Trees in Ink

 
This time on the ink drawing and painting course was tree week. Above was drawn with a stick, and more spattering.

Below I outlined the trunk of the tree. Then painting with water and dropping in the colours. On this exercise we also used white ink for the first time, which I found quite good at calming down my bright colours.  

Then at the end we did some very quick exercises. First blowing the ink through straws. I think I should perhaps call this "Fire on Dartmoor"

And finally a way of just using black ink with lots of water, and drawing in the tree. This was a bit of a rush, and my inky background did not really spread with the water very well.

 

Next week is the final session, and we can do whatever we like. I am tempted to return to the flowers, but not sure yet. 

Linoprint Christmas Cards

It has become my habit to linoprint my Christmas cards for my friends and family. This year some of them were of the "Nearly Home Trees" which are a distinctive clump of beech trees, that can be seen on the A30 just before the border with Cornwall. For anyone who lives where I live they really are a sign that you are nearly home, and we still play the game of who can spot them first.

At first I did not like my prints, as it does look like a steady rain is falling behind the trees, but perhaps for Cornwall that is fairly realistic. Below is a photo of the actual trees that I took a few years ago. I need to try and do more linoprinting, as it is really fun, and I will try and work on my accuracy of the cutting, and not snudging the prints, both of which I find difficult.

Garden Diary August

Time once again for my monthly garden diary. I do realise that I do this diary mainly for myself, as although I keep a note of where I planted each year, and the seeds, it is sometimes really useful to have a look back and see how things went.

Blackberries are what are filling my days (and freezer) at the moment

It's been a funny old year, with all the hot weather and no rain for a long time. Although it is raining now, we have recently dug two lots of potatoes. A much easier job than last year, as the soil just seemed to fall away to leave lovely clean potatoes, but really shows that we need a lot more rain to penetrate the soil.

The plants that looked like they were doing okay, but then really didn't flourish like last year were the runnerbeans, french beans, broad beans and peas. Yes we had some, but I have not put any in the new chest freezer as we just ate them as we went. This is a photo of my entry in the village show for longest runnerbean. I came third, but I guess I have to admit that there were only three beans entered!

 

But the freezer is coming into its own with berries. Raspberries did really well, and now we are filling it almost daily with blackberries and elderberries. Even I am starting to think that perhaps I should stop picking the blackberries, but they are just so lovely. We have one lot of blackberry wine bubbling away, and plan to make more throughout the winter. We have already bottled dandelion flower, elderflower and cherry wine. My husband was worried that if we picked the elderflowers, we might not have enough left for berries. Although some of the bushes have suffered a bit from the dry weather, there seem to be plenty of berries. I have just weighed all the elderberries in the freezer so far, and it is over 3kg. I am also planning to make some jellies and jams. My husband made some raspberry jam already, which was so much better than mine.  

Dandelion labels made by hand and elderflower on the computer

 

The other berries that look great are the sloes, but this year I am not going to be drawn into picking until we have a frost.

Things that did well in the veg garden were the courgettes, and patty pan squash. I managed to mainly pick the courgettes small, but must try to remember that even 6 plants was too many. The patty pans are still flowering and producing, but I seem to be the only one keen on these cute little vegetables. Also the onions did fairly well, despite me planting them too close to each other, and having to replant. We now have several strings of onions in the kitchen. 

 

 

There is now a plant and produce donation cabin in the village, which is a great way to share. I have given, and am excited to see how the watermelons, aubergine and broccoli that I received do.

The main problem for me seems to be that a lot of my plants seem behind. Sweetcorn are only just starting to swell, one baby butternut squash has appeared, melons and watermelons I am hopeful for, tomatoes are still very green, and the spinach just seems to have stopped growing. Hopefully we will have a mild and wet September, and some of these things will catch up. The celeriac is also still looking very healthy, and I see that should not be ready until October, so there is still time.

My one butternut squash

I nearly forgot to mention the apples and pears, which are looking so much better than last year. It will not be long before the cider press will have to be got out.

And finally the pumpkins - each plant seems to producing a good sized pumpkin, which are starting to turn orange. 

 

Although not strictly the garden, but we had a visit from the Woodland Trust to look at our growing woodland, which we planted in the spring of 2020. In the spring this year we looked down all the tubes (a mammoth task in which I had to keep reminding myself "this not as hard as actually planting trees"), and we replaced the 20 or so trees which had died. But out of 1400 trees this did not seem too bad. 

But my husband has been quite worried about the trees in the dry weather, but the tree people were very reassuring that they would survive. The photo below is not really a good comparison, as the first was in February just after the trees were planted, but you can see in the current photo below a lot of the trees are well out of their tubes.

Icelandic Pullover

At last my husband has got his Christmas present, this Icelandic pullover. He has been very patient, and for once I think it is actually something he will wear. 

The pattern I found on ravelry, and it is called the Anniversary Sweater and designed by Védís Jónsdóttir. The pattern was free, and comes in lots of sizes, but I knitted in XL, I also ordered the recommended wool, Lopi Lettlopi, which came from Iceland. It was not cheap, but is really beautiful wool, and I wanted to try and make as authentic an Icelandic pullover as I could. He picked the colours, and although I was a bit worried it was all too brown, and think it looks really good.

Knitted on circular needles, for me this was unusual, as I tend to like to knit flat and seamed. But I found it okay, and enjoyed making the patterned sections.

My husband was a slightly reluctant model. The first picture was at the beach at Widemouth Bay, but then we went for a few action shots by the wood pile. 

We had to have several ash trees cut down near the road. It makes me sad when I see ash trees dying, and for us this was expensive, as the road had to have traffic control while the tree surgeons were working. But on the plus side we now have a lot of wood for the wood burners, with which we can keep the heating bills down for quite a few years. I would also really like to do something creative with the wood, and would welcome any ideas.

Gardening Diary April

I think the time has come to restart my monthly gardening diary. Looking back at last year's diary, I realise how keen we must have been to get going, starting to write in January, when apart from weeding and digging there was not really a lot to do.

I feel I may be a bit behind with the vegetable garden, as although I was in Cornwall for a long stretch of time after Christmas, we were slightly distracted by our big tree planting project. We have planted 3 acres of trees, with help and advice from the Woodland Trust. I feel our neighbours may think we are a bit mad, and it was a huge amount of work. Approximately 1700 trees and shrubs. However hard or many of us were working, it seemed impossible to plant more than 100 each day. My husband was the hero, and was out even on days with driving rain. I dug a fair share of the holes, and both our children helped a lot too.

To begin with we planted oak and beech trees in stands of 25

 

This is a long-term project, as perhaps we won't see it as a mature woodland until we are very old, but perhaps our grandchildren (yet to be made) might. It is encouraging to look down the tubes now and see a lot of the trees, which were small bare sticks, with leaves now.

New game is "name that tree"

View of the house (in need of some whitewash), with some of the tree planting area behind

Tree planting seems to be very much in the news, but my husband has been dreaming about managing his own patch of woodland for a long time. I think he thought to find some woodland to work in, and making his own was not the original plan. Some of the trees are filling in between two areas of existing woodland, so he does have some larger trees to look after. The Woodland Trust man was very keen for biodiversity that woodland areas be connected, so that wildlife can move from one area to another. 

The largest part of the trees came through the Woodland Trust, although a few and some through SWLEN, now called Habitats and Heritage. Also quite a few were grown by my husband himself, from nuts he picked up. For several years there has been a section of the fridge where the nuts have to go to simulate winter, before they are planted. He has planted these trees in a small separate area.

We did a little planting in the vegetable plot after Christmas, planting some blackcurrant bushes and a tayberry. I have also just put in 7 more asparagus crowns, in the hope that I will have more than a single asparagus on my plate. Five bought from a seed company, and 2 from Poundland, so we will have to see which do better. My daughter and I went back to London for schools reopening, but while we were there my husband has planted onions and shallots.  

The blackcurrant bushes, and trench for the asparagus behind

First shoots of an onion

 

We have decided to try and grow a bigger variety of plants this year. The crops that were successful last year, we often seemed to have too much. My other resolution is to try and dig in more manure, as that did seem the key to things doing well.

We are only going to plant just one sort of potato this year, but have had a set back, as my husband put the seed potatoes on a low shelf to chit. He then found they had all disappeared. He said he almost started to doubt himself, as there was not a scrap of potato left. But the dog was looking guilty, and tubby. So we have had to buy more and start again. We have now planted two rows of desiree.

In digging over the area where we had potatoes last year, I have dug up a quite large amount. I can only think that our decision to dig a few plants when we needed them was not very sensible. Perhaps with two of us doing this we were missing plants, this year we should just dig them up all in one go.

We didn't grow any strawberries last year, so yesterday planted 12 strawberry plants bought in the garden centre. My gardening book says that you should not let them fruit the first year, but I am a bit uncertain about this, as the label on the plants didn't mention this. Should I remove any flowers, or just talk to them severely? I'd welcome any advice on this.

This morning I have been out in the polytunnel planting seeds in trays. I have planted two types of tomatoes, cucumber, courgettes, squash and sweet peppers. I have more seeds, but it was so cold out there that I have decided to hold off a bit before planting any more.

I have also planted broad beans straight outside, although was a bit disappointed with the small amount of seeds in the packet.

We have got rid of the grapevine in the polytunnel, as it was taking up so much space, and did not really produce any edible grapes. We still have another vine against a wall outside, but thought that we could make better use of the space inside. I have found another large trough, and we are thinking that we might plant salad leaves in the polytunnel where we can better keep off the snails and slugs.

The other thing I have done is removed all the dead branches from the red currant bushes. Some were fine last year, but some of the bushes did not really produce much. My first idea was to dig out the worst plants, but as they all have some green leaves, I thought a really severe pruning might help. I am also going to give the gooseberries a little prune, although perhaps should have done this earlier.

I will be back in London when term begins, so the rest of the planting and looking after the seedlings will all be down to my husband. I am hoping he will send some photos for the next month's update. This has been a really long post, but it is a catch up on six months, so from now on I will try and do my regular monthly garden update.

A general view of the vegetable garden, with fruit trees behind

Conkers

I don't often repeat posts, but it is that time of year again. When I showed this before there was quite a bit of interest in the game of conkers. So apologies if you have already seen this, or if you live on the other side of the world, and are looking forward to Spring.

Conkers are the fruit of the horse chestnut tree. Finding a spikey green case,  slightly split open, and removing a shiny conker from its white cushion, is one of the pleasures of Autumn. But it has been on my mind that my pattern did not include the conker case. So I have reworked the pattern adding a shell section. So now you can make a lovely little home for your conkers. The new pattern is available on ravelry and Craftsy.

The shell is knitted on just two straight needles and in two pieces: green and cream. So the only sewing up is joining the inner and outer shells. There is some short row knitting to create the curves. As you will see I have made two variations: a half shell, which is how I often find a conker on the ground, or the two halves sewn together so you can have your conker just peeping out.

The game conkers is played between two people. A hole is made in the conkers, and they are threaded on a piece of string. They take turns hitting each others conker with their own. Each player holds their conker out in front of themselves, and the other player takes a swing at it with their conker. The conker that breaks the other one is the victor. The dangers are that you can be hit by swinging conkers, which are quite hard, or being hit by flying shards of conkers when the hit is successful. Hard conkers usually win, but it is considered cheating to harden your conker artificially.  Apparently Michael Palin of Monty Python was disqualified from a conkers competition for baking his conker and soaking it in vinegar.

Then there is the whole business of scoring. A conker that defeats another is a oner, etc. But if a conker beats another conker, it also takes on that conker's score. So if a twoer beats a threer, it would become a fiver. It is that conker that takes the title, not the human swinging it! 

 Happy Autumn Conkering

Cushions

When I went to the Knitting Show at Earl's Court in the spring I bought a really huge ball of chunky Aran wool. I've had the idea to knit some cushion covers for myself, and our holiday seemed the perfect time for this "big for me" knit. 

This was my first cushion, and I was delighted with how it turned out. It is a 50cm cushion pad, so quite big. The pattern worked out perfectly with exactly five leaf designs on it. It may look a bit like cable knitting, but isn't, just a combination of knitting together and increasing. I am going to put the pattern for this Leaf Cushion online soon, though may knit another one in a deeper colour first.

I had enough wool left for a second cushion, and thought I would try something a bit more pictorial. I had a few problems, as originally the tree was going to be in a frame of leaves. Something went wrong and I had to unravel, which is why there is just a leaf in each corner. I was really pleased with the tree, which I planned out on a grid of paper. You can see my enormous grid below, which is actually 9 pieces of paper glued together. I had thought of writing it up as a pattern, but I am not sure that anyone else would want to follow such an enormous chart, or even how I would get it into a document. I even got a bit confused myself near the top of the tree, but thought that so long as I keep the right number of stitches, no one will be able to tell if the odd leaf is not in the place I originally planned. So this is probably going to be just for me. I may have a go at another similar cushion, as it was fun to do, and I would like to make the tree a bit more asymmetric, and knit it in a deeper colour.

Conkers Revisited

Last year at about this time I wrote about conkers. There was quite a bit of interest in the game of conkers, and apologies for repeating some of the photos and information below.

Conkers are the fruit of the horse chestnut tree. Finding a spikey green case,  slightly split open, and removing a shiny conker from its white cushion, is one of the pleasures of autumn. But it has been on my mind that my pattern did not include the conker case. So I have reworked the pattern adding a shell section. So now you can make a lovely little home for your conkers. The new pattern is available on ravelry.

The shell is knitted on just two straight needles and in two pieces: green and cream. So the only sewing up is joining the inner and outer shells. There is some short row knitting to create the curves. As you will see I have made two variations: a half shell, which is how I often find a conker on the ground, or the two halves sewn together so you can have your conker just peeping out.

The game conkers is played between two people. A hole is made in the conkers, and they are threaded on a piece of string. They take turns hitting each others conker with their own. Each player holds their conker out in front of themselves, and the other player takes a swing at it with their conker. The conker that breaks the other one is the victor. The dangers are that you can be hit by swinging conkers, which are quite hard, or being hit by flying shards of conkers when the hit is successful. Hard conkers usually win, but it is considered cheating to harden your conker artificially.  Apparently Michael Palin of Monty Python was disqualified from a conkers competition for baking his conker and soaking it in vinegar.

Then there is the whole business of scoring. A conker that defeats another is a oner, etc. But if a conker beats another conker, it also takes on that conker's score. So if a twoer beats a threer, it would become a fiver. It is that conker that takes the title, not the human swinging it! 

My new improved conker pattern and the horsechestnut leaf pattern are available on ravelry separately, or with a discount if you buy both together. Also my samples are available in my Etsy shop.

 Happy Autumn Conkering

If you haven't seen my little giveaway please Click Here. Thank you to everyone who has entered. Some of your entries have really made me laugh. There are still two weeks until I announce the winner. I would love to see some more entries from crocheters.

Some More Fairy Folk

As promised a few more fairy folk for my shop. Meet the Oak Tree Fairy, my first boy fairy. Do you like his little acorn hat? Perhaps I should call him an elf or pixie rather than a fairy. 

Many thanks to my husband who so patiently held him in place while I photographed him. Goodness knows what passers by thought we were doing in the bushes.

Next is the Echinacea Fairy. She is the main reason for my not posting these fairies sooner, as I have been hunting around my neighbourhood for a yellow echinacea flower for her photoshoot. I think it is a bit early for them here, so she has had to make do with a sunflower. As I also couldn't find any sunflowers locally I took this photo between the aisles at my local garden centre. Hubby was my lookout guy! But as you will see from her little embroidered bag, she is definitely an echinacea. All these fairies are for sale in my Etsy Shop.

Finally I have photographed the Lavender Fairy again, as at last the lavender in my garden has some flowers.