Steel Kitten

I won a giveaway!

Last week I entered Liz's giveaway over at Violet Posy and found out on Thursday I had won a fantastic Ollie and Nic bag that everyone was salivating over.

Isn't it fabulous!

Very pleased. After an exhausting week of writing and house painting, that cheered me up no end!

Thanks Liz.

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Yes, you read that right. I'm decorating. And no, I'm not going to show you! Not yet, it's not finished.

I can tell you it's not the kitchen though. I'm clearing the cupboards in there at the moment ready for all hell to break loose next week.

I still have another couple of days work before my decorating is completely finished so you can see it then.

Promise.

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There is a new washing machine making an appearance Monday. Martin saw how utterly unconcerned I  had become (read lazy!) about finding one and has taken matters into his own hands. Hmmmm.....

She's freed from the tyranny of washing....

(Peasant hanging out the washing by Berthe Morisot)

It's been almost three weeks since my washing machine broke. The last wash I did was memorable for the way the machine nearly took flight during the last spin and the sheets were covered in concrete grit. Somewhere one of the concrete blocks inside had come loose, pierced the skin of the outer drum and dumped its shavings into the wash. We could have repaired it, but it was a complicated repair and would have taken us some time. As the machine was 14 years old, we decided it was time for a new one.

Predictably I ran around like a headless chicken for a few days comparing the endless choices available and getting nowhere fast. My mother let me use her machine to do a couple of washes. And then a funny thing happened. The following week my parents were at my sister's and I couldn't do the two washes I needed to do on that day, so I pootled off to the launderette.

Half an hour, one wash and £5.40 later it was done. And that was it for the rest of the week.

We seem to have adjusted to life without the machine. I don't really understand how I can do a wash every other day when I have a machine and then happily just one wash a week when I don't, but that's what has happened. The launderette has much bigger machines, so I guess that must account for some of it - I can fit our clothes, bedclothes and towels into one machine load.

Perhaps we've also adjusted by not changing our clothes so many times a day - sometimes the outfit I wear in the morning is different to the one in the afternoon and different still from the one in the evening. Unconsciously, I've changed to wearing only one set of clothes a day, and even then they are jeans or a skirt that can be worn a few times before washing.

Right now, even though it's costing me money to go to the launderette, it's actually saving me time and simplified my life. I don't have to think about whether I should do a load in the morning - washing gets done on a Saturday afternoon when Martin has taken off his uniform. I don't have to clean the machine and its seals or run it through a hot wash with vinegar to get rid of the limescale. Someone else maintains the machines and if they break pays for the engineer to fix them. Plus I get to check out the charity shops and library etc while the wash is on and I can persuade Martin to hook up the box trailer and dump a bit more junk and rubble - left over from our numerous projects - down at the tip.

It's been tough to explain to Martin though why I prefer life without a machine. After all, a year of doing one wash a week adds up to around £280 a year - or the cost of a new machine.

He's not buying the 'simplicity more important than cost' argument, so I guess I'll be made to buy one shortly.

He'll be dragging me kicking and screaming though.

Normal service will resume shortly...

I found this book in the library and I can't put it down....

...did you know that a ram can service 100 ewes around half a dozen times each during the course of the 17 days fertile window of conception that ewes have in November. That six hundred times in 17 days. He'll lose 30% of his body weight during that time as well.  The mind boggles, not to mention their....no. No. Don't go there.

I'll be with you as soon as I've finished reading it....

Getting crafty for...er...er...

I'm crafting like mad, but I can't show you any of it. Well, I can show you enticing snippets. It's for the Big C you see. I don't want to say the word because it irritates people saying it so early, and I'm one of the people who throw a fit in shops when I see C cards several months early.

But when you're making homemade gifts, you can't just throw it all together in December. You have to be organised and start early.

Which is why I was sat with Martin's glasses perched on my nose last night peering at a stitchery for an hour. I could use a bigger count of AIDA, but I like my stitcheries to have lots of detail which tends to get lost the bigger your stitches are.

 

So for a while, my lips are sealed. *Shock horror* How often does that happen?

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I've added some more cherries to the cushion and now I don't like it (especially since Fleagle has found it and covered it with hair)

I wasn't convinced with the first lot and now I'm even less convinced with them all on there. They just look plain weird, all regimented and peculiar. But it's no good asking a perfectionist to put cherries on a cushion randomly. Do you know I even stitched the cherries into place so they wouldn't flap around randomly. Sad, very sad. Control freakery gone nuts.

So they're coming off. Crochet flowers will replace. When I've learnt to do crochet flowers that is.Or maybe a spot of stitchery should go on there.....we'll see.

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Two recent snuffles from a car boot sale:

Martin asked in hushed tones what sago was and did it have anything to do with tapioca. I've never met a man with a more pathological hatred of tapioca. And fishcakes. I sense perhaps my MIL may have force fed him with the two while he was growing up and he now has psychological scarring.

I feel that way sometimes about Ready Brek.

It's all pogs and veggies this week

We found a baby hoglet in trouble a few days ago. She was lying on her side in some long grass not far from the nest. She was barely moving apart from a few spines twitching when the breeze blew across her. Martin brought her in and we administered some first aid - a warm water bottle to lie on, a little warm water to drink and some quiet rest in a cat box.

She became quite perky after about an hour, enough that we could examine her. She was smaller than the others- only about 50g so possibly the runt - and had some nasty ticks behind her ear which could have prevented her from putting on weight. She also had an swollen eye that started oozing pus. 

Petal,as she's now called, has probably been poked in the eye by something when snuffling in the under growth so we bathed her eye with boiled cool water and a cotton bud and put in some antibiotic eye drops (we've collected quite a medicine cabinet for the hedgehogs!). After a good scoff on some kitten food she wriggled down into some warm fleeces and went to sleep.

She was so tired after what was probably a harrowing night for her she didn't even wake up when I sorted out her ticks and bathed her eye again. Just lay on her side gently snoring while I cleaned her with a cotton bud. She's put on 40g since Saturday, so hopefully it won't take any more than a month before we can get her to 600g hibernation weight and and then we'll release her.

Then last night, we had the surprise addition of her THREE siblings (Twinkle, Blossom and Filbert), who are now tucked up in the conservatory asleep in a rabbit hutch. Two weeks ago we weighed one of them while it was snuffling around the garden to get an idea of size and age (they were all roughly the same size so we figured it was a good starting point). At 100g we estimated they were about 3/4 weeks old. Then we weighed one of them again a couple of days ago and it was still hovering around the 100g mark. Despite feeding them every night right outside their nest, they've put on no weight. At 6/7 weeks old it's not good enough and they'll almost certainly perish in the cold.

Hedgehogs only hibernate once they hit 600g in weight, a sort of physiological failsafe. Unfortunately, it means many autumn babies never hibernate and are left searching for food all winter during a time when there is very little food out there. Eventually they perish of cold and starvation. So to ensure they get to the correct weight in time for winter hibernation, we removed them from the nest yesterday and have started feeding them up on kitten wet and dry kitten food plus peanuts and fruit.

Hoggyopolis here we come again!

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Been trying to get some serious veg gardening out of the way this week in addition to pog rescuing.

The potatoes are up and they're not half bad either. Considering we've already eaten about half of what was in the ground this year, this little lot will probably see us through until Christmas (we don't eat a great deal of potatoes). That means what I planted will see us through six months since I started digging them up in June.

The bed was given a good dig over and some dried grass, compost, fire ash, and blood fish and bone were dug in. After smashing up the big chunks of soil, I transplanted the pathetic specimens of beetroot that had been attacked viciously by the chickens too many times and planted some more fast baby beetroot, kale,baby spring cabbage, baby carrots and mange tout. I reckon that I can get a bit more veg out of the bed before the cold weather really hits. I have fleece to cover the bed when it does and some more to wrap around the fencing.

The tomatoes are impressive and provided the base for one of the most tasty pasta sauces I think I've ever cooked. These big meaty numbers will certainly be on my growing list next year.

I also wanted to show you my Swiss Chard. I took a picture a couple of months ago when it was bursting with vigour and ready to pluck.

Then like an idiot I wandered off to download the picture and forgot to fleece it back up. The chickens moved in for the kill and had possibly one of their most exciting days since they arrived.

Rather irritatingly, despite scoffing 7 Swiss chard plants, none of them suffered with tummy upsets. I was severely miffed at their ability to handle so much illicit greenery without punishment.

Clearly crime does pay.

I've also been bottling greengages and pears like a fiend for quite a while now and adding to the jam store. I've found we have a yellow plum tree in the hedgerow over the back field of all places and am in the process of picking some for jams. Unfortunately, they are riddled with coddling moth larva so preparing them is hard work, but still. Free food and all that so I persevere.

Talking of free food, my mother has discovered a secret stash of filberts. Like any good forager, she won't reveal the source, BUT luckily for me, her teeth are playing up and she's not risking hard foods at the moment so I get them. Yippee!

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Finally, Martin and I went to Barnsdale on Bank Holiday Monday and I was adopted by the resident cat. Note the delicate part of my anatomy he's sticking his claws in!