Back Home

A break from the holiday photos. Here instead is a little collection of photos of Things At Home.

The garden at about 7:30am. A late summer garden, the grass is heavy with dew, all is rather overgrown, and the day promises to be golden. We have indeed been having a good July weatherwise (which hasn't been the case for the last two years so it's very welcome). Notice the washing on the line - seven pairs of pants and jogging bottoms all from one day of potty training. I was just letting him go with the flow (so to speak), probably not a good idea. Now he gets plonked on the toilet every hour or so but we still have several accidents though the day. I'd abandoned the last attempt at potty training after 5 days but this time we need to keep going as he'll be starting nursery mid-August (woo hoo!)

What is this? I'm looking after a friend's garden while she's on holiday. This friend grows lots of vegetables and I'm allowed (encouraged even) to pick whatever is ripe - a fantastic reward for the little effort required. This is, in fact, a crystal lemon cucumber. At first it seemed to me rather an odd thing to grow. The advice was to peel before eating.

So I used a tattie peeler, seemed to do the job fine, and then had a taste - mmmmm delicious! It's very nice, much crisper than an ordinary cucumber and the children love it too. I'll be picking a few more of these before said friend is back. Perhaps we'll even try to grow them ourselves next year too.

(It's all a just bit random...) This is my hexie output for the holidays, mostly accomplished during scrabble games against (or should that be with?) hubby once the kids were in bed. Yes, I've been bitten by the patchwork bug and am attempting to make my first solo quilt. The hexagons are a lot easier than the shapes I did for the blocks in this quilt, and it's actually quite a pleasant task. Almost all the material I'm using is from the childrens' old clothes which they've now outgrown. I'd been keeping these since they were born with vague notions of making patchwork with them and the time had come to either use them or get rid of them, and, well, I'm very bad at getting rid of anything so patchwork here we come.

Here is the total stash so far - more blues and greens required methinks, I don't want it to be too pink.

Though I do like these pinks (a tenuous link, desperately trying to prove my blog is not so random after all). They smell absolutely scrumptious - no need to have to bend down and sniff, the scent is noticeable just when walking past the pot.

With May and June being so cold I was rather late in getting my window boxes planted. Indeed B&Q had stopped stocking bedding plants by the time I visited so good old Morrisons came up trumps again. I would have preferred nicotianas instead of petunias (again for the scent), but overall I'm pleased with them and they certainly brighten the place up.

Back to the sewing. I'd run out of thread so had to visit my thread box to see what I could use. This box originally belonged to my granny. Until I started blogging and flickring (seems any word can be changed into a verb these days) I hadn't appreciated how desireable old wooden cotton reels were, and I've got some!

The threads are in gorgoues colours too. I picked a modern spool to use seeing as I now realise these wooden ones are special.

Now on to some holiday souvenirs. On the way home we stopped off for lunch in Port Appin, a tiny little place in a beautiful location. There was an art exhibition on in the village hall, entry was free so we popped in for a look, and came out with a picture! It's by Helen Simcox (more of her work is available here) and I absolutely love it.

More souvenirs, just some of the shells we collected on the beaches near the caravan.

Normally I wouldn't collect the holey ones, I guess I was inspired by one of the projects in this book.

I finally made Andrea's yoghurt pot cakes. They were good.

I've done some gardening. Really, we do have enough Lady's Mantle now so I've been cutting it back and uncovered many snails which N enjoyed collecting and lining up on the slabs.

And I managed to squeeze in just a little more hexie making. Not a lot, but enough.