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About Mrs. Hartley |
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Mrs Hartley is 86 and having retired some 14 years ago she spends a little while knitting in the afternoons and evenings. All this knitting is put to good use with a constant supply of sweaters for the family and cuddly toys for the youngsters. For the last few years she has also presented the local nursery/playgroup with a couple of boxes of cuddly toys every Christmas. She often makes up her own patterns or alters existing ones. It is from the creation of these patterns that her first book was put together entitled “Knitting Patterns For Beginners.” Mrs Hartley also enjoys gardening although she does not cut the grass very often now! She has written a semi biographical book called "From Hardware shop to Garden Centre" detailing a large part of her life when she started and built up a successful garden centre and as you will see from these articles she is still a keen gardener. Mrs Hartley has written several articles for local news papers on gardening and she also writes articles on gardening for the local blind newspaper as surprisingly she is registered partially sighted, which, makes her books and her hobbies, all the more remarkable. Her refusal to give up her hobbies as her sight has deteriorated is an inspiration to us all. (Link To Staffordshire Blind Charity.) Unlike many people her age her hands are as slim and as agile as they were when she was 20 years old. Mrs Hartley’s doctor puts this manual dexterity down to her regular knitting and says that she is unlikely to ever suffer from Arthritis in her hands. Neither does she suffer from arthritis in her legs even though she had a hip replacement nearly 14 years ago after a bad fall and she still enjoys going out for walks around the village where she now lives, regardless of whether it is summer or mid-winter. It is to be hoped that she is just as able when she is in her 90’s and as her father still went out for brisk walks until he died at the age of 98 it is quite possible! |
