuffed full of fish and a haven for wildlife in general. Must find out who has the fishing rights.

 

Another view of Langcliffe weir with the old quarry in the distance, the setting sun making it look rather nicer than it actually is.

So, this is the last bathroom just about completed. Judith is this very second touching up the paintwork where my hand has strayed off course with a brush. Its all looking lovely. I'm glad we recycled a lot of the architrave and skirting boards, gives the rooms a bit of history .

This is the hallway from the front door , showing off the new paintwork and my jauntily angled light fixture,

 

Ed came back for a while to sort out our small drain problem. When you let the kitchen sink drain, the drain by the garage door made this unpleasant glug glug noise and the basement was getting really damp. No access to the drain run meant he had to take up some flags (again) and break into the drain run and rod it out from there. I wont show you what came out, too disgusting, suffice to say I wont be pouring any more fats down the sink. £200 fatberg anyone?

 

Well, that's it for now. Judith's dad is well on the mend, Laurence got into Uni in Southampton, and our friends Dan and Robert are coming tomorrow for a day , so we are having a short break Monday from decorating.

See you in a bit.

Rams head poker

A few months ago I was watching Ade Edmundson on 'The Dales'. Required viewing for me as a newcomer to the Yorkshire Dales. He visited a Blacksmiths and throughout the episode the editor cut back to the creation of a lovely fire poker with a rams head handle. I commented at the time to Judith that 'its lovely, what craftsmanship, isn't it good that such skills still exist' or something along those lines. Now Judith is a canny lass and filed this away up top. For my birthday this year I got a small carrier bag with a picture of said poker and a promise to have a similar one made by our very own Blacksmith at his smithy here in Settle.

This is a local sheep (ok its a ewe, not a ram, but they have similar horns) You can see the way the horns curl out and away from the head, making a circle round the ears, Its a breed called Dalesbred. Our neighbour Joan who wont mind me telling you is in her 80's, prefers these sheep to all others as apparently you can wrestle these beggars by their headgear, whereas a Texel sheep has no horns and so is a lot harder to handle.

So, yesterday morning we arrived at the forge and David Clements was waiting for us . He's a lovely bloke and very very accommodating with his explanations from everything from how the forge works through the history of blacksmithing to what was going on with the poker he was creating for me . No question too stupid it seemed.

This is the forge, the heart of the smithy, Its at a slight angle to the room walls. In times gone by this was to accommodate a set of bellows, hand operated to blow air into the coke fire, increasing the temperature and allowing the metal to be worked .Today, in a nod towards mechanisation, there is an electric blower doing this job, which can be adjusted to allow the fire to become hotter or cooler, depending on need.

 

The forge room itself is a thing of beauty, its festooned with a million bits and pieces hanging from the rafters. There are many metalworking machines: presses, drills, welders and one beast of a piece, an automatic hammer.

This is David firing up the Forge for us. He usually wears a leather apron. You don't wear wellies in the smithy, in case hot bits of metal find their way down there. Imagine. He tells a very funny story told to him by the previous blacksmith about an unwelcome visitor who got some red hot metal down his open necked shirt. It travelled all the way down his clothing until it fell out his trouser bottoms. He didn't come back.

 

So this is the beginning. Its a 1/4 inch rod of iron produced in Orgreave (remember the miners strike, yes that Orgreave) I wanted a poker about 2ft long, so he cut it to about 18 inches. the pointy end is drawn out by about 6 inches.

 

The handle end was heated up to red hot and split down the middle for about 4 inches using a hammer and cold chisel. This would become the horns later.

 

Below the split the rod was flattened and bent and folded in over itself to form the head proper. This was done at a much higher temperature to weld the iron to itself. This is the best way to join metal to metal. If you were to then saw this in half , you would not see a join. Problem with this is, the horn spikes were in danger of getting too hot and burning off, so they had to be cooled at regular intervals.

 

So, once the head and horns had been formed, the detail could be added. the horns were drawn out and twisted and the facial features added.

The shaft was beaten using the beast of the automatic hammer and the pointy end drawn out and beaten into a spike.

 

The whole thing took about 2 hours, David even made us tea.

 

 

 

Here's an awful picture of me holding my birthday present. I'm almost wishing for some cold weather so I can use this in anger. We had my initials and the year stamped on the shaft for good measure.

 

Its funny, we have walked past the smithy many times and wondered if it was still working. Question answered. David has many commissions and is a true artist in metal. We learned that he is responsible for the iron gates to the friends meeting house here in Settle which look like they may have been wrought in the forges of middle earth. Judith tracked David down from there, he has no website. He's also done some work for a friend of his in St Lucia (nice gig!) where he cast some iguanas in bronze to decorate the stairway he also created.

 

Settle never fails to amaze me. local arts and crafts are thriving. We have a cobbler who will make me a pair of walking boots for about £100, guaranteed not to leak. Then there are the farming brothers who produce 'Blue pig bacon' .

I just hope our venture into the hostelry business stack up against these artists in metal, leather and Pig!

 

The walking wounded.

Well, Judith got back safe and sound from her parents, Dad seems to be on the mend and she probably wont have to go down again until her mothers op in September, hooray.
The electrician arrived early on Monday morning and set about doing all the snagging, but it was all rather fundamental stuff if you ask me, powering up hot water return pumps and putting in lights as per the schedule are not snags. Laurence arrived on Thursday, with hurty ankle and scabby elbow, but otherwise ok thankfully . He does however have to undergo a small op next week down south for an old shoulder injury (jujitsu) so is coming back here on Tuesday we think, to recuperate.

Here he is with his Ma, on a short walk to the river at Litton yesterday. It was a lovely day and the walk was ostensibly to work up an appetite for lunch at the Queens arms pub. Despite lots of rain the river bed was bone dry, but I took some nice shots of the surrounding countryside.

 Mother and son headed for pub

 

I love the lichens on this old signpost.

 

The vegetation in this lane make me think its probably a stream at some times too.

A small downside was that Judiths seafood platter was almost completely tasteless. If you closed your eyes and ate one of the shrimp it was like eating a small piece of slightly chewy rubber, but not as tasty.

There was a bit of untoward excitement caused by me forgetting to fill the car up with diesel and running on fumes on the way back. We spluttered into Settle a bit like a clowns car at the circus.

 

We are now officially in decorating defcon one phase. I had a bit of trouble mounting the small chandelier in the new front bathroom, lath and plaster all being a bit crumbly to work with. Ordered this Pattress of the net, it sort of matches the toilet seat (mahogany) and with a bit of luck and a following wind, it screwed in to the laths quite well. Not a bodge job in sight. And I just love the word Pattress. Pattress, Pattress, Pattress. All right Martin, don't wear it out.

 

We have a lavender plant in the garden that has been full of cabbage whites when the sun shines. The garden is looking a bit dusty, truth be told, it seems that most of the plants are early flowering, must rectify that and put in some late flowering plants.

 

The new front bathroom is now undercoated and the shower burnished to gleaming . Just need to put up the 'Borrowed light' F&B paint so that John can finish the fixings when he gets back off holls.

 

This was me this morning after painting the ceiling of the shower.

Think i'm turning into a turkey, look at that bloody neck! Gobble gobble gobble.

 

Off to deliver Laurence to Gig in a bit (short for Giggleswick apparently) and thence to his Dads in leatherhead prior to his op on Monday, good luck Laurence.

Then we are off to Lancaster to the Dukes Playhouse for the RSC's 'live' film of Branagh's Macbeth. Going with Sister Sally and hopefully fixing her lock at the same time.

I have I-tuned the original cast soundtrack of Calamity Jane so that I can practice my bits whilst we decorate the house. There are no rehearsals until 27th August and we have been asked to be book-free by then. Of course Judith may have actually done away with me before that!