A night at the Proms

Anyone thinking of going to the proms, you should. It's so much fun and a chance to feel exceptionally British. We manged to get ourselves some free tickets courtesy of my brother who was working on on of the promotional stands at the event.

The event was held in the grounds of Blenheim Palace. Such a beautiful backdrop and once owned by Sir Winston Churchill, it doesn't get more British than that.

The Battle Proms signature piece is Beethoven's Battle Symphony which finishes with 200 live replica Napoleon cannons (apparently the music was always intended to have 193 live cannons) which is where the Battle Proms gets it's name from.

We managed to turn up to the proms without any union jag flags (error). Luckily there were plenty on sale so we still got to wave the British flag.

We watched the pass over from the Grace Spitfire which gracefully looped the loop right above our heads, for a very, very close encounter with the aircraft.

We packed ourselves a kind of French/British picnic with crusty bread, a variety of cheeses, Salmon, quiche, strawberries and not forgetting the essential English scones.

These tasted so good, we used cherry jam and clotted cream topped with raspberries - yum.

The cannons even fired with colour coordinating gun powder to match the theme of the evening.

The English orchestra were incredible, I realised I knew a lot more of the music that I thought I was going to, I couldn't tell you what they were called but I definitely recognised them.

Obviously no proms are complete without the fireworks, which along with the cannon fire made it pretty spectatacular. You really can't beat having a fireworks display accompanied by a full orchestra.

My favourite piece from the whole evening had to be the sailors hornhipe. It's such a happy song!

I leave you of course, with the iconic finishing piece; Land of Hope and Glory with it's firework finale. I'm ashamed to say I didn't know any of the words, or to Rule Britannia or to Jerusalem... I'll definitely be learning them for next year though!

Name Necklace

Quite a few people were interested in how I made the name necklace, this post is kind of a step by step of the process.

A present for a very good friend of mines 21st birthday. We wanted to do something that was personal, a name necklace seemed the perfect choice (I would imagine she finds it difficult to find things with her name on, as do I!)  

Firstly I picked out a font I liked and printed it out to size onto a sticky label, which I could then stick to the silver. Doing it this way just makes it easier when you are sawing around it and stops it from moving about (useful tip!)

This is the back of the cut out, you can just about make out the start of a backwards F

On a very lovely sunny day I sat in the garden cutting around the font with a piercing saw, similar to a coping saw but slightly smaller with a much thinner blade. The thin blade makes it easier to cut around curves and corners, essential for a project like this.

This side shows the sticker attached to the silver, which is being held in a tiny clamp to keep the piece steady as I cut it. (Any woodwork people reading this I really could do with a bench peg...) Once cut out I went back through with tiny files and sandpaper to neaten up the curves and edges to make it more defined.

The E and the Y needed drilling to create the holes which I did using the Dremel (an electric multi tool that can do practically everything)

To enable it to be hung from a chain I soldered two jump rings to either end and then attached the chain with two further jump rings. Lots and lots of polishing later with the Dremel, first with the tripoli and then with the rouge, the piece was finally finished. Just in time to make it to the party with these cool little welly vases!