here, there and everywhere

I used to think that spring is my busiest time, with all the gardening jobs etc. but it seems that bit by bit autumn becomes busier as well! or maybe it's just me getting older?:) anyway, I am trying my best to keep up with it all, but it means that there's little time left for blogging about it.

I have been picking stuff all over the veggie plot, but on the fruity side our harvest will be miserable this year. a tiny bowl of plums, a few elderberries and the usual rosehips. plus some raspberries... the only thing I can still pick and quite regularly (even though not in huge amounts) are the blueberries. we eat some and I freeze some... and look forward to repot a new addition to my blueberry selection, which I received a few days ago:) the measly harvest doesn't surprise me - that's what you get when the weather has been cool and wet since spring!

the only plants in the vegetable area, which grew exceedingly well were the kales, nero di toscana. I prefer the smoother leaves to the more curly kales, because they are so much easier to wash (I am not a vegetarian, but I don't like creepy crawlies in my meals:)) the chillies are a bit of a surprise, because they were red in the photo on the label - but stayed yellow with me. I think I am going to turn most of them into a paste, "diluted" with tomatoes, because we don't really eat very hot food. should be enough to last us a whole year:)

 

 this is another first for us - grapes! we tried for years to grow them, but it never worked until we tried this variety (black hamburg? not sure....) inside our dome. outside they make a lot of leaves, but nothing in the way of flowers, never mind grapes. they are small, but they do taste nice! we have to share them out evenly, because there are so few to go around:)

the small pinkish berries are berberis berries! this breed has white berries that turn pink when ripe. they have a very clean lemony sour taste - maybe I should juice some and use it instead of lemon juice? not sure they would do well in a jelly....

 

I did pick a small bowl of blackberries (wild, they grow everywhere, but aren't exactly plentiful either this year) and decided to make a berry cake. I made a sponge base and covered it generously with (bought) strawberries and our own raspberries, blackberries and blueberries. then I covered it all in a fruity jelly, made from fruit juice, some sugar and gelatine. (forgot to take a photo of the finished cake!). which tasted nice, but was a bit of an effort, because I started rather late and it took ages to set. and of course eventually I didn't have quite enough, so I had to start again with an instant job in a bag - close to two in the morning:) which had to be added hot - and started to melt the gelatine at the bottom, so part of it all seeped out at the bottom.... I could write a book about cake "stories" like that!

this is a mini lemon! I got my hands on one and gave it to my husband for his birthday. it was small, but covered in buds. it has flowered quite generously, but the first lemons were tiny, about the size of a generous blueberry! the second set though is much bigger now! I wonder if they treated the plant with growth stunt, so that it will slowly turn into a normal lemon producing tree? wouldn't mind that, because I think those small lemons are difficult to squeeze... at least they are untreated "bio" lemons and we're checking every day if one of them has turned yellow yet:))

 

 

 

 

a few days ago we had a mighty hailstorm out of nowhere. no plants were damaged but after a while we found this dragonfly dead in a large puddle:( I think it must have been too fragile to withstand hailstones like that, but we were too late to save it from drowning:( they are so very beautiful with their huge, fragile wings - the pattern in them looks like smoky lead glass pieces!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and from this angle you can see why they served as inspiration for the first helicopters. the wings look just like the blades of a heli before take-off.

 

 

I do bits and pieces on the side, during tea breaks etc. I dug out another bag ful of old cotton yarns and started to make wash mitts. I can use only so many dishcloths, but wash mitts are nice for small gifts! stuff a nice piece of soap inside (handmade, if you can find one), pack 2 or 3 nicely and you'll have a secret santa or a small something, when you visit someone.

 

for tv knitting I started the revontuli with my "black to white" handspun merino. this photo was taken about 10 days ago, the start in deep black (sorry, the flash doesn't like to show deep black:). it is a very simple pattern, after the first few rows it really is more or less mindless knitting.

 

this photo is from today and you can see that I am nearly done. I am going to reach the white part soon - though I have to say that by now the whole thing is a bit boring to knit. no wonder, with close to 500 stitches per row and nothing much to do but knit stockinette, with an increase every 50 sts or so. I know - it looks like a bag, but with so many stitches on the needle, I cannot even open the knitting up on my longest one! another two or three tv evenings - and I should be ready to block!

this is the dark blue silk (handspun) again, for which I couldn't find the right knitting pattern. I tried quite a few, but didn't like any of them. when I checked one of my crochet mags (crochet accessories 2011) I stumbled across a very open pattern, adorned with some beads. I would like to make a scarf for myself, silky and not too warm, more decoration than garment, and I quite like the open effect so far. the beads are matte silver-lined glass, only blues and turquoise plus some clear glass, also silver-lined for a bit of sparkle. they remind me of sea glass, so maybe I should call the scarf mermaid's net with sea glass?:) I did discover something weird though, when I took the pic - I must have gone senile this morning, because I turned after doing only half a row - and now have a funny step in the middle. nothing for it but to frog, but luckily it's only half a row.

now off for kitchen duty - right now I wouldn't mind a holiday, preferably with lots of knitting time - and no gardening jobs whatsover:)

quick update

three entries in one day - must be a first! I just wanted to let you know that Shadow isn't here anymore. we found her owners - and her name is Muggy, if I got that right. no, I don't like that name - but the dog was clearly happy to be reunited with her owner:) and vice versa! we found out, that she isn't a Husky mix after all - but an Alaskan Malamute mix! she was only here for 3 days - but I do already miss her. ok, not the chewing on furniture/wool/toes - but her affectionate personality made up for all her mischief. on the other hand I can see that our old dog is relieved - she immediately ran to her favourite place and plonked herself down with a big sigh - and went to sleep. the only problem now might be that she lives right on our way into town and will probably run wild every now and then. but at least we'll know now where she belongs and can ring to have them pick her up if she does follow us again!

 

we'll see how long it takes for another one to make a trip to our animal holiday home here:)

and the rest

so, now you know all about "shadow" (I do wonder what her real name is!). isn't she gorgeous? ok, full of mischief, but adorable, too! I do hope we'll find her owner, even though I'd love to keep her. but then she is still young and full of funny ideas - and our old Dobby is a bit overwhelmed by so much attention. because of her injured hind leg she can't play and fool around for long anymore, something shadow just doesn't understand. and I am sure she's still growing - also a little bit of an elephant (little miss trample....)! we don't really have the time to train her properly just now! the trouble is that she's so cute, that it's hard to tell her off! she just makes this clown face, "grins" at you and shows her tummy - it's not easy to be angry at her when she does that:)

 

I did do a few other things in the meantime of course. I've been crocheting and knitting dish cloths out of leftover cotton yarns. no pictures of those, went straight into use. I also used a few smaller balls of fine cotton, which I found in the recycling center a while back. the colours are "wake me up and do the dishes", right?:)

 nothing special really. just single crochet, half green and half pink, two triangles. I tried to make the edge a bit pretty by adding this 2coloured pattern... simple to do, but quite effective. I have nearly a full cone (1kg) of the green - and nearly 2 full ones (2 kg) of the pink! what am I going to do with the pink especially? I also have a softer yellow, which would go well with the green and tone it down a bit, but the pink I have no idea for. no garment for myself, that's for sure - I don't want to stop traffic on the road!

 

I finally got around to blending and spinning my white to black sequence. the smaller pieces are the top as it came, the fluffy bits in between the blends I made up from them.

 

in hindsight I should have blended one or two more batches with the white, because all the colours flow - just not the white to the first grey. I think I'll try the revontuli with it, probably from black to white, because I have more of the white yarn. not sure if it will be enough though...

 

when I showed my fairy-tale yarns at the last spinner's meeting, one of our members fell in love with "rose red"... she was so enamoured with it that she even wanted to buy it, but of course I still need it for the full project. when I stumbled across the leftover pink and rose tops at home some time later, I thought I'd just spin up the rest and give some to her. it's a bit "greener", because I only had light green soy silk to ply with, no pink silk left. I added a few ribbon roses and hope she still likes it slightly changed (if she doesn't, that's ok - I'll just keep it:)

 

I also finished the first of two baby cardies, the second one is on the needles. simply done, like a ballet wrapover, just with a little frill at the bottom. it's soft and fine sea island cotton - though I have to wash it again now, because Shadow, aka the "uptonogood" dog, had to wipe her nose on it:(

 and I am way behind in the garden - too many other things have to be done right now! and a nosy dog, digging holes in my veggie plot as soon as we get there isn't really helping. though I am sure that she's very proud of herself, fertilizing the plantings and jumping on those ugly small polytunnels to flatten them!

I did wonder about one of my new plants though - I bought two tubers of begonia odorosa. this is one of them in flower. they are a pinky-red on the outside - and yellow on the inside!

oddly enough, the other tuber, supposedly the same, flowers like this. practically no yellow and single, not double blossoms. it's not the odd one out, none of the flowers show any yellow or double petals! and the oddest thing to me - they have no scent whatsoever! why is it called odorosa then??? anyway, they both do look pretty, but it's not the first time I get mix-ups like that in my flower pots!

this is it for now - it's oddly quiet downstairs and given that nobody has claimed shadow yet - I'd better get down and check what she's been up to.... I do hope that somebody rings about her soon - or our house will need a complete makeover:)  

a dog story....

hi guys! I am new here.... I am a girl, teenage age, they say - and I love to play and have fun. well, that's why I am here actually, but more about that later.

 there are three people here (and one old dog...more about that later, too:). they can be fun, but sometimes they are a bit odd. they don't want to play all the time! but I do - and if they don't, well, I won't let them out of the door... simple as that. no attention, no space to move.                                                                         hm, that didn't work out so well - those humans! they just went out the back door! unbelievable! alright, you asked for it. let's see what I can do to get attention.                                                                         

there's a lot of stuff in this house to play with. I found two balls of this - it rolls around, makes loops and knots, you can throw it in the air - and when someone finds you doing it, you do get a lot of attention! ok, the first time I didn't do it right - I ran to the boy to show him what I found. he wasn't too pleased - and took it away from me. but the second time round I got clever - and started to fuzz it up a bit - under the table:) it took them a while to find it - but boy, did I get attention this time! ok, the woman was a bit miffed, she yelled  at me and told me off - and she didn't give me a chewing stick even though the other dog got one! maybe they don't like it, when I play with their stuff?

 

ok, if I am not allowed to play inside - I'll just go off and try the outside... now, where's the old lady gone to? she must be here somewhere; I can smell her!!

righto, there you are! let's play a bit then... come one, don't be lazy... give it your best shot!

she is a bit odd, that one - eventually she gets a bit cranky, so I better give in - truce! (you have to appease her and let her win, even though you could just bowl her over.... she's got a limp and gets tired early - the old ones are funny, eh?)

 

puh, what a day, I think I need a rest - maybe I ate a bit too much? never mind, give me five minutes.... I could shred a bit of cardboard later - or jump on the table again. yesterday I got told off again - there was some meat lying on the sink! it smelled so good that I took it down - which they didn't like! should have put it somewhere else then, ha! and you know what they did? they gave it to the old one - even though I caught it! yep, humans can be really mean:(

the woman said I should behave and look nice for a photo. what's that supposed to mean? I always look nice! alright, alright, here you go then.... that's me at my best. they call me shadow btw. but that's not my real name! because - well, I don't really live here. I just followed the woman, when she passed me on her bike. she was nice and played a bit with me, so I thought, hell, why not have a little day trip! I've been here a few days, but I don't know my way back now! and anyway, it's ok here - maybe I should stay?

 

so, this is "shadow's" story... if this dog belongs to you, please contact me soon. I am sure you must miss that lovely dog (ok, she's a bit like a ball wrecker sometimes, but really sweet, too:) a lot!

not getting anywhere?

do you know that feeling, when you're working your butt off - but don't seem to get anywhere? right now I am busy on all fronts, but nothing ever gets finished! the building work goes on, the garden work goes on as long as the weather allows me to work outside. but it doesn't look like a lot of progress on the shed and the garden is still the overgrown jungle it was 2 months ago! add to this the damage this cursed rabbit is doing - and it leaves me with a desperate wish for late autumn/winter! the veggie plot looks rather odd now, nearly everything has to be covered with nets, old curtains, fleece etc.... funnily enough the rabbit doesn't like the japanese indigo, which isn't covered. not that it's putting on much growth, I think it dreams of warmer places and more sun.... but maybe it will do a bit more now that we have a week of more summery temperatures? the measly plants are on the left, right beside the healthy looking late batch of potatoes. the only plants that don't seem to care about the weather:)

this is our wine, which has set grapes for the first time ever! we haven't had any luck with plants outside, and in the greenhouse I had to play bee and pollinated a bit with a q-tip, but at least we won't need to thin out the fruit bunches:) it's a red wine supposedly, but we're still early in the season for grapes, so we'll wait and see what happens....

the only plant I'll be fully self-sufficient with will be chillies. we don't really eat very hot food, so I only need them sparingly, but the 6 plants I have are full of chillies, which started to ripen during the last few days. at least I think they're fully ripe now, because the first orange one has been on the plant for a long time and it didn't change to red, purple etc. anyway, I am not sure I'll be able to dry them properly, so maybe I should either freeze them or pulp them up into a paste?              the green leaves on the left are from a cedronella plant, which grows away nicely and dries quite well, even in our humid climate. it gives off a slightly camphorous scent, fresh and clean somehow. I'll collect some and maybe use it as a moth repellent between my woolly stuff....

 I also took a few pix of my fuchsias, dahlias etc. they are all in full swing now! the fuchsias just because they're pretty (don't they look like frilly dresses with petticoats underneath?:) - the dahlias for dyeing. I have three of the red pompons and was able to collect one big bag full of frozen flowers so far. but the plants are full of buds, more to come for my dyepot!

 a "coral" fuchsia, totally different shape - and no frills at all.

 this is one of the many crocosmia "luzifer" plants. they look a bit like a fiery freesia, but they are pretty hardy and survived even the two very cold winters a few years back. and they multiply nicely, too! I wonder - the colour is so much like the red dahlias - would they dye orange and yellow as well? another one I have to try out...

this little flower is a dahlia, too! dahlia merckii, one of the original species, which surprisingly survived the winter cold after all. I had several of the clumps in the garden, but only this one made it through. I am happy that it did, because they are easily grown from seeds, so that I can add to my collection again for next year....

of course it's not only flowers around here, but when the weather is this good I have to work on the outside most of the time. I did finish the green to go with the two other colours though. I am planning on knitting a "fletta" cardie, the cardinal is the main colour, green and pink (softer and a bit lighter than the photo shows) are accent colours.

and I started to spin up the leftovers of my "sock orgy" - this is the wool/silk blend I dyed for the sky area. very soft and cushy....

I also tried a few small bits to knit on the side. my first set of wrist warmers (saw them here) was shorter, tighter and had "steps" that looked nicer somehow. I think I should have added more rows into each step with the longer one - or less stitches to make them more pronounced? anyway, they're nice and warm - once it's colder again:) off into the giveaway box with them...

I've had an idea about my fairy-tale yarns. I think I'll start a big shawl, more or less rectangular, or rather "free-form". I plan to follow the tale a bit and add and take away the yarns just as if the story unfolds and the character come into play. I am going to spin either a dark brown or dark green (forest colours) for this, to keep the yarns separated a bit, not too close to each other and I'll use freeform knitting (and maybe crochet) in the project. maybe (thanks for the idea, Andrea:) I'll also assign certain stitches and patterns to each character - but I have a feeling that it will take some time and effort to work that one out into a usable garment:)

to keep my hands busy I am also working on a baby cardie from fine sea island cotton that I still had in stash, in a natural white, with a little frill at the bottom. not much to show yet, but I am rather glad that I managed to change over from the frill with 225 sts in each row (just for the back!) to a much quicker knit of 75 sts for the rest of it! not sure if I'll take it for the train ride tomorrow, but I think I'd be better of with a sock - several need finishing anyway!
now I am back into the garden - getting more plants out for the rabbit to finish off..... and btw - I am back with my normal email address, all sorted, but you can reach me on eircom, too.

argh!!

hi all,

just to let you know that my email account with hotmail has been blocked (apparently hacked:() - I can't access my emails and addresses anymore. could you please send me a quick email here, so that I can update as many email addresses as possible? thanks...

gerriguinness at eircom dot net
(replace words with @ and .)

hallo,

nur eine kurze notiz, dass mein email konto bei hotmail geblockt wurde (scheinbar gehackt:(), sodass ich meine emails und adressen nicht mehr habe! koenntet ihr mir bitte eine kurze email an diese adresse schicken, sodass ich so viele adressen wie moeglich wieder herausfinden kann? danke.

gerriguinness at eircom dot net
(replace words with @ and .)

beans means.....

no, in this case it doesn't rhyme (old advertisement by very famous ketchup company:) - from now on beans mean colour for me! ok, there are plenty of different ones around, but I am talking about black turtle beans specifically. I read here that you can dye with them. and not just any old yellow or beige - no, you get blues and purples! I followed the description, soaked 1.5 kg of dried black turtle beans over 2 nights - and this is the result: well, if you image the blue to be more purple - or the light colour darker and more purple... that would be the result. unfortunately my camera doesn't like purple as much as I do - or maybe it does and keeps the nice colours for itself. anyway, I've never had purple show up as nicely as it looks in its natural state.... but I do like the result a lot (you can see, that wool and silk take up the dye slightly differently) - which means that we'll eat far more bean stews etc from now on:) I don't usually use foodstuff as dyes, unless I can use the material later. which is the case here, you just boil the soaked beans as you would normally and can use them for whatever dish you like - or freeze the beans for later.

this wool/silk blend is the leftover of my picture socks; I just spun up the leftover of blue, but there's still a lot of green and now purple. no ideas yet what to use it for, but it would be soft enough against the skin....

I didn't dye much this year other than the sock yarn, which is mostly due to the fact that I still have so much dyed fibre in stash that I need to use it up before doing more. but I can still plant and grow a few more dye plants - some if which can be found on this table:

a friend of mine in germany helped me with this order, because there aren't that many herb supplier in ireland. unfortunately some of them didn't like being in a dark box for some time, but most of them recovered quite quickly. of course one of the dead plants had to be the myrtle (myrtus communis), which I have search for years over here. well, can't be helped, at least all the dye plants survived:)

I also received a batch of several summer "bulbs", which I planted into pots in the baby plant nursery (close to the porch, where I can keep an eye on  them). all of them sprouted nicely, apart from one, which was damaged by slugs. it did try to sprout again, so this time I put it up on the window sill to avoid a second butchery.... all I need now is more space in the beds to put them all into permanent positions:) but we're working on this - our old herb spiral will be dismantled soon (it doesn't work so well, when you have couch grass and ground elder invading the stones sooner than you can turn your back:(), which leaves a lot of new free space to be planted into:) this was supposed to become a small pond, but after much to and fro we decided not to dig there. one reason are all the large mature trees with tons of leaves each autumn; the other would be that there are two very large boulders underneath, which we would have to dig out/split before putting in the pond liner... we have decided on another space for this - but it won't be ready for use for at least a year, more likely two....

apart from a lot of gardening work I've been working on my fairy-tale yarns - and I am happy to announce that I finished the last skein late last night - with only 1 m of yarn to ply with I finished the bear yarn.

those are all five, not that the colours go all that well together:)

obviously those two are snow-white and rose-red. because they are girls, who live close to a forest and with a large garden, I added greens to their main colour - and a few beads as well. with hindsight I should have chosen smaller beads, because the larger ones tend to "hang" a bit off their plying thread.... unfortunately the holes in the beads were too small to pull loose fibres through to attach them tighter into the spun yarn. both yarns are made from merino, silk and banana silk.

 

those two are the bear and the prince. the bear is a mix of icelandic wool, jacobs, locks of BFL - and a bit of blue to show that the bear is really a prince, put under a spell.... I plied it with a fine thread of jacobs humbug, which maybe added a bit too much of grey for a bear, but I like it anyway. the prince is spun from merino in blues and a ply of handspun silvery-white viscose. I added clear silver-lined beads and a few golden discs and small toothed wheels (from a watch maker) as "treasure" (princes should have treasures, right?:)

the last one in the tale would be the dwarf, a nasty old bugger, who gets his just reward for being so mean:) I used all kinds of corriedale and merino in forest colours - and a bit of rusty read to liven it up. when I plied it I added tufts of silver fox hair, which is too short to spin on its own - but makes a nice "beard" for the dwarf. now the question is: what do I eventually make from those yarns? I have no idea yet - but maybe I'll split them up eventually. for now I keep them as "fondling yarns":)

 of course I didn't just spin during the last month! I also finished a few smaller projects, such as those potholders, in double knitting. my mother seemed to like the first pair I made so much, that she even requested another pair! because I only needed half a ball of cotton of each for the 1st pair, I had just enough to make a 2nd one, same colours, but different pattern - which goes well with a light grey kitchen.

 I also knit up this doily, from handspun ramie, which gives it a slightly nobbly, coarser look than bought crochet thread, but it's supposed to be used on a wooden table that is a bit more rugged itself, so I hope it fits (and no, I didn't attach a price tag to my gift, the paper thingie on the right just holds the information about material and washing:)

the last photo - I couldn't resist showing this one - is a close-up of a new geranium plant I grew. I just love that strong colour and wish I'd be able to dye a yarn in this shade! it seems to glow from the inside - the only nag is that the verbena to the left has a slightly different pink - which doesn't go at all with the geranium:) they looked similar on the picture, but hell, they don't fight and I am just glad about every bit of colour I can get in this dreary summer...

this is it for now, no entries for a month means I had a lot to catch up:) now I have to decide for a new larger knitting project - have been procrastinating for quite some time now, because somehow I cannot decide what to make. I better get cracking, because christmas isn't that far away anymore and if I don't hurry up a bit, time for making gifts is on again!