Good food, locally produced

I wanted to share what I had for lunch today. I was particularly pleased with it because the majority was home-grown. The very fresh eggs, poached, are from our own hens - laid this morning. The Cucumber, mizuna and mixed salad leaves are all from our own polytunnel. Chives are also from the garden. I finished it off with teriyaki dressing , red pepper from the fridge (our own are not nearly ready yet) and a sprinkling of mixed seeds. I must make the effort to do this more often. It such a good feeling to enjoy really fresh, healthy food and know that most of it was produced right here in my own garden.

Chickens

I've had a lovely, busy weekend this week. On Saturday I visited a friend who used to live very close to me but is now about 40 miles away. Our children had a lovely time playing together, and we all had a very tasty, healthy lunch too. The sun even shone on us for a little while when we took the children to the local play park.

One interesting part of our visit though was rather impromptu. When I arrived at my friend's house, one of the first things I saw was her new hen house in the garden - complete with two, brand new chickens. I've been thinking for a while now that we need some new hens in our flock, so when I discovered that the farm she'd bought them from was only a few miles away, I decided I just had to take a detour on the way home!

After a good wander round and looking at all the different colours of hens available, we decided to buy four, one for each member of our family. DS1 chose a dominant black hybrid with lovely brown markings on her neck feathers. The black feathers have an amazing greenish sheen when viewed up close in the sunlight. The white with black neck markings was the perfect partner for this one.

To complement the black and white, I chose this very pretty Dominant Blue (grey to anyone who is not a chicken breeder). She's particularly camera shy, all the shots I have are of her rear end....

And finally, DS2 chose the lovely Pheasant-coloured girl, who is the only white egg layer of the group - this means that when he collects the eggs, he will know which one came from "his" hen. This one is a bit flighty at the moment - she escaped yesterday and was loose for several hours before DH finally managed to chase her through a neighbouring field and into the open door of our neighbour's shed. He followed her in and shut the door behind them, giving her no chance to escape again! This is also the first hen who has laid us an egg, much to the delight of my younger son (who will be having it soft-boiled with toast soldiers for lunch).

All the pics are taken through mesh, this is because the birds are still very nervous and I'd like to give them a couple of days to settle in before I do the necessary (and painless for the hen) task of clipping the flight feathers. Our fence is not high enough to keep in flighty birds, and the road right outside our garden is too dangerous to let them wander out there. Also my neighbours would be not best pleased if my hens were out scratching in their carefully-tended gardens! My plan is to raise the height of a section of fence which encloses our little orchard, so they can safely free range in there. It will also keep them out of our vegetables, which is essential - last year I let the our hens have total free range but protected certain crops with cloches. I lost an entire bed of rocket one morning when the cloche blew off during the night, leaving the tasty greens exposed for a hen feast! So rather than ring-fence the veggies I think it's safer to fence in the chickens. The small run will have to be their home in the meantime.

Finally, here's a snap of our rather disgruntled "mother hen" who is used to just having one rather submissive little friend. She is quite put out by these interlopers and has taken to perching on the drinker to show her superiority. At least it's an improvement over the constant clucking/crowing she was doing yesterday at 5am....

Catching up!

I've never been one to keep a journal on a regular basis, and I'm not what i'd describe as a creature of habit. So blogging does not come easily to me. Please excuse my lack of posts, and this attempt to bring things a bit more up-to-date!

The finished Layering Shrug, blocking.

Since my last post, I have finished (and worn) the Layering Shrug, cleared out most of my WIP's/UFO's, and started a few more. I'm knitting busily on various projects for THAT event at the end of next month.... gloves for my Gran (finished), hot water bottle covers for extra gifts (done), socks for FIL(finished), and a Gryffindor scarf for my nephew (just started). In between I try to have some fun projects, and I have promised to do a test knit for a sock pattern for p/hop, on top of all the usual stuff.

Lyle Socks, designed by Susan Bromiley

I also got my first pattern published! Lyle is a sock pattern for men, plain and simple but not too tedious to knit. It was made available as a printout on the p/hop stand at the Glasgow School of Yarn last month, and the pdf will be going live on the website as soon as the lovely P/Hop Clare gets back from her holidays! Check out the p-hop website for more information.

Me (on left) with Amy Singer at The Yarn Cake in Glasgow 

And guess who I met at the Glasgow School of Yarn! Amy Singer, editor of Knitty.com! I took two classes with her - socks from the toe-up (vegan-friendly) AND spindle spinning silk. All in all it was a fab weekend, I was glad to be able to get there and join in the fun.

Making Mondays

A few weeks ago, Natalie at TheYarnYard started to log what she has been making each week on a Monday. I thought it was a great idea at the time, but it has taken me this long to get round to posting about it!

So in celebration of Making Mondays, I have resurrected this blog, renamed it, and revamped it.


Here's my Making Mondays project for this week.

These cute car trousers are my first attempt at sewing clothes, and I am very pleased with them! They were made using a kit which is available here. There are some lovely designs for boys, and even more for little girls. I have also treated myself to a skirt kit that I will get around to making up one of these days!
The lovely thing about these kits is that the pattern is printed onto the fabric itself, and everything that you need to make them up is included - instructions, matching thread, button, zips, and even a sew-in label.

My only suggestion to anyone making one one of these is to measure the wearer carefully before cutting out the pattern pieces. My 4 year old son is slim around the hips, and I had to make the age 1-2 size to fit him! I left the legs the maximum length (the biggest size is age 6) and just trimmed and hemmed them last. I left a good 2" turn-up so that I can let them down later when he has a growth spurt.

One pair down, one to go. Because what one son has, the other wants......

Misty Morning & Busy Spiders

Having to go out early to catch the school bus has its advantages sometimes.... this morning our garden was festooned with webs and I managed to get out while the dew was still on the grass and the mist was still in the sir. Even in the time it took to run inside, grab my camera and dash back out again, the mist was already starting to lose its ethereal gleam. I did manage to snap a couple of images though.

Harvest Display

A couple of days ago I had the pleasure of spending the evening in the company of friends, making corn dollies to celebrate the harvest. Afterwards one of those friends came to visit me and brought this lovely bouquet of flowers from the garden, which I decided to display on the table with one of the corn dollies I have made. This one is a Harvest Angel, and I made her some time ago, but with careful storage I hope she will last a few more harvest seasons.

Ouch!

This is what I found in my hens' nest box today - three normal sized eggs and one mutant double-yoker.

Does anyone know if you can buy special cushions for hens with sore bottoms? 'Cos that's gotta hurt!