Feathered hen friends

I’ve been meaning to introduce you all to our chickens but crochet kept getting in the way. But now is a perfect time as my husband brought me a special present home from work with him last night.



Any guesses????



Yay! Two new girls to add to our brood. We’ve named them Natasha & Queenie. They make a fine addition to our 8 chickens that we’ve had for a few years now. Here’s where they live…



A perfect spot in the corner of our garden for our girlies to peck around and lay scrummy eggs.

I got a bit of a shock this morning when I got home. I saw this little munchkin looking at me through the back doors!



Her and her sister had both escaped from their enclosure! I was running round the garden for ages after them, goodness knows what my neighbours would think if they’d seen me! Finally, captured…



Once I’d retrieved them both and returned them back inside I watched for a while to see if I could see how they’d done it. Sure enough, a few minutes later, Natasha stood on top of the coop then flapped her wings and took flight up onto the top of the enclosure. From there it was easy to jump down to the garden. I gave chase again, she’s a quick one you know. There was only one thing for it, scissors. No I wasn’t about to make her into a Sunday roast! It was time to clip one of her wings. It’s what you have to do to un-balance them to prevent them from flying.



What gorgeous feathers they are too but a trim was definitely needed. They can’t feel it thank goodness, don’t think I could do it otherwise.





Lots of cuddles were had afterwards as they were so good. I think they forgave me for spoiling their little adventures.

Here’s some of our longer standing residents…



Scarlet in front & Lou-Mei behind.



Buffy is centre stage here and Beyoncé is to the left, to the left. (Did you like what I did there?!!)



Buffys sister, Afro Barbara.



Angel, trust me she’s no angel.



Honey, our biggest & puffiest hen.



And finally Delilah.

We’ve had a few others come and go over the years, Lemon, Kirstie Allsopp, Sarah Beeny, Olivia, Belinda & Cleo. Also Eric & Bob. They were thought to be girls but no. They were noisy cockadoodaling cockerels who wouldn’t leave poor Beyoncé alone. They just weren’t able to carry on with us, they were causing havoc so they went to live on a posh farm in Cheshire.



I love our little feathered hen friends, they make excellent pets, are easy to look after and have such individual characters. They also keep us supplied with lots of delicious eggs.



Chinese New Year

We ventured out in the freezing cold and rain today to Liverpool to celebrate Chinese New Year. There was still quite a good turnout considering the awful weather. Here’s a few snaps from China town….

Even the parking meter was beautiful! This Chinese arch is the largest outside of China.

We were a bunch of drowned rats after a good walk round so we decided to find shelter in a gorgeous teppanyaki restaurant for a spot of lunch. It was delicious. Thank you hubby!

Thanks for stopping by and reading my little blog, I’m really enjoying doing it. I’ll be back soon with my latest crochet work in progress. xxx

Keeping it local

This morning we had a lovely stroll through our village. It was bitterly cold, the sun was shining but we had a purpose. Our destination was this….

B:ox is a relatively new, local bakery, only open Saturday mornings. It opens at 8am and closes when the bread is all sold, usually by around 10am. You have to be quick! The few people we saw around the village at 8.15 were either on their way to or from the bakery. Word is spreading fast and it’s becoming a weekly ritual for a lot of the locals.
When I say bakery, it’s actually the basement of their house.

The bread is sold from a little outbuilding in their garden. The set-up is lovely.

B:ox is the love child of a local man. He’s been a professional chef for 30 years, whose cv includes culinary director for the 2010 Asian games and then for the 2012 London Olympics! It’s his true passion in life to produce REAL bread with no additives to the local community.

We made our selections, I could easily have bought more but I’ll wait till next Saturday. On our way home we popped into our local butchers too. He makes some gorgeous sausages. We often get some ready for breakfast on a Sunday morning. Yummy!

We are extremely lucky to have these local independent businesses on our doorstep and we all need to support them. You come away with a warm, wholesome, organic feeling and it’s nice.

Back at home I unpacked our baked goodies, a Rosemary flatbread, a brioche loaf and a sour dough loaf. Mmmm, they smell amazing. Time for that first and best cuppa of the day while my hubby makes my breakfast. Very nice it was too!

Happy weekend everyone xxx

Prettifying

After finishing my blanket, I had one night with no crafting. That was tough going and with no yarn to start my next project I decided to move onto another therapeutic pastime, deco patch.

I rescued this magazine rack from the boys bedroom last year with the plan of doing it up & using it myself. As usual it’s taken me a looong time to get round to it. I got my collection of deco patch papers and glue out ready to start transforming.

It’s really easy to use, just tear up your chosen paper into smallish pieces, put a thin layer of glue onto the wood, stick the paper then put another layer of glue on top of the paper. Just keep sticking and building it up until you get the desired look.

I wanted a kind of mis matched look so I used a different paper on each side. Once you’ve covered everything, give it a final layer of glue all over. This will dry to a hardened finish. Et voila, one far prettier magazine rack. Only trouble is, I kept all my deco patch papers in here so now I need to find them a new home.

It fits perfectly next to my enormous stack of ideal home magazines. There’s no magazine rack big enough to house those!
While I was doing this I realised my dresser had gotten extremely cluttered and messy, it needed sorting.
This was the before….

And this was the after…..

There’s still quite a lot of stuff on here but it’s a definite improvement on before. I mustn’t let it get that bad again!

Baby blanket… Complete!

From little foundation chains grows a good size baby blanket.

I’m delighted to say my first ever crochet project is finished, hooray! It didn’t take me quite as long as I thought. It’s a good size for a first project, just manageable.

Once I’d lovingly crocheted 30 granny squares, I arranged them randomly until I was happy with them then attached them all together using single crochet. This was the result:-

It was great to see it finally coming together as I’d imagined it, although this was when it really showed up any mistakes and slight differences in the size of squares. Oops! I wanted to give it a border to finish it off. I did a row of treble crochet around the whole blanket.

Then I did another row….

I do think now, looking at it, that it may look a bit neater if all the squares were the same. Or at the very least all the same colour on row 5 (the outside row). You don’t know these things till its a bit late though.

It wasn’t quite complete so I decided to learn how to do a nice scalloped edging.

I was so pleased with how this came out and it didn’t take too long to do it either. Towards the end of this blanket I managed to squeeze a few extra moments of hooky time in, I was really wanting to get to the finish line and getting a little bit of an addiction along the way.
So here it is, the finished article that I’ve been banging on about……
.

Now I’ve finished I’m actually feeling a little sad, I miss it already. I’m sure project no 2 will be along very soon. The 3 older kids have already requested a blanket each! Better go yarn shopping. In the meantime, little Baby J can enjoy mummy’s handiwork.

Happy hooking xxx

Near the end

Just a quick post to say it won’t be long before crochet project no 1 will be coming to an end. I’m really quite excited! I decided earlier to lay my squares out to gage the size and realised that I only need 2 more squares to make what I think is a large enough baby blanket for my little cutie. He’s only dinky after all.

I’m sitting here as I type with Glenn Miller blaring out of my iPod crocheting my very last square of this, my first ever crochet project!! I’ve been watching tutorials on how to join all my little squares together, once I’ve mastered that, I want to put a border all around the edge to finish it off. I can’t wait! I’ll be back in a couple of days with the finished results, I promise ……. Xx

I’m hooked!

Well I’ve finally got around to posting about my new favourite thing, crochet. Been too busy hooking! It took some getting the hang of I can tell you, but I was determined I was going to keep trying until I managed it. I spent many hours on you tube watching various tutorials, had my stack of books from the library which I studied. The books weren’t really helping me to learn, they gave me plenty of inspiration though. Lots & lots of projects I’d like to have a go at. I found I needed real, moving pictures to show me, where I could pause, try, play, pause, catch up, play, then rewind…. And do it all again! I just kept plodding on until that moment where that little switch in your head flicks on and you just GET IT. It’s just a case of finding a way that you understand, that makes perfect sense. It can be different for everyone.

My friend who’s an amazing knitter had wanted to learn to crochet for a while too. She’d gotten really frustrated and hadn’t found any tutorials that helped her. She decided to start a little crochet group at her house once a week. What a fantastic idea that was! There was talk of us maybe paying someone to come & teach us as a group but I think we’re doing amazingly on our own. There’s 3 of us so far and it’s working really well. We’ve all mastered the granny square and our first blankets are growing nicely. I’ve done about 25 squares up till now, not sure how many I’ll need for the finished product. It’s going to be for Baby J so won’t need to be huge. Here’s a little look at some of the squares so you can get an idea of what it’ll look like.

I took these photos a couple of weeks ago now so my little stack has grown quite a bit. It’s very satisfying seeing them all piled up! I’m trying to do a square a day, more if I can. I try and start a square while baby j is in the bath, any little opportunity. That’s the good thing about crochet, you can pick it up and do as little or as much as you want. The putting it down is getting harder, I say to myself, just one more row…. I’ll just go to the next corner….
My husband will look over at me in the evenings, see I’m hooking again and roll his eyes! Last night though I took shelter in the tranquil environment of my dining room while there was a big footy match going on. A little crochet accompanied by a glass of red made for a pleasant evening 😉 xx

Happy things

Here’s a few little things that have been making me happy these last few days…

Gorgeous daffs blooming in the dining room.

Pressies from my hubby. Just because x

Dozens of spring bulbs starting to sprout at a local florists.

Really unusual piece of architecture spotted on a walk. My family think I’m bonkers taking photos of all these random things!

And last but not least, special 16th birthday celebrations for my step-daughter. Fun was had by all.

Thanks for stopping by xxxx

Craft crazy

That is so true! If crafting or creating is your thing then it does take over. It’s always ticking away in various parts of your brain with little sparks of inspiration, even while you sleep. I have so many projects on the go at the moment. Some are just in the very early stages, still in my head. Some I started ages ago or I’ve been collecting all the ingredients together over weeks or months in preparation for the moment when I might come to actually make it real. I’m that dizzy with it all spinning around in my head that I don’t seem to be able to actually achieve anything. Especially seeing as though the time I get to create is so very limited. I really need to slow it down & focus. One thing at a time, I need to prioritise, breathe, then maybe I might start to see some of my projects completed.

One little thing I did manage to finish this week was this card.

It’s a birthday card for my lovely nan.

She’s going to be 90 years young next week, how amazing is that!

My nan still has an allotment on the go you know, gardening has always been her passion. She’s not quite as nimble as she used to be but for 90 she’s absolutely fantastic.

I hope she likes it as much as I enjoyed making it.

As I type, the sun is shining in directly onto my basket of crochet. Do you think it’s trying to tell me something??

Boys….Urghh

If you’re expecting some kind of crafty, creative blog today then look away now.

Aren’t boys vile? Especially the teenage variety. I took it upon myself this week to give the boys bedroom a proper good spring clean, under much protest I might add. They said there’s nothing wrong with it. What dirt? Take my word for it, it was very much in need of a CLEAN. Well, Kim & Aggie would have been more suited to this one. Where were a pair of feather trimmed, zebra-print rubber gloves when I needed them? This was just a selection of what I came across on my brave, stupid, never doing again task:-

43p in 1p’s
8p in 2p’s
40p in 5p’s
A handful of coins from around the world
Just 5 odd, dirty socks (surprisingly)
6 half used packs of pocket tissues
A library book due back 21st Oct 2013
1053 match attax cards
2 hot water bottles with stagnant, smelly water inside
18 sets of unwanted Top trumps
6 rather suspect slimy lumps of goo, stuck to the floor, rock solid
37 old birthday/christmas cards
842g of dust (that’s an awful lot of dust)
3 old mobile phones, completely outdated but perfect to give to the little man who likes to pretend he’s talking on the phone.
1 digital camera, used for maybe 4 months, 7 years ago

I’ve not even finished yet, I’ve still got to go under their sofa & in the wardrobe. How can they live like that? How can they think that’s ok? I didn’t bring them up in a filthy, manky, disgusting home so why do they think it’s fine/normal/not a problem?
I’ve been kind and spared you any visual proof of the above, I’m sure those of you with any experience of teenage boys will be sympathising right now & nodding in agreement.

I’ll be back soon with something much nicer & prettier.

After I’ve enjoyed a nice glass of wine & a spot of crochet.

Vicki x