I love September for its fruit picking and making pickles and jams. It’s usually the time I make the Christmas cake so it can mature. I’ve made so many over the past couple of years, and John has make sure they were very well tested a long way before Christmas, I’m having a break this year. Unless I can sneakily make one and hide it when he isn’t around!
We have been lighting the fires already, it has not been a nice August weather wise. John has bought in a pallet of straw logs from Fuel Britannia and we have been amazed at how well they burn. They have to be ‘imported’ from the Isle of Wight so the delivery charge is a bit steep but if more farmers were to invest in the machinery to compress the waste straw, they would be on to a winner. One of my biggest hates is round bales in the fields left to rot. The only bigger hate is round plastic covered bales! There seems to be a move back towards rectangular ones around here now but they are huge. I can’t ever see anyone flinging one of them down from a loft to clean a stable! Perhaps bio fuel will help save us from more plastic blobs in the fields too.
Elsa and Mike leave tomorrow. We’ve had a lovely week and a bit together. Lots of sewing too. She is ready to finish her Irish Chain at her home and I have been pottering. The Jenny BOM is ready for quilting, just waiting for the wadding from Ali, I have sorted a couple of other projects that need doing soonish and I finished the little silk covered journal cover below. That is both back and front to show the beading and it takes a A6 notepad.
We are having some brickwork on the front of the house put right and a chimney removed so the scaffolding is up and there are strange noises very early in the morning. We’ve also talked about the replacing of the cat room on the side of the house with something a little more substantial that will become my workroom/studio/hideyhole!! Can’t wait!
Today is the start of the Great Dorset Steam Fair a couple of miles away. We are going along in the afternoon for something to do. I’m not a huge fan of it. It’s the largest of its kind, a vast sea of steam engines, vintage lorries, heavy horses, beer tents, bands, fairgrounds and the roads have been blocked for a week and it takes just as long afterwards for them all to go again. That and the Bank Holiday and we’ve been almost housebound.
There is a website called OPAL (Open Air Laboratories) if anyone is interested. It’s a place where you can take part in surveys that help the British Natural History Museum and several universities gather information about where we live. I think the next one is hedge sweeping this month to see what lives in them. Why not register or download the pack and join in.
Yesterday my new toy arrived, a Dremel Versitip. I'm looking forward to finding out what I can do with it. This morning I am going to cut the corner triangles for the Jinny Beyer quilt, something I have been putting off but feel OK with doing now. Hopefully this one will be on our bed before Christmas! Don't watch this space though...
