A little inspiration

I am feeling a little worse for wear today after spending yesterday out in Soho with my friend, Sarah, who I am a bridesmaid for in May next year along with her two other bridesmaids - we were shopping for the fabric for the dresses, which Sarah is making herself. They are all natural greens - mine is a beautiful light-ish colour with hints of gold. I'm very excited about seeing the final version. Going around all of the fabric shops inspired me too and so this morning, whilst nursing my hangover I ordered this pattern, which I have had my eye on for a while:



I have never made anything from a pattern before so I am both excited and nervous about how it's turn out so watch this space! My mum also sent me a photo of the pencil case I made for her, which she is acutually using as a travel tapestry bag so that she can take her sewing to the allotment with her but, looking at it now, I'm rather pleased with myself and looking forward to making mine once my zips arrive:



My mum also sent me a photo of this lovely serving plate/charger - we've been looking for one for a while but haven't quite found one that we like but this one is lovely and apparently belonged to my Great, great grandmother (or possibly even her mother) and is definately from before 1904 by the back-stamp. She's offered it to us and I am delighted:



On another plate-related topic - a few weeks ago we popped in to see my mum and she had some plates which she had got from an auction and was going to chop up to make mosaic - I thought they were too lovely for such an end so I pilfered them and they are now proudly living with our crockery so I wanted to share them:



Finally to the garden - the back garden is mainly green at the moment, most of the flowers having finished (apart from some more sweet pease but the front garden, being shadier and therefore later, is really coming into it's own. Our hollyhocks are finally out and they are the most beautiful colour - I have taken some photos so that I can try to colour match this for somewhere in the house because the dusty cream and deep pink of the flowers really is wonderful:



The Japanese Anemone is also flowering, which is one of my favourites, and so lovely to have in the garden:

Jammy Dodger

Last weekend we spent some time clearing the allotment site and what progress we've all made!

This picture gives you some indication of what the site was like before we started the clearance:



and here it is this weekend:



There is only really one big bramble patch left to go and we have now marked out one plot, which is great to see on the ground. Hopefully we should have plots divided within a couple of weeks and we can claim a bit for our own, which will be lovely!

The other bonus of having cleared all of the brambles (to compensate for the cuts all over my arms!) is lots of blackberries! I used just a fraction of the ones that we're collected and made this much jam:



I has also this evening been cooking up some of the fruit from our garden and made Summer Fruit jam, which strawberries, raspberries and blackcurrants, all from our garden:



Unfortunately, I was also cooking dinner at the time so I got a little distracted and it cooked a little too long (like mother like daughter!) so it's more like tough jelly sweet in a jar than jam! Hopefully I'll be able to use some of it in my porridge once winter arrives...I might have to use a sledgehammer!

My final piece of handiwork this week was a couple of lavender pillows made from dried lavender from the garden - one to go in the trunk where we keep our spare bedding and one slightly wonky heart to hand on my side of the bed to help me sleep. Just lovely.

Morris Dancing, Ostrich eating and plenty of potatoes

What a busy week we've had again so plenty to update on...

This weekend we went to "Puzzlebury" - which is a mini-festival run by my friend's mum in the Forest of Dean. We went last year and it really is so much fun. She has the most amazing house and garden - it's an old mining house and has a big plot of land with it - complete with lake!



She puts on such a good party - there's a big water slide down the hill, a swimming pool, lots of lovely food and drink (the cider was a little too potent and I had an unfortunate run in with a bramble patch and am still removing the splinters!). We had a visit from some morris dancers on the Saturday who taught us some moves. I don't have a photo of us dancing but this is the troupe (The Widders):



There were also bands and DJ's on the Saturday night as well as a bonfire and, although we were boring/hungover from Friday and went to bed early a good time was had by all! One of the highlights was the Ostrich which was roasted in a pit with hot rocks all night and served up for lunch on Sunday:



We also had 6 Ostrich eggs, which took two people with a drill to get into:



Sadly, we had to leave before the scrambled egg was ready but I'm told it was delicious!

We came home on Sunday afternoon because I had a job interview on Monday morning. I haven't actively been looking but this would be a part-time job which would make my PhD (which starts in a month - aaaah!) more do-able so I thought I would go for it. I now really want the job but have to wait until Wednesday to find out. I think they've got 2 other strong candidates so I'm not thatg hopeful but we'll see! Fingers crossed!

We had already booked Monday off it did mean that we got to spend the day doing house stuff. Matt dug up some potatoes, which Hythe very kindly decided to give him a hand with:



As well as their pesky garden antics the girls are also determined to get into the kitchen at every opportunity:



So, I have this afternoon ordered some temporary netting to fence them into a little area of the garden so that they can run out when we're at home without making a nuisance of themselves!

We also managed to do some things in the house today, including clearing the spare room to a be a sewing/craft room. It's a difficult room to photo but this shows the new mirror on the wall and furniture layout:



On the garden front, we are still getting a good crop of raspberries, and have just dug up our second lot of potatoes. The first harvest made a delicious cottage pie and this lot are doing to be fish cakes with plenty left over for the rest of the week and into next.

The allotment site, which we have now started clearing with a vengeance is also starting to take shape. The group are meeting on Wednesday to discuss next steps and I'm going to encourage them towards dividing up plots so that we can all get going in time for Spring!

So that was our week. I have all my fingers and toes crossed for this job so I really hope to have good news for my next post.