Busy, busy.......

Must have been the sunshine - got lots done! 5 loads of washing, 3 of them dry, one in basket, one up on pulley. Talk on the forum of mangles, so have put up an ad on our Freecycle for one, could be useful.
Got the onion skin wool dyed and out of the dye bath - now got some cotton in it for patchwork.quilting; also some wool in an alkanet dyebath. Will leave them overnight to stew a bit. Started off some fruit cocktail wine, hopefully fizzing away in the morning, and a lot of the green jumper knitted. No trees in, but will try again for them tomorrow - forecast doesn't bode well, but will wait and see.

On this day.........

Picked up a wonderful book in the charity shop last week - A Book of Days - a miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar; a Chambers book from many moons ago, now reprinted. Wonderful information in it, could lose myself for hours!!
Today, in 1942, the very first edition of Desert Island Discs was aired. Notabel births include Germaine Greer and Thomas Paine; deaths - George III,Edward Lear, Alfred Sisley and Robert Frost.

More on the non-electric endeavours

Still trying to reduce our dependency on electricity. thus, I have made my first non-electric butter, using the hand butter churn, and ground some home grown chillies in the grinder. We have used a stove top kettle for a couple of years now, but I am resurrecting what was my great grandmother's kettle for using now. It is in the process of being cleaned up on the inside, with several good thorough boilings, then needs a clean on the outside. Big, black and very heavy, lovely kettle, though, and I suspect if goes back further than my great grandmother. Nice connection to the past, with tea as an added bonus:0)

The end is nigh........

.....of January, that is! Gone quickly, this year, but I seem to have been busier than ever. I try to ahve a quiet start the the new year, but didn't seem to happen this time. Enjoyed Burns night over the road, haggis was good (for English haggis ;0) ), and some good ale to wash it down. Saturday all day was the open day at the Guild, so was busy demonstrating peg looms and talking about natural dyes. Bean came too, did some weaving and some spinning, and wants to join the Guild now, so that's good. Spent yesterday out in the garden as it was so nice down here. As a result, house looks as if the proverbial bomb has hit it - again. Still ahve bits of shopping from Friday to put away...........

Burns Night

Here we are again, Burns Night, 25th January! We've been invited over to the pub for haggis tonight, courtesy of the landlord, so no haggis cooking here today, will make it next week and have even more. I was brought up on Robert Burns poetry and songs, living in and around Dumfries for many years. On a forum I read a comment from an exceedlingly arrogant Englishman about how he "didn't rate Burns as a poet"; well, Burns was very much a poet of time and place. If you know nothing of the time or place he wrote in, then you can never know the man....................

Perfect prayer?

"..............I prayed for: a plot of land, not so very large, containing a garden; and near the homestead a spring of fresh water, and a bit of woodland to complete it."


Horace 65 - 8 BC

Don't you just hate it.........

...............when your OH turns up back from work at 1.45pm instead of the 5.30pm you expected........... he was back before me, and I was only up the raod. Ah well, at least I got the washing up done, not much else, though. Puts me right off for the rest of the day. :0) :0)