Wiltshire weekend

I had a lovely weekend in Wiltshire with my lovely daughter; we walked, talked, ate cakes and cream teas and had a really relaxing time.

We stayed here

We visited Avebury,

Salisbury,

and Lacock.

It was wonderful.

Easter Chicks

I received an anonymous comment recently asking for a pattern to make the Easter Chicks I mentioned a long time ago, and couldn't reply direct as there were no contact details.

I've had this pattern for many years, just jotted on a scrap of paper, and have occasionally adapted it slightly, but to be honest, it's technically not mine. So I hope that by giving the pattern here I won't be contravening any copyright law!

Easter Chicks

Using 4ply wool in lemon or yellow and using No 3(11) needles, cast on 26 stitches.

Row 1 - K

Row 2 - Inc, K10, inc, K2, inc, K10, inc

Row 3 and alt rows - K

Row 4 - Inc, K12, inc, K2, inc, K12, inc

Row 6 - Inc, K14, inc, K2, inc, K14, inc

Rows 7-14 - K

Row 15 - Inc, K to end, Inc

Row 16 - K

Row 17 - As row 15

Row 18 - K

Row 19 - As row 15 (44 sts)

Row 20 - Cast off 12, K20, cast off 12

Rejoin wool to remaining 20 sts

K 14 rows

Pull wool through remaining stitches and gather tightly.

Sew seam, stuff head with cotton wool or toy stuffing fibre, run a thread around the base of the neck and pull tight to shape and finish off loose ends.

Embroider eyes with black thread, or use felt dots

Cut beaks from orange felt and sew on, or knit from contrasting orange or dark yellow wool.

The beaks on mine are literally three stitches cast on and cast off again, but you can do anything you like.

You can use "fluffy" wools to give a different effect, especially some of the baby wools that have a fleecy feel. I've knitted the chicks in double knit and chunky wools too (you might want to adjust the pattern or your needles a bit if using chunky as they come up much bigger).

I've also knitted hens using beige or brown, and create a little comb from red wool.

These I knitted in stocking stitch instead of plain knitting but they don't look quite right somehow.

Basket making

I had a wonderful Christmas present from my daughter - she paid for me to go on a two day basket weaving course. It was really enjoyable, and in the two days I learned how to make some willow baskets. Everyone on the course started from the same basis, with two hoops, and each of us ended with a very individual result.

This is called a God's eye. It holds the hoops together.

I managed to cut myself quite early on (with a Stanley knife) but I still remembered to take photos at each stage...

The final result was a neat little basket which would be perfect for collecting eggs in (if only I had a couple of chickens in my garden!).

Here are my three finished masterpieces (not too bad for a first try, if a bit rusic).

I really enjoyed the weekend - all the materials we needed were provided, and we had help at every stage. It would be fun to do more but there's a lot of advance preparation (the hoops were dried for weeks beforehand, and the other weaving materials had to be soaked to ensure they were flexible). I might have to scavenge in the hedgerows for materials to practice with.

(picture is from a greeting card - I'd just love to be able to create this sort of thing myself)

Happy New Year to anyone who drops by here.

I hope everyone had a really nice Christmas. Our Christmas was good - my Mum came up on 23rd and my daughter and her boyfriend came up on Christmas Eve. I'd been quite under the weather with a bad cough and spent most of the weekend before Christmas in bed, and was at work on the Monday so it was quite a mad dash to get everything done. In the end everything was fine, though I didn't get to make my mince pies until Christmas Eve, which is very late indeed. The important thing is everyone arrived safely and we spent some good time together.

I did manage to find time decorate my new mantle shelf, but failed to find any decent materials in the hedgerows. It's basically a pine garland with a lovely piece of holly and gold coloured ribbon twined round, with some wooden letters and hearts and stars.

Here is another bit of my effort at Christmas decoration - I have quite a lot of these twiggy things which I put around the room in vases. I don't really like tinsel or garlands hanging from the ceiling, but I love lots of candles and silvery or sparkly stuff. The two little chickens were a present from my daughter - she knows I would like some real chickens, but these little metal ones are almost as lovely as the real thing.

While mum was here I took her out for a few day trips, but I am rubbish at taking photos. We walked along the beach on Mersea Island, and had lunch at a nice pub called the Victory. We visited some pretty Essex villages, Tiptree, Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Fingringhoe, Wivenhoe. We also walked along the Blackwater Estuary at Maldon - but I didn't have my camera with me so can't show you all the lovely views we saw!

I am not a big fan of shopping in the sales but I did buy a couple of these beautiful glass Christmas baubles which were on sale in BHS. We also went into one of the Woolworths shops that was closing down - I felt quite sad, to see the end of an era. We also visited a few charity shops in Billericay (one of the things Mum and I both enjoy is a good charity shop!!) and I got a couple of little bargains - this lovely wool for 89p a ball.

I drove mum and my daughter back to the West Country on Thursday and I went to work on Friday so life is now gradually going back to normal again. This morning my son and I took down our tree and decorations and stored everything away - it feels a bit sad that everything is over for another year.

We are quite pleased that we managed to really cut down on waste this Christmas. No food was wasted, and very little rubbish was created that couldn't be composted. I think next year I would like to see if we can do away completely with wrapping paper, and try to give each other more useful presents. I find the idea of making lots of handmade presents for everyone quite appealing - but I think I would need to start planning well in advance.

Decking the halls

I picked up these lovely decorations yesterday from the Cancer Research shop - all of this for £1! There were lots more, but I thought I would leave some for the other bargain hunters. The decorations are all made of wood and metal, which matches my objective this year of not buying anything plastic. (Unfortunately the decorations came in plastic wrappers).

My other objective was to have some sort of mantlepiece - I've longed to have a proper fireplace since I moved to this house 18 years ago . We have an ugly old fashioned gas fire and a back boiler, which both need to be replaced but finances have not allowed - there are so many things that have taken priority over the years, but after seeing what wonderful decorations other people have blogged, I gave my self a kick up the proverbial and bought this beauty on EBay. Its basically just a wooden mantleshelf, purely cosmetic, but somewhere for me to put my candles and a bit of holly. (Yes I know that's not holly, it's laurel, but I will go out and see what I can pick at the weekend - maybe some berries too). When I have properly decorated my new mantlepiece I will proudly display a photo, watch this space.....

How's this for rustic decorations:

I made these from some twigs and scaps of knitting wool. I plan to make some more, maybe paint them or use gold paint.

Finally, here's a picture of our tree. Over the years we have had so many different colour schemes, but most of our favourite decorations are white, silver and gold, so the majority of the other colours I gave away on Freecycle. Many of these are wood, glass or metal (though I do still have some plastic ones). There are also a few hand knitted ones (stockings, candy canes and so on).

I'm off to do some Christmas shopping and to drive to the west country to deliver gifts and to pick up my daughter from University.

I knitted this hot water bottle cover for my sister using some wool from my stash - it's a Christmas present, which I must post in the next couple of days.

This is just about the only preparation I have done for Christmas so far, other than put up the tree. I am so envious of The Nester and the 150+ bloggers who have posted pictures of their beautiful garlands. I don't have a fireplace, or anywhere to put up a garland, and have been searching EBay for a fire surround, but I might just resort to a shelf, so that I can put some candles and pine cones.

I've neglected my blog recently - here are a couple of recent highlights in my life:

• A visit to the Country Living Christmas Fair in November - my daughter met me in London and we had a lovely afternoon...

• My son and I had a short holiday in Herefordshire and stayed in a lovely barn conversion, and had a really enjoyable day Llama-trekking

Spring...

I haven't been a very good blogger lately, though I have been keeping up with all the lovely blogs I regularly read. So many people manage to post every day, or at least a few times a week, but I never seem to have enough time lately.

These lovely poppies are growing in my garden - some of them are almost as big as peonies, and are a lovely range of colours. There are quite a few flowers in bud and it will be interesting to see if there are any other shades of mauve or pink.

I received this lovely bag from my Shopping Tote swap partner Sandra. It has lovely hand embroidered flowers on it. Thanks Sandra, I love it!

I have been avidly watching Springwatch and enjoying it so much. I don't know which birds are my favourite, but you've got to love Crane School! Brilliant.

Back after a long absence...

My last post was over a month ago and there have been various illnesses in the family which I won't go into detail about, but things have settled down a bit now and I am catching up with myself and getting life back to normal. Sorry for the long absence ....

I finished the hot water bottle cover for my daughter I mentioned last time, and have started another one for my sister.

I knitted this without a pattern, just used a hot water bottle to judge the size. I made one of these once before using chunky wool and it turned out very well, but this wool was different as it has a varied texture which made for a lumpy finish. My daughter was happy with it, so that's the main thing!

My washing machine broke down a few weeks ago and I've been struggling without for a time, but had a new machine delivered today. I was very torn about buying a new appliance while trying hard to be more frugal, but the new machine has an "A" rating which means I will save both electricity and water so overall I don't feel quite so guilty. What I especially like about this new machine is that it has a 30 minute cycle which is so quick compared to my old one. The old machine had had its fair share of repairs and was not particularly energy efficient. Since the delivery men left the new machine has been put through its paces several times in an attempt to catch up with several weeks worth of accumulated laundry. I did as much as I could by hand, but wouldn't even try to wash jeans or towels by hand!

I finished my shopping tote for my swap partner... I posted it off to Australia a while back but I haven't heard from my swap partner yet so I hope she has received it by now. Here's a photo (which I hope won't spoil the surprise if it hasn't arrived yet!)

Sorry the photo is a bit dark, it's a cream linen fabric with blue and green pattern, lined in calico. I was going to have a go at making the bag that uses a normal plastic carrier as a template, but it looked a bit challenging. I might tackle it sometime soon and I'll show the results if its a success!

A Day in My Life - 14 March 2008

Little Jenny Wren is going to write every month about her day to day life and has invited other bloggers to join in. I've signed up, at least to do one, as I am lazy about posting, though I always manage to read lots of other people's blogs and post a few comments.

So here goes, this was my day today...

Woke up at around 5.50am, my alarm is set for 6.00am but I usually wake up before it turns on. The radio comes on rather than an buzzer (though I do have a back up alarm clock that goes off at 6.27 (don't ask why 6.27 rather than 6.30! Just one of those things) but rarely need it. The radio station I mainly listen to is Radio 4 but in the morning from 6-9 its the Today programme, which is a really smug, self congratulatory news programme. The women presenters particularly annoy me (Sarah Montague and Carolyn Quinn) and I frequently get so irritated with the programme's style and content that I turn the radio off. Depending on how early I wake up, I sometimes read for a while, but this morning the house felt cold and I just stayed snuggled under the covers until about 6.15 then went to investigate why it was so cold. The heating was on, but for some reason the hot water tank and some of the radiators were luke warm rather than hot. I switched the hot water tank over to the immersion heater so that there would be hot water for a shower and while I waited for it to warm up I went down to put the kettle on for tea and to let the rabbits out and to feed them. This morning they had a big handful of hay, a big scoop of dry food, a carrot and half an apple chopped up. I changed their three litter trays (one inside their house and two outside). The litter trays are such an easy way to keep them clean, I just empty the used ones in the compost bin as I just use newspaper for a liner and straw and it all composts really easily.

After a cup of tea it was back upstairs into the shower and get dressed. Today I wore a navy blouse and navy trousers and a cream cardigan. I wash my hair everyday, so I had a quick blow dry then back downstairs. My son goes to college and he'd already got up and got ready so he was just about to leave though he said he didn't feel very well. Both my children hardly missed any school through illness, and would never take a day off school/college/university/work unless genuinely too ill to work.

I then made myself some lunch (today was a cheese and tomato roll, banana and pear) to take to work. I quickly ate some plain Greek yogurt with a sprinkle of nuts and dried fruit then suddenly remembered I had to feed the tortoises. We are looking after two tortoises for a week or so while their owner is away. I felt a bit panicked because I remembered how cold the house was, and these are tropical tortoises that need warm temperatures, but fortunately I've got an electric heater set up on a timer so they weren't cold! Today's food was a few cape gooseberries (physalis) and some strawberries.

Then I set off - today I had to go to Witham, which is about 10 miles away from my house, to carry out a risk assessment of a school crossing patrol site. Today's site was one that has not been manned for a long time, so I needed to count traffic and pedestrian movements at the busiest time of the day (in this case from 8.30 - 9.00) to see if it is worth keeping the site. In half an hour a couple of hundred cars passed the site, but only two people crossed the road. We will probably abandon this site.

I then headed to my office. I don't have an allocated parking space, but my line manager lets me use his sometimes as he often catches the train to work. It sounds lazy, but it takes me about 15 minutes to walk from the car park to the office and this is just too far to walk there and back. I'm not a fast walker, and I'm usually carrying a briefcase, as well as a handbag, my lunch, knitting or a book etc, so most days after I've done a site visit I will drive home and cycle into the office - it takes me less than 15 minutes and it's a much pleasanter journey, and I can put all my bags in my bike basket. Today, as I had to go out on site again in the afternoon, I drove into town and parked and walked to the office. I spent a couple of hours writing up notes of site visits, dealing with emails and phone messages, then had to complete my staff appraisal form with my manager. We have to do this every year in order to get our pay progression. I think the less I say about this the better as I feel it is just a paper exercise....

Lunch time, I whizzed out for a few minutes to get a bunch of daffodils (my favourite flowers and the local market sells 5 bunches for £2.00) and to have a poke around in the Oxfam shop. I picked up a nice piece of material for .99p which I may use for the shopping tote swap I've signed up for at down-to-earth.

This afternoon's site visit was in Billericay, which is only about 12 miles away. Some days I have to drive 30 or 40 miles each way to get to a site, but this only took me half an hour. Our crossing patrol ladies and men are great - they do a very difficult job and they are really special people. I do hate to see inconsiderate drivers and the way they behave to our patrols. People parking on the school keep clear markings, speeding, failing to stop even though they've been signalled to do so... There are a lot of selfish people out there, but the patrols take it all in their stride and are out there whatever the weather.

I drove back towards home, but the traffic was horrendous, so I decided instead of sitting in a queue of traffic I would pop into Lidl. It's not a shop I generally go to, but I got some real bargains from the fruit and vegetable section - red onions for 20p, 1 kg carrots for 55p and a mango for 23p. Amazing! I must go there more often. The carrots will be great for the rabbits, and for us too, and the mango will be great for the tortoises (if I don't eat it all myself!). I usually only shop for food once a week at the most, so this was not a big shopping trip, and I didn't really need much. I could have got quite a few more things, but I resisted the temptation!

When I got home it was about 5.50pm so I turned on the computer to catch up with emails and reading blogs. I usually listen to music when I have the computer on. This week I've had a few new CDs arrive that I'd bought either on EBay or from Amazon. I do like a bargain and the CDs I bought this week each cost less than £4 (one was only .75p) though of course there is also the cost of postage, but even so none came to more than £6.00. I drive a lot for work and find music more relaxing when driving than radio but I do get bored listening to the same stuff over and over. I probably won't buy any more CDs for a few months, and these should keep me going for a while. While catching up with my favourite blogs I saw a post at Belinda's place about Earth Hour and have signed up for it, and I will see if I can get the County Council to join up too. As they employ over 20,000 people it might make all the difference.

I fed the rabbits - fresh water, a scoop of dry food and some greens and then shut them up for the night. Then I phoned my mum for a chat. She's hoping to come up for a visit Easter weekend so we were arranging that.

When my son got home from college he still wasn't feeling well and went straight up to bed. He's got a sore throat and feels achy. He didn't even feel like eating any dinner, so I won't bother to cook tonight. I've just been snacking on yogurt and nuts, and might have some salsa and tortilla chips. Not very healthy I know, but I don't really like cooking for one.

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I had that salsa, and a cup of tea, then my younger sister phoned and we chatted for about an hour (maybe longer).

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So here we are at the end of the day. It's now just after 10 and I think I might turn on the TV to watch the news and do a bit of knitting - my daughter wanted me to make her a hot water bottle cover and I've nearly finished it. I'd better hurry up, it's nearly spring!

I'll probably go to bed around midnight, maybe read for a while before I go to sleep.

Not a particularly exciting day, but doing this has been fun. I've visited a couple of the other blogs that signed up for this. It's interesting to get a little window into other people's day; we all have such different lives and experiences. This has been a typical day for me, the way I currently live, but one day I'd like to be able to record a day filled with gardening, growing my own vegetables, baking bread and finding time to be creative.

If you got this far, thanks for reading! I'm posting this now, but I do have a couple of photos to add and will do that tomorrow, but it's been a long day!

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Saturday Morning Note: I've added a few photos to make this post more interesting (not so sure that a shot of the inside of my compost bin is all that special but you know what I mean!).

Valentine Swap

The doorbell rang this morning and look what I got:

A lovely selection of goodies from my swap partner Blossom in Lucy's Valentine Swap - after I'd take a photo of this pretty bag, the gorgeous knitting wool, a lovely green FQ and of course some delicious chocs, I discovered these hidden in the pocket of the bag...

two cute little buttons, a little wooden koala and a tiny golden angel. Thank you Leigh - everything is wonderful. I hope your parcel arrives soon (and that you enjoy opening my swap items as much as I enjoyed yours and that the Aussie customs don't have a problem with anything I sent!).

I knitted this Autobot design facecloth for my son - he's a big Transformers fan. I found the pattern here (thanks Enid). Now he wants a Decepticon one to match. I may have to work out a pattern for myself as I can't find one anywhere on the internet.