This week, up the mountain in Caerphilly, I have been taking great delight in watching (and hearing) a huge crowd of jackdaws swooping and diving every evening before they dive into a nearby tree and settle down for the night.
Starling murmurations are spectacular – when I was at university in Aberystwyth we used to sit in the bar on the pier and watch the thousands of birds coming in for the night, doing their aerobatics over the sea and then suddenly dropping out of the sky and vanishing.
These jackdaw flights look for all the world like a starling murmuration but Google tells me that this is actually known as a ‘clattering’. It also tells me that jackdaws are democratic in their roosting habits: some will start to squawk when they’re ready to get up in the morning and then when the noise reaches a majority pitch they all fly the roost. I guess it’s the same in the evenings, as from about 5pm they’ll start flying back and lining the ridges of the neighbours’ roofs, and when enough of them fly in the clattering begins. It really is a clattering – the noise is immense. Occasionally they’ll have a practice clatter in the afternoon and then all fly off again to do what jackdaws do – chiefly terrorising seagulls and demolishing the cherry tree next door, I think.
There are some examples on YouTube of these clatterings – I keep trying to capture it but my phone doesn’t do it justice.
I’ve written before about my fondness for the magpie family that lives in my Essex garden, which produces a noisy brood every year who run their poor mother literally ragged chasing her about after they’ve fledged. I like corvids in general (before anyone points it out – I know starlings aren’t in this family!. One year we had a little gang of them visiting the garden every day, comprising Richmond the Rook in his fluffy trousers, a pair of jackdaws and a few of the magpies. They were great fun, mastering the bird feeders together and working out how to get at the peanuts through teamwork.
I saw a raven eating a sausage roll from a Greggs bag in Clerkenwell once – huge thing, and I didn’t like to think about what had happened to the original purchaser of the sausagey treat. If the raven had come asking for my pastry snack I’d have handed it over, no questions asked.
Rooks are noisy and chatty and playful, and I always feel a bit sorry for the ones banished from the rookeries . What have they done that they have to go and find their own tree? There’s a large rookery near the church in North Weald, and it’s so loud when you walk past that it drowns out whatever I’m listening to.
Crows, on the other hand, stomp about the place looking slightly menacing, and at harvest time for all the world like they’ve been planted in flocks in the fields.
This week I’ll be back up in London, looking forward to getting back to work and getting ready for the family festival on Saturday. I’m not looking forward to my inbox though…
Also – happy Father’s Day to my excellent and well balanced dad, without whose sage advice my sisters wouldn’t be the functional, sane adults that we are today. Well done Dad…
Same time next week…
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous/Appassionata/Score!/Pandora – Jilly Cooper
Thanks to all the people offered sympathy and spare beds after last week’s post – you’ll all be pleased to hear that the swelling has gone down considerably, although my eye looks like a Pride flag (appropriate for this month) and the bruising is spreading across my face. It’s…colourful, especially the greeny-yellow making its way down my cheek.
Right now I am in the Forest of Dean being looked after by my sisters and cousins, who are warning me about tree roots, speed bumps and anything else I might fall over. We’ve also been doing some gentle crafting in the shape of Lino printing, which I haven’t tried before, and I did bring my crochet along as well.
We’ve also been out for a gentle walk with the wonderful Merlin bird app going – lots of new birds for my life list and even more evidence that I’m getting on a bit. Fortunately the cousins I was walking with also have the app..
Work sent me some glorious peonies mid-week as a a get-well.
I have been missing work, but I’m still waking up through the nights with headache and have taken the advice of my boss and doctor to slow down and take some time to recover. I’ve found it quite hard to slow down after going full tilt for so many months and juggling the separation, work and children. I’m trying very hard to relax, honest…and now I’m going to do just that for the weekend. You’re getting this post early so it’s off the to-do list!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Riders/Rivals/Polo/The Man Who Makes Husbands Jealous – Jilly Cooper
I have been asked to point out that I did, in fact, do something of note in week 313 and that was to attend a Best Practice sharing session on making our arts programmes more inclusive. Facilitated by the fabulous Kate Oliver (hi Kate!) who, as well as being a freelance educator extraordinaire, was my predecessor in my current role. The session explored what being radically inclusive looked like for people working in community and SEND settings, and as always was filled with excellent insights from people working in the field, and sparked great discussions and a call for dismantling the patriarchy. Hurray!
It was held at Tate Modern on the 5th floor on a glorious spring day, so we were treated to London looking shiny in the sunshine. I treated myself to an orange hot chocolate from a nice lady with a van and watched the world go by for a while. I love watching people and boats and all the things happening around me in the sun, and then making my way back across the bouncy bridge to St Pauls.
This week I have spent a lot of time hanging out in Myddelton Square, near our new site, while we held public meetings about an aspect of our operations. I stationed myself on the door, greeting people and catching them again on the way out to make sure they went away with a smile. I have to say I was surprised to see a pair of woodpeckers in the trees in the middle of Islington as well as the ubiquitous parakeets, blue tits and pigeons. There was also a squirrel foraging for scraps who hung out with me for a while.
Spring does finally feel like it’s getting a grip, though the paths through the fields and forests are still quite badly churned up. The byway through the woods is particularly bad, thanks to idiots in 4x4s who seem to have no consideration for other users of the space, leaving foot deep clay ruts filled with lakes. They’re even removing fences and damaging the forest itself, and the Essex Way is a mess.
This week (well, Friday 20th) marked the sixth anniversary of my very first post on this blog way back in 2020 and it appears I am still burbling about squirrels, flowers and forests. Thanks for hanging out with me all this time…
There are many things I like about summer but mosquitoes are not one of them. No matter how much go-away spray you use before you go out for a walk the little beasts always manage to find the single square centimetre you missed – the bit where your bra strap moved, or (as has happened to me a lot recently) they fly up your trouser legs and savage the backs of your knees. I’m sporting five on my arms and one on my neck at the moment. I’m sure they play a vital role in the ecosystem or something but if they could do it without nibbling me I’d appreciate it.
They are the price you pay when you’re staying by a river and want to go out bat hunting at dusk, however. After London sister Tan spotted a Daubenton’s Bat on a walk along the Blavet earlier this year we were quite keen to find some more. Although the weather has changed from summer heat to muggy drizzle, we’ve made it out a couple of evenings this week for a wander along the tow path.
It’s been magical – there will be a glimpse of one bat skimming along the river near the bank or zooming over your head, and then suddenly they’ll be everywhere – chasing each other in circles, divebombing the river or flitting in and out of the trees. We’ve found that the bridges are popular bat haunts, and we’ve stood for ages on the towpath by the road bridge watching them zip around on eye level with us catching insects. They’re so batty they look like toy bats – the sort of bat shapes that Laszlo turns into in What We Do In The Shadows or Count Dracula in Hotel Transylvania. The battiest bats, in fact.
Bonus points have been scored for the kingfishers catching a last few snacks before heading off into their holes for the night, an indignant heron who took off from the path in front of us, a muntjac deer watching us from the other side of the river before disappearing into the crop growing behind it. There’s a coypu couple who swim among the waterlilies near the bridge, chuntering away to themselves as they potter around doing whatever it is coypu do. The owls start muttering to each other shortly after the bats come out.
No sign of the hen harrier or the short-toed snake eagle so far, but there’s a week to go. The two cockerels who live on the same lane have been much in evidence, shouting at random times throughout the day, and the cherry tree outside Dad’s office window has been alive with long-tailed tits while I’ve been shortlisting job applications over three days this week. It’s great that so many people want to work with us but by Thursday afternoon my eyes were crossed and I was thoroughly fed up with AI generated introductory paragraphs. Still, I’m looking forward to meeting the interviewees.
Not having to think about what to feed people for dinner
French bread and patisserie, especially my favourite religieuses
Time to do some fiddly crochet in the sunshine – these peas in pods are crocheted with perle thread and a 1mm hook. I’ve made some bigger ones as well, with friendly looking peas that pop out of their pods.
French supermarkets and their fruit and veg sections
Various family members are arriving today and it’ll be lovely to see them, and hopefully over the next week we’ll see more exciting wildlife (that we aren’t related to). I’m assuming my Things and my Beloved a) have noticed I’ve gone and b) are missing me at least a bit. Two of them have texted me with demands for money, so business as usual there.
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading
The Book of Doors/The Society of Unknowable Objects – Gareth Brown
Lies Sleeping/The Hanging Tree – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)
Miss Percy’s Definitive Guide to the Restoration of Dragons – Quenby Olson
Thursday was GCSE results today for Thing 2 – we were at school for 8am and then went straight to her chosen college to enrol. Jill brought me coffee in the queue, as she works there, and when the doors opened we got her signed up on the Culinary Arts course and kitted out with chef’s whites, her very own apron and oven cloth, and a pair of extremely no-nonsense steel-toe-capped kitchen shoes. I can’t decide whether she looks grown up or dressed up, but I’m extremely relieved that she got the grades she needed and onto the course she wanted. Apparently there is a shortage of patisserie chefs, so I have heroically volunteered as a taste tester should she go down that route.
Thursday afternoon had more drama – I’ve been feeding Ziggy and the Piggies for the last ten days or so* (next door’s mighty hunter cat and guinea pigs, not a Bowie tribute band) and while chatting to the other neighbour she mentioned that she thought Ziggy had caught a magpie but not killed it, as it was sitting on their lawn. Off I went with Doctor Doolittle (aka my Beloved) in tow to see if the ‘pie could be saved. Its wings were working as it kept flapping away from us, but its legs were dragging. We couldn’t see any cat damage, and Ziggy wasn’t around, so after some manoeuvring Dr D managed to get it into a cardboard box and we covered it with a wire frame to prevent cat attack. In between adding bits to my learning strategy I tried contacting the local wildlife rescues in the hope they’d come and help but they said that if the legs were damaged it couldn’t be rehabbed. I phoned the vet and took Mr Magpie (no idea where his wife and/or children were, though obviously I asked as it’s only polite) round to them. I suspect they would have had to put him to sleep, as the new receptionist didn’t look very hopeful, but at least he was safe from cats.
He wasn’t a fledgeling as all his beautiful feathers were in. We have experience with fledgelings, as we once rescued a baby woodpigeon who’d fallen out of the nest and kept him in a box on the trampoline for a couple of weeks while his anxious parents flew down and fed him. I don’t know whether he was a single chick who was just too fat for them to get back off the ground or if he just went too early. Eventually the rest of his feathers grew in and he fledged properly over a couple of days and headed off. We also used to have a collared dove pair who nested in the Christmas tree where the treehouse was and we always enjoyed watching their nestlings hop around on the railings. We’re lucky enough to have a lot of mature trees around the garden, and usually have robins, blue tits (who treat the trampoline net as a climbing frame), blackbird, woodpigeon and magpie families raising chicks every year. There’s a fierce wren who chased Ziggy off, much to his surprise and embarrasment, and a poser of a bullfinch who sits on a tree stump and shows off. The odd sparrowhawk has been known to rest on the edge of the sunroom roof, and the roof pigeons like to sit on the glass roof and wind up the cats.
Thing 2 and Colin – a serious business
There’s a gang of teen corvids – a couple of jackdaws, a rook and a magpie – who terrorise the neighbourhood feeders and hang out on roofs cawing, and sometimes we get visits from the village peacocks on a wander. I think they have extended their territory into the woods behind the house as they were regularly waking me up at 4am earlier in the summer despite sleeping in Loop earplugs. Colin the pheasant – named by our builders, who reckoned he strutted about like one of their lads – used to be a regular visitor and was tame enough to hand feed monkey nuts to. We haven’t had a pheasant for a while but we have had badger cubs in the garden again this year, and a fox investigating the Blink camera. I like to sit out and work in the garden and listen to the different songs – the BirdNet app is great for identifying all the different species.
*Ziggy self-catered this morning, however, choosing to picnic on something in our garden. This is fine, as last time I was in charge of him he was leaving me decapitated meeces in the mornings.
Making me happy this week…
This week was vastly improved by the existence of Wednesday which was bracketed by early morning coffee with Amanda and after work (nonalcoholic)* cocktails with Rhiannon. Epping continues to disappoint, as did the High Court interim injunction this week which is bound to be seen as a precedent for all sorts of other councils to take umbrage at the Home Office’s flagrant disregard for change of use applications and so on. Of course this meant there was shouting and celebrating outside the Bell, where the residents are already too scared to leave the building. The ‘decorators’ have been active in our village again, which I hope doesn’t mean they’re going to start terrorising the families in the Phoenix. I am a cynic, so I suspect the lack of public transport and criminal opportunities other than the farm shop and soft play next door might put the hoi polloi off visiting, unless they fancy some expensive sausages and some cake.
Anyway, Rhiannon and I tried a new food hall type place near St Paul’s Station, where I had a ‘Light & Stormy‘ which was remarkably convincing. It had a herbal elixir (an excellent word) instead of dark rum apparently it contains trendy mushrooms. Whatever- I liked it and if it wasn’t just as expensive as rum I might get fonder of it. We didn’t eat although there was a good range of food options. We had agreed ahead of time that we’d spend exactly ten minutes having a rant, although we did add two minutes for AOB (well, expressing our disbelief at members of the local council). We had a timer and everything, and then we had a lovely couple of hours chatting about everything else.
*apart from the tequila slammer that the nice man gave us in exchange for leaving a review.
A solo trip to Harlow where I had a holiday mani/pedi so I have pretty nails – the colour is Thai Chilli Red which isn’t too red or too orange. It wasn’t my first choice but they’d run out of that – red with a burst of gold – and I like it a lot.
Not Amazon, who have annoyed me this week by failing to deliver a parcel three days this week as they were unable to find my front door. Suggesting they got out of the van and walked up the drive was not helpful.
This week I will be working from France, and appreciating not having to think about feeding people or public transport. I shall mostly be shortlisting…
Same time next week, people!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
The Furthest Station/The Hanging Tree – Ben Aaronovitch (Audible)
The Postman’s Path – Alan Cleaver. meh. Took back to library without finishing as it was disappointing. If ever a book needed Illustration it was this one. He kept going on about sketching and doing walks but there were no sketches shon or even a map. Great premise, poorly executed despite good reviews.
In my usual sublime-to-ridiculous way, this week we are hopping from radical inclusion to…. frogs. Yes, frogs. I like frogs.
Also newts, dragonflies, toads and bats (the flying sort, not me).
This handsome chap lives in our garden, and takes no sh*t from anyone.
This aquatic turn of mind was sparked by a last-thing-on-Friday email from our lovely project manager Liz, who is currently thinking about the logistics of getting power onto our new site and – as a pond is featured in the plans – there was a question about how much water would be in it so we’d know how powerful the pump would need to be.
Now, I do not know a great deal about ponds (other than about acclimatising myself to them in the wild) and I know even less about how to calculate the volume of a pond from a flat plan. ‘It looks quite big’, I hazarded. I suspect this was not very helpful.
I don’t know much about frogs either, so I enlisted the assistance of my Beloved who knows about things that happen outside in the garden. He dug a wildlife pond in ours a couple of years ago, which does not as yet have a frog but I live in hope and whenever he finds Tiny* when he’s gardening he puts him in the pond.
Tiny
*Tiny is my newt…sorry
In my head the pond on the new site is not a sterile, shallow water feature which will inevitably be filled with paddling small people without so much as a pondskater to be seen, but a proper wildlife pond where we can have pond-dipping, spot dragonflies and bees and butterflies, and attract all sorts of exciting wildlife including bats who definitely live in Islington and who could be encouraged to come and live on our site if we had a source of quality bugs for them. The pond in my head is raised so people can sit around the edges and people who use wheelchairs can do the pond-dipping activities too. One end of it is a bog garden and the other end is deeper, making a home for things that like deeper water for the laying of frogspawn. (It will have a chickenwire frame over it, so we can lift it for activities and maintenance but cats and would-be paddlers can’t fall in).
Small toad in the strawberry bed
There will be plants like irises and things that oxygenate the water, grasses around it and insect-attracting plants to make this little corner a wildlife haven. My Beloved and I spent the next hour delving into wildlife ponds (starting here) and discovered that you only need a pump if there’s fish – who are apex predators in the pond, and eat all the other things – or if you’re having a fountain. Wildlife ponds don’t need them, but they do like oxygenating plants which also provide cover for tiny wildlife. If we did have a pump it would need a filter to prevent the tadpoles and froglets being sucked up and mangled.
Islington has the lowest amount of green space per person of all the London boroughs, and increasingly where green space is being planted it isn’t publicly accessible. When teachers were consulted waaayyy back in 2023 they wanted to be able to come to the site to explore biodiversity and bringing water back onto the site will be key to attracting wildlife. The site’s history is inextricably linked with the history of water in London, too, so a pond makes sense. Hopefully the pond-in-my-head will become reality, complete with frogs…
Things making me happy this week
Coffee with Brian and Anhar from London Museum on Tuesday morning.
A catch-up with Cath on Wednesday evening in the local pub, where my existence was met with ‘what are YOU doing in here?’ from my daughter
An exciting meeting with Apple at their Battersea offices, which they described as ‘joyful’ and said my creative activity was ‘supercool’ and that they were going to try it with their kids. I’m not sure they’d seen paper and pencils for a while…
…and the trip back to the office was on the Uberboat to Bankside, with a walk back via St Paul’s and St Bartholomew the Great
I made a start on a new spiderweb scarf using the gorgeous yarn I bought last week at the Wool Show, made a pair of dragonscale mittens for my colleague’s birthday as she feels the cold, and started a hexi cardi with yarn from the stash.
Sunday at the Waltham Abbey Wool Show with Heather, where we squished a lot of yarn and I was quite well-behaved. When I got back I got all my skeins out of the stash and turned them into balls so I have no excuse not to use them – thank heavens for the winder and swift gadgets!
Open Day at Waltham Forest College with Thing 2, where she hopes to go in September
Impressing Thing 2 with my excellent French accent when she made me try on a beret. Well, who doesn’t do ‘Allo ‘Allo impressions under those circumstances? I am, apparently, ridiculous.
Ok, I might be exaggerating a bit here, but one of the wonders of living out here in sunny Essex is the variety of wildlife we get in the garden. The majority of it is welcome but some – like the odd rat – is less so. Living near farmland and with a watercourse near the house it’s inevitable, of course, but I still don’t want them snacking on the bird seed.
My favourites at this time of year are the blue tits who colonise the nest box and produce a brood of noisy chicks demanding feeding. The first sight of the babies as they peek out of the hole and glare at us is always an ‘aaahhh!’ moment, and one of the very bedraggled and exhausted parents paid us a visit one evening this week too. Rather foolishly, it had stopped for a rest on the fence outside the back door which surrounds the cats’ outdoor space – Lulu thought it was her birthday but Thing 2 came to the rescue. The bird was remarkably tame (or possibly just knackered) as we were able to get very close. It flew from Thing 2’s hand to my head before we were able to put it safely out of reach of the cat.
Bedraggled blue tit
The local shrew population has less luck when it comes to Lulu. The occasional one ventures in to the cat space (probably after the strawberries) and doesn’t live to tell the tale, instead becoming a love gift for my (and her) beloved. She’s always most annoyed when we take them away from her. She did bring a mouse in just before Christmas which we didn’t realise until it peeked out from behind my sewing machines, leading to a frenzied twenty minutes with a wooden spoon, an empty cheese sauce pot and finally a rehoming in the compost bin.
Today I have been joined in the garden by a baby sparrow, and every year we have robins, blackbirds, dunnocks, goldcrests, woodpigeons and collared doves. There’s a raucous family of magpies too, whose antics make me laugh. They are scrappy and behave like human siblings, arguing amongst themselves and rough and tumbling in the garden. The poor mother (I assume!) takes refuge on our neighbour’s roof, and as soon as the juveniles spot her they all go and join her. On one occasion there was a panicked squawking as one landed on the telephone wire and ended up upside down without enough sense to let go….
Other garden birds are woodpeckers, the odd sparrow hawk, starlings (nesting in next door’s roof), red kites soaring overhead, moorhens in wet springs and for the first time this year parakeets have flashed past. For several years we had a very tame pheasant who our builders named Colin after one of their colleagues who also strutted about. This year Richmond the Rook is a regular, stalking about in his fluffy rook trousers and hanging about with a couple of jackdaws.
The less feathered friends turn up too: we’re privileged to have badgers visiting from the Common as well as foxes, rabbits and the occasional muntjac. We can usually track their progress by the nibbled plants, much to my Beloved’s disgust. A slow worm can often be found in the greenhouse enjoying the warmth, while toads lurk under stones and tarpaulins and newts haunt the flowerpots. Most years we have a bumble bee nest somewhere, as well as squirrels and tiny mice.
One of my friends described coming through the back gate once as like walking into Narnia – sometimes I think she’s not far wrong!
Other things this week have included cheering on the RideLondon cyclists as they zoomed through the village, binging Stranger Things seasons 1-3 in preparation for season 4, seeing this year’s museum fox cubs playing in the sunshine, Thing 3 going off on his first solo sleepover at London Aunty’s house (it’s fancy, apparently), much crocheting of a shawl which is taking forever, a glorious swim, a mooch about the market, an early walk, and making some tiny things.
This week it’s half term and there’s only three days in work thanks to some Queen or other having a jubilee. The village has broken out in bunting already. I have promised my beloved that I’ll sort out my shed next weekend….
See you next week!
Kirsty x
The Betrayal of Trust/The Various Haunts of Men – Susan Hill
So here we are at the end of week ten, and we’ve survived half term. Actually, it’s been lovely: the weather continues to be glorious, and we have taken advantage of the slight easing of lockdown rules to go on a couple of socially distanced walks with a neighbour and her daughters. Her twin girls fall between Things 2 and 3, and in normal circumstances at this time of year the kids would be in and out of each others’ houses all day making up dance routines (or TikTok-ing, this year), splashing in the pools and bouncing on trampolines. It’s been lovely seeing them back together while we grown ups put the world to rights. The best fun was when we walked through the woods to a brilliant rope swing where we spent a good hour jumping off over a stream bed before following the meanders back to the path home.
Following the path through the woods
Rope swings have been a bit of a feature of our exercise this week – we also visited one in Gernon Bushes, near Coopersale, which has been there for years and which someone has kindly fixed a seat to this year! The first time I went on it I faceplanted spectacularly as I forgot to let go….
This route took us through what’s known locally as the rhododendron path – it borders the Gaynes Park estate, and while they did a lot of clearance last year they have left this beautiful section on the way to the motorway bridge. The bushes are several metres high in places, and dense with flowers as you can see. We brought a cutting home at the children’s request to see if we can grow one for the garden.
Things 1 – 3 on the rhododendron path
As I type this morning I am recovering from my long walk of the week – solo today, and covering 8.5 miles. I was hoping for 10, but it was getting hot and I was getting hungry so I took the quick way home instead of retracing my steps! I picked up the Essex Way on the edge of the woods and then followed that to the outskirts of Ongar, past St Andrew’s at Greensted – the oldest wooden church in the world, and very pretty. I love this route as it follows the green lanes with very little road in this stretch. I hope to walk the whole of the Essex Way to celebrate my significant birthday in a couple of years – I have covered the stretch from Epping to Willingale while training for the Shine Marathon last year, and would love to do the rest over a few weekends.
The devil is in the detail…
This week’s making has been very small scale, unlike my walks! Apart from a bit of crochet in the queue for the chemist and the Co-op (the virus shawl has become my queuing project!) and whipping up a couple more pairs of MBJM Four Seasons shorts from some remnants of jersey and stretch denim, it’s all been about the cross stitch.
Four Seasons shorts – so comfortable!
Thing 3 and I tried some cyanotype printing with some garden plants, with moderate success – we enjoyed watching the paper change colour and developing the prints in water. I think we need to find an acrylic sheet to hold the plants down flat while they develop so we don’t lose definition in the middle.
Cyanotype printing
Thing 2 and I have been baking – this week we made soft pretzels, cinnamon rolls and Hummingbird Bakery chocolate cupcakes with coffee icing from the Cake Days book. All very unhealthy but so delicious. Baking is Thing 2’s happy activity – she does love to cook, and with 16kg of flour to get through it’s nice to have alternatives to bread. We used cinnamon sugar on the pretzels instead of salt, I recommend this as a great breakfast. I also insisted on raisins in my cinnamon rolls.
Cinnamon rolls
And here’s my cross stitch update – there’s still a few gaps in this section, but it’s almost finished. The cross stitching technique, with its capacity for detailed colour changes, really captures the pointillist style of Seurat’s painting – looks better from a distance!
Centre top panel of Sunday Afternoon on the Island
What’s growing this week?
The garden is lovely – the roses are heavenly, and while out walking the blasts of elderflower and honeysuckle are blissful. The garden is full of bees (especially when my beloved discovered a bumble bee nest under a raised bed) and they are loving the lupins, lavender, cotoneaster and the mass of foxgloves that have seeded this year. I spent some time yesterday cutting back periwinkle and mahonia to give my hollyhocks a chance for some sun, and cutting hawthorn shoots away from my physalis plants which have self-seeded beautifully so I should have a good show of ‘lanterns’ this year. Strawberries are ripening every day, and its so decadent to be able to pick and eat them warm from the sun – the raspberry canes are blossoming too, so with any luck we’ll get a good crop. Home grown lettuces have been the basis of this week’s salads, and I think we’ll have fresh peas with dinner tonight.
Honeysuckle in the garden winding round a dead buddleia tree
The hedgerows and fields are producing new flowers as well – I spotted my first bindweed of the year on my walk this morning, some beautiful escaped sweet peas, mallow and grass vetch.
One of the most lovely flowers this week has been the poppy – the Oriental one in the garden is still in bud, but the fields are splashed with red and this rubble pile at the local farm is covered with them. I love the way they almost glow in the early morning sun. You’ll also spot the farm cat and – not a flower – a fledgling magpie who let me take a photo of him before he flew off. Unlike the green woodpecker, who squawked indignantly at me and flew off across the field!
That’s it from me for the week – I’m posting early today so I can sit in the sunshine this afternoon! Term starts back tomorrow, much to the Horde’s disgust, although Thing 1 now only has to do GCSE subjects and Things 2 and 3 are on a four day week.
I’ll leave you with an image of a baby blue tit we found on the ground while out walking – no, I didn’t bring this baby home with me! Feeding a baby mouse with milk is one thing, but I draw the line at smooshing up worms. He was a noisy little chap, shouting away at us and demanding food – I made Thing 2 put him back as close to the nest as we could.
Hungry baby blue tit
Hope your week was as good as mine! One of my favourite moments was a comment about last week’s post that said reading it was like taking a holiday in someone else’s life. Thanks Olivia! Olivia is one of the museum world’s treasures, with her wonderful stories, so this was high praise indeed.
See you at the end of week 11…
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Still on Jilly Cooper, sorry… the doings of Rupert Campbell-Black and co are much more interesting than the current omnishambles of real life.
What a strange week this one’s been – again. After last week’s lengthy rant about the possibility of lifting lockdown shortly before Johnson’s pre-recorded ‘address’, we’ve all been stuck in a weird confused limbo which hasn’t really been clarified by various press conferences and guidelines. We are staying safe at home still, as that seems the most sensible thing to do at the moment. And don’t even get me started on school reopenings…
All three children (and I) have had a wobble at some point this week. It’s been important for us all to recognise that this is not a normal time, and that it’s OK to be able to put our hands up and say ‘right, I am not coping today’ and to retire to the sofa. Thing 2 had a meltdown on Thursday when it became clear that the family holiday in Wales was going to have to be cancelled and we wouldn’t be seeing the cousins and the grandparents this summer, let alone the aunties and uncles. My parents live in France and my youngest sister in Northern Ireland, so getting everyone together every couple of years is something we all look forward to. Thing 1 is missing her friends and has lost motivation, and Thing 3 is not sleeping well and is having trouble focusing. He enjoys learning and the stimulation of the classroom, as well as being with his peers. Being stuck at home with his big sisters isn’t a lot of fun, he tells me.
My own meltdown was Tuesday. I couldn’t wake up, and spent the day feeling as if I was wading through treacle. I didn’t even pick up a crochet hook or a needle which, if you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know is pretty unusual for me. I lay on the sofa, read a book, and napped through the afternoon before feeding the family things from the freezer for dinner. I’ve learned over the last twenty years or so of periodic depression that some days are bad days, and there’s often no rhyme or reason for it. I’m not in a period where the first thing I do when I wake up is do a mental check to see if I’m OK, thank heavens, but there’s still the odd downturn. I take Citalopram, like many other people like me, and that seems to keep me pretty level most of the time.
What about the rest of the week?
Luckily up days outnumbered down, and despite a few frosty mornings I’ve been able to get out walking every other day. I’ve been varying my route only slightly, by taking the odd different path, but mostly I’ve stuck to a wide semi-circle around the village which takes in fields, woods, a farm and – one day – the golf course. The pink flowers are coming into bloom now alongside the white and yellow, and one early morning I saw three hares. There are coot chicks on the ponds, and the sound of skylarks in one particular field on the stretch of Essex Way I cover is glorious.
Pink alongside the yellow and white
Today we went on a bike ride round my usual route – all five of us! – and were lucky enough to run into friends. It was so good to have a conversation with other adults – albeit from a distance! The kids had enormous fun in the giant climbing oak on Friday too, when we dragged them out of their pits for a walk.
Things 2 and 3 – monkeys in a tree again
My sock fixation has continued, and I finished the pair that had me cursing last week because I wasn’t reading the pattern properly. They’re very pretty, and quite lacy – it’ll be a shame to put shoes over them!
Vappu socks – pattern by Claire Montgomerie in Inside Crochet #101, yarn Stylecraft Head over Heels in Sugarloaf
I’ve managed some sewing too. After last weekend’s organising of patterns and fabric, I was able to grab the kits I wanted and get straight on – apart from with the True Bias Shelby Dress, which I cut out and then discovered I didn’t have any interfacing! Annoying, as this was the one I really wanted to make!
Virtually everything else has been using jersey and other stretch fabrics, for which I bless my overlocker. The first thing was the Jump Up Suit by Alice and Co, which is yet another item in my collection of work appropriate pyjamas. I made this in a grey Ponte Roma fabric, and before cutting I took 6 inches off the legs (and another three when I hemmed it!) and lengthened the waist by a couple of centimetres which I then ended up taking out again. I CANNOT get the hang of blind hemming, so couldn’t do the pretty scalloped neckline, so after much swearing I ended up doing a rolled hem on the overlocker which still seems to work. I can see this being much worn…
Alice and Co Patterns Jump Up Suit
I used scraps of jersey fabric to make the Watson bra by Cloth Habit – a toile, really, to practise new techniques and to check the fit. Apart from needing to pull in the elastic under the arms, it’s pretty much a perfect fit and the pattern instructions really do guide you through the process step by step. As I was working on smalls, I also whipped up a pair of Superhero Boxers by MBJM Patterns for my beloved, who was the only person in the house who didn’t have any handmade undies – he was sceptical but they fitted perfectly and he wants to know when the rest are coming…
Watson bra/Superhero boxers
Finally, I gave in and made some face coverings after the lovely Patrick Grant launched The Big Community Sew project – I used leftover fabric from my red quilt (which still isn’t bound) and from Thing 2’s shaggy pants, and some fat quarters from the stash. Luckily I also had some elastic, as that’s proving hard to source at the moment. I chose the McCalls face covering pattern as it looked pretty straighforward. I whipped up ten – not perfect but they’ll do the job.
Face coverings
I made another Greenstyle Centerfield top, using plain black jersey and a printed jersey I bought at the Knitting and Stitching Show a few years ago and have had in the stash. I bought it as I thought it had sheep on it, but it turns out to be alpacas so at least I’m on trend. This is a DREAM to sew and comes together in less than an hour’s sewing time. I chose the plain scoop neckline rather than a hood this time round, so it was superspeedy. And SO comfortable – particularly with the MBJM Patterns Four Seasons joggers that I used the rest of my black jersey on. I love MBJM patterns, they are so versatile – I made these in capri length with phone pockets, but you can also choose three other lengths, two waistbands, a faux drawstring and another pocket style.
Four Seasons Joggers and Centerfield Top
Finally, we have been lucky with the wildlife this week – I’ll leave you with our regular badger, and see you at the end of week nine.
I’ve often described my working life as like a rollercoaster we get on every Monday and get flung off every Friday, exhilarated but exhausted – like Diego the sabre-tooth tiger in Ice Age after he comes down the ice slide. I’m upgrading that to the waltzers, I think – you think you’re moving fast and then someone comes and spins you in the opposite direction entirely. All you can do is hang on… that’s what Monday was like! A morning of catching up with a week’s worth of emails, followed by a frantic team meeting and then three hours of preparing to lock down for the next couple of months. Furlough means we are forbidden to do any work for the museum at all, so we had to make the most of Monday!
All this while trying to convince the Horde that it really was the start of term and it was time to get back to routine. (They all got dressed, so I counted the day as a win….) Anyway, I – along with most of the museum – am now furloughed for the next couple of months unless the situation changes rapidly (anything is possible these days) and the relief this news brought was huge. I have written before about the stress of trying to be’work me’ and ‘mum me’ at the same time, when it feels as if I am failing at both, so this means I can try and get one right at least.
Time to slow down and enjoy time at home – bluebells on a local lane
So, it’s back to SPAG and fractions (I’m sure there was more to maths than fractions!), story writing using some strange acronyms (DADWAVERS, anyone?) and Hitler’s Germany which is Thing 1’s history topic. We’ll stick to the format we were using before Easter, as that gives us time for creativity in the afternoon.
Doesn’t furlough mean more making time, too?
It does! It’s been a productive week, too, with a bit of upcycling, a bit of fixing, a bit of making and a bit of crochet.
In the mornings while I have been working with the children, I have been repairing the hexies in a lovely crochet blanket – I made it, and used the magic ring to start all the hexies but all of them have started to come undone. I used this very helpful tutorial to fix them, and will go back to the chain method to start these things in future.
Thing 1 requested a wrap skirt, as she had seen one on Instagram – rather than buy one, I knew I had a few wrap patterns. She chose New Look 6456 in style D, and I had some lovely polycotton with daisies and dots on. It was pretty straightforward to make up, and now I have a happy daughter.
One new item, one refashion modelled by Things 1 and 2
Thing 2 – who usually flatly refuses to wear hand-me-downs – will NOT give up on a stripy dress which my sister bought for Thing 1 when she was about 5. She’s been wearing it as a top with shorts for the last couple of years, but it’s finally got too small. So, she asked me to make her a crop top and mini skirt out of it to get another year’s wear – we cut round the waist seam, added elastic waistbands and she’s happy again! She’s now requested pyjama shorts, which she’s going to help me make, and ‘Shaggy pants’. Apparently she means wide trousers like Shaggy in Scooby Doo – so it was back to the pattern stash where she found another New Look pattern and a quick browse on Pound Fabrics where we found some pretty cotton.
The pyjama shorts request sprang from watching me whip up a pair from the remnants of the wrap skirt fabric. I used a pattern by The Makery, which was a freebie with Simply Sewing magazine a few years ago. I used elastic rather than the drawstring, for ease, and they are perfect with a vest for this hot spell. While searching the stash I rediscovered the Lapwing Trousers pattern by Simple Sew and once madam had rejected the ditsy blue flower fabric I offered her, I decided I’d make another pair for myself. There’s nothing like a pair of floaty cotton trousers for hot days. (Other things I have rediscovered this week: my hammock, Bloom Strawberry Gin and Fevertree Elderflower Tonic, and stargazing in search of satellites and meteors).
The table tennis table is still up in the garden and it’s so useful for laying out large patterns and quilt tops, even when Thing 3 decides to open a market stall at the other end.
Actually playing table tennis is rarely an option…
I sandwiched the red quilt top (the wadding was a bit of a patchwork too) and quilted it together, and its now awaiting binding. I’ve decided to use ready made bias binding on this one, and am waiting for it to arrive. The second image is the big make of the week – I volunteered to be a pattern tester for Alice and Co Patterns, who are extending their size range for the Intrepid Boiler Suit. I ran across Alice and Co when they did an updated versions of the Mary Quant Georgie and classic minidress to accompany the Quant exhibition at the V&A.
I love an all in one, and had just bought their Jump Up Suit pattern – I would probably not have tried the boiler suit if they hadn’t asked for testers. I’ve looked at boiler suits but never had the courage to buy one – this seemed like the perfect solution! I’d also just bought several metres of gorgeous lightweight pinstripe denim (Pound Fabrics again) and now I had an excuse to use it. Luckily they let me join the tester team…
The PDF pattern was really straightforward to put together (if I ever win the lottery, the first thing I am buying is an A0 printer and a garden studio to put it in), and the instructions were really clear and easy to follow – even the enclosed yoke, which I have only tried once before. It really was a case of trusting the pattern, and the resulting yoke looked great.
I’m a great one for taking sewing shortcuts, especially with zips and sleeves – I hate setting in sleeves – but as I was testing the pattern I thought I’d better do it properly! The process became quite mindful, as I had to think about what I was doing more carefully and pay attention to the finishing. The only step I skipped was finishing the raw edges before sewing, as I decided to overlock them as I went along. I even overlocked the zip tape to the seam allowance.
The back and breast pockets were cut against the grain so I could have the pinstripes at a contrasting angle, and the side pockets were perfectly (if accidentally) pattern matched. I decided to make a self-fabric tie belt to go through the waistband casing, rather than use a proper belt, and used fabric scraps to patch one together as I knew no one would see the seams!
The making process took me about six hours, plus time to stick together the PDF and cut out the fabric, and it was thoroughly enjoyable – and I LOVE the result. I made my beloved take a proper photo of me wearing it with my Lottas just so I could share it… it also shows off my new ultra-violet hair, or so it says on the box. I may make the legs a bit shorter, as here you can see I have had to fold them up four times, but I love the 80s girl group vibe. There’s also a free pattern hack on the website for a button front version, and I quite fancy a sleeveless one too, so will definitely be making this again.
You can’t have spent all week sewing, surely?
I mentioned earlier that Thing 3 had decided to open a stall on the table tennis table – there’s a touch of the Del Boy about this one! He sold bric-a-brac, and not to be outdone Thing 2 decided she also needed a stall. I had bought them some new acrylic paints, so her USP was painting rocks on request. I had some tiny pebbles that we’d sprayed white with primer, and she painted me a set of ladybirds for my shelves of frivolity in the shed. She also painted me – secretly – a puffin rock, as they are my favourite birds. Thing 3 helped his dad improve the water feature – here you can see him taking a well earned break!
Having been inspired by the Great British Sewing Bee, I painted some rocks to use as pattern weights – very useful when cutting outside! I usually use chunks of slate from the garden centre, but these pebbles have been hanging around for a while and now they’ll see more use.
Pattern weights drying in the sun
I have even managed some gardening! Hard pruning some hydrangeas transplanted from the neighbours last year, which are showing signs of life, and weeding out the wild garlic from the beds by my shed. I was really pleased to see the campanula survived the winter, and also the bleeding heart we bought at the sad plant section last year and which I snapped the stems off when planting out – it’s got flowers on and I hope it will self-seed. My hollyhocks are shooting up again, and my chinese lanterns.
Not such a sad plant!
The hammock has seen some use, too – crocheting and listening to birds in the afternoons. The BirdNET app has been so useful – I now know what the goldcrests sound like, and the chiffchaffs. The red kites seem to have stuck around, and I see them wheeling over the houses quite often. Other garden visitors have included the fox, the badger and a tiny mouse.
The mouse – and can you see the squirrel?
Let’s see what week six brings us! Have a great week.
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
Plan for the Worst (Chronicles of St Mary’s) – Jodi Taylor
The Language of Spells and The Secrets of Ghosts – Sarah Painter
Soundtrack for the week:
John Mellencamp, Creedence Clearwater Revival, John Prine
What Kirsty did next 