Pleasant way to spend an hour on a Friday afternoon

Get hold of your local paper, sit down with a big mug of good coffee and turn to the property pages :)  These days a lot of the properties are online, so you can peruse the insides of the houses, see the gardens, and cast a critical eye (lol) over their decor.  My local paper turned up this wee gem this afternoon - I tell you, if I had the money this would be mine, it's just lovely. Would have liked a few photos of the garden, but if the house is anything to go  by................. http://www.symondsandsampson.co.uk/residential/searchresults.aspx?display=details&pid=STU120138&fastfind=true

Interesting survey on craft

http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/about-us/press-room/view/2012/newsarticle-201202150943-4f3b7e450aff5?from=%2Fabout-us%2Fpress-room%2F

Update on the natural dyeing

I've completed four skeins so far, and am so pleased with the results; such soft and gentle colours. This pic shows them together - top left is black tea, top right is the Black Turtle beans, bottom left the nettle  a lovley soft pistachio green, hard to capture  on a photo), bottom right is the onion skin.

Bean dyeing

No, not a typo lol; this latest skein is dyed with Black Turtle beans, just bought in a supermarket. The resulting colour is an exquisite shade of duck egg blue, matching the Runner duck eggs in my egg bowl. It looks particularly stunning against the onion skin dyed skein I did last week: I think any project I decide to do with them will have the two colours in. There is a big pan of fresh nettles and wool on the go as I type , for the next instalment :)

Sunday afternoon in the garden

It was like midsummer in The Vale this afternoon, so I spent a few hours outisde; watered the greenhouses - things are really doing well, and there'll be much potting on needing to be done this coming week, some for my garden, some for selling at the gate. I just sat a lot too, soaking up the warmth and sunshine, listening to the birds and myriad bussing insects out and about their daily doings. Just coming into flower now are some of my absolute favourites, the aquilegias; I picked a few for the kitchen table, and there are a lot more to come of all hues,singles and doubles, darks and lights, dramatic and understaed - it's all there in the aquilegia family. Love them.

Small treats for a Saturday

You  really don't have to spend a lot of money to treat yourself if you look around and keep your eyes open :)  My spare money gets spent on wool/fabric, the garden and books mainly - things that give me a lot of pleasure, and long lasting pleasure at that. There is a little roadside plant stall in a nearby village I frequent quite a lot - she has very good cottage garden pants - nothing fancy schmancy, but well grown and excellent prices. I came away with 10 foxgloves, an alchemilla mollis ( can't have enough of that, one of the prettiest things when adorned with fresh raindrops, never tire of it), a campanula and two ragged robins; further west I came across a new-to-me stall, run by a  florist - lots of pretty bunches artistically arranged, and a ew nice perennials too. I bought a good sized heuchera  'Caramel' - with peachy tawny leaves. Funnily enough, I wasn't keen the first time I spotted this when it became available a ew years back, but I loved the colour today, so it came home with me for £2. The first lot of plants were £10, so for the total of £12, a well-filled box of plants that will give me hours of pleasure and lots of babies , and rejuvenate the patch outside the kitchen window so I can look at them all while I wash up  :) We drove home via Thorncombe Wood (where Thomas Hardy's cottage is), and I sat for a good quarter hour listening to truly beautiful birdsong and looking at the last of the bluebells Made a detour up and over Bulbarrow to smell the wild garlic, and stopped on the top for a while; my house is just to the left of the yellow rape in the fields there; on a very clear day, with a telescope or binoculars, you can actually see it! The view is right out and over the Blackmore Vale and I never tire of it, whatever the weather To round off the day nicely, my new-to-me book was waiting for me  when I got home; I'm really looking forward to starting this , and have a feeling it won't be put down until the very last word is read :)

Thought for a late Friday evening

Been a bit of a week for me - lots of  'stuff' going on -  environment, justice, peace, lots of reading to do, noddingof head, shaking of head vehemently, throwing up hands in despair, wanting to shake a couple of people very hard to get some sense into them - you know the sort of week lol. And there's another one soon..............!!