It’s official I am hooked, well needled actually. Thank god for the finger guards after my first proper stint at trying to make something reasonably life like. Moving on from sheep, I tried my hand at a Barn Owl at the weekend.
She is beautiful and I keep looking at her from all angles. I need to work more on her feet and beak and I also want to make another one with a less tilted angled of the head. I am very critical of my work but I was flattered and amazed when few of my friends thought I had photographed an ‘actual real life owl’ at the end of my garden when I conducted a little photo shoot!
In the beginning..it all started with an egg shape and a handcrafted felt sheet of mottled colours
Starting to bring the ‘egg’ to life with legs! Does anyone else remember Ludwig?
Giving the egg a head and a face and now it’s starting to take shape
All of this wool to add to the wings and and the face and back before it really started looking like an owl!
And there she is (no name) although I think she make be an Olivia as suggested by my dear friend Nicky.
Can you see Olivia looking for her lunch?
I like her. Still a little more shading to add and feet work to do – my next one will be even better I reckon. Thanks so much to Sarah of ‘I Felt Fantastic‘ for the tuition and launch into this wonderful hobby! I highly recommend her online courses which include all materials and templates.
Well a good online search unearthed an easy little recipe to make my favourite chutney – Tomato and Courgette!
This is quite handy as my allotment has gone crazy and I could eat courgette and marrow every day at the moment. This is the link to the recipe BBC GOOD FOOD
Ingredients 500ml cider vinegar or white wine vinegar 400g brown sugar (any brown sugar will work) 1 tbsp mixed spice 2 tbsp yellow mustard seed 1 cinnamon stick 4 onions , chopped 1kg courgettes , diced 1kg tomatoes , chopped 4 eating apples , peeled and diced 300g sultana Method STEP 1 Put the vinegar, 300ml water, sugar and spices in a very large pan. Heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves then add the rest of the ingredients with a tsp of salt.
STEP 2 Bring back to a simmer then simmer uncovered for 2 1/2 hours until darkened, thick and chutney-like.
STEP 3 To sterilise the jars, wash thoroughly in very hot soapy water. Rinse in very hot water then put on a baking sheet in a 140C/fan 120C/gas 1 oven until completely dry.
STEP 4 Pour the chutney into the sterilised jars while still hot, seal and leave in a cool dark place for at least 3 weeks before opening.
I bought my gingham lidded wide mouth jars from Amazon (my go to shop) and also bought some wax discs and labels. The chutny should be ready in around 4 weeks and I think they will make a nice homemade xmas gift along with some cheese, crackers and wine!
A lockdown project which evolved into a micro-brewery!
Well the aim of the project was just to have a platform to serve beer from ( a mini bar) for our Hash House Harriers run planned for the Lechlade festival (May 2020) but due to the lockdown we ended up making something that was still temporary but a little more substantial in an area of the garden that wasn’t used much.
We used reclaimed materials as much as possible. Andy shopped for essential items such as wood for the frame for the roof. We used his left over oak floorboards for the bar top and the ‘fringe’ as a couple of kids fancy dress grass skirts stapled to the underside of the bar. We added features such as solar fairy lights, a shelf for bottles and then popped a little fridge and freezer underneath for wine to cool and ice cubes.
Andy then ventured into making furniture and crafted a neat pallet stool. I sourced some other bar stools from Facebook marketplace
We use the bar on Summer mornings to make omelettes on a little camping gas stove. We have a coffee machine too. In the evenings its a great place to sit and play chess with a citronella candle burning.
Micro Brewery
Again another idea born out of the desire to provide a unique way to enjoy a beer after a hash from a car park or edge of a field or forest!
Andy decided he would brew his own ‘Hash Beer’. The North Wilts HHH emblem is a pig – so he brewed Pig Beer,
The first was a Kune Kune Lager (a Kune Kune Pig is a micro pig) then we had MexiPig, a mexican lager, Brown Snout Stout and the favourite ‘VPA’ -Vegan Pig Ale. Vegan because it has no finings in it. Finings are made from mollusc shells. And then we had a cider request and made Sows Arse cider.
I took a fancy to having a go and used the flowers from the elderflower bush growing in the garden to make Elderflower Champagne.
I used a recipie from YouTube but the guy used both metric and imperial measurements, I got mixed up and used twice the amount of sugar required resulting in some very fizzy champagne (bombs). Andy helped solve the problem and we diluted it and bottled in and now we are waiting to drink it!
Next month is October and domestic violence awareness month.
I often think the question ‘what if?’ How different would my life have been in the last 10 years at least if I had only known.. We cannot go back, and we cannot change what has been and gone and I berate myself over and over for not noticing ‘warning signs’. I didn’t need to have got involved with the wrong person for sure. Even though I wasn’t the only one. I still feel terrible guilt for the ending of his last relationship in which I now know I was in the group labelled ‘f*** buddies’ by his former girlfriend and policewoman. We are connected on social media and she is married now with children but for her it must have been a hurtful time, finding out and dealing with betrayal and lies. If I had known he was in a relationship I would never have got involved and if someone had told me what I was getting into (people knew) then I wouldn’t be writing this today.
On my website, in my Recovering and Health section, I share a lot about events that were painful. They weren’t all bad though and the times when we laughed together, planned for a future, even talked about marriage kind of made me feel like I was winning with forgiving things that had happened to me, or events that I had found out about by either looking or by chance. I felt pulled emotionally because I don’t like to give up and I hung in for too long which made it harder to leave and say NO. I became a victim of my own behaviour, not just the behaviour dealt to me.
Abuse isn’t always physical, it can also be coercive control and ‘gaslighting’, emotional abuse and many other forms. For me it was the continual stress of being cheated on and having constant doubts as well as the times he physically harmed me. Being blamed for ‘looking’ when I had found out as if it was my fault somehow. But I didn’t always have to go ‘detective’. He bought me beautiful underwear once, sent in the post in a box wrapped in tissue paper – I felt like a princess! But the bra cup size was too big so I called the company, explained he was a soldier overseas in Afghan and would they send the right size for exchange whilst he was ‘in action’. That’s when I found out about the Colchester affair. Another one, my heart sank when she read out the name and address for delivery. Obviously I thought there had been some mistake but she had TWO orders one for me and one for the other woman…..she was very sorry and apologetic but I just put the phone down, did a little checking on FB, found her, made contact and had it confirmed. I even went to the camp once and walked around for the day with a pass picture on my camp ID that wasn’t even me, it just looked like me but it was another woman that he’d checked into the camp another time….really it’s so sad….
What I try to do now is look at the good times and be glad for the things we did together, know I was the better person for putting up with terrible treatment and that most of all I did try. I tried hard to fix a broken person who was never ever going to change but was changing me.
I wish I’d been stronger to say no. To leave. Sometimes it was the enormity of what I had to do logistically or that I believed he wouldn’t do it again as he’d promised. I was tired, depressed and so worn down that I just kept going, smiling, pretending to everyone that we were ok when all along it wasn’t ok.
That day I found out about the woman he is with now along with his chats with another woman concurrently, I just had enough and looked at myself in the mirror and saw a broken woman, a version of me with no smile, too many tears and no hope. I found courage and made change happen and look at me now!! I didn’t know how many friends I had to help me to where I am today. People were kind, understanding and there is a lot of help out there, you just have to take that first brave, brave step and say ‘No more’, believe yourself and life is and will be better and happier and calmer on the other side. Nothing you can do can change a person like this. It’s not your fault. You didn’t make him do this.
AnnieLewisMe 