Sunday 31 July 2011

Woolly bees

Last night's meeting of the Country Crafters Guild went swimmingly well and I crocheted a bumble bee! Here he is:



I have had to do more hen management today as yesterday I found 6 eggs under the hedge and Peggy emerged clucking excitedly later in the day from behind the shed and again, I found a warm egg tucked in to the leaves. Seems like it's not just the bees who like to mix things up a bit! I left them shut in (apart from Maud who's too stressed to lay at the moment anyway) and then released them from the confines of their house once they'd laid in the nest boxes.

I was very pleased with my bumble bee so I made another one and gave it to Charles as a desk mascot - he was very impressed. No really, he was.

Other than that I've spent the day pootling about and crocheting some bits and listening to the Test Match or watching Earth Story. Charles bought me some cherries which I love but they are sooooo expensive so that was a nice treat.


I'm still feeling pretty whacked and in need of rejuvenating but hopefully a bit more time off and relaxation will help and by the end of the week I might feel sufficiently energetic to hoover the lounge!

Saturday 30 July 2011

What a difference a day makes

This morning I should have been catching the 9.37 to London, then on to Durham for my residential geology Summer School, but after being diagnosed with rather impressively low haemoglobin levels following the fainting thing, I withdrew from the course on grounds of illness. It is quite a punishing schedule as it's a year's worth of practical work crammed in to a week: daily field trips on a coach to various geological wonders follwed by tutorials and lectures in the evening, which is incredibly good fun and stimulating but not when I find walking up the stairs hard work and tablets are doing strange things to my insides. I asked the children's dad if he still wanted to have them as previously arranged and he said yes, sooooo a week off! However, Amber was distraught about going and I have had endless pleading texts asking to come home. The 'plans' their dad had arranged this week seem to involve a trip on an open top bus and erm, staying with Granny and Grandpa (who do have a swing!!) and er, did I mention the open top bus? T is not going to see Harry Potter, or get shoes, and apart from Tuesday (open top bus ride day) they aren't doing anything, not even the beach. I try very hard to give my ex-husband the benefit of the doubt and back him up but it's really not very easy at times.

So, who knows how long my week off will turn out to be as not sure how long it'll take for a full mutiny situation to develop. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm free at the moment. This morning I decanted my purple peapod wine into its demi-john with accompanying bloopy airlock thing:


I admit it looks rather like raspberry smoothie but it's blooping away encouragingly and smells pleasantly of wine...

I also went to the nursery and bought some winter veg having been all fired up from watching Gardeners' World last night:


I bought a strawberry plant for £1.29 that had at least 4 runners so that was a bargain:


I had shut the hens in before I went but they had all been really really mean to Maud so as punishment I let her out and kept the others shut in. Maud seemed to enjoy the lack of aggravation and finally got to have a dust bath without being chased off for the sake of it:

Maud luxuriates in the hen equivalent of a bath with bubbles, candles, magazine and chocolate
I then listened to the Test Match and tried to crochet a flower. It required a hook manoeuvere that I'd not done before and I think I finally got the hang of a 'popcorn' stitch on the seventh petal but anyway, here's my attempt at a geranium:


Why is my crochet always so wonky?? Anyway I love doing the flowers, they are great fun. I've done my 9th granny square for the Sissinghurst Hot Garden blanket and a few other bits too. Nicky's coming over in a while for a meeting of the Country Crafters Guild so hopefully there will be some knitting and hooking to enjoy.

Thursday 28 July 2011

Faintly ridiculous

I had a blood test today at the doctor's - "oh yes, I'm fine with them" I said cheerily to the nurse. 5 seconds later "Ah, I'm feeling a bit woosy..." and I woke up with my head between my knees having had the strangest dream, and the nurse holding my hand and cooing reassuringly at me. I had Rosie in the waiting room and bless her heart, she coordinated the whole getting me home procedure with military precision as I couldn't drive. Or indeed lift my head up off the chair I was lying on outside the nurse's room. Many thanks to her, all at the surgery and my parents and former-mother-in-law for propping me up.

Anyway, the rest of the day has been spent rather quietly in bed with iPlayer and knitting or in the garden doing some gentle pottering. I still feel pretty ropey but hopefully I'll perk up tomorrow. I have finished my 2nd coat hanger cover and Charles came round with a magazine, my crochet flowers book he'd got me and a bar of chocolate so I think it's now time to rest weary head.

Wednesday 27 July 2011

Peapods

I decided to crack on with the peapod wine today as the pea plants have got horrendous powdery mildew (thanks to the hot dry weather) so felt a bit now-or-never about it. I set Amber to work picking all the pods:


and then shelling them:

Peggy wasn't a great help
Then, having halved the recipe that I found on the selfsufficientish.com forum, I simmered the pods in water til soft. There's something very elemental about things bubbling away in a preserving pan on the stove, it brings out the alchemist in me! I went and hung out the washing and Amber asked me how it turned in to wine so I was then trying to work out the chemical formula for sugar + yeast = alcohol + carbon dioxide but I got my C, H and Os in a muddle. Amber of course had long since gone...

Not looking frightfully promising at this stage
So with the homebrew underway, I started making up frames for the beehive, and again Amber got stuck in:


See - she can be really quite helpful. Sometimes :-)

Unfortunately my decision to wash the kitchen floor every morning failed today and it was only Day 3 but perhaps it was a bit ambitious. If only the hens wouldn't come in and shake after their dustbath, and if only the dog didn't come in and shake after his walk. I don't let the ducks and their adorable little webbedy feet come in to the kitchen so it's not as bad as it could be.

I'm in my usual pre-Summer School state of low-grade panic about going away but this is my last one so I really want to enjoy it. I was telling Charles all the things I was worried about and I realised afterwards that I hadn't mentioned anything about the children!

Tuesday 26 July 2011

Yet more flowers

I am very pleased - I discovered that my terribly expensive Sarah Raven Salvia patens 'Oxford Blue' (that I had forgotten to label when I pricked it out so didn't know which pot it was in and therefore where I'd planted it) has flowered!

Gorgeous
I have added some other crocheted flowers to my collection. I say 'collection'; my one hellebore:

Rose
Buttercup
...although I'm sure that captions are unnecessary as they are instantly recognisable. I asked Charles to choose a flower for me to crochet for him and he said ooh a Viola please, not noticing the subheading at the page top marked 'ADVANCED CROCHET' but hey, how hard can a crochet flower be?? Just to squeeze the very last ounce out of the words crochet and flower, I also made a vase holder to hang up at the window:

Vase = bottle
and here it is in situ:

Quite pretty although it does draw attention to how filthy my windows are.

Other than that, it's been a quiet day. I had a final check over my project and realised my Reference section was rather um, sparse let's say so I did some Google Scholaring and read a few papers on the subject and adjusted my Discussion accordingly. My course work is really interesting at the moment and it must be worth doing a degree to be able to write notes about bdelloid rotifers who ditched males of the species 100 million years ago and reproduce parthogenetically (that's cloning) and seem to be doing very well. I'm not going to make any analogous suggestions at all :-)

Oh I forgot to post a pic of the fantastic sunset last night so here it is. I realised my camera has a sunset function so it seemed a worthy subject on which to try it out:




Sunday 24 July 2011

Another busy day

Having been so inspired by the hot garden at Sissinghurst yesterday, I was keen to try making a granny square blanket with the colours I'd seen. I looked up the pattern on Attic24's blog and had a go - it was very straightforward to do so I got cracking. I also had a look at Nicky's book of crocheted flowers and sat with my cup of early morning tea and got hooking. I got up to replenish tea and managed to catch my foot on the wool, pinging the crochet hook somewhere. Could I find it? Although trying to find an admittedly large needle-type thing in the metaphorical haystack of my living room was not easy and I felt a bit sad about having lost it, especially as I was halfway through constructing a hellebore.

Anyway I did find the hook and before tidying or hoovering so that was a good result.

It's a start...
I then remembered I had to make a new run for the ducks so I got going with that - I drew a plan and everything (but I didn't stick to it) and didn't really make that many mistakes. I think it's a bit more robust and easy to use, as well as foxproof:


There was lots of quacking but I'm not that up on my duck-speak yet so not sure - I hope they approve. Joss and Simon came over at lunchtime and brought my demi-johns so I can make some homebrew and bought me a bottle of their own elderflower fizz. It's very exciting:

I've got bloopy air lock thingies
for each of them too
We looked at the bees too as they are new beekeepers so that was fun. Simon is also a builder and architect and I was slightly concerned when he headed towards the duck run but luckily he said it looked pretty good - maybe he usually wears glasses or something.

So after they'd left, I sank into a much-needed hot bath as my fingers were in ribbons after all the unforgiving chicken wire and banging my thumb trying to get the bloomin' stuff stapled on, ouch.

I'm watching the program on the last Atlantis shuttle flight...amazing things us humans :-)

Saturday 23 July 2011

A full and inspiring day

I woke up early which was fine as I had to get to the timber merchants to get wood for the new duck run. Then Charles arrived and we set off for Sissinghurst...without a map...but anyway we got there eventually! It was just gorgeous, and the hot garden was stunning:




It was all very inspiring and the rest of the gardens were lovely too:




It was starting to get a bit busy so we had lunch and headed home, taking a slightly less scenic route this time. I left Charles sowing seeds and went over to Nicky's to have a meeting of the Country Craft Club - see I can say it! - as we had lots of exciting things to discuss:


Look at all that! Busy times! What you can't see in this picture is all the alcohol - we made Limoncello and necterine brandy and some sweet-preserved lemons too. I then pootled over to the bee farm and picked up a hive for my neighbours.

Sooo, a busy day...time for pj's, podcast and a bit of knitting I think.

Friday 22 July 2011

Creativity

Today was a bit of a freebie - in that we had completely absolutely no commitments whatsoever, bliss - so I made coffee for my parents who had kindly come over to collect their dog and also my dog to give me some non-Spaniel time; this is refreshing as much as I enjoy Scruff's company, it means I don't have to spend 10% of my day finding the other shoe/slipper/sock. My Howies clothes had arrived which are great and I'm really pleased with them so despite feeling a bit poor (they are sale items but I ordered them before the smashed wing mirror nonetheless) I have worn the sleeveless cardi all day and look forward to trying out my waterproof cord jacket too as I'm sure the weather will oblige.

Anyway after discussing hydroelectric power and photovoltaic cells with T as part of his GCSE something workbook, I gave in to Amber's request to do sewing. I had asked her 4 times during the morning to choose a workbook and the first time she went and fetched her bunny and sat cuddling her on the sofa, the second time she went for a bike ride, the third time she hid under her dressing gown and on the fourth occasion she got out the sewing machine. So, taking the hint that perhaps the workbooks weren't going to float her boat today, we set about making things.

Happy Amber
She made an iPod jacket for me, showed Rosie, with uncommon patience, how to make a little purse, made an iPod cover for Tris which he promptly rejected but she wasn't fazed, and an egg cosy for her step-sister, among other things. She was in heaven. Taking the attitude of if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I have been meaning to make a laptop case for some time and also use up the old jeans I've worn out but can't bear to throw away as it seems such a crying shame to get rid of good quality, tough fabric just because of a hole in the knee. So, here it is:



I have padded one side of it but as I am rubbish at getting these things to line up and my machine isn't really man enough to deal with 7 layers of fabric, let alone denim, I wondered if there was some way in which I could crochet the sides together so that's what I did. I sewed a line of backstitch along each short edge to give me 'stitches' and then double-crocheted (sc in US!) it together. I then chained and dc'd two button loops and sewed them on and finally got to use some lovely buttons that I bought ages ago. I did also make a pocket for the lead out of a leg of a tiny pair of jeans...I cannot fathom for one minute that either of my strapping lasses ever fitted in to such diminutive clothes but I guess they did...which I may keep or change as it didn't quite go according to plan [ha! - plan? what plan??], but I've got it for now anyway. I was quite pleased with my creation :-) I would like to embellish it with some crocheted flowers and some more buttons but I will pootle along with it and not rush to finish it which is a bit of a failing of mine.

Oh and I also finished my projects for my Evolution course...

Thursday 21 July 2011

Flowers everywhere

I had to take my car to the garage at silly o'clock this morning as someone had smashed my wing mirror while I was parked in the road at Sports Day so I am now the best part of £200 worse off, thanks very much. Bet it was a taxi driver }:-(

Anyway I spray painted the cover myself which saved me about £30 although it does very much look like I spray painted it myself, hmm. I sat and crocheted some flowers while it was being fixed so I've got 4 now:


I only need about 50 more to make a garland. Still they are fun to do and it's all good practice.

I returned home, checked email and discovered I got 89% for my assignment! I am thrilled! Just waiting to hear what John P got, as by past performance, he should have got about 112% which I don't even think he could do (love ya John). I was feeling so pleased, I shut down the Excel spreadsheet I need to wrestle with for the next assessment and went and brewed some coffee.

Wandering round the garden, I saw that the big green plant as referred to in a previous blog has decided to flower:


It's quite pretty but I'm not keen on white so possibly not worth the wait! I'm thinking it must have been the result of that time Charles was left unattended at the garden centre during the '4 perennials for £10' season. I am pleased with other bits of the garden tho:

Pink echinacea and pink hollyhocks

Chocolate scabious, penstemon 'Blackbird', dahlia and borage
And I picked this unconventional combination to have on the lounge windowsill:


Right, back to a bit of crochet and a spot of Evolution textbook, followed by some Great Ice Age, all helped along with a large glass of rather lovely Merlot :-)

Wednesday 20 July 2011

Culture

Charles had procured two tickets for Rusalka (I keep wanting to say Rula Lenska) at Glyndebourne and given I've never been there and also it was an afternoon out, I said 'Yes!' very enthusiastically. The building is amazing and the gardens lovely - I saw my first ever hummingbird hawkmoth on the lavender - but the opera was rather lost on me. All about a mermaid who forfeits her power of speech to be able to become human and woo her prince. We stuck Part I and Part II but by then it was raining and we hadn't bagged the all important seats for the long interval, and I had bought our picnic from the Esso garage so only had a M&S carrier bag not a nice hamper. Charles voted that we'd seen enough to get a flavour and hadn't the prince died anyway in that last scene? so we came back to my house and watched The Deathly Hallows Part 1 that we'd just got on DVD.

Harry Potter possibly more our level than Antonín Dvořák....

Tuesday 19 July 2011

Sports Day

Today was fun, although I was quite tired having gone to bed late and been woken up by Tristan [sore throat] and Scruff [??] in the night but the evening had been fun as Nicky had brought Loretta over to observe a meeting of the Country Clarft Crub, and we had a very pleasant time talking about stuff and knitting things and eating chocolate. I also revealed Mr Buff-Orpington to his wife but the flash photography was not very flattering so we will get them together for a photo op at some point but here is Bertie:

He looks slightly less Quasimodo-ish in daylight

I am feeling rather wary of posting such a picture on a blog that both my father and brother might look at but I'm hoping my Dad won't know how to comment and Nick will be too embarrassed to admit he's related to me...

The ducks were a bit disappointed with the glorious sunshine/lack of rain that greeted the morning but having been loudly quacked at by John when I got back from walking the dog, I got their bath ready. They were quite keen:


In fact so keen, they couldn't wait and hopped in:


The swirling water out of the hose brought a wave machine element to the proceedings and they were quacking excitedly - the adrenelin rush of surfing white water is obviously applicable to ducks too.

I managed to tear myself away from the garden long enough to take the children to the Home Ed Annual Sports Day which was great fun as usual. They are all so keen to join in, it's great to see.

Strawberry lace eating contest

Obstacle Race
Three-legged Race
I opted out of the Parents Race as a) I was tired b) I have won the last two and c) I was too busy knitting. I finished my coathanger cover last night and stayed up ridiculously late last night crocheting flowers but here it is:

Quite pretty I think
I've started my next one and also cast on 60 stitches for my cafetiere cosy. Oh and crocheted some more flowers for a garland to go round my fireplace.

My garden is looking fantastic. Here's a couple of pics:

Squash
Giant Sunflower
Bit of a mess but all very productive
I'm off to Glyndebourne tomorrow!

Sunday 17 July 2011

July in England

The ducks once again were about the only ones happy with the rain, closely followed by the Scrufter who frankly doesn't care as long as he gets taken for at least 2 walks a day of no less than 11 miles each.

Tristan had some footie thing that required us to be out of the house by 8.20 this morning so it was a perfect opportunity to wheel out the "it would be like this every day if you went to school...how lucky are you???" whilst thinking to myself how on earth do people get up at this hour and get their kids to school every day???

So, that being over, my project is pretty much done and I am up to speed with the Great Ice Age, thoughts turned to the state of the lounge. All this craft stuff makes me want to make lovely things for the house so in a spirit of orderliness, I got to work dusting and wiping and hoovering. I had done about 1/10th of it when Charles arrived and he was deeply impressed and probably rather shocked at my frame of mind but nobly offered to help. We moved the chairs and the tv and I cleared the windowsill, so instead of dust and paperclips and hairbands I now have this!

Gorgeous
We had done about half the room when we went for lunch and despite my best intentions to continue in same vein when we got back, after a roast dinner and Harveys Best bitter courtesy of the Merrie Harriers, a snooze was called for. Anyway I did do a bit more tidying in the office as I'm getting rid of my enormous printer as I hardly ever print. It's run out of ink and it will cost me about £70 to refuel it so I'm giving it back to my ex-husband. All heart, me.

I have finished Mr Buff-Orpington's torso, and whipped up a few tail feathers during Tonight's the Night yesterday evening but I need to do his feet again.

I staked my hollyhock and I'm hoping the sunflowers will cope with the weather as I'm wanting to save the seed to feed the birds. I am quite interested in not only trying to grow my own veg and flowers but also plants to feed the rabbits and chickens and ducks. Although I think if I devote a border to dandelions and goosegrass, people may well think I've gone completely bonkers.

Ooh talking of ducks:

I must confess that much as I absolutely adore my little ducks, I just don't get the 'dozing off in a tub of cold dirty water' thing. Hmm...

Saturday 16 July 2011

Nice weather for some

Woke up this morning to drizzle so I let the ducks out who quacked with excitement at the rain. The hens were less impressed but not as unimpressed as me. I would have been quite happy to sacrifice the day to the God of Boxed Set DVDs but the God of Springer Spaniels was not on my side - twice today I have had to schlep up the sodden wheat field while Scruff has bounded joyfully through the same.

Still, the Sun did show its face for a while this afternoon so the hens showed their reptilian roots by basking in the rays:

Ida flops down


Daisy and Emily enjoy some warmth


Peggy joins the sunbathers while Henry adjusts his trousers
Rosie has spent the day in her pyjamas, Amber brought her duvet down after lunch and has been ensconced on the sofa ever since, and Tristan arrived back from his sleepover tired and hungry, maintaining that as I know he is always tired and hungry when he comes back from sleepovers, I should make allowance. I maintain that as he knows he comes back from sleepovers tired and hungry, he should make allowance. I can see that one running on indefinitely...

Meanwhile, I have finished at least three quarters of my 2500 word project (including the mind-bending graphs and stats) that needs to be sent off almost the day I get back from Summer School. I also made some floral soap this morning using all sorts of dried petals and Isle of Wight Lavender essential oil that my parents kindly brought back from their recent trip. So, despite the temptation to retreat back to bed with my new Cath Kidston [sale] pjs that arrived in the post this morning I have been quite productive. I have finished Mr Buff-Orp's tail feathers and looked up how to do treble crochet stitches so I can get on with his wattle.

I did pop out and check the duckles (of course) and discovered why people say they ruin your garden! They have made a little muddy pool to dabble in, how sweet is that?

More potholes in the lawn; Richard's going to be thrilled.
But I have calculated that 1 call duck is equivalent to about a third of a regular duck so far less damage than if I had got big ducks. It's all relative, and besides they look so happy :-)