Monday 28 January 2013

Potato Chitting

Our seed potatoes arrived a little while ago, and we've now got them out, as traditional, in egg boxes in the study to chit.

After being a bit disappointed with 'Cara' last year, we've returned to 'Druid'. We've got 'Lady Christl' again (delicious, productive, and stores surprisingly well for a first early: past Christmas, in fact), and are trying out 'Swift' and 'Corolle'.

Sunday 27 January 2013

Two In A Row

For the second weekend running, we've managed to spend a day quilting. It's not exactly speedy work, but we're gradually making progress. We have enough pieces assembled, now, to mock up a reasonable extract of the main central section (roughly a quarter).

Quilt mock-up (© Ian 2013)

We're very pleased with how it's looking so far!

Rain and wind over the last couple of days has meant that that snow has almost all melted away, leaving very wet ground, but no more ice. We went up on the hillside, to check how the weighed down weed-proof fabric was doing (that is, whether it showed any signs of blowing away: all fine), and there are a number of little brooks running down the hill. And a spring which wasn't there before.

We've moved enough weighing-down rocks up, and measured and cut more squares of weed-suppressant, so when the ground's drier, we can cut more patches. Of course, we can probably start digging holes, too, on the next suitable weekend: that'll mean we can start actually planting trees.

Monday 21 January 2013

Quilting and Snow

We had a very pleasant weekend, getting on top of bits and pieces on Saturday, and then quilting all Sunday. I've now installed trace heating on the pipes in the roof-space of the utility room, which should ensure that they don't freeze. It's been on the to-do list for quite some time (three years), but never hit the top of it, as conditions cold enough to threaten a freeze are relatively infrequent, and we've managed by leaving the door to the kitchen ajar on those nights.

That's suboptimal, though, so thermostatically controlled heating is an improvement. I need to wire a spur socket, to make it a bit neater, but it's now basically sorted.

Sunday was more enjoyable (no fun working through a ceiling hatch with glass fibre insulation everywhere), and we made good progress on the quilt. We now have a complete set of nine appliqué leaves, and a good number of nine-block squares, with more in the works.

Heavy snow over Sunday night meant that today's been a snowed-in working-from-home day, spent in the sitting room with the stove warming us. And very effectively, at that.

Snowy  Lane (© Ian 2013)

The house in its frozen setting, from the hillside (© Ian 2013)

Birch trees on the hillside (© Ian 2013)

View from the hillside (© Ian 2013)

The house from the future site of the orchard (© Ian 2013)



Sunday 13 January 2013

Orchard Plan

It's been a long and tiring weekend, really, but we've cleared about 50m2 of gorse from the hillside, marked out where the 47 trees will go, and cleared and put down squares of weed-suppression on the spaces for about 17 of them.

The gorse patch from the kitchen gate (© Ian 2013)

The gorse patch from the drive (© Ian 2013)

Clearing the gorse was a matter of loppers (and secuteurs) and good gloves. Liz cleared a lot of brambles (horribly twisted and knotted in the gorse), while I concentrated on gorse. The gorse (unhindered by bramble) was rather quicker, and our respective speed showed. The gorse hid an enormous rabbit warren city, which they will now, no doubt, extend up the hill to better cover.

This, no doubt, explained the cats' interest in what we were doing: they spent most of Saturday supervising us.

Eventually, the gorse and brambles were cut, and today we turned to putting out bamboo canes to represent the trees we have planned.

 After clearing the gorse patch, and putting out the bamboos (© Ian 2013)

Roughly half (25) are for Scot's pines; the other 22 are ornamental or fruit trees. We had a bit of time left, so I got Sigrid out, and cleared patches around the first couple of dozen. Once we'd picked up the debris, we had time before the light failed to place 1m squares of weed suppressant membrane around the canes, and weight them down.

Sigrid worked really well, with the tri-blade attached, mowing through the undergrowth. There's a trick to keeping her clear of the long bramble lengths, and obviously the detritus needs clearing afterwards, but that's fine.

Canes marking future sites for the trees (© Ian 2013)

We finished the weekend by sowing sweet pea seeds: we're trying out a lot of varieties this year (14) in different colours, to work out which ones we think will work well in the corner's colour-wheel beds.

Sunday 6 January 2013

Quilting and Mincemeat

The last two days of our holiday have been a bit of a mix. We spent most of yesterday working on our quilt: we started cutting the calico squares for snowballs, adding the corners, and then applique-ing the leaves onto them. We're hoping to have at least some time next weekend getting a bit further, but this at least has made it possible to get a sense of how it will all look once finished.

We also undecorated the house, and swept up lots of holly leaves and berries; I put up a new coat hook in the utility room; and we made mincemeat.

Yes, mincemeat, for Christmas 2013. It improves with keeping! Same recipe as last year, a nominally 6lb batch, though it seems a bit less than that.

Friday 4 January 2013

Portiere Curtains

We've been finding that the house sports a number of draughts that we haven't previously solved. The back door and front door, especially, have a gale howling through the keyhole, and round the door, when the wind gets up (which it does, frequently). I've used foam strips as best I can, but they're not perfect.

Separately, we're aware that heat flows up the stairs, cooling the living rooms (which we'd like warm), and warming the bedrooms (which we'd like cooler).

Longer term, we're considering insulating the walls (the back wall externally, and the front wall internally), but that's a way off, but there are some changes we've been able to make immediately. Firstly, the long-unused curtain rail separating the landing has been put back into use over the last few weeks. Having proved workable, and having made a difference to the landing temperature, I've replaced the track with a pole, which has meant a set of tab-top curtains that were spare have replaced the unattractive curtain that moved there from my dressing room. The curtain now splits the landing into a small area at the top of the stairs and outside the two spare bedrooms, and a longer landing with the master bedroom and bathroom off it. This means that heat from downstairs only really escapes into the new small landing space, and not into the bigger rooms (which also have loft hatches).

I've also put a thick curtain up across the back door. It'll mean access through that door is slightly complicated, and that we won't, during cold weather, go out for any length of time using that door, but it should really help with the drafts.

This obviously doesn't work so well with the front door: a normal curtain across that door couldn't be drawn behind us on leaving, meaning it wouldn't be in place during the day, or if we go away. Instead, I have constructed an ingenious contraption that works to open and close the curtain with the door, while entirely covering it (that is, extending beyond the door's recess on all sides. Photo when I can. Basically, there's a shelf bracket and short vertical pole mounted at the top of the handle edge of the door, with a curtain pole 'cup' at the top. This brings the cup forward out of the door recess, and up above it. The cup can rotate, and the pole can move laterally along it: both of these are necessary freedoms, because of the non-coinciding pivot points of door and curtain pole. On the hinge side, on the wall, the curtain pole's mounted on a bracket modified to include a vertical bolt, through a hole in the pole. This is the pivot of the curtain. When the door's opened, the handle side of the pole moves with the door, rotating around the hinge-side pivot: it also moves hinge-wards, in the door frame of reference, and ceases to be parallel to the door (hence the requirements for sliding and rotating the handle-side fixing).

Relatively simple to make: you can buy portiere curtain poles, but those for recessed doors are expensive (~£100-120), and all this cost was £30, for a curtain pole and a shelf bracket, and a few bits and pieces (scrap wood, to mount things, and a machine bolt for the bearing).

I then put up similar affairs on the doors to the two spare bedrooms, to help compartmentalize the landing. Simpler, because there's no recess; instead of a bracket, the handle-side cup is mounted on a small vertical plank, which means the curtain pole is above the door level. The cup through which the pole slides needs modifying, though, because of the change in angle between door and pole; that's easy enough, though.

Lastly, I've put up the new outside light above the drive (much nicer than the old bulkhead lights), and wired in a PIR sensor so the lights come on when you approach the front door. Needs some tweaking (so it comes on for longer, and doesn't trip until you're closer), but very pleasing.