Happy Mother's Day!

Sadly, (well, not for her!) my mum lives in France, so we've had to make do with a 'phone call. I don't see as much of her as I'd like.

I have spent the day with my lovely 10 year old daughter, who has been very sweet. I was presented with a home made card and some daffs from the garden. Perfect, and I'm liking the gingham ribbon that she pinched out of one of my jars of goodies, nice touch!

In between listening to" the official chart" (her, not me, I'm unable to listen to radio 1 these days) and packing her up to go on a 3 day residential tomorrow, we have sat and crocheted together. I taught her a few basics (well, that's all I can do, really) last year and she took to it much quicker than I did. I feel really proud of her about lots of things and it's a particular joy to share an enjoyment of this craft with her.

My sweet, clever girl.

Happy mothers day!

Awesome sunset and other pretty things

Yesterday evening my neighbour came a knocking to let me know that "officially, there is an awesome sunset". She wasn't wrong, these pics don't really do it justice, but what colours. We live on a hill, sheletered by trees (thankfully, because it can get very windy), but beyond the trees have amazing panoramic views.

Finally (some) of the daffs are fully in bloom. These ones are by the pond, which is magical at the moment, full of very noisy toads, it's a lovely time of year when the weather is as good as it's been this week. We moved here a year ago and this time last year the weather couldn't have been worse. Snow, rain, and mud, mud, mud.

I am rubbish and remembering to take "before" pictures. In front of our barn has been looking decidedly shanty town for far too long, (probably just as well I don't have a before picture). It has been undergoing a bit of a tidy up. My right arm is a bit worse for wear from exposing some pretty slate cobbles from underneath mud and weeds, but it's starting to look prettier. In a rustic way.

Slacker blogger

Gosh, doesn't time whizz by? I want to get into this blogging malarky, but find that I need to use my spare time doing stuff and that doesn't leave so much time to blog about it. Then, people are kind enough to read it and leave comments and I want to reply, but can't always make the time. Have taken some pics that I would like to share over the last few weeks but have not managed to resize them to fit the blog.

Also, have gone back to work after a long time off sick, had a job interview and an offer (but not very local), so lots going on. And then, spent some time making the front "garden" of the shonkywonky one look better, and hand weeded a raised bed, but in the process have injured my right arm/ wrist in a way that is making it difficult to do stuff. Peeling spuds is torture and worst of all, crochet is not fun at the moment. Frustrating.

Anyway, I don't want to be a moaner - I have friends who are dealing with stuff that makes this all seem trivial - losing sight, cancer - it puts things into perspective, as do all of the horrible things going on in the wider world. I will try to aim for a positive and pretty post really soon.

Thank you to the visitors and people who have bothered to comment. I'll try to be less of a slacker over the next week!

Jen

Time for some colour and crochet

Everything looks better when the sky is blue and there is some sunshine. A £2 bargain found in a charity shop on my way to an interview last week.

Crocheted coathangers.

I have been making these with a view to selling them once I get an etsy shop up and running, along with bunting and other bits and bobs. I looked around for a while for a simple design that I could adapt. Each coathanger will be slightly different. The pattern I've used was inspired by this one on Fiona's lovely blog. 

http://marmaladerose.blogspot.com/2010/04/crochet-hanger.html 

So the first one I did was very similar to hers, except my flowers were lazier and didn't have leaves.

 

 

She uses double crochet, which makes a neat, dense fabric, but continuing the lazy theme, I find double crochet slow and more fiddly that crocheting trebles, so after completing the one above, I redesigned the pattern to suit me, using treble crochet (UK terms here). So the coathangers in the outside pictures at the top of the post were adapted from her pattern, but she has to take all credit. These hangers are all child-size, but I'm about to start on some adult-sized hangers, having just had a big batch arrive in the post.

The First Weekend of March. Pretty views, minging eggs and jobs being done.

It was cold in town this weekend, really cold. We went down for the local seed swap. (Thank you to Andy and Leanne http://www.theloopproject.co.uk/ for quietly organising this great community event). Unusually it was milder up our hill than in town. The weather had my family and the neighbours all outside for much of it, getting some jobs done in the sunshine. Some of us even getting down to one layer of clothing for a short while.

Sunset behind the shonky wonky barn on Friday evening, looking forward to many more of those.

Forgot to take a proper "before" picture, so this is a "part way there" picture. Rediscovering a raised bed. There are a couple of these, but last year they hardly got any light. My man has been getting trees and hedges under control and we are hoping for some better growing this year. There is asparagus in the front of the bed, poor crop last year but I don't think the bed has had much love in recent years. Cathie has been doing the heavy work - digging up huge nettle roots. I've been sedately hand hoeing whilst sitting on a caravan step at the side of the bed. Frustrating, but slow progress is being made. As well as nettles the beds are plagued with creeping buttercup which formes a carpet of weed last year. Perhaps we might be more on top of it this year. We are trying for the little and often approach. We will be avoiding planting much out until June this year - we learned the hard way by loosing most of our beans to frost when we put them out at the end of last May. The upside of this is that we have plenty of time to prepare the beds!

The chickens (thickens) continue to amuse, while pruning some rosemary in front of her house, Cathie discovered this.....................................

Omlette anyone? We'll be passing, we reckon these must have been laid, unnoticed, last summer when the chickens had the run of the place for a few days, we need to pluck up the courage to carefully move them somewhere. Where? A bit scared of breaking one!

From possible evil smells to amazing aromas. The wild garlic (ramsons) starting to appear. You smell it as soon as see it. There is loads in the garden, looking forward to using it.

There is also life in the blackcurrants. We've done some hopeful pruning and transplanting, fingers crossed we will improve on last year's harvest with minimal effort. From a few wild looking bushes, we now have a dedicated part of the garden with several rows of them.

Lovely to be seeing be skies and brightness in our amazing landscape.

I must take some crochet pictures to add some colour. Thanks for looking.

Colour

Just a bit of yellow. But a lovely bit of yellow. We had wonderful blue skies here today, which makes for a cold evening. I attempted some weeding, but even though i sat down and did it sedate- like, I am hurting badly this evening. What's a girl to do? I want to grow veg and i want to earn a crust and put food on the table and both of these are challenging me at the moment.

Anyway, stop moaning. Colourful (well as much as you get up here just now).

It's such a tiny token of colour, but up here it's still winter and it's lovely.

Mundane Pleasures

Blue skies and the first time I've hung washing outside this year.

The ex-battery girls scratching around in their "summer home" - away from the food growing areas, but still very much free range. 

The daily eggs they provide us - they are amazing laying machines and have been laying all through the harsh winter we've had here. Daffodils from the garden, nearly in flower.

A view across one of our fields.

A finished crochet project. (Well, apart from the darning in, I hate that bit, but my daughter has just learned how to do it, so maybe I can use some child labour).

Looking forward to my daughter getting home from school. Because I am unable to work at the moment I am a stay at home mum for the first time since I went back to work after having her - when she was about 14 months old. I need to work, but I can't deny that it's been lovely to be here being a mum and a housewife - a breadmaker rather than a breadwinner.