Summing up Sunday 3rd January 2016

That was a bit of a gap: sorry to all our multitudinous followers :)

We have been doing Christmas and New Year (nough said).

E and J went to Lyme Regis on Weds 30th Dec, substituting for the traditional New Year's Day visit which hasn't happened for a few years.

It was wet and windy:

and then today we scanned our ewes:

                     

Look! That's a baby lamb. 

Very exciting.

Tune in for another picture of this lamb when it's fluffy in March:))

Summing up Sunday 25th

A busy week full of autumnal events.

It always seems odd that the mulberry is the last to get leaves and the first to loose them and it's no different this year. The  shower of yellow dinner plate sized leaves has been going on for a week or so and without a frost and an avalanche of leaves  the steady trickle will continue. Joyce visited to swing whilst J did the sweeping up...

The biggest event of the week was the arrival of Jacob, a visiting shetland ram, last weekend. He's gradually been accepted by our rather flighty group of girls. Initially Cleo and Bunty bossed him about but they are now being a little more accepting of him and he's showing the right kind of interest in them, so we hope for the patter of tiny feet at Easter. However, he seems to be encouraging bad behaviour, and on the  first very rainy autumnal day they wickedly knocked down the mollytunnel defences and ate through the plastic to get into a nice dry space with hay!

The second autumnal event was an amazing apple day in cambridge botanic gardens visited by a and t . We went in with a mission to try and identify some varieties for the end of our field and found 7 great ones to bring home to the south west for a bit more of a trial. We realise we are going to have to do a bit more of a search in South west pomonas ( fruit encyclopaedias for areas ...) but it was a good start.

Autumnal event number 3 is the start of the grand pickle and chutney preserving which starts now and will go on, traditionally in this house anyway, to Boxing Day when the final pumpkin will be pickled. T in cambridge has been making quince cheese and setting it in lovely containers with wax seals, and here we have been using up all the green tomatoes in chutney before blight takes them over. 

Summing up Sunday 11th October 2015

Main event of the week: The Lottie Project (see earlier post) which raised £145! (yay!)

CB: E has finished sewing in ends!

A and E went to the North Somerset Butterfly House, amazingly warm and very beautiful butterflies. One landed and travelled on E for most of the way around.

A finished and sent an amazingly odd sewing stand for k s birthday - devilishly hard to make as I couldn't get my head around the 3d nature of the whole thing and right up to the very last minute I wasn't sure it would actually work.

A went out to Hugh F-W's Canteen in Bristol for a surprise birthday lunch for d, a very old friend indeed. It's interesting how friendships last phases of life and our lives do seem to have quietly woven in and around each other's careers,families and book-reading.

J cut wood until the chainsaw gave out,

J and E are currently watching a very amusing Noel Coward farce "Relative Values".

There was an incredible sunset this evening, one would have thought it an improbable backdrop if seen in a film.

Bananagrams of the week: squally, extant, fatwa, cleat, dally, agony.

Terrible Guardian Quiz - can't even remember!

The Lottie Project

I know 'The Lottie Project' is a (very good) book by Jacqueline Wilson, but this was something different. Some of our friend's own an allotment that allows people with mental health problems to access growing and the outdoors. Recently, they've got planning permission to have a polytunnel - hurray!

So, to buy the polytunnel they need to raise a bit of money - what better way than a garden sale? In true lucky-British fashion, the weather was be-a-utiful yesterday, which was such a relief (there wasn't really a contingency plan for rain...) And it was a great turnout, despite our worries.

Look how many people came

The allotment was bedecked in finery with beautiful bunting.

And all the things for sale... Wow! So many generous people. One very generous person (who isn't even involved in the organisation) donated a huge amount of cakes. Thank you so much! We were all very, very touched by the magnanimous gift. She must've been baking all day!

Coffee and walnut cake. There were also FOUR lemon drizzle cakes, and a huge batch each of almond and cherry, and chocolate sour cream muffins! Wow! Thank you so much.

MJ (whose sale it was) planted out some wonderful wellies! It's cat grass in the Hello Kitty Boots.

She also made the lovely herb garden markers. Other things on the table: A and E's seed packets (saved from the garden), MJ's tea light holders, A's lovely willow bird feeders, and some stones painted by people from 4 in 1, a mental health charity.

Our painted charm stones...

Pickles and relishes...

Pickled eggs, beetroot and onion relish, and marmalade.

Teasels transplanted from the garden...

And my lovely (if I do say so myself) bee and ladybird noughts and crosses boards. Four of them all sold! The stones were collected from Clevedon beech, painted in acrylics, varnished, wood chain-sawed by Joe, then varnished, and then the willow grid marked out.

And here's a glimpse of MJ with her stall.

Really successful sale, and fingers crossed enough has been raised! Watch this space.

Shibori dying

I've just returned form an excellently run course at West Dean College near Chichester with tutor Janice Dunning and 8 other wonderful ladies. We used indigo and woad and tried out lots of different techniques to resist the dyes - stitching, clamping, tying, winding, pleating, wrapping - and I have come home with some glorious cloth to make into a quilt and possibly some clothes to wear. I love blue so immersing myself in it was glorious. Thank you to Janice and the warm and inspiring companionship of the other people on the course.

So this is. It involves stitching for a long time with strong  threads in a drawn patten which you then draw tightly before dunking in the bath.

This is karamatsu - the material is folded then stitched in concentric half circles with a very clever mechanism of tying with a knot through a cloth fragment at one end and then loosely stitching into another at the other side to allow pulling and tying off!

This one is where the cloth is stitched with a fold and then pulled tight - mokume.

This was my favourite - Bomaki - which involves making tubes of material that fit over drainpes or poles. The fabric is then rucked up and it creates a wave-like pattern.

And this is clamp resist dying - itajime - this produces regular symmetrical patterns by concertina folding the fabric then on either end clamping with pegs, clips, bound wood, acrylic shapes, etc before immersing in the vat. 

Dismaland

Our friend Banksy has put on a show in an old dilapidated outdoor swimming pool on the beach near us.

Getting tickets is a bit like getting into Glastonbury: as soon as they're released they're gone, so E and J with Charlotte in attendance went along to join a queue on spec. We won! We asked a dismal assistant when we arrived who told us that 300 tickets were about to be released, so go join the crowd. The people around us had come from France, Plymouth and Barnstaple, so our four miles seemed a bit too easy. They had also been waiting four hours when we joined them.

We had been waiting about 15 minutes when a non-dismal Beaches and Events assistant came up the line counting, and stopped about five people behind us, which seemed hopeful. I went to get an ice cream and when I returned, E and C were gone! Moved right forward into the barriered zone in front of the ticket hut. The lovely Beaches and Events opened the barriers and let me through, to the cheers of the rest of the queue. Three pounds later we were in.

The rest is best told in pictures. We went round pretty fast, and could happily have spent twice the 90 minutes we did spend.

Summing up Sunday week 6

Best outings...

J and A's cycle ride along the strawberry line to Axbridge and the Lamb for supper on Saturday evening.
A and E's visit to see Lacey at Brent knoll RSPCA cattery, though sad she hasn't yet been re-homed.

Achievements ...

16 pieces of Raku pottery sitting on the windowsill glinting in the sunshine.

Singing in a Joyful spirit concert with A in an octet on 'I heard the voice.' 

Most exciting happening..

A badger visited in the night and dug a small hole at the side of the drive to find and eat a wasps nest. The debris, and the poor old wasps were scattered across the driveway first thing in the morning. 

Visitors...

Sue and David came to train game - great fun! 

Best thing in the garden...

The wonderful sweet peas and the night scented stocks. Come and see more over here!

And something we want to remember...

Sarah Raven's seed range of flower seeds for cutting -looks fantastic so we are disappointed we didn't discover them a few weeks ago, but there is always next year.

And the score in the guardian quiz was ... 4 out of 15. Did you know that Mick Jagger had six children, and yet none of them had silly names?

Happy June x