Saturday 10 August 2013

The Making of a Chiffon Queen

My earliest memories of sewing began when I was around 5 years  old. I used to play for hours with my dolls and my doll's house.
My mother worked as a part time hairdresser in my home town of Eastbourne in Sussex.
My sister and I would be dropped of to Nanny and Granfa's house in the summer holidays, and most days on the way to school mum would pop in to see nanny.
One day in particular sticks in my memory...I must have been about 4 or 5 years old...so Josie, my sister,  was 13 months older than me...but we were ( in our own minds) twins.
Mum stopped of on the way to school as usual, she asked Josie and me. To stay in the car, mum had a lovely old Morris Minor in green. Well...I was desperate to see my dolls and my doll's house, which was kept for me to play with at nanny 's house. It was in her dining room, on what seemed to me a very high chest of drawers or side board.
I disobeyed my orders and sneaked into the house to play.
I got totally engrossed in dolly heaven,  and sometime later realised I could no longer hear the familiar chatter of Mummy and Nanny.
I ran into the garden...down the path to the bank opposite the Coopers Hill Farm. Right at the bottom of the South Downs.
No Car....they had left me behind....oh how I cried,  a neighbour who must of heard my cries, came to comfort me , I can still hear her Scottish accent saying,  " its okay,  they'll be back soon my dear".
What seemed like hours later my Mum's car pulled up at the bank, me standing there with nanny's neighbour.
Josie and I used to play a game in the car...one of us would get down behind the seat at the back of the car and pretend. That we weren't there! ...so this whole scenario had happened because of our own little world of 'twinness'

A slight case of crying 'Wolf'...nanny had put her hand behind her chair as usual to check...WERE. Both there.....somehow she had felt something....given mum the okay and driven all the way to town and discovered outside the school....that Josie had been telling the truth...I wasn't there!

Sunday 13 January 2013

New addition (Sheena the Siamese)

Sheena has been in the Chiffon Queen world for nearly a year now and is still the height of entertainment to us all!
This time last year our lovely Periwinkle (my inherited Siamese) sadly passed away,he was my Nanny's cat and was in a bad way when we first got him on 16th August 2009. He had a good couple of years with us, so there was a big gap when he had gone. So, about a month later I wasn't surprised when Mr B started looking at cats on the Internet!
Suddenly up popped a post on Gumtree with a photo of a Siamese cat that looked a bit like Periwinkle . She was an unwanted pet that lived with about 6 other cats and a rather shabby Collie dog. She definitely needed to come and join the Chiffon Queen household straight away!
A skinny loud sleek Siamese was placed in a cat basket and a name was chosen for her as we headed for home. Her previous owner had called her Ena... A most inappropriate name for such a regal animal,but cats know their name, (we were told she was 6 years old), so a name had to be choose that she would instantly recognize, Sheena it was.
Sheena was immediately greeted by our Staff cross, Milligan and they instantly became BBF's!
Our two other cats took a bit longer to come round to the new arrival. Mr.T, our big ginger boy was petrified,  as Sheena was of him,  and it took him a month to get used to the fact that the loud Siamese was here to stay!
Sheena made her home under the stairs for the first few weeks, and then gradually integrated to sleeping with us in our bed! There was barely room for us all as often a rather large dog and occasionally big ginger boy would also join in!
Funny girl Sheena it was soon discovered was more like a dog, she could fetch a small ball of wool and drop it at our feet, she was even more interested in a screwed up piece of paper, and the noise she makes carrying the paper is hilarious.