Gratitude Sunday

Joining Taryn in this heartfelt tradition. A time to slow down, to reflect and be grateful.

Through out the week I have been grateful for

... Feeling the need to get some DIY done. The house is slowly starting to look presentable.

... Planning the decor and soft furnishing. Finally I have some vision about how I want my home to look.

...the sense of calm and achievement that this brings.

... The breaks in the stormy weather we have been having has allowed me to get out and do some gardening.

...cracking open the bee keepers quilt project again. Feels good to slowly work through all those odd bits of wool that knitters and crocheters collect.

 

 

Garden update 4/10/13

I haven't posted a garden update in a while, mainly because there hasn't been too many interesting goings on. How is everyone's garden doing? Definitely the air has turned autumn-y and everythong seems to be winding down for the impeeding cold of winter. The leaves have turned their rich-red-orangy colours too.

My brassicas got decimated by caterpillars (apparently it has been a great year for them and their numbers have been dramatically higher this year), so I have replaced them and covered the with milk bottles.

I saved all the bottoms I cut off too, these are to use as drip trays.

I have also transplanted about 100 strawberry seedlings which are all over the conservatory. Going to be a bumper crop next year. My white strawberry plant is still flowering and still producing fruit!

I have also planted some peas in the other raised bed for over wintering and they gave just started to sprout too.

Washing Fleece

One of the main aspects of my self-sufficiency plan is to process wool from fleece to yarn. I managed to acquire two fleeces in May, from a lovely lady down in Devon.

 They are two varieties, a cross which I can't quite remember, but the fleece is quite curly and rough. I find this one quite difficult to wash. And the second is a texel X blue-faced leicester, but it feels very much like a slightly finer than usual texel.

So let me go into the washing process in a little more detail. Firstly you must make sure you store the fleece somewhere cool and dry. In this case my garage.

I have them wrapped in old sheets to keep them cleanish.

So on a nice day, when is relatively warm and sunny (for the uk at least) I tear of chunks to wash. As I don't have anywhere suitable to store a whole washed fleece. 

Firstly you need to do what is know as skirting. Basically you search through the fleece and take out any undesirables; such as poo, bits of bugs and plant matter.

So to wash the fleece is use one of those flexi-tub bucket things and fill it 1/2 full with hot water from the tap and then top it up with boiling water from the kettle. The water needs to be hot, just hot enough so you can barely put your hand in it. To this I add a good squidge of washing up liquid. I like to use traditional green fairy because it quite concentrated. (A squidge probably equates to around a table spoon in normal person speak.) 

I need to weed the patio I know!

Once it has soaked for around 20 minutes you can removed it and change to water to clean water. You may need to do another "soap soak" or use plain water if it is clean enough and soak for another 20 minutes or so. An important thing to note is the temperature needs to be roughly the same otherwise the temperature shock can cause the fleece to felt. Which is no good for spinning!

Once your fleece is clean you can either leave it on some mesh to dry (or the swing chair) or stuff it into an old pillow case and swing it around. This actually has a proper name but I can't remember it right this minute. 

On the left in this photo is an unwashed fleece and on the right is a washed one.

I hope you find this information helpful and let me know if you have any other questions!

Gratitude Sunday

Today I am incredibly grateful for the lovely weather we are having today. This means I have done loads of gardening and managed to get lots of outdoor things sorted.

I am also grateful for trying new things, I bought myself a tahkli spindle and have had a go at spinning cotton and silk.

Also, I found the first ripe blackberry of the year.

Re-Growing vegetables from scraps

I saw a pin on Pinterest a few weeks ago talking about re-planting the bulb bit from spring onions. So next time I had some for dinner I saved them and put them in water for about a week until they started growing roots and I planted them in some compost.

Now these were originally outside, but I bought them in due to the heavy snow. There's also some salad trying to grow in there, but its struggling due to the lack of sun (the irony is as I am writing this, the sun is the brightest it's been for weeks).




The other day as I was cutting up the leeks for my soup, I had an idea come, maybe leeks did the same thing. So I repeated the process and sure enough, I potted up my leeks this morning!

You will need to excuse my gross window sills here!

 

If this was Pinterest, it would be in a mason jar, with a gingham bow round it; on a pretty bone china saucer. Unofrtunately a recycled yoghurt pot and a chinese take-away box will have to do!

Also, apparently you can just cut of what you need and the plant keeps re-growing. Never have to buy leeks and spring onions again! Awesome.