Stitchwort

The stitchwort is flowering. Locally here it is along the hedges and path sides, in the same sort of places as bluebells. One of my favourite floral displays is bluebells, stitchwort, and red campion all out together in the woods.


There are still some flowers on the willow - this bee was feeding happily on what's left. There was a red-tailed bumble bee about, which just would not stay still long enough to be photographed.


This is not a good photograph from the point of view of composing the shot, attention to background and so on, but I was trying to get a record of the plant, which I couldn't readily identify. There was a very large patch of it by the roadside. Study of my battered copy of Fitter and Blamey ("The wild flowers of Britain and Northern Europe" by Richard and Alistair Fitter and Marjorie Blamey ) reveals that it's probably yellow archangel - a rather upmarket name for something that looks remarkably like a nettle. The only difference is that the plant in the picture has variegated leaves, which is not mentioned in the book. If this is wrong, please identify it correctly for me.

Botanic Gardens

After shopping for shoes and failing to find any that both appealled and fitted, a boost was required. So off to the Botanic gardens, where not only the gardens but also the coffee shop are most attractive. Once the body was fortified with coffee and the obligatory bun, the plants called. Above is the view from one of the gazebos - the early daffodils are over, but there are still plenty in bloom, partnering the plum blossom beautifully.


In one of the hothouses are several sorts of butterfly, as well as a pool full of goldfish. In tanks are spiders, insects and small amphibians. The cockroaches were wonderfully marked, but almost indistinguishable from the bark litter in their tank, so not very photogenic!


New growth is appearing all around - these leaves were particularly fresh and "just out of the wrapper".


There are a few sculptures in the gardens, including this heron in the pool near the hothouses. In the background is one of a circle of sculptures depicting North East historical worthies.


In the Himalayan Dell is this row of birches, looking spectacular today in the sunshine and before their leaves open. From this angle the building site (a new college) can't be seen.


But these tulips make my favourite picture of the day - a real blast of colour!

Things we used to do

OK folks, you can relax - this is a religion-free posting.

Today there's been a couple of activities that haven't been done for a while - cloth doll making and jogging.

Breakfast browsing/reading today was "Making creative cloth dolls" by Marthe le Van, and that triggered off a couple of ideas. I haven't done any sewing for ages, and it seemed like a good thing to try on a free day off work. Two freehand patterns were drawn on sheets of A4 paper, and two small dolls have been cut out, one is sewn together and stuffed, and the second is partly sewn together. Once assembled, they will have faces, hair and belly buttons added, and any other ornamentation, embellishment, or clothing that seems appropriate.

Jogging - 20 years ago it was fairly easy to run a half marathon, so why is it now so hard to jog not quite 3 miles? I could almost have walked it in the time it took. Probably something to do with sitting and knitting all winter, plus the left-over effect of the broken knee 2 years ago, and having that wired up for 10 months. The inactivity plus the eating equals the difficulty in finding running kit big enough. These hip bones used to stick out - now it's the avoirdupois that sticks out.

Progress reports on both activities in due course.

Happy New Year!

Today we celebrated the festival of the Buddha's birth, and therefore the start of the new year, at Throssel Hole Abbey.
In this picture of the altar are offerings of cakes iced in brown and blue - probably the results of one of the children's activities, as the weekend was a family retreat. The mass of flowers at the bottom right of the picture is the roof over the small statue of the baby Buddha.


This shows the ceremony hall after the ceremony and the Dharma talk - a couple of people were still in the side chapels behind the main altar.

As usual, we had an excellent lunch, and it was just about warm enough to eat outside, though cloudy and dull.

Cuckoo!

At 2.10 p.m. this afternoon, we heard the cuckoo, loud and clear, in Weardale near Stanhope. Spring is definitely here!

There were masses of primroses in the woodland, and a few violets on the banks.


Our path took us up by Stanhope Beck, up onto the moorland, past the seat placed in memory of W.O. Colin Wall, R.M.P., killed in Basra in 2003, and down the Crawleyside incline. There were grouse and lapwings, skylarks, and plenty of those SBBs.
We had our picnic above the valley, looking down over Stanhope, with the sculpted shapes of the old quarries just below us. (Dear readers, you shall be spared the sight of our little group having a nice lie-down after lunch!)


Further along, we followed Shittlehope Burn, where the banks were covered in wild garlic - just smell it!


Returning to the road, we took in an extra loop on part of the Weardale Way, which passes through an extremely tidy and well-manicured caravan park. In 1984, Hell was full of rats - in mine, it could well be full of caravan parks like this.

Again, dear readers, you shall be spared the sight of middle-aged backsides lined up putting their rucksacks back into the car, preparatory to repairing to the tea-shop.

This walk was a repeat of one we did in the winter of 2003, when it was my birthday walk. This time, a belated Happy Birthday to Peanut Yorkie, who will have his own version of the event.

And the message is...

This posting is a useful way to sit by the window and watch out for the repair man. I daren't go out into the back garden and continue yesterday's thrilling task of re-pointing the paving, in case I miss the man from Grittish Bass.

Funny how advertisements enter the mind in ways probably never thought of by those who dream them up.

There's the company who sponsor CSI for instance - the message received is "phones for the incredibly thick". And there was a car "they don't want you to buy" - we didn't.

The cleaning products with the ludicrous 'dirt' scenarios and intensely irritating presenters/salespeople; OK, they may clean up fresh dust and lightly coloured water, but how do they do with the catsick on the carpet that you don't find till hours later?

There's soap labelled "non-comedogenic" - well, soap NEVER makes me laugh!

Recently I found myself singing a song I must have picked up from a couple of TV ads, a bank that has hi-jacked a Glen Campbell oldie, and another cleaning product - yep, Like a Limescale Cowboy.

Out and about

The flower beds in Jubilee Park were looking colourful yesterday as DH and I walked back from the shops. Along the railway line path the willows and cherries are flowering. As we came past the farm, three house martins were swooping round - the first of the summer.


Today we had a walk in Hamsterley Forest. The mountain bikers were still assembling in the nearly empty car park when we set out. We didn't meet many people in the forest, though by the time we returned the car park was heaving. The usual rule applies - 200 yards from the car park and you're away from the madding crowd. Saw a couple of people jogging - hmmm...


Even the moorland looked attractive in the sunshine. And the tracks were quite dry. Large areas have been felled, and in places logs are piled up beside the tracks. The log piles smelled wonderful. Among the wildlife we saw were two peacock butterflies, a pair of jays, and a few lapwings.

Rowers and Flowers

There were quite a lot of students rowing on the River Wear today in Durham, just under Kingsgate Bridge. Some building work on the riverside too. It was overcast and rather chilly, not inviting weather for messing about on the river.


Meanwhile, back at the ranch.... this flower looks like a primrose, but has several flower heads on one stem, like a cowslip. There are both primroses and cowslips in the borders, and a variety of others from the primula family - it was intended that they should hybridise.


And this is the first forget-me-not to have buds on - it's only a couple of inches high, but is still capable of seeding all over the place! One of our most successful plants.

It will be easily grasped from these 3 photos why I take so many pictures of flowers - the camera and I do them rather better than landscapes.

Mostly wool

All morning working fingers to the bone over the microwave, dyeing lots of skeins of handspun - Shetland and Wensleydale wool. Here they all are drying on a clothes horse in the conservatory, with Jazz supervising. Interesting to see how the different wools take the dye differently.

The Knitting Curmudgeon has a competition running for a "Fib" - a sort of haiku, only with syllables in a Fibonnacci series. Here's one:
Red,
Blue,
Purple,
Colours bright,
Dyeing wool today -
I can't wait to start to knit it.


This is the new current knitting project - a side to side cardigan in stripes of neutrals and orangey tones; provisional cast on at centre back and worked to centre front, then again from centre back to the other centre front. If there's enough wool, it might have sleeves.


And this is a lichen-covered telegraph pole spotted on a walk today. Amazing colour!

The ice cream van has been busy this week - a few days ago it was playing the Teddy Bears' Picnic, and today the theme from Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Ta Da!

The black jumper, front view and back view (the colour strip goes across the back neck) - it's Shetland with colour detail in Blue-faced Leicester, hand dyed. It's all hand spun and hand knitted, and I'm especially pleased with it as it's the first jumper I've done in this particular way.






The "recipe" comes from 'Knitting in the old way' by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts and Deborah Robson, using their guidelines for a jumper knitted in the round, with sleeves picked up and knitted down from the shoulders, also in the round. So when it's done, there are no seams to sew up!

The Shetland wool is much softer handspun than millspun, and Blue-faced Leicester is wonderfully soft anyway, so it's lovely and soft and warm.

Now, what shall I make next?

Plant Life

The houseleeks are now transferred to 2 smart new pots (from Mr. Tesco) - one each side of the pergola.

In spite of the cold, some of the wild plants (you could call them weeds) in the garden are flowering. This is heartsease, which is far too pretty to pull up and has very variable coloured flowers. This plant is only about an inch and a half tall.

The plants out of a Marks and Spencer basket of mixed indoor plants were separated and potted up individually a year or two ago, so the label was lost and their varieties are now unknown. This palm-like plant has produced a sort of flower, or perhaps fruiting body, in amongst the general tangle of leaves.

And two of the cactuses in the conservatory (kept at 10 degrees C.) are now in flower.

There have been very few birds about recently - presumably the bitterly cold weather has prevented insects from emerging, and so there is little food for them. The only visiting birds spotted this week have been a song thrush (quite unusual) and a pair of fat pigeons.

The black jumper is being blocked, and will be ready to photograph in a few days. Oh, the suspense!

From the frozen North

The ice formation in the bird bath remains a mystery; perhaps it fell from an aircraft, or the police helicopter that prowls about (or does it in fact belong to some more sinister organisation??).

DH has been laid low with a nasty cold, involving lots of coughing at night; he seems a bit improved today but still feeling alternately hot and chilly. I'm surprised that I haven't caught it (yet), or indeed the one that a colleague was determined to share with everyone over lunch, coughing and spluttering in all directions.

This week the blackthorn has blossomed - otherwise totally unremarkable hedgerow trees and bushes suddenly step forward from the background with their delicate mist of white flowers.

It would be so good to get out into the garden and give the emerging plants a good feed. A couple of clay pots have shattered with the cold and the plants in them need re-potting, but as the snow is currently falling thick and fast in huge blobs, and the wind is still coming from the North pole, that will have to wait. The weather has been really strange - or is it just that all the seasons have slipped back a couple of months?

There should have been a photo of the completed black jumper this weekend, only when it was all done I decided that the neckline was wrong, and have decided to alter it. I know the suspense is almost too much, but there it is!

Sheep - and ice

These Jacob sheep live at the Botanic Garden in Durham. The light yesterday evening was not good, but if you look carefully, you can see a small black lamb lying down to the left of the centre tree. (No, it is NOT a furry lizard.)

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And a little something for our overseas readers, who may be in hotter climes - even tropical:
This morning there was a strange ice formation on the bird bath, so I photographed it before it melted, from the side, from above, and as close up as possible. There was some melt water in the triangular cup shape of the top.




Has anyone any ideas how this odd shape might have been formed? (Other than aliens, of course.)

Party politics

It was reported on the news this morning that Tony Blair and David Cameron were going to have a discussion about how political parties will be funded in the future.

Pardon me? Shouldn't that be the voters deciding how political parties should be funded?

Imagine the opportunity for election costs to spiral upwards at several times the rate of inflation (or at least several dozen times the rate of increase in civil service pay, or pensions), the army of paid party officials they will "need" to administer the money, and the possibilities for funds to "go missing".

As long as political parties are funded by their own supporters, they still have a reason to work at attracting support. And why shouldn't people be able to CHOOSE who they support?

Perhaps you wouldn't mind paying the wages of the party machines of the Tory, Labour and LibDem parties; but how about Sinn Fein, Respect, UKIP, the British National Party?

The electorate need to be consulted. If ever there was an issue to put to a referendum, this is it.

This government is really getting up my nose.

April showers

When it stopped raining, there were some plants in the garden just crying out for their new growth to be noticed. Among them were this allium (above) and an aquilegia (below).

And yesterday when we went out for a walk, more new faces were putting in an appearance. Coltsfoot flowers shoot up before the new leaves come up, and are one of the earliest to be seen by the wayside.

Today we celebrated the Festival of Great Master Keizan, who devised many of the ceremonies still used in Soto Zen.
Our journey to the Abbey was along roads with plenty of big puddles, past fields of floods and churned mud. It rained all day.
When we got home, the ice cream van was playing 'Raindrops keep falling on my head'.

Concert - and a little bit of politics.

Yesterday evening I accompanied DH to a concert at the Sage, Gateshead - our first visit. The performers were Remember Shakti. In case you don't, they are guitarist John McLaughlin, drummer Zakir Hussain, percussionist V. Selvaganesh, mandolin player U. Shrinivas and singer Shakar Mahadevan. I enjoyed the jazz/Indian fusion music more than I expected, and particularly liked the singer, who drew the tune in the air with his hand as he sang.
As many of the audience were wearing traditional Indian clothes, I was also able to enjoy seeing more square yards of beautiful silk than I have seen for a long time, some of it enhanced with amazing embroidery.

And a bit of politics -

Loans = peerages:
The treasurer of the Labour party said he didn't know about these loans, so who EXACTLY were they paid to, and how EXACTLY were they going to be repaid?
And historically, peerages have been given to people who help or do favours (sexual and otherwise) for the Crown (now the Government), so what EXACTLY is new here anyway?

ID cards:
Even if the government can find a company who can produce them (and "government computer project" has acquired its own expectations!), then so can anyone who wants to forge them.
It follows from this that there must be another reason for the imposition of ID cards by our ever-more controlling and centralising government; yet another encroachment on free speech and civil liberties.

Now - will Big Brother (and not the one on TV) require me to stop blogging, or will MI5 open a file on me? Assuming they can find out who I am, of course.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday PY,
Happy Birthday PY,
Happy Birthday dear PY,
Happy Birthday to you!

Card etc will be waiting when you get back. Meanwhile, spring is springing (you can tell by the amount the cat is shedding), and the sun is shining, and I need to weed the garden.

Spring break

There were still lots of snowdrops in flower in Shropshire last week; these are in the moat of Stokesay Castle, one of the few "visitor attractions" open before the end of March.

While we were in the area, we went to find some of the places where earlier generations of the family lived. This is All Saints church at Wribbenhall, where my grandmother's grandmother was buried in 1891, and my grandmother's great grandparents were buried in 1879 and 1873. We did not find any memorials with their names on, but there were a lot of illegible headstones. The church was locked, but further along the road we found the Great Western Inn, which my great great grandmother inherited from her sister in 1881 - it was this inn which enabled my great great grandfather to become a "gentleman", rather than the policeman, coal dealer, and cab owner he had previously been.

The Wyre Forest was a magic place to walk in. The only time we'd been there before was for an orienteering event in the 1980s. A wonderful place to spend 2 or 3 hours exploring, even using only a 1:25000 OS map.
We did our usual holiday thing, pottering about, visiting some interesting museums, castles, and gardens, walking, and stopping for coffee and cake rather too often. When planned, the week was likely to be early spring, flowers opening, bit of sunshine - in the event it was perishing cold, and it even snowed the day we walked along the river from Ironbridge. I managed to leave my walking shoes at home as well as my family history notes, took too many clothes I never wore, and lived in my thickest jumper, Rohan fleece and my thick cream fleece hat. Do you ever go away with exactly what you use, nothing more or less?
Super break - now sadly back to work again on Monday.

Signs of spring at last?

This is how the current knitting is progressing - at the top is a close up of the colour detail at the top of the back shoulder, and the lower picture is the overall piece of work. The artificial lighting has given it a rather green cast, but in ordinary daylight it is black - the colour of all possibilities.
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A brave little tulip, showing a touch of colour.
And new hawthorn leaves, only slightly burnt by the recent cold.

Small birds have been visiting the feeder, and a few are looking brighter coloured and ready for a bit of courting - any minute now the house martins will be back, and we haven't got last year's crap off the porch roof yet!

Our small boating continues, with DH disposing of a car load of Stuff this morning. It even looks as if I might be able to get my little car into the garage while we're away for a few days! (We have never actually tried putting a car into the garage in the nearly 4 years we've lived here.)

Small Boating

I've just read "Living the simple life" by Elaine St. James, advocating reducing the stuff you buy and the stuff you waste your time doing, so that you can have time and resources to do the things you really want to do. Very practical, and an excellent plan.

Much of this accords with what we have been doing in recent years, but it's known in our house as"small boating" - on the principle "would I need this if I was living on a small boat?"

Obviously, we're not terribly good at it, or we wouldn't have downsized to a larger house, but at least we can get into our garage, and the only items in the loft are empty boxes.

Our parents and grandparents tended to keep things that "might come in handy sometime", but they lived in an age when pieces of wood, nails, bits of string, and empty tins were not so cheap and easily available, and many of the items they hoarded were sturdily enough made to be still useable when the need for them arose, but times have changed.

As my mother did, I still have a button box; it never contains the right size/colour/number of buttons I actually need for the garment I've just made, but it can be very useful for replacing an odd lost button.

It used to be said that 3 rapid house moves or a fire sorted out your stuff problem, but that's probably a bit extreme. It does pay, however, to maintain vigilance, or you find that the "odds and ends drawer" in the kitchen is overflowing with allen keys, empty 35mm film containers, plastic medicine spoons, instruction leaflets for gadgets that broke months ago, and rubber bands dropped on the doorstep by the postman.

And now I think I'll go and contemplate the wardrobe full of clothes that might come back into fashion one day - probably the day after I decide Oxfam needs them.

Ice cream

It snowed all weekend. It was freezing cold, and the wind was like a knife. So the ice cream van came round. For ages the merry tune was audible, going up and down all the cul de sacs (culs de sac?) on our housing estate. The merry tune was the one known to all as Just One Cornetto - which at least made a change from the usual tunes, Colonel Bogey and the theme from Match of the Day.
I wonder how many housewives dashed out in their slippers for that essential Mivvi.

Yarn and story

This is the current knitting - a jumper for myself in black Shetland wool, with colour detail in hand dyed Blue Faced Leicester.











This rather fuzzy picture is some Manx Loghtan I was spinning yesterday. (The more in-focus skein in the background is some Shetland yarn.)






And this is how it looked when it was plyed and wound off onto the niddy noddy.







Apart from spinning and knitting (well, it's snowed all weekend), I've been updating my family history files with fresh information, and then amending the "book" that's in progress. This is an attempt to turn all the births, marriages and deaths into a more readable form so that all the grandchildren will have an idea of earlier generations.

After about 3 years following the ancestral trails, I have compiled a "tree" or network of relatives which contains details of almost 600 individuals - this is not counting the Australian branch, which contains about 300 more individuals. It's been great fun following up the clues, but now I've reached the point where it's not easy to obtain the information from CDs, websites, and microfiche at home; I shall have to travel to record offices and libraries. In due course I shall do this, but in the meantime I am keeping it going by compiling the "book". The trouble with it is that I keep having bright ideas about what I could add to it in the way of illustrations, so the "book" may turn out to be as open-ended as the research!

A short walk with my camera

As it wasn't freezing or raining, I went out for a short walk this afternoon. The alders have lots of catkins, the birds are singing loudly in the hedges, and I found this bud just opening.








This was the brightest colour I found on my walk, an abandoned apple beside the path.

Who cares?

A very distressing story on www.neenaw.co.uk a couple of days ago called "Caring goes out the window". It makes you even more determined to avoid these places where you're supposed to get looked after, but it's the last thing on everyone else's mind.
In hospital? The main priorities seem to be getting the paperwork done, and the patients shifted out as soon as possible. Shorten the waiting list and free up those beds!
In the care of the local authority? That's where youngsters learn to play truant, shoplift and take drugs. "Care" seems to be one of the last things they get; though of course it could be that the only ones you notice are the most damaged ones.
In a care home? The staff are on the lowest wages possible, so you can work it out for yourself how they are going to feel about the job, and how they may feel about inmates who might prefer to be independent, who might hate their situation, and might actually have human feelings and reactions.

Sunday Afternoon

For a breath of fresh air (and a nice cup of tea), we went to the Botanic garden this afternoon. It all looks very tidy, and lots of work has been done since we were last there.
We sat in the bird hide and watched lots of tits, blue, great and long-tailed, plus a nuthatch on a feeder really close to the hide, then a goldcrest on the same feeder.
There was also a squirrel trying its luck with one of the feeders, and then a sparrowhawk dived in twice, but as far as we could see unsuccessfully.

Hello to visitors - there is only a minimum of information on my profile because I don't think I want to be identified with any other life I have. If people other than close friends and family read this blog over time, I'm sure they will pick up my interests and views. I read a number of other blogs regularly, but am still keeping my head well below the parapet.

Wildlife

This morning, with a hard frost and bright sunshine, I was looking at the garden to see if there were any little birds about. A blue tit came briefly to the old feeder, but flew away; I thought I had scared it off. But when I looked again, there was a sparrowhawk sitting on the fence. It's been in the garden several times before, so this must be part of its territory.
We have also had a rat in the garden - I've seen it. When our neighbours constructed a deck with a nice space underneath, it occurred to me that it would be ideal for rats, and that's exactly where this one is living.
So - should one prefer some sorts of wildlife in the garden to others? Is it "better" to have pretty little birds or large predators? What about rats and mice? Slugs and snails?
Any views?

Finished!

The jumper for DH is finished. The second sleeve was finished on Friday, and it's taken since then to join all the pieces and to block it - too big to do in one go, so the sleeves had to be blocked separately.
It's knitted from Manx Loghtan wool, with the cream stripes in Wensleydale, both in their natural shades. There's a kilo of wool in it altogether. Actually it's a bit more brown than the photo shows.

And now on to the next project - I am swatching some black Shetland to establish a gauge, and then I'll test out some colours in a slip stitch pattern, with a view to knitting a jumper for myself. As I really didn't enjoy joining all the pieces together in the last one, perhaps I'll try to make it all in one piece. Never knitted sleeves from the top down, so that'll be good to try. The other change will be to work out the measurements for myself - the above jumper used standard instructions, and the sleeves came out a bit too long.