Sometimes It's Best To Leave Well Alone...

We visited Wisley Gardens at the weekend and took plenty of photos as always.  This little meadow section was so beautiful, I thought it might make a good painting but on getting home and looking at the photos properly, I don't think nature can be improved upon.  So I guess I shall just make do with looking at the photograph.

Doesn't it make your heart sing to see all these flowers in one place?

Foraging in the Garden....

I think we can declare the Tomato Challenge with Soggibottom blog well and truly over - Midge has been eating tomatoes from her plants for over a week now while mine remain resolutely unripe.  However, if all the flowers on the plants eventually turn into tomatoes, at some point in the summer we will be having them for every meal!

We have had an unexpected success with mushrooms though.  For Christmas I bought my son a mushroom growing kit although had never heard anyone getting good results from one of these kits.  He followed the instructions to the letter, got a few little nobbles starting which then turned mouldy and disappeared.  This happened a few times, so in the end we got fed up with mollycoddling the things and chucked the box outside.  I put it in a damp corner and pretty much forgot about it.  Yesterday I discovered the above!  A nice healthy crop of Yellow Oyster Mushrooms - admittedly I have just had to check what they were as neither my son or I could remember what it said on the packet.  Also, I didn't want him making himself a mushroom omelet and being rushed off to Casualty!

Elsewhere in the garden there are little treasures growing - a  blue flower grown from seed that once again I cannot remember what on earth it is.  My gardening is haphazard to say the least!

Clematis that hasn't grown for about three years - I thought the winters we have had lately had killed it.

A bumper crop of blueberries approaching ripeness.....

...a fair number of squash.....

...and lots of pretty flowers.

Not much to report creatively - last week was one of those times where life got in the way of living and I spent too long catching up on errands and jobs.  I'm knitting up stock for a summer fair on Friday, and labouring over a wild flower painting that has been untouched for far too long.  Hopefully this week I will have time to get the creative juices flowing once more and let the boring stuff take a back seat.

Growing.....

The faux-fox stole is coming along nicely now - he just needs some back legs, his belly sewing up and a fastener.  Considering this began as one of those 'I could do better than that' moments after a glass of wine one evening, it's not come out too bad!  I have even written down the pattern as I went along just in case this needs repeating.  I'm in two minds now as to whether to put this one on Etsy and repeat it for the original gift (not until May) or to just keep it for the gift and make another one at a later date.  If you'd like one made for you, get in touch!

Ever since my parents died, over  fifteen years ago, I have been trying to get my hands on the family photograph albums as I had no pictures from my early childhood other than a couple of battered black & white baby photos.  One of my brothers had various boxes of memorabilia after their flat was cleared, one of which was brought to me a couple of years ago but it only contained the really old pictures of when my mother was a child - fascinating, but not what I was after.  This month my brother discovered another box stored in his loft and delivered it to me yesterday - jackpot!

This is the house I grew up in on the Isle of Wight - Debourne Manor, which dates back tothe 12th century and is mentioned in the Domesday Book.  We lived in half of it, but owned all the grounds which consisted of an orchard, vegetable garden, walled front garden, massive driveway & lawn, a pond and a couple of acres of woodland.  No, we weren't rich but my dad was a canny estate agent and I think this was either a bargain or some sort of deal!  It was a wonderful place to grow up and I spent most of my time outside wandering, making dens, fashioning my own bows and arrows, bothering wildlife, collecting flower petals for making paint or perfumes, collecting acorns and chestnuts for fairy meals, just returning home for meals.  On rainy days the house was big enough to explore, particularly the attic where I had a dolls house and could cut myself off from the outside world altogether. Do I need to say that the Narnia books were my favourites and I was always searching for that magic doorway!

It would seem that even then I enjoyed sitting in the sun with a good book and a dog at my feet - not much has changed in the past 40 years!

A cup of tea in the garden - nope, my tastes haven't changed there either.  Thankfully I don't have to wear tartan pinafores or get my hair cut by my scissor-happy mother any more, but I wouldn't mind a pair of those red Clarks sandals.

Now I face the gargantuan task of scanning 6 albums of photos and cataloging them all - that could take a while.

My tomatoes have finally poked their noses out of the soil - I was beginning to wonder if they were duff ones, but it has only been a week.

Cucmbers too.  On the other hand, marigolds, cosmos and a few of the other flower seeds are racing away.

Battle of the Tomatoes

I'm usually a bit lackadaisical when it comes to getting my seeds planted.  I buy them on time with the best of intentions but then time seems to get away from me and I end up somwhere in March panicking and throwing them all in then wondering why nothing is as big as it should be later on in the season.  However, this year I have been given a challenge - Midge of Soggibottom down in Devon has suggested we have a tomato growing race.

So yesterday I trundled down to the garden centre to buy my seeds, and today have planted them with more than usual care* - I even bought a windowsill propagator instead of my usual supermarket plastic cake/biscuit box (which are actually really good as free mini-propagators). 

So we have some red ones, some yellow hanging basket ones, and some I bought just because I want to see what a Yellow Stuffer will look like!  Place your bets now...
I've also planted some cucumbers after discovering last year how very easy they are to grow, and have some broad beans and runner beans waiting in the wings.  The rest are flowers - I can't go without my annual crop of sweetpeas and Cosmos!

No art to show lately - I am not feeling at all creative at the moment, no inspiration, no enthusiasm.  However, next week is half term which means I have a whole 9 days at home so I will get myself back into the groove once again I am sure.

*I think Midge might be cheating - she planted hers a day before we said we would!

Country Garden Bag & a Trip to London

The Country Garden Bag above is what I have been working on for about a week now. It started off as a simple clutch bag in some of the white cotton tape yarn I bought at that car boot sale in order to utilise a metal clasp I wanted to try out. Knitting up the main piece was the easy part, as was sewing in the lining. Then came the ordeal of sewing it to the metal frame - I don't know if you have ever tried to sew around corners through holes in metal with a straight needle, while at the same time making sure two layers of fabric are tucked neatly away inside - not easy. In fact, about a million miles from easy....easy is a dot on the horizon! I skewered myself so many times with the needle, always somewhere especially painful, like down the side of a fingernail or the back of my hand (don't ask!) and then while dealing with the agony, trying not to let my blood get on the pristine white bag!

Then it seemed a nice idea to use the other colours in this yarn (Papua by Adriafil - gorgeous!) to create a flowery design...so I crocheted strips down the lines of the knitting stitches to represent grass, leaving a few inches dangling at the bottom of the bag - two evenings' work. Then I set about making crochet flowers & knitted leaves and sewing them in place, some on the bag, some on the dangling blades of 'grass' - another 3 evenings' work. I finally finished it last night by sewing a little glass ladybird bead on one of the flowers and breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief! I'm debating on whether or not it needs a fine chain shoulder strap...

This will be on sale at the Goodwood Organic Farm fair, Chichester, on Sunday 1st June, but if you'd like to get to it first, it is £25 + P&P.

Talking of the above fair, I shall not only be selling the crafts you see on this blog, but also touting for business with regard to pet portraits. If you fancy immortalising your beloved companion (humans too!!) here's your chance! I shall bring along my portfolio and plenty of business cards - better get in quick because if the project possibly in the pipeline (still don't want to jinx anything) comes off, I shall be a very busy lady for quite a while.

Yesterday I had a brilliant day out in London where I met up with three bloggers who I 'chat' with on a regular basis on-line - Penny & Toby from Natural Attrill and Sybille from Magpie Magic. We had arranged to meet up at the World Cafe in Covent Garden, but where did we all run into each other? Yes, the bead shop opposite! Had a lovely lunch, comparing and swapping beads, getting to know each other, and then had a wander round the shops before a final coffee at Covent Garden Market. Great fun and I hope something we will do again in the future - I promise next time not to be such an airhead and make sure my mobile phone actually has some credit on it........