Of Elves and Quilts...

All you Mothers out there will appreciate this scenario:-
Tea time Friday, 'Mom I need an Elf costume tomorrow. I got a job helping Santa at the grotto in Togher's!'
Lovely dear, and how do I magic up an elf costume?
'Oh I figured you'd have some red material and you know...'

So, up at sparrow this morning to make this:
The waistcoat was an old sateen top (from my disco days but sssh!) and the shirt was a remnant of silk left over from the dress I made for my first date with the Hub many MANY years ago...

Talk about history!

And for the rest of the day I've been working on hand-quilting yesterday's mishap. Definitely better than the machine quilting.

Bank Holiday Monday put to good use.

Is it possible to be a 'lavender junkie'? If it is, then I think I am! Lavender to sleep, for stress and distress, for cuts and bites, for hands, headaches, and lavender bags as presents. I think I need therapy...lavender bathsalts?
This is what this morning looks like: real summer weather, but it hasn't actually begun raining.
Progress on the shed! The Hub has been hard at it all weekend, and now the roof is on (minus the felt membrane) he isn't getting as wet.
Yesterday I thoroughly weeded the veg beds and boy! did they need doing. I had to slather myself in Jungle Juice as it was very buggy, but tidy veg beds are so satisfying to gaze upon.
Lots of broad beans coming along, we had the first batch with dinner last night- it's my favourite veg, but only home grown, the bought ones have no flavour.
The packet instructions of these mangetout said they were low-growing, which I took to mean they didn't need staking. Obviously it meant they only need short stakes! With all the little curly tendrils they are now a tangled mat, but very happy and putting out plenty of flowers, so I'm hoping the harvest won't be affected by my ignorance! Mum used to grow mangetout when we were children, but she kept eating them straight off the plants! The Hub tossed this mat back onto the bed whilst cutting the grass but it has to be out as a few tomatoes and a basil have decided to grow beside it.
Here you can view the rogue potato which has taken over the carrot patch. I pulled as many of the carrots from under the potato leaves as I could find, and we had them for dinner too as they weren't going to bo doing much more growing with that monster breathing down their necks. I suppose I could have pulled the potato? Oh and the white flowers are self seeded rocket.
Finally found where the nasturtium went, it was hiding under the dock leaves- what? you don't have dock leaves in your veg patch? What do you do to remove nettle stings then? Oh, you don't have nettles either? Well don't boast about it, if you had extreme rheumatism you would be wanting to roll naked in a nettle patch at dawn...or maybe sunset...or is that arthritis I'm thinking of... I planted two whole packets of tomato seeds and something ate most of them and the rest are kinda spindly. The single tomato I DIDN'T plant turns up in the scallion patch and is thriving. Sometimes I think my veg patch has its own agenda, or else it just really knows how to get up my nose.
And then when the rain set in and I was waiting for the dinner to cook, I got out the quilting and did quite a bit. Kim, at http://kimsbigquiltingadventure.blogspot.com/ is having an 'Encouraging August' for all those sluggards (like me) who need a bit of motivation to get their projects finished. Great idea, especially since I need to have two small quilts done and delivered by the end of August and I'm finding it hard to keep at them. The other top is still in blocks, not sewn together.
And as if you aren't fed up with all the photos, here's a few from the hedgerows which I took this morning. As I've said before, I love the way hedgerows develop and change with the seasons, and year to year. Patrick Whitefield has a new book out which is about how nature changes landscape through time as well as between places. Its on my wish list for next year when all the expense of Debs' dress, Kenya visitors, Sos and Dilly's College monies are done. (Tried to do a link but as some of you know my links are a bit dodgy:book is called 'The living landscape: how to read and understand it')
(http://www.green-shopping.co.uk/books/book_pages/natural_history.html#LLS)
Harebells
several different ferns growing on the wall together.
Irish lanes are often so worn down that they are almost tunnels, here the top of the bank was way over my head (as are most things...)
And there you have it! or as Bugs Bunny says 'That's All Folks!'

Spiky Fringe and Destructive Gardening

Perhaps I should beging the day's post the same way some Victorian writers used to title their chapters, you remember...In which our heroine....next time I will!!!

So much for the lovely weather- we are now having torrential rain and almost gale force winds. The broad bean plants are lying flat in the veg bed. I was going to have chard for supper but cutting it in this wind will be quite a challenge, well not so much the cutting as the catching before it blows away!

Yesterday morning I was teaching class music in School so the night before I took the scissors to my rather long fringe, wide peripheral vision being essential when teaching, both in the interests of safety and discipline. I never get it right so I am now sporting a hedge-hog spiky cut, very flattering to a dumpy forty-something. NOT! The children are preparing an end of term concert and were full of mad ideas for amusing each other. It was interesting to listen to them working out how to present themselves and their songs, and exciting also to see the practical application of the term’s music work.

Yesterday lunchtime, on the way in to his shift at work, the Hub stopped off to take the chain-saw to a couple of big branches in the folk’s garden. (It’s called ‘destructive gardening’!) Cutting them down was not a problem, but stuffing all those whippy branches, wet leaves and chunks of tree trunk into my small hatchback to remove them was something else! Mum and I would make good wrestlers, you know, those woman wrestlers from South America I think. Reminds me of the children’s old joke: How do you get Pikatchu into a full bus in rush-hour? Pokemon!
Sad, I know!

In the post yesterday was a letter from some Missionary friends saying that after a year's break back in the States they have come to the conclusion that God still has work for them in Kenya and so they will shortly be heading back there. They have several ideas for reaching out to various peoples, and building support networks. Working out in the Mission Field is not easy, obviously, but I think that sometimes Churches here at home over-look the Mission Fields right on their door-steps. Our present Clergy are working hard at motivating the local congregation to embrace out-reach as a way of life. It’s hard to stick one’s neck out in your own home-place and open one-self to potential ridicule, but it is also so obvious that there are many lonely and needy people here. It is as necessary for people to live God’s love at home as it is to send people out to distant places, and just as hard work, in a different way. And sometimes I just feel plain stupid!

Dilly arrived home at lunchtime today from Dublin, complete with wet laundry, clean but wet. And yes, I am thankful for small mercies! Luckily she has work for most of the summer in Dublin as funding her University studies is proving rather more expensive that we’d envisaged. She and some friends have also found a flat for the coming year and are collecting their belongings from all over the place as they have been staying on friends' floors this past fortnight. Student living at its most normal!

Mum’s god-daughter wants to start hand-quilting so on Saturday morning I’m going to meet with her. She has just recently begun patchwork and quilting and is so enjoying it. I think that it is good to be with people who are just beginning to learn something I love. It makes me remember the joy and excitement when patchwork was new and the possibilities were endless. Well, they still are, but occasionally I get bogged down in methods or colour-ways I feel I should do, rather than my quilts being purely imaginative and experimental. There is room for both.

Well our heroine has to get supper now!