Wall Hanging

It's been a long weekend, as we had Friday off. We spent the day helping Cath & Jason move house—they've not gone far, so it was five of us with a Transit van, while baby & dog were with Cath's mum. It wasn't too traumatic, in all: they completed around noon, and their buyer wasn't actually moving in on the day, so it wasn't too stressful. Fortunately, we managed to corkscrew their sofas up a rather unpromising twisted staircase...which was by no means certain for a while.

Today and yesterday have been relaxedly getting on with the wall-hanging/curtain for the dining room for me, which is almost finished, while Liz has got on with bits and pieces around the house. Yesterday, that included painting the downstairs windowboards and reveals, which are now looking really good. The gloss could do, really, with another coat, but that'll wait until spring, when I hope to do the window frames too. The weather's been atrocious, so the only things we did outside were to rearrange a delivery of firewood on the drive, ready for chopping, and harvest some Jerusalem artichokes (delicious), parsnips (one good, one rather forked), and scorzonera (to be eaten).

Wall Hanging

We're just back from a weekend visiting David and Ann, which has been really relaxing. We called in on Liz's sister on the way home, too. Back home, now, and this week we're planning to make progress on the wall hanging/curtain that will cover the insulation on the gable wall of the dining room. I hope to make good progress, but I'm not convinced we'll finish it.

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.

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.

Quilting

We managed to spend most of today on our leafy quilt, which will eventually go in our bedroom. I'll find a photo, but it's been nice to make progress. Sadly, it's the last day of our holiday, so part of the day was getting ready to return to work: lunch boxes, work bags, and bikes ready. Ah, well. It's been the longest break we've had in several years—since our honeymoon, we reckon—as a result of taking Friday 23rd off as well as our 'normal' Christmas break of a fortnight.

Roll on 2012...

To-Do List

Several days of working on a to-do list that we'd 'saved' until our holiday...

• The workshop's been tidied up, and I've installed the replacement bolts on the workshop and garage doors.
• We've made another batch of marmalade. This time we used two lemons and four oranges, which came to just under 0.75 pints of juice. You're meant to add 0.75pt of water (and 6lb sugar) to the Marmade tin; I reckon you should make at least two-thirds of this juice (half a pint), and potentially all of it. With this extra pectin, the boiling time was only about 12 minutes (not the 15 the tin calls for). I looks like another good batch!
• Another tree surgeon's been to look at the poplars.
• Our attempt to purchase the hill-side opposite the house has, sadly, come to naught. No great surprise, but we thought we'd enquire!
• It's been raining for about 48 hours, so we've had to put out buckets to catch the drips in Jenny and Philip's conservatory (they're away for another week).
• I've put a ceiling light in the middle of the dining room.
• I've replaced the light switch in the cellar with a waterproof one, as the wall often gets lots of condensation, which didn't feel safe.
• Liz has, with heavy heart, taken down the Christmas decorations.
• We've sorted out the Christmas fabrics (windowsill runners, tablecloths, etc), and finished hemming the tablecloth for the kitchen.
• Crushed and stored a big bunch of applemint that's been drying, ready for making tea.
• Found the divider for the floor between kitchen and utility room, and started thinning it down to fit.

Patchwork Exhibition

We had my parents visiting for the weekend, and had a pleasant and relaxing time with them. We discovered the Bankfield Museum, which is an unassuming gem outside Halifax. It currently has an exhibition of patchwork by members of a local quilting group: there are some beautiful, and innovative pieces on show. There are also permanent exhibitions of textiles, a Duke of Wellington's Regiment museum, a costume gallery, and a toy gallery. It's well worth a visit.

We made a seriously tasty apple and almond pudding cake, too, which I will endeavour to load onto the recipe page when I get round to it.

Pondering

Although Sunday was rather wet, Friday (a day's leave) and Saturday were dry for reasonable stretches, so it's been a fairly effective weekend.

I started dismantling some more old pallets on Friday, to augment the compost bins with, while Liz weeded the onions. We didn't get all that far, unfortunately, before rain stopped play; we did, though, therefore sew the last curtain tie-backs for the kitchen. Saturday morning also started out wet, so we began the day by lifting the paperwhite narcissi that gave us some much-needed winter flowers. The flowers ended in January, but we gave the foliage as long as possible to die back, and fed the bulbs a few times (Chempak's low nitrogen #8, with NPK 12.5:25:25, to encourage root and flowers, but not foliage). The bulbs are now dry and dormant, so we've lifted them, cleaned them, and will put them somewhere cool and dark to wait out the summer. We started with 45, but there are several that have started to split, and have (currently joined) offspring forming, so hopefully next year the stock will be noticeably increased.

When the rain cleared, we got back outside, and continued where we'd left off. I finished assembling a third compost bay (a bit smaller than the first two, because of space constraint), and turned the contents of the existing bays (bay 2 into 3, then 1 into 2). The older heap (2) isn't doing as well—a bit dry, and not rotting very well, so I watered it after mixing it. Bay 1 was doing well: nice and hot, and rotting nicely, so hopefully it will go still better after aerating.

Liz's mammoth weeding session has left all the vegetable and fruit beds looking much better, although she's left with sore hands and back.

Sunday morning dawned clear, so we got straight outside to ponder our plans for the middle lawn. It's divided in two by the cover of the septic tank, which we have to build into our ruminations.

The Middle Lawn (from the north end).

It is, however, a very good size. We'd always wanted to keep the bigger, more level, more regular shaped part (the foreground above) for a 'games' lawn—somewhere large enough for badminton, short tennis, clock golf, boules, croquet, and the like. However, we've never checked whether it's actually the right size, rather than just looking about right. So, we dug out Liz's grandfather's length of rope, marked up for a badminton court, and set about laying it out. It's the circumference of the court, with marks for where the main lines go, so it makes it all rather easy. The lawn, it transpires, is approximately 7 feet short, but also about 7 feet wide; so the badminton court won't be quite regulation, but is eminently playable.

Yes, we checked it was playable. In wellies. And a breeze.

This, obviously, is excellent—the septic tank is immovable, and we don't want to reduce the beds. It won't be Olympic regulation size, but I'm not that fussed. We also checked croquet-suitability. It's a little small for serious use, but for a casual game, entirely satisfactory.

The culmination of this is that we can now go about laying the extra beds at the edges of this lawn, and remove the gorse/cotoneaster we don't want, knowing that the grass area is sufficient, and we don't need to revise our plan for which bit of lawn to leave large and quadrilateral.

We've also been intending to get our three pot-grown fruit trees (a plum, an apple, and a cherry) into the ground. They've not been really happy for the last 18 months, and we think they need to get out of their pots. Our master plan calls for a pond on the opposite side to the tank in the photo above—that's the foreground of the next photo. We've marked something tentative out with sticks'n'string (as normal), and we'll see how it feels. However, it's basically right, so I've lifted turves where the fruit trees will go, near the pond (yes, I know I'll need to clear leaves from the pond!). These appear like monumental mole hills in the photo—but as soon as it's dry for long enough, they'll be replaced with fruit trees.

Looking onto the Middle Lawn from the east corner.

Snow!

Saturday morning caught us by surprise, as we hadn't anticipated snowfall: nonetheless, there were a few inches waiting. This rather reduced our enthusiasm for a day outside, which we therefore postponed to today. Saturday then vanished in pottering, tidying, and cleaning, but never mind; at least I got a big (72 rolls) batch of bread made, which should keep us going for two or three weeks.

Today, we've been rather more productive. Although we finished the kitchen curtains some time ago, we didn't make the tie-backs for them (nor are the requisite hooks up, but that's another story). We've started to address this, and have made three pairs, and cut the fabric for a fourth. At the same time, I finished a tablecloth from an off-cut of the curtain fabric, with a cream border to make it large enough. That leaves us with a pair to cut, and two to sew—and curtains and tie-backs for the utility room.

The snow having thawed somewhat, we also ventured outside, to get a few things done. First was pruning the fruit bushes (and a couple of other things), as the currants, gooseberries, and blueberries all needed attention. The acer and buddleja in the front also had a trim, actually. We then sowed some more seeds: peppers, aubergines, leeks, clematis (C. integriflora, a short species), more cauliflowers, carrots and parsnips. Who knows, some may even germinate. Some pyrethrum/chrysanths, which arrived last week, we potted up, too.

It's the time of year when I get excited about buds and shoots. In addition to the daffodils and crocuses which I've incessantly mentioned, the bluebells/scilla/puschkinia are all on their way up, and I've spotted promising buds on the lilac, rose, honeysuckles, rhubarb, fruit bushes, and acer. And some tulips are showing above ground, too. Now, if only I had a bit more time, and it wasn't so cold, I'd spend some more time outside.

The leaky chimney which vexed me a fortnight ago is now hopefully repaired. Our regular builder (he of the kitchen work) popped in on Friday and applied some sort of magic sealant, which should do the job. I suspect another look at it may be on the cards for the summer, but his rates are (very) reasonable, so I'm sanguine for now. There will, no doubt, be enough rain in my immediate future to establish whether it still leaks.

Pipes, Presents, Preparations and Pins

Mum and dad's visit yesterday went well (just quick, not least because it's snowy and travel's unpleasant); today's social worker visit has been rearranged to the New Year—she's fallen in the snow and aggravated an injury, preventing driving.

The house is now fully decorated, and there's an inordinate amount of greenery through the rooms. Upstairs, as normal, has escaped significant adornment, but there's a lot of holly, ivy, pine, and decorations downstairs. We finished making runners for the windows, too, which all look good, and enliven the sills.

This evening, we've done some of the preparing for the Christmas lunch, making a mango sorbet and chicken liver pâté. The latter, we've made before, very successfully and easily. It's good made in advance, and sealed under butter: once it's started, though, it needs to be eaten quite quickly. Which is fine, admittedly, and never a problem. The sorbet is new to us, and was splendidly simple to create...and will, I hope, taste good.

Unfortunately, the recent cold weather froze the pipes in the roof space above the utility room, and they chose this afternoon to thaw...revealing that both pipes had split. After staunching the flow, I had to reach into the loft, remove the split sections of pipe, and spliced in repairs. The only things I had available were, in fact, stopcocks, which aren't quite normal, but function well as over-specified straight connectors. This being a one-man job (the hatch to the space is a foot square, and one can't climb in), I left Liz wrapping the Christmas presents, and at least the tree now looks complete. Extra lagging is on order for the pipes: while I was up there, I've also installed loft insulation, as there was a minimum already in place.

Curtains

Finally, we got on with making curtains for the kitchen. Liz had started on of them, to check how it was going to work, a while ago, but we've spent the weekend working on the set. There are five windows in the dining room, which are all now finished (bearing some tweaking of the gathers). Unfortunately, we didn't quite get to the matching pair for the utility room, but never mind. The kitchen looks much better with curtains that are the right length, and all the same...

It's snowed again, too, and the track is not pleasant. We're not due more snow until Thursday, probably, but it's cold enough that what we have will almost certainly remain.

Of course, the curtains pretty much entirely occupied the weekend, so we've not got anything else to speak of done. It's a bit of a busy week ahead, predictably: we're at work Monday and Tuesday, then have visitors on Wednesday, a social worker coming on Thursday, and then preparations for Christmas Day (we're cooking the dinner...) will probably take up Friday!

Now: where did I put the wrapping paper?

Christmas Decorations

A busy weekend, partly spent outside, and partly in. We lifted the gladioli, which have been flowering since October. They hadn't really stopped, and we cut some of the flowers quite recently—but the snowfall has stopped them in their tracks, and I wanted to get them lifted as soon as possible, as they're not meant to be left out over the winter. As such, the thaw (the soil's no longer frozen, which helps!) was an opportunity. They're not looking in bad shape, considering they've been lifted before having a chance to die back naturally (one is meant to leave them for six weeks after flowering, to all the foliage to yellow and wither—but that would put us in mid-January).

Last year, we lifted them in mid November. Hopefully, they'll go into dormancy safely, and I can tidy them up (trim off the rest of the leaves, and extraneous roots), before putting them somewhere cold and dry until the spring.

After a general tidy-up (more leaves into the leaf-bin, some trimming, and the like), we came in, and have been making some Christmas decorations. We picked up some festive fabric while visiting friends. Some has been cut into two tablecloths (for the dining room), which will need hemming. Another piece has been edged with some red & gold holly print fabric, for a kitchen tablecloth, and several pieces of green & gold holly print have turned into runners to go along the windowsills. We had a few of these from previous years, to brighten the windows and complement the other decorations, and now have a complete set. Few bits still need doing (hems on tablecloths, mainly!), and I have a plan for some table-mats, but they'll all have to wait.