Of Water, Wonky Elephants and Wits...

Uh...what happens if one accidentally waters the broadband yokemibus connector instead of a pot plant? I kinda...missed...

Remember the shopping tote I was wondering what to do with?

Well I added appliqué and this is the finished result- can you tell what its meant to be? The Hub said it looked like a wonky elephant...honest answers please!

And then I felt like playing with some of the tie-dyed fabric so I made this:

I might put these in the shop tomorrow, if you think they are ok, well the tie-dye is...but if you all think the appliqué is a wonkety heffalump then I'm NOT putting it in the shop!

Its Daft I am- not Stupid!!!!!

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But mostly I've been gardening, and teasing the dogs...when Furball-dog 'talks' he sounds just like Chewbacca!

So now he's Chewbacca-dog!

Yesterday I tried to brush them but they thought it was a game and whenever I called Chewbacca he'd pounce on me then run away! I thought that with this warm weather a good brushing would help him feel cooler- Brains versus Brush?

Hoover-dog let me brush him but he has short hair and it isn't such an issue. So I weeded some more of the gravel instead!

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I was reading a post earlier about giving one's blog focus. I need to consider this issue very deeply as neither this post nor this blog has ANY focus at ALL!

Perhaps I should re name it- 'The Wonderful World of Wandering Wits' !!

Whaddya tinks???

A Damp Day in the Garden

The first flower on my one and only rose bush- very exciting!

These wild orchids have started to ping up all over the garden and in my neglected pots (neglected pots? oh sinner!)

Isn't the rain on the clover leaves just wonderful? I wasn't sure it would come out in a photo...

And please enter the Doggerel Contest if you haven't already? There's some really funny rhymes so far!!

Dog and Daughter

Don't you think that sounds like the name of an English Pub?

'Just nipping down to the 'Dog'n'Daughter' for a quick pint!!!'

Something really funny happened yesterday evening...

To set the scene:
Youngest Doughter was at a BBQ on Saturday, and by way of entertainment they all went kayaking and swimming in the lake afterwards, (as one does when its warm!) so after Church she was pretty tired and went to bed to sleep for the afternoon. Well, about six o'c she got up - and this is where it gets funny:

Hoover-dog was lying in the Hall and, on hearing thuds and bumps from upstairs decided that there was a Security Issue at hand, so he began to bark, woofing and growling and going for maximum Security Alert.

After a few minutes of this outcry Youngest comes clumping and crashing down the stairs (honestly- at what age do offspring start using the stairs in a civilized manner?) and Hoover-dog goes increasingly ballistic until suddenly he realises who it is...

...brief silence, dog-brain-cogs turn...

Hoover-dog squirms, you know, when a dog gets embarrassed and does the whole body wiggle thing?

...dog-brain-cogs turn some more as Youngest stares Hoover-dog down, how the heck do I get out of this one?...

Hoover-dog decides to treat the whole thing as a joke and starts jumping around wagging his tail and greeting Youngest like she's just returned from safari or something...

I know it all happened in far less time than it takes to tell, but it really was so funny- when our dogs embarrass themselves its so hilarious to watch, and the more I laugh, the more they try to pretend it never happened!!


And by the way- please enter my One Year Bloggiversary Doggerel Contest? I promise not to send you Hoover-dog as a prize!! It'll be something far more civilized!!

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PS I've managed to import some of the posts from my previous blog, in case you are wondering how the posts archive suddenly got so long.

Doggerel Contest!

Remember I said as how it was my one year Bloggiversary recently? Well I thought you guys could do with some entertainment and I'm having another Doggerel Competition! I thoroughly enjoyed the last one- your entries were such fun!!

Here's the first line:

'I'm glad that I'm a jelly worm....'

Make that into a rhyme if you can!
Long or short as you like, leave it in the comments, and I'll pick a winner, ummmm....next Saturday?
If I don't have your email (and I do for all you regular folks!) please leave me an email contact?
I'll decide on the prize during the week, probably one of my usual mix'em gather'em envelopes of 'stuff'!!!

Howzat? Sound good?

Looking forward to your entries, amigos! (What's 'worm' in Spanish?)

Of Friends and Aprons!

Earlier in the week a lovely packet from Kathy thudded through my letter box! Inside was my prize shopping from Everyday Bliss' Etsy shops...and please note that it took me WEEKS (change that to MONTHS...) to decide what to choose; from time to time Kathy had to remind me not to forget (was that very Irish?)!

Well this is the result and...BE JEALOUS folks! be VERY jealous!!!

The two prints are from Flor Larios and are even more beautiful in reality than they are in her shop photos- I'll definitely be buying them as presents in the future, I can't stop looking at them which is why I got cheap frames to put them in for the time being, so they don't get spoilt with handling!

And d'you see the star necklace in the box? Its so pretty! Its in the dinkiest box too, real gift presented- this is from Happy Cloud Moments, and to be honest I'd like to buy up half her shop...for myself too, nothing so generous as presents!!

Kathy added the pirate card (I wonder why she thought wacky pirates would appeal to me?!...)- can't you just feel a quilt design coming on?? and the Flying Wish Paper- which I've never come across before but sounds such fun; you write a wish and then light it and it floats upwards!
I'm saving that to make wishes one evening when my girls are all home for the hols- I thought it would be fun and also something to remember!

So THANK YOU Kathy, so very much! I had such fun choosing my gifts, and they are giving me great pleasure now!
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A good friend emailed me this and I'm posting it because I expect it will amuse yous, as well as taking you for a little walk down Nostalgia Lane!

Remember Aprons?

Remember having to make one in Home Ec when you got to Secondary School?
The History of 'APRONS'

I don't think our kids know what an apron is. The principal use of Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath because she only had a few. It was also because it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and aprons used less material.

But along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven. It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.

From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.

When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids.. And when the weather was cold grandma wrapped it around her arms. Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.

Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron. From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls. In the Autumn, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.

When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.

When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men folks knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.

It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that 'old-time apron' that served so many purposes.

And another thing:Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw!

They would go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs were on that apron. I don't think I ever caught anything from an apron - but love...
Thank you Diana for my lovely apron- I wear it with thankfulness for your kindness, and now I can add all the above reasons too!!!

Thankful Thursday

Thankful Thursday strikes again! I'm thankful to Greg for continuing to host this...or maybe I should say 'hosta' this since he's so into gardening!!
If you'd like to join in, please do? I think its a good thing to count one's blessings regularly, it certainly helps me to focus on things positive.

And this week's Thankfuls are:

1. Thankful that my 'away girls' still like to ring regularly and update me on the main events in their lives, some good, some not so, but I just am glad they like to chat. They are always and continuously such a gift to me.

2. Thankful that Youngest's State Exams are over- Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! and you can put away the ammunition now...We survived by the skin of our teeth and can start the real business of the Summer now: Doing Nothing!!!!

3. Thankful that the Primary Schools shut this week- last Assembly and farewell to 6th Class yesterday. Its always kinda sad to say goodbye to them but its such a small town that I regularly see past students around in the shops and that, and generally accost them for their latest news! And to give them their due- they are almost always kind enough to stop and share the scuttlebutt! Being a Teacher has its delights!

4. Thankful that its the Summer Hols and now we can drift for two months without School and College deadliness and 'must-do' frantic tearing about.

5. Thankful for my garden- its still a jungle to the 'untrained' eye but I get so much enjoyment from working outside in it and planning what to plant where and how it will look. I once read that a packet of seeds is the ultimate in optimism, but to me growing things is a statement of faith in my God-
He has provided-
He does provide-
He will provide-
Doubt never raises its ugly head in my garden.

Any blessings you want to share?

Drain Snorks and Things Which Go Bump...

In some houses (probably yours?) when a door slams, is stays shut, and that's it.

In our house when a door slams it bounces open again and the handles fall off...

In some houses (also yours probably?) when one flushes a loo, it stays flushed, end of story.

In our house when one flushes a loo its the signal for the Drain Snorks to come galumphing out and gallivant round all the loos and drains in turn, whooshing as much water as possible out of the S-bends and generally causing noisy mayhem in the water system...

Yesterday (on and off) I spent weeding the patio gravel; temperature was 24 degrees in the shade- stinking hot for here! Four years ago I decided gravel was a more eco-friendly option to the house surround than tarmac with its drainage problems, but I'm beginning to understand why most people just go for tarmac. I could spend the entire year weeding the gravel and it would still look untidy and I'd have missed bits.

But I tell you what the perfect antidote to weeding is?
Strawberries, warm from the sun, picked and eaten right in the veg patch! So, guess that's the jam out the window, I ate four of the strawberries yesterday!!

Last night was St. John's Eve, Midsummer, Summer Solstice- whatever you want to call it, bonfires everywhere and much partying. I don't know whether its a rural custom, or just the West, or just the Irish, but Midsummer is really big here.

Town was very quiet this morning, so I guess there's a lot of sore heads being nursed!

Of Dog-Daisies and Sunset

Yesterday evening I went outside to try and get a good photo of the dog-daisies along the lane:

...and became side-tracked when I noticed that the alpine strawberries are ripening! They are tiny, less than a centimeter in length but oh so sweet and tasty! I tried to photograph them before eating, but had trouble getting the lens focus correct...so I ate them anyway!

The honeysuckle is budding nicely, it's going to smell wonderful in another week or so:

And this seems to be flowering moss- Ulla? Sue? Does moss flower?

Thistles we have aplenty- I explained to them that this isn't Scotland so technically they weren't really welcome but they didn't seem too bothered, oddly enough...

And then as I was heading back the sun dropped into its 'golden' moments and I caught a few shots:

The photos are pretty enough but don't do justice to the beauty of these few minutes in the evening- it was just glorious!

Still, I just love daisies- they're always so cheerful!...all of which is to cover the fact that I didn't do one scrap of sewing yesterday...

One Year in Blogland!

When I deleted the 'heckety at home' blog I noticed the option to 'export' it so I investigated and have managed to save most of the text onto my hard drive. As a result I can look up old posts, and since the 15 June sounded vaguely familiar I trawled through the 3.329 KB ( such a LOT of blather!) and discovered that it was the day I began the Blogification of the Life and Times of Heckety Loo-Lah Beckety!!

And so- reprinted here for your entertainment upon this Auspiscious Day (no, one year later and my spelling is, if anything, worse...) is my Horiginal Blog Post:

Well I've grabbed the bull by the horns and have started a blog- I think it could be a swift, steep learning curve, but as long as I don't fly off into hyperspace I'll be OK. My children are the computer fundis (experts), but I like to pretend I am sort of competent.

With the lovely weather that's been in it this last fortnight the Hub condescended to attack part of the garden at the weekend so that I could plant out part of the plant nursery taking up the driveway...the part of the driveway closest to the front door where he would like to be able to park on wet days!

He chopped and swore through weeds and long grass, then hacked everything out in chunks...including ALL the spring bulbs. Then he spent another few hours retrieving the bulbs from the compost bin.

Great start! Or as the eldest daughter would text-speak: 'Urr'.

I've been dress-making in the evenings over the last fortnight as the youngest daughter, B, was going on a week's School Trip and didn't have enough clothes to last a whole week. School uniform has many advantages, but it turns holidays into laundry nightmares. Two skirts she needed; I made one with blue patchwork in a band around the middle to eke out the fabric. The second skirt was made using two pairs of torn jeans, ripped apart and re sewn in panels. Both turned out OK.

Now I have begun a green knitted dress for the eldest against winter smart-wear, its tough being a student and having to fund one's own wardrobe so I thought I'd help out. She chose the wool herself and its a lovely soft shade of green.


So let me see:-
the School Trip she thoroughly enjoyed, and the patchwork skirt is still in use though the other was 'lost',
the green knitted dress is still being knitted,
the spring bulbs never recovered except for a few tulips which have popped up in the veg bed,
the plant nursery migrated to the south side of the house, which is just as well considering the winter we just had as it meant that most of the plants miraculously survived,
and I am a seasoned lunatic...whoops!...I meant Blogger, of course!

But of all the things I didn't know one year ago the most amazing to me is this: that I would find a group of such special friends out floating in Cyberspace too! I tell you guys, I was the poorer for the not knowing you one year ago!

So I'll repeat the ditty I emailed some of you last week:

Here's to us- we're true blue!

We are Bloggers through and through!

We are buddies so they say

And we're on our way to heaven where we'll meet some day!

(Its a cleaned up mis-use of a traditional Hash House Harriers Song- my MIL and the Hub sing the rude version!!...loudly and often...)

So then, here's to us all and the next year that's in it!

Of Knicker Lace and Jar Jar Binks

Rummaging for rickrack in one of my boxes I found this:
It looks like posh knicker lace to me...where on earth did I come by it?

I was trying to design a nice Rabbit for the shop but this was what I ended with...everyone says it looks like...

..... Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars. Unintentional, really. D'you think there would be a new career for me designing Star Wars soft toys?

Hmmm...think I'll keep the day job awhile yet...

I was trying out a stripey shopping tote from the more boring fabric pieces I dyed. Not particularly wonderful, in my opinion:

I think the colours are missing something, and I think perhaps I shouldn't combine just home dyed fabrics, some prints are needed, or something...any opinions?

Playing With Dye!

On Friday morning I ripped out a collection of curtain linings I had saved for a rainy day and cut them into manageable lengths for dying. They were sourced from various people and the second-hand shops; the curtains themselves were mostly too worn to be any good. Also a friend gave me a set of curtains for which she had no further use.

I always forget what fun it is playing with dye- these are the most vibrant results but there is a lot more. I use Dylon Hot Water dye mostly as its the only fabric dye you can get here. Above is Bordeaux #11, below Golden Glow #2:

Bordeaux again:
Below is Jungle Green #26:

And then I threw in a ball of string to see what would happen, also some white plastic buttons, the kitchen towel and some handkerchiefs! Its funny how everyone runs a mile when they see the dye-pot come out!!!
SUCH FUN!

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I'm going to make up some cushion covers for the shop, and shopping totes, as it seems that tie-dye fabrics are 'in'...probably due to the whole World Cup thing being in South Africa. A bit pseudo, it should be mud-cloths if people want to go really African, or indigo dyes...now, if I'd only thought I could have grown a stash of indigo and be turning everything blue!!!

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Have any of you experimented with plant dyes? I'd be well interested if you have as its something I'd really like to try.

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On another note (pun, ha! ha!)(and I may have said this before...) but have you heard the voice of Jack Lukeman? He is just so amazing, such timbre and resonance- here's a link if you are curious, but none of the YouTube snippets I listened to did his voice justice really.

Death by Chocolate

Did you know that Chocolate is poisonous to humans?

Apparently if you eat 10kg it will kill you, that's 50 large bars ( I worked it out, of course, just so's I know).

But what I want to know is this: WHO ate 10kgs and died and recorded their binge in order to preserve the rest of us from such a fate?

Whoever it was deserves a medal...or a slice of chocolate cake?

Blast from the Past!

Middle row, second from the left...the Hub!! His daughters wear the same expression still...

I found this on a friend's Facebook page and we all had a good giggle- aren't ould photos just the best lark?!

LSD:-

Labour Saving Device, of course...what did you think I meant?

I had a brainwave this morning, bit late for me, but I'm telling you so that you may practise it if you have the opportunity:

Name your child after a leading store brand of clothing and you will NEVER have to sew on another name tape! And if you intend having several children and you don't want their clothes getting mixed up then use several store names.

One's children may object to having names like Primark, Dunnes, Next, Atmosphere, Land's End, JC Penney, Monsoon, etc but only think of the time saved when it comes to packing for summer camps, ski trips, school trips and all that sort of thing.

I'll leave you to consider my brainwave, and if you think of any more LSDs I'd be grateful if you'd pass them along to me please?
And do you think I should patent this idea?

Gotta go, the sun is splitting the rocks and there is the matter of a few triffids needing annihilating in the garden...

Links-a-Daisy

Not Lynx, links, as in web links you know? I'm not really into the whole man-eating scene- I'd have been born a Tsavo Lion if that were the case...

I though I'd give you a beautiful sunset to remember all the people who have gone before us and who have left gaps in our lives:

I also thought you might like a bit of visiting today, as a change from my bewailing...here in the rural West we call visiting 'ag cuairt' (egg koo-ur-ch) and its taken seriously. Sometimes you ring ahead to ask would a certain time be convenient, other times you just pitch up at a friend's place. Tea is offered, sometimes food, always a LOT of talk and you stay as long as it takes to set the world and its uncle to rights. Hospitality in general, is a serious business here!

Have any of you heard of Anne Spoerry- one of Kenya's most dedicated Flying Doctors? I met her on a few occasions, and the Hub knew her at one time, she was a formidable and amazing woman, you could even say, a legend in her own lifetime!

This is an interview with Marian Van Eyk McCain about how everything we do is connected to everything else...there is no such thing as an unrelated incident. Its the sort of thing which might pop into one of our deeper thoughts and then pop out again, relevant to all of us really.

Quilters Ahoy! Here's a request: Vicki Maloy has started a new siggy swap and is looking for participants...sounds like a fun project! (If only I could get it into my head that siggys are signed patchwork squares and not tobacco toting teenagers, I might be able to sew them...)

And another Quilt Notice from Micki, and a reason to take your hols in Donegal this year:

Jeff's '5 for the week' are worth visiting, as well as relevant and irreverent...

I know some of you are teachers, and, as teachers we are exceptionally special people with a rare and distinctive view into everyone else's children's lives. In this spirit I suggest visiting Symphonic Discord's post about her Class Field Trip- I regret to say I giggled and groaned the whole way through. If not a teacher you may not appreciate the humour- be warned!!

And one quick blast on the trumpet: I was included in my first Treasury EVER!! And it really didn't cost me that much in bribes either...Thank you Griselda Pugh! (The wine, silk PJs, Butler's chocs, and brown envelope will be in the post shortly!)

A last observation- Welcome! to the people who have recently become Followers!

I'm not sure it was a totally wise move on your part (ask any of the folks who have journeyed with me since the early days) as about the only thing I can promise is that you probably won't be bored, though equally you'll never know what'll crop up in the next post...

HECK! I'M not bored and I'm LIVING this life and WRITING the damn posts!!

So, me dears, rachaimid ag cuairt le cheile!