Renovated...

 My old potting table had been neglected and unused at the bottom of the garden for far too long.  Mr.B felt sorry for it, especially as I had bought a new potting table/cupboard a couple of weeks ago, so he decided to take it to pieces and mend it.

Obviously, my job was to paint it and I found a pot of wood preserver that I had forgotten about until I put it in the new cupboard (!)

 

I gave it blue drawers - the same blue as the rest of the garden storage and pergola.  Smart isn't it!  I'll try not to let it get into such a bad condition again...

Gardening...

 It's been a while since I posted here - not a lot of art going on because I have been out in the garden while the weather has been good.  After an incredibly wet winter, it was great to have some dry days at last.

So I got the citrus trees out of the greenhouse - although there have been numerous frosts since I did this, but the trees seem to be OK - and started on planting seeds.  This year I have an abundance of seeds - my daughter gave me an advent calendar last year with a pack of seeds for every day, plus I had already bought some packs in readiness.  

 Very quickly I ran out of room for all the seed trays due to the extra gardening equipment being stored in there.  So I bought a little wooden flat pack garden cupboard - I love building flat pack furniture - put it together and painted it blue to match the sentry box.  I decanted all the bits and pieces from the greenhouse into the cupboard and finally managed to get all the seed trays in place.  There are also some vegetable seeds sown in the covered planters in the garden. This year I am attempting to grow tomatoes, cucumber, peas, radishes, onions, spring onions, lettuce, carrots, pumpkin, sweetcorn, runner beans, 3 types of courgette, cosmos, nasturtiums, marigolds, and various other flowers from seeds I got free in magazines.  Many are already sprouting, but it's a long time between now and summer, a lot could happen.  Last year my seeds started off well and then we had a month of cold, dismal weather which put them in stasis so they were very far behind once the good weather returned.  Fingers crossed for this year!

 I have been painting, but it needs a little bit of work to finish it off but I have left it while I have been gardening.  Maybe today? 

Biding Time...

After the wettest January on record, and what looks like the wettest February too, it was good to be able to get out in the garden for a bit of a tidy up yesterday.  There are hundreds of bulbs poking their noses out of the ground and one lone daffodil open already.  I also found this pretty bloom on my small potted camelia.

Spring is just around the corner!

As I currently have no yarn projects on the go, I have been playing around with some amigurumi  - this tiny crochet baby took my fancy - how cute is that?  He is about 2 inches tall.  Not sure what to do with all the little creatures and people that I make - perhaps I had better do one of those Little Acts of Kindness and leave them for people to find...

After a rubbish year for sales and commissions last year, this year has started off well - two painting sales and a commission for a dog portrait that I shall be starting this week - long may it continue!
 

Summer Hops...

Back in August I spotted a view of the hops growing on our pergola against a bright blue sky that made me want to paint them - the contrasting colours just sang.  My first attempt was in watercolour and I soon became discouraged - I'd chosen paper that was too small and consequently the drawing was a nightmare, and the subsequent painting was tight and fiddly and just frustrating to do.

So I ditched that one, and started a much bigger painting in acrylics on canvas board.  I didn't bog myself down with a highly detailed drawing - in fact I started by just painting the pergola against the sky, nothing on it at all.   Then I just loosely marked in the shapes of the hops and let the paintbrush do the work as I went along.

As Autumn kicked in and the light began to fail, I was working under electric light a lot of the time which really changes the colours, so had to check occasionally that I was getting them right by taking the painting outside for a look. Thankfully everything was OK!

This was quite a departure from my usual subjects, but enjoyable nonetheless and was a welcome distraction from reality!  It is currently for sale in my Etsy shop.

Next up...not sure, but it will be in watercolours and splashy! 

In A Pickle...

This year in the garden was a bit of a strange one - a chilly Spring followed by a relentlessly hot Summer meant things were a bit different.  Seeds grew slowly and stopped growing for a few weeks when the weather was cool which in turn set them back considerably.  Some things didn't make it when the heat kicked in - not a single courgette this year compared to last year's glut.  My carefully nurtured tomatoes in the back garden were a bit of a disappointment but the tangle of random tomato plants that sprung up on the remains of the old compost heap in the front garden were amazing.  We could recognise some varieties from tomatoes we'd bought at the supermarket, except these were much tastier!  There were so many large tomatoes that had not turned red by the time October came around that I managed to make about 4lbs of chutney.

 Runner beans were quick to start - we had one lot to pick and then with the heat they faltered, only to get going again at the end of the summer and we had a bumper crop for a couple of weeks.

 One vegetable that really took off this year was the cucamelons.  I grew them from seed and they looked a bit shaky to begin with but then suddenly went berserk and there were more cucamelons than I could eat!  Luckily, after watching Gardener's World last week, I found out that they can be pickled, so I picked the remaining ones and gave it a go.  Looking forward to seeing what they taste like!

On the easel at the moment, a large acrylic of the hops on our pergola.  The hops were another roaring success and look so pretty draped along the beams - I took a snap of them in mid summer against the bright blue sky which is what I am trying to capture in paint. It's not my usual thing, I'm finding it challenging but it's getting there.  Think I might go back to bears after this...

That's a Whopper!

 I usually have minimum success with my courgette plants - very small garden and I tend to plant them in pots.  This year I took Monty Don's advice and planted a couple of them right next to the compost bin...this is what happened!  It has grown bigger even in the few days since I took this photo and we will be eating courgettes every day for weeks at this rate...

Boring...

Apologies for being so quiet over the past month or so.  I seem to have spent most of my time in the garden trying to get all the jobs done that were left while it rained interminably.

I have finally planted all seedlings & young plants, which was a task and a half, especially finding spaces for various cabbage & cauliflower plants that were given to me.  It's all in now and I am impatiently waiting for everything to grow while fighting off the snails and slugs.

We have a pretty dire summer predicted - I hope that doesn't come to pass as I would really like to be harvesting homegrown veg this year!

We found a pick your own farm within easy distance recently, so I have been making strawberry and rhubarb jam as we had finally run out of all homemade jam.  Also made tomato & chilli jam and pickled some beetroot.

I was ill over the last couple of weeks - it was a bit concerning as I had a tight and painful chest with the feeling that I needed to cough but nothing was productive. Also kept getting a low grade fever off and on for a few days.  Went to the doctor and was told it was nothing serious, probably viral (isn't it always?) and sent home with some strong cough mixture and instructions to send in BP readings twice a day.  Thankfully, it all seems to be clearing up at last.

On the work front, I have been painting a sweet commission of a cat, plus designing and knitting more fun patterns for Nudinits.  Hopefully I will have more interesting things to blog about soon!
 

Birds, Babies & Blimey, That's A Big'un!

Throughout the summer I have been sporadically working on this jumper.  I saw this pattern through a post on Twitter I think and looked it up on Ravelry and promptly bought it.  I could not resist those wonderful birds!  

 

However, making it has not been easy.  Firstly, the yarn I ordered arrived and was not the same colour as it appeared on the photograph on the yarn store's website and they did not have another similar so I had to change my colour choice.  Then it took me three attempts to get the increases right before starting on the birds.

The chart for the birds involved being repeated 4 times in the round (did I mention this whole jumper is knitted in the round from the neck down?) and to make it a bit easier, I went through each line counting the number of light stitches and writing them down before knitting the round.  So I was getting through a maximum of three rounds in an evening.  Incredibly, I think I only made a couple of minor errors which hopefully will not notice and I did end up with the right number of stitches needed to carry on once the birds were complete.  Now it is straight knitting, which is a whole lot easier and much quicker, although this is being knitted in baby yarn so not that quick!  I might have this done by Christmas...

I also made some summer dresses for my grandaughter, one with farm animals on, one with dogs on, and the one previously posted with wild animals on.  Apparently they went down a storm and were ideal for the heatwave.
 

The garden has been struggling with the heat and lack of rainfall - it has meant a lot of plants dying off prematurely and my runner beans have been a disaster.  But I have managed to grow several of these enormous things!  It is a Tromboncino squash,and this one is over 2ft long.  You can cook them like a courgette but they are much tastier and not as watery.  I shall definitely be growing these again next year.

I am currently finishing off a couple of painted trinket boxes - painting the bases black and varnishing.  Not hard work but time consuming as it means literally watching paint dry.

And I might have quite an interesting little job coming up involving knitting and bears...

It's Hot Out There...

As Mr.B has almost recovered from his knee replacement surgery, I am starting to get my time back as I no longer have to be on hand as much.  So I have started sewing Otis stuffies again.  These two are already spoken for.

As is this one.  I am also painting a trinket box, part of a commission for three of them, and have a line up of four painting commissions waiting in the wings.  So it is all go once more!

Meanwhile inthe garden, everything is growing well but I am especially happy that I have managed to get a couple of chicory plants to flower.  Last year they were just leaves on plants that I grew from seed and did not flower.  This year they are over 6 ft tall and I just love the delicate pale blue flowers that only last for a day before being replaced with more.

 

The greenhouse appears to have been overly successful - looks like I will need a machete to get near anything!  In there are three large tomato plants, two long cucumber vines, a smaller tomato plant and somewhere at the back, a melon plant.

I have been picking runner beans, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries and have a lot of cherry tomatoes just waiting to turn red.  Hopefully everything will survive the next few days of very hot weather.

Garden...

As we are stuck at home on lock down, it's time to get on with some outstanding jobs.  With the weather being so beautiful, one of the first things to get done was to tidy up the patio and give it a jet wash - after the wet and miserable winter, the paving stones were slimy and filthy.

Then we put the new plant stand in place and I potted up some ranunculus & violas that I had bought before the lockdown.  I was very pleased with how it looks - now we just need all those flowers to come out and cheer us up!

 We have been waking up at ridiculously early times this week - stress I think - but on Tuesday it was a good opportunity to watch a pair of dunnocks courting in the curly hazel right outside the living room window.

 I'm assuming it was the male that was doing all the posturing and posing, fluttering his wings like crazy while perched on top of the small tree.

The female seemed to like his efforts, they were hopping and fluttering around each other on the patio.  Perhaps they will nest in the garden?  We already have a pair of bluetits nesting, and possibly a pair of coaltits.  At least with the lockdown the noisy brats next door aren't crashing around quite so much and our garden is a peaceful haven for the birds most of the time.  Thank goodness we have the garden and a few fields behind the house to enjoy in the sunshine when we can.

Garden Time...

 The past couple of weeks have been a bit of a nightmare outside in the garden.  We have had a faulty gutter for years which has caused all sorts of waterfalls and water related problems.  I finally managed to get the housing association to fix it but it involved having scaffolding put up on our patio for a week - not so easy with all the flower pots, greenhouse, grapevine etc. out there!  So everything had to be moved out of the way and we had chaos for about a month (first date for scaffolding never happend...) 

Finally last Thursday we got our patio back - a few breakages but I'm willing to overlook them because we now have a shiny new gutter.  I spent two days putting everything back on the patio as well as building two new wooden tables for the bonsai trees.

 Everything seems to have come out of it reasonably well, no major casualties.

 I moved a few things around - gave the olive tree some more space and got rid of some pots of what might well have been weeds that I was cultivating!  It is starting to look good.

 We also got a new fence after a winter of it crashing and banging about every time the wind blew, so I was able to plant a few climbers in at last.

 The Torbay palm at the bottom of the garden has put out a large cluster of flowers this year - the scent is overpowering but the bees and flies are loving it!

And the triffid in the front garden has put out a flower spike as well this year - two years ago it got to about 15 feet high.  Waiting to see what it does this year!

So with all that going on, there has not been much time or inclination for arts & crafts - hopefully now things have calmed down I will be able to get back to the easel once more.

Paintings & Picking...

 A lady that bought one of my paintings and two prints sent me a photo of them framed and on her wall - I love it when people do that!  Don't they look great?

I have one white currant bush in a pot in the garden - yesterday I picked 3lbs of currants off it!  This must be a record yield - time to make currant jelly!

Grandfather Clock..

I've been a bit quiet the past week - this is one of the reasons why!  This is a grandfather clock, about 18 inches tall, made from all sorts of bits and pieces covered in felt.

It took me quite a while to figure out how to make this.  Initially I thought to use card board boxes for the structure, but when it came down to it, I could not find any the right size plus they would be a bit flimsy if I cut them down.  However, i rarelythrow anything away that might come in handy in the future and stashed away I had a large piece of firm foam that had been the internal part of a tool box which was already semi-cut into small squares.  I also had some pieces of even firmer foam that had come as the packaging for something - can't remember what - which were ideal to use for the central section.  So I made three parts, the base, the hollow middle and the clock.

I appliqued some rather nice tweed and soome felt, embroidered with gold crochet thread.

I made the fancy bit for the top and the little piece for above the pendulum from foamboard and covered them in felt.  All the sections are held together with toothpicks in strategic places and then sewn firmly into place.

The pendulum is made from felt and stuffed, then embroidered with gold crochet thread.  It is suspended with a wire - the little scrolled piece hides where it is attached to the underside of the clock face.

The clock face is made from two pieces of card covered in felt.  I used some bought fake watch cogs and gears for the back part and embroidered the numbers on the face. The clock hands are made from an old ice cream carton and held in place with a tiny nut and bolt.  I sliced my finger open while making the hands - thank goodness I did not drip any blood onto a fortnight's work!  If there are any typos in this post, that is why as I have a large plaster on it!

You will have to wait and see what this is going to be used for...

 In the meantime, the garden is starting to look rather lovely.  Since the weather perked up, I have done an awful lot of work out there.

I re-turfed the 'lawn' - now it really is a lawn, not just a mud patch - and cut down/dug out a lot of old and unruly shrubs and the dying damson tree.  I replaced the tree with a young greengage tree I discovered going for a song at Lidls.  The old shrubs have been replaced by a vegetable patch.  Fingers crossed it all survives!

It's Dirty Work...

I have spent the past week transforming this....

...into this.  The grass after the winter (I won't even deign to call it a lawn) was sparse, waterlogged and full of moss.  Usually I re-seed it in the Spring, but that never seems to last, so I thought I'd try re-turfing.  First I had to dig up all the old grass & earth, break up the clods and level it out.  This took about five days as I did a little at a time - I know my limitations!  By Sunday it was ready for the turf.  Turf was delivered yesterday - the lorry driver and I discovered that the passage that leads to our garden was too narrow for the pallet with the turf on it...so we unloaded it all and the driver very kindly helped me take the rolls of turf into the garden.   Then after lunch I set to laying the turf - wow, that was very hard work!  At one point I thought I might very well throw up my lunch...
But it is done now - let's hope it lasts because I'm not doing this again!

Apaert from grubbing around in the dirt, I have been making some felt flower brooches as I have a request for a couple.  Now they just need the addition of bees...

Garden Goodness...

 I have started picking produce from the garden - small quantities still, but enough for a rhubarb crumble and this morning I made some white currant jelly.

I made it at 6 a.m. and had it on toast for breakfast - delicious!

Tanagers...

 Last week I got a bit of an unusual commission, which at first I was not sure I could make a go of.  However, once I had the suitable reference photos and got pencil on to paper, it all came together nicely.  This one is of a pair of tanagers flying out of a guitar - it has a personal meaning to the client and I hope I manage to execute it properly.  This is using Derwent Inktense pencils on smooth watercolour paper.

 Meanwhile, now the weather has warmed up everything in the garden is coming along nicely!

I honestly cannot jam another plant in anywhere!

Garden Stuff...

 We have a wren's nest in the ivy on the pergola.  We didn't know what it was when we discovered it and nearly pulled it apart while investigating - very glad we didn't.  The wren has been seen entering it, so hopefully it is being used and we haven't scared it off - I heard it singing loudly out there this morning.  The nest is about 6ft away from our back door so perhaps we will be able to see what happens if there are chicks.

 I've been planting flowers...

 ...the currants are already dashing ahead...

 ... the apple tree is covered in blossom, having recovered from it's severe pruning in the winter.

Of course, now that there are flowers, seedlings and bedding plants out there, the weather has taken a turn for the worst - the garden is now swathed in expanses of fleece until the cold snap is over.