Cheese and Soap and Skillz (by sarah)

At the beginning of the year when we were setting down our New Year Resolutions, me and Alaric realised that we were still stuck with exactly the same stitches for kniting and crochet that we started with three years ago. All our projects have been variants on a theme.

We also wanted to move forward with the home stedding stuff, having added chickens and allotment since moving house. So here is my first cheese - it is a soft spreadable thing but I am very proud of it - I might also have accidently made a butter but that's cool too and is being used 🙂

The other skill we've been meaning to try has been soap making and we thought this would tie in really well with the yarn craft side of things. So the easiest way of learning the stitches is to knit or crochet squares but I have to be making something or else it wont happen - I've never been good at practice - learning yes but practice no!

Anyway we are basically knitting and crocheting flannels or face/wash cloths to go with the soaps. Here is my first crochet attempt - I think it is double with single as the edging - it is lumpy and bumpy and miss shappen but I am so happy - of course it took me like a month to create.

This is the current one - a single crochet - lets hope I can remember how to carry on with it now Mum's gone home - I really struggled with the double when she wasn't about.

I have also added on four different rag rug making techniques to the skillz I haz, recently, plus improvisational comedy and sketch writing so I am feeling quiet chuffed. I am also nerviously awaiting proof copies of a book which is more painful than I would have thought!

What A Lot of Allotment…. (by sarah)

This week we made it too the allotment twice during the evenings and Saturday we were there from lunch time until the night was closing in and as I think that was the longest day that is saying something!

During the week I also used up the produce we had harvested last weekend - namely the raspberries and the broad beans - the raspberries are the main reason we are going during the evenings as there are more ripe ones every few days. We have already gotten to the point of making smoothies and stuff 🙂

We also got to try out are roof rack for the first - I told my Dad that we needed a chair for the allotment or a bench or something and that I had been trying on Freecycle to get one for ages - we talked about making one from the spare decking and old table that is lurking around our garden. But what happened is when he went home he restored a chair frame he'd been given for fire wood and made a seat for it and painted it so it would last outside and sent it down with my brother. I kind of didn't believe it was for the allotment but it was! So it got tied on the roof rack.

We picked up some coloured sharpies on route so the girls could decorate it.

Jeany did get a bit frustrated with her sister as she kept scribbling over bits Jean was trying to do nicely but it all worked out well including decorations from Alaric such as a castle and rocket and snake that he and Jean did together.

There is still more to be done on it but that is fine as we can just keep taking the sharpies with us 🙂 Jean also made sure we all knew what the seat was for 🙂

Whilst there I did so much weeding I lost count - I know I did at least 7 buckets full and filled up the new composter we had to buy on Friday (or rather Al bought whilst I was walking Jeany to her drama group). To be fair the first of the buckets only was weeds and all - the others were damage limitation (ie cutting the tops of the thistles that wouldn't pull nicely) but the last two buckets where veg bed weeding and I even managed to do some hoeing and raking whilst Al was off getting shopping.

Jean collected a bag of lemon grass, a bag of hay and a bag of dandelions as well as harvesting the raspberries 🙂 She was most excited about dandelion stalks that were as tall as she was 🙂

I have crowned her Jean Bean the Allotment Queen 😀

We were also gifted some french bean plants by one of the other allotment holders which we planted along with the spare tomato plants and the runner beans I got fro Prinknash Abby last weekend. These are in were the sweetcorn has failed to come up. Radishes and spring onions are doing well and we are quiet happy with it though there is still a lot of work to do to get the site maintainable. Alaric brought dinner back to the allotment which was great 😀

We were also given a load of peas and half our fridge was full of home produce - this is the way we like it 😀

Sunday morning I cleaned the chickens out and made pancakes with home grown eggs, I picked the strawberries in the garden - unfortunately breaking our bench chest that the neighbours gave us. And I made a coolie from some of the raspberries 🙂 We also used the neighbours home made cherry syrup and it was fab 😀

Lilly - Jean's chicken is sadly still ill and sadly producing soft shells again - she is the only one of the four rescue hens not to have grown all her feathers back. I found the rabbit eating the soft shells so we decided he had to come back out of the run which is unfortunate as they provide him with company, but with Lilly sick as well we just thought it was best.

Of course the hutch which was origonally Blacky's now has no doors so we've bought him a little run thing for now whilst we build him a run that is big enough for him and a friend and he is being let out for supervised time to hope around the whole garden.

(it's just as well we are growing lots of food as it cost our weekly food/domestic shop budget!)

ALso we have discovered that we have corn and wheat and stuff growing in the garden where we used to feed the chickens and rabbit before their new run was built!

Apart from that we didn't get the tip run done though we did build a mount for the festival trolly to go on the roof of the car (on the roof rack) and we found Elmo and a funky car.

Of course I also cried because a) the pedometer and stuff shows I am active even though it hurts and long walks are with a stick and the calorie counting shows I am eating 2/3 what I am supposed to as a woman and I am still expanding round the waist :/ and b) Jean wanted a hamster and I am so broody that though I said no I really wanted it so when I didn't get my coffee I cried but it wasn't really about coffee - sigh. But mostly all fab at the moment.

Growing the Good Stuff (by sarah)

Yesterday saw the first ripe strawberry from the plants Alaric bought for £12 a few weeks back - he had it as part of his FathersDay Brekki.

I have been making salads out of the various leaves I am growing inside and out at the moment and tonight we went to the allotment. We haven't been able to do a proper stint there for 2 weeks so there was a lot to do. I quickly filled my giant blue bucket three times with weeds - the first bucket load as always was roots and all!

We've found the broad beans have a bit of an infestation and that nature has started to rally the troupes in the form of ladybirds (ladybugs if you are from the US).

One the plus side we still got a good crop of beans and there will be more, I have a second crop already in and some runners waiting (bought from Prinknash Abby on Sunday).

The radishes are doing well though no where near as epic as the giant ones my bro bought me from his back garden. They were a mix of white, black and pink and in round and suasage shape. Alaric is very pleased about this - I only took enough for the next few days as am hoping to be back on Thursday to do more.

Jeany worked hard picking the broad beans and the raspberries 🙂

There where epic numbers of the soft fruit - easily £10 of supermarket peak season money. Of course I think Jeany may have been eating as she was picking too 😉

There was a spiders nest in the lemon-balm so I decided not to harvest any of that today!

I finally got around to putting the rainbow chard seeds in as well! The girls both ate their dinner on site and I think it is starting to come together - especially as this year we consider to be the hard graft for little reward year due to just getting the ground prepared and stuff.

Concept Sketches (by sarah)

I've been working on concept sketches - don't worry I know there are huge problems with the proportions and stuff - the drawings are just for design and figuring stuff out in my own head and of course drawing practice! They are all based in the universe of The Punk.

Starting with Punku herself in her Babel outfit.

And Jesu her brother with his sacred fish spear.

An Aquatic Ape fishing with their manta ray plans.

The Lady also known as Chaos and the moralistic bad guy.

I also now have emblems for all the main characters of the first part of the story - today also saw me write a short story that is based in the Punk's World - not bad as I have post festival workshop running fatigue and possible mild food poisoning so lots of ouchy and I did a four hour stint of weeding at the allotment today.

Another Hectic Bank Holiday (by sarah)

It started Friday with a friends leaving the country do in Bristol where I chatted about politics, scifi, fantasy, gaming, art and science. Then Saturday it was up relatively early to go to an audition to sing at the Gloucester Pride in June (more on that later), then it was home to work on festival trollies and to bake cakes 🙂

We found a broken trolly a few years ago and we decided that this year we were going to get it fixed in time for festival seasons 🙂 Al has slowly been buying and finding the bits to do this with. He has spent the weekend welding, sawing and tightening things 🙂

He insists it's not a gokart.

I made chocolate orange cake, diary free choc cup cakes and lemon zest cupcakes for the family fun day to raise money for the Play House Theatre in Gloucester (more on this later too as it was a fab day with lots and lots of photos!).

Sunday was pretty much taken up with the Funday which ran from 11 until 4, we had pizza and film time when we got home.

Today I got up, cleaned out chickens and sorted the wormaries a bit - one of them had an ants nest in it 🙁 But fortunately it hadn't done that much damage. I then had a shower and we headed out to the climbing wall for Jean's Rock Mice season. She was in disgrace for wearing her shiny school shoes and the wall don't tend to give climbing shoes out for mice seasons :/

If she wants new shoes before next term she is buying them herself!

I worked on the design and illustrations of the comic book whilst she was in climbing and Mary and Al went shopping for various bits including a drill bit and strawberry plants!

Last week me and the girls cleared up the old grow bags and put the soil in the girls old laundary basic to make an upcycled strawberry planter. Jean then helped me plant the strawberries Al had got.

They weren't quiet the kind of strawberry plants I had in mind so not sure how well it is going to work but hey ho!

This then lead to the issue that Al had managed to get far more plants than I had expected for the tenner I'd suggested (he actually spent 12 but close enough). So this meant that we had to find homes from the remaining plants - and this meant finally getting around to mounting all the disused cabinets on the wall that I have collected since we moved in.

As you can only really use good solid furniture for this sort of thing it took two of us to mount them on the wall - this meant I got to play with the power tools too as the cabinets were too heavy for me to hold up for any time.

I'm really quiet pleased 🙂

And I have space for more stuff to happen.

We were then going to head down to the allotment but alas the weather got in the way so instead we headed to the garden centre to get some planters - we found some galvanized ones on half price sale so got four of them plus some more terracota pots. So it turned into an expensive weekend. But I then spent the evening repotting my sage, tyme, comfrey and sorrel. I also weeded the blue wooden planter I have and put four pots of margaram, golden margaram and oragano into it. The pots I freed up I then used plant out more of my tomatoes that I have grown from seed.

I cleaned the decking up where I've put the planters and am chuffed 🙂 Also though not this weekend - this week I also cleaned the smaller planters I had and brought them in for the window sills. I planted them up with salad mixes as I have been cheerfully eating home grown salad. One night during the week I made basically the whole dinner from home grown stuff - true most of it we have to thank the person who had the allotment before us but still!

Feeling guilty we didn't make it too the allotment though :/ We plan to go after work this coming week.