I can't tell you how excited I am about this. I made a hat! I proper hat! And not just a knitted bobble hat either, but a several-panelled, properly sewn hat! (Not that I'm knocking bobble hats, but they are more within my range of normal skills - although come to think of it, I'm not sure I've ever made one...) Anyway. Peter often wears a hat like this, and as he has a rather large head, and is extremely particular about his hat preferences, they are usually sourced from a firm in Poland. Sadly, when the time came to replace the most recent hat, the Polish firm had none available. We waited several months with him still wearing the battered old hat, but eventually we had to admit defeat, and since our searching for a new supplier was not proving fruitful, I offered to make one. How hard could it be?? I found several patterns online, but they all seemed to involve things like measuring, and as I lean towards the slapdash when it comes to sewing projects, I opted to just vaguely draw round the old hat (without taking it apart, just in case) and hope for the best. Peter found an old blind that had a water stain in one corner and I set to with the scissors. At first, things went reasonably well. I didn't have a grand plan, I just added a bit at a time to see what would happen, accepting that I'd probably have to do quite a bit of unpicking. First I cut out the eight panels, and sewed them together in a circle, and then cut and sewed on a band. This fabric frays really easily, so I ended up having to buy some iron on mending tape to sew over the seams. Obviously I had to press them first - and of course the lessen here is that I should have pressed the seams and ironed on the bending tape before sewing on the band, because things got really rather awkward. Still, it was manageable, and I hand sewed over the edges of the iron on tape as I wasn't sure the stickiness would hold up to the abuse of being worn every day. Look, it's started to look like a hat! Just needs a brim. Actually, first it needs something solid inside that band, and for this attempt I did butcher an old hat (not the most recent, but a similar style). This had clearly been sewn into the old hat using an industrial sewing machine, and while my sewing machine is pretty heavy duty (apparently it will sew through eight layers of denim - not sure why), by this point the hat was getting a bit awkward to manipulate through the machine, and I was doing everything by hand instead. The little holes were very small, so I spent a rather grumpy hour poking a needle through to make them slightly bigger before I put the whole thing inside the fabric. Easily the most tedious bit of hat making by far, and I wouldn't do this if I was making a hat from scratch. However since the holes were there, it seemed daft to try and make new holes through the fabric. The whole thing was quite awkward though, and of course once I was sewing through the fabric, I couldn't see the holes so had to feel for them with the end of the needle. Yawn. Far more cheerful was making the little button for the top. Just a circle of plastic I found lying around (I'm hoping it wasn't from something important...) and covered with a bit of the gathered fabric, then sewed onto the top to cover the hole where the eight panels were joined. Very jolly. Finally the brim, and another nuisance that I don't even seem to have taken any pictures of. I drew round the one on the old hat (sadly the brim from the ancient hat that I butchered for the hat band had already disappeared), and cut out a piece of orange plastic folder. This fabric is quite thick, and quite loosely woven, so getting a tight fit and a tight seam was a complete nuisance. I even glued a bit of iron on mending tape to the plastic, then ironed the fabric onto that, but it still isn't quite right and moves around more than it should. Still, finally it was done, and I'm delighted to say it does actually fit! I'm less delighted that the combination of the thicker fabric and the pleats I put in (because I hadn't properly measured the 8 panels, and cut a bit too much seam allowance which I didn't use) made the whole thing stand up rather than the old one, but I'm hoping that will settle with use (or rain). Altogether pretty good I reckon for a first attempt, and I've learned an awful lot about hat making (hattery??) in the process. Next time I'd use thinner fabric, iron and cover the seams of the panels before adding the band, and perhaps even use a narrower band. I think I'd also make more use of iron on tape - I think the band would look better if the fabric were stuck more closely to it (maybe thinner fabric would help there too).
Anyway, I'm still too close to it and can see all the flaws, but the fact remains that I made a hat, and except for about 3 metres of iron on tape, it's made entirely of reused materials. Not bad at all.
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Sometime last week (or was it the week before?) we woke to snow. Not very much snow, but snow nevertheless. The chickens at first weren't impressed, then they were curious, and then in no time at all they were strutting round like it had been snowing all their lives. Incidentally, this picture of Rusty reminded me of a similar picture of our dear departed Hermione, taken in the snow this time last year, just before her and Luna's untimely demise, which means we must have had these new ladies for almost a year now. Speaking of chickens, Beaky isn't very well at the minute. She's been a little off colour for a few days, and has been living inside with us again, having an Epsom salts bath every morning. Some days she seems better, some worse, so she's off to the vets again in the morning for a quick check over. Poor little thing. Anyway, I was talking about the snow. It was very scenic, but not very heavy, and it didn't stick around very long either - the perfect sort of snow for wandering in, admiring, but not getting stuck in on the way to work. Most convenient. I wasn't the only one who'd been out and about in the snow. It was gone after a couple of days, and since then it's felt like we've had incessant howling wind and rain, sometimes even inside the house.
Bring back the snow I say. I've written a lot about running over the years. It all comes down to the same thing. I'm enthusiastic for a while, enter a race, don't train properly, do it anyway, come last (or nearly last), and then don't run again for months, until some other ludicrous race catches my eye, or I'm goaded into a challenge by my sister. It's got to the point where I've started to think I'm incapable of sticking with a training plan, that I'm never going to get any faster, that I'll always be slow, plodding, last. I don't mind being any of those things - someone's got to be last after all, and the fiercely competitive streak that spurs me on in other areas of life doesn't really affect my running (except for the odd sprint finish). But lately I've got to wondering just how fast I could go if I actually tried. In 2014 (I think) I was training for a marathon, and while I didn't do 'marathon training' particularly well, I did run far more consistently than I ever had done before, and it showed. I knocked three minutes off my fastest 5k time, getting down to an annoying 30.07 (I never did manage to get under 30 minutes), and I did a 10k race in an equally annoying 1 hour and 1 minute. That was fast for me, but it isn't particularly fast in general, and I've never got anywhere close since (I did my latest 5k in 39.17). Before you start thinking it, yes, I know I'm faster than everyone who stayed on the couch, even now, but that's not really the point. I'm not beating myself up here, or (heaven forbid) criticising anyone else who runs slowly - but I would like to improve, to see what I'm capable of. I've always run alone, but had the support of other runners online. My online running pals have been a source of encouragement and inspiration over the years and occasionally we've met up and raced together, although that hasn't happened for a good while now. I've never had much luck running in a group - I've always been too slow, holding people up, and in one case was just left behind when a supposedly 'slow' running group shot off into the distance and never looked back. It takes me right back to school PE lessons every time. My local running club seems friendly, and says everyone's welcome - but even their slowest weekly runs are around six miles in an hour - as fast as I've ever gone, and much further and faster than I'm capable of at the minute. These are normal people - surely it can't be completely beyond me to get to that level? Anyway, all this rambling is to say that last Monday I found myself joining the running club's beginners' group - a special programme for non-members working their way up to running 5k. I feel faintly ridiculous working up to 5k (again) - I've done marathons after all - but right now this is where my fitness level is. I went out with the slowest of three groups, and managed to keep up all the way round. It felt good. So good, in fact, that I paid up for the remainder of the programme, and went on Wednesday too. we ran up hills, and spurred each other on, and I kept going further and faster than I would have bothered to do on my own. Today I got up and dressed to go to running club's monthly 5k run. I'd looked at the finishing times for the past few months, and knew I'd probably be last, very likely by a good five or ten minutes. Old doubts crept in - while I've been last plenty of times in plenty of races, I really would like to get out of the 'I'm always last' mentality, and voluntarily putting myself in that position seemed unhelpful. So instead I drove to a nice flat trail, plugged in an audio book about running (The Long Run: A Memoir of Loss and Life in Motion), and did 3.7 miles in a nice leisurely 50 minutes, running for four minutes at a time then walking for one. I had a nice time, and felt a good sense of achievement.
I've been here before with this enthusiasm for running, and after a couple of weeks my regular training has always dropped off. I'm hoping that having the group to run with will keep me going this time. Once we're up to 5k, the leaders keep the group open so those of us who are keen can keep working up until we're ready to go out with the running club's usual hour-long runs, and I would SO very much like to do that. It's not such an outlandish goal, is it? Over the last few years I've been doing an 'in the garden' post every month or two, trying to keep track of progress and seasonal changes. You can see some from the last couple of years here, and from the last few years in our old garden here. Now we have more space, I want those posts to reflect the fact that our outdoor activities often take us beyond the garden, and I'd also like to bring in discussions of what we're doing inside the house too. January has been rather bleak. The weather has been grim, and both of us have been ill at various times, so we've not made as much progress as I'd like. Still, some things have got done. Field walls We are deep into dry stone wall territory here. I have a love/hate relationship with walls. I love the way they look, and the idea of them. But ours are old, and they fall down, and I don't find it that easy to rebuild them. However, I'll mostly be repairing them myself, so I'll probably get better over time. This gap appeared last summer, and I started dismantling it properly at new year. There was one day in the middle of January where the sunshine coincided with a weekend and I spent a happy couple of hours shifting stones and looking at the view. You can see my new space-age knee pads in the photograph - I can't be doing with soggy and sore knees and these are far more convenient than shifting a kneeling pad every five minutes. This sort of work, while being difficult and taking forever, does remind me why we moved out here. I've nearly (but not quite) finished dismantling the wall far enough that there's a solid bit to rebuild on. I want to finish it before the cows come back in May, which feels like a long time away, but I know it will come round quickly. Pondering compost I built our existing compost bin from old pallets and breeze blocks when we moved in. It's served us well, but it's rather inconveniently sited in a field rather than in the garden, and now it's somewhat collapsed, it seems like a good time to relocate. I shifted all the mostly-rotted compost over onto the edible windbreak to use as mulch, and started pulling bits of wood out of the pile of old floorboards to build a new one. I've identified where it's going, and broadly what it's going to look like, and when we get another day of fine weather, I'm going to start building it. Fencing in the vegetable garden I didn't grow much food last year, partly through idleness, but also because everything I did plant was either eaten or dug up by a succession of chickens, hares and sheep. This year I've decided to fence around an area of the garden to (hopefully) keep them all out. I think it might also make the garden seem more enclosed and manageable, more like a little allotment than a vast expanse of wind-blown grass. You can't quite see in this picture, but I've started to put pegs in to map out where I want the fence posts to go. We've got some fence posts, and I'll be filling in between them with chicken wire. Fingers crossed that will be enough. Collecting rubbish Rather a lot of what we've done this month has involved collecting rubbish and piling it up around the garden. I've noticed that piles of 'stuff' seem to be a staple feature of gardens out here, and I can very much see how it happens. This pile is ostensibly waiting to go to the tip. It's been waiting for several weeks already, and I confess it's a bit of an eyesore, both for us (it's right next to where we park) and for people walking on the footpath down our drive. We'd been waiting until it dried out a bit to put it in the car, but might just have to get on with it as I'm sick of looking at it now. Fluffing up the chicken run One regular part of our outdoor activities is cleaning out the chicken run. We pick the droppings out of the house each day, and once a week or so we clean out the hen house and put in fresh bedding. Every few weeks we rake the old bedding from the floor of the run and replace it. For the past few months we've been replacing it with hay. The advice about using hay for chickens is mixed. There's a general consensus against using it for bedding in the hen house - it's dusty and can harbour mould, and so can cause respiratory problems. But in the outside area of the run, where there is plenty of ventilation? Some people still advise against it, for the above reasons, and also because they have a tendency to eat it, and eating too much of it can cause problems in the chickens' crops. I don't know what the answer is, but we do have rather a lot of our own hay, and nothing else to do with it, so for now we throw a few handfuls in there every few weeks for them to root about in. They love it, and it stops the ground getting quite so muddy for a while. The last time I put some in there, I lay down on it myself, and was surprised how warm and comfortable it was. I reckon I could sleep a night in the chicken run if I had to (providing the hay was fresh, of course). So there we are - a round up of homestead-ish activities in January. Looking back it seems like quite a bit, but everything I've written about here was done over one weekend in the middle of the month when it stopped raining for a few short hours.
There's been no DIY progress from me this month. Peter has acquired tools for kitchen renovations, and has fitted blinds in the living room and the bathroom, which have made such a difference to the feel of the place, especially after dark. We didn't have any curtains, and while there's not much chance of anyone looking in out here, once the sun set the windows became inky-black voids which didn't help with a feeling of cosiness. I'm hoping February will bring some nicer weather. I'd like to get the new compost bin built, and the vegetable garden fence, and to make significant progress on my field wall. But if all else fails, I can always start plastering... I'm enjoying tracking my days, although I'm not sure it makes interesting reading for anyone else. This last week has mostly been a washout - I started sniffling on Monday morning and things went rapidly downhill from there, so other than dragging myself to work, not much has been done. Monday 27th Left for work at 6am. Tired and unenthusiastic, and by the end of the day I'd properly come down with a cold. Met Peter at the cafe on the way home, but the kitchen had closed by the time we got there, so we came home in a slight grump instead. A quiet evening of not-very-much-at-all. Tuesday 28th The first proper snow of the year! Just an inch or two. The new car slid around a bit getting out of the lane, but the main roads were gritted and we made it to the city without incident (there was no snow there at all, of course). A long and very tedious day. I felt like a zombie and was having a complete sense of humour failure all day. Peter had a band rehearsal in the evening, so I had arranged to meet a friend for tea, but at the last minute his plans were cancelled. We still saw our friend though, and didn't get home til after 10pm anyway. Peter slept on the sofa so I could cough and sneeze my way through the night. Wednesday 29th I probably could have done with staying off work, but with six meetings to rearrange and the car due in the garage, it seemed like less effort to just get on with it. I stumbled my way ineffectively through another day (all the meetings got ticked off though), picked the car up, got home about 6 and dozed my way through the evening. Thursday 30th Worked at home, and for all the good I did I might as well have stayed in bed. We met our friend for lunch in the local cafe though which was nice, and had a very quick wander round the charity shops. I tried to work again in the evening but it just wasn't happening. Another lazy evening, and I forgot all about putting the bins out. Friday 31st Left for work at 6am, and after a couple of hours in the office, sneaked off to meet a friend for breakfast in a new-to-me cafe. I was feeling slightly more human, but an hour of walking to the cafe and back didn't really do me much good, and I had a rather unpleasant day of trying to catch up on all the things I'd not quite done for the rest of the week. Didn't get home til 7pm, and after an uninspiring tea of porridge, put my dressing gown on and stared mindlessly at the computer for a couple of hours before having an early night. Saturday 1st Had a rough second half of the night on the sofa. Normally I sleep well anywhere, and for most of the week I've been starting the night in bed, then several hours later when Peter is ready for bed, I've been getting up and sleeping on the sofa. This works well, but on Friday night there was clearly a mouse having an exciting adventure behind one of the cupboards which woke me up every hour or so. I was awake early, and sneaked in a couple of hours of work, trying to catch up with what I'd missed throughout the week ready for a deadline on Monday. We had a lazy breakfast in the cafe, a wander round the charity shops, and then in the afternoon I cleaned out the chicken run, which was as much energy as I could muster. A friend came to stay in the evening so we stayed up til 2am. Sunday 2nd I was awake before everyone else, and sneaked in a bit of work, trying to catch up before Monday's deadline. After a quick breakfast, Peter and our friend left, and I planned to work until lunchtime then have the rest of the day to myself. Sadly Peter's plans were cancelled, so by the time I finished work at 2pm I had fifteen minutes to myself before he came back. Still, I did manage to hang the washing outside for the first time this year, and spent some time outside sorting out a pile of wood to build a new compost bin and cleaning out the chickens. The evening was spent pottering round getting ready for the week ahead, doing an endless mountain of washing up, and other not-very-interesting household tasks. So, the end of the second week of tracking my days, and still no DIY. No sewing or running this week either, and no wall-building or flute playing. One visit from a friend though, and lunch with another friend, and a teensy bit of gardening. Progress.
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Hello!Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm Jenni, and I write here about our new foray into country living, which includes growing food, knitting, baking, wandering around the fields, and seeing which local cafe serves the best cake. Categories
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