Of Chickens and Candles and Holes (by sarah)

This weekend has been absurdly busy, for a start I have finally been putting the attic back together after the whole roof fixing of last year! Then there were chickens! It was time to fetch our new rescue chooks - these ones are slightly less rescued than the previous lot as they came from a free range farm and so are a lot perkier than the first lot were initially. They also look better with already red combs and wattles.

It was getting dark by the time we got back with them so photos are not brilliant I'm afraid. Felix who is one of the original four, is not impressed as she is in the rabbit run whilst they settle in.

She was always quiet pecky so we shall have to see how introductions go!

We had planned on getting four hens but when we got there they had spares, so we ended up with 6. Their names are:

1) Squwashy - apparently this is something minecraft related that Jeany has picked.

2) Rose - named by Mary, she didn't give a reason

3) Chris - a chicken scheme programmer as picked by Alaric

4) Pete - another chicken scheme programmer

5) Tardis - this is my chicken 🙂

6) Firefly - this is my dad's chicken and apparently the most intellegent of all the dinosaurs.

They laid an egg on the way home and have since laid 3 more - we had fried eggs for dinner. The run looks so much better with chickens in it 🙂

The weekend also saw Alaric drilling holes in the walls.

Apparently I didn't want this part of the house! No he isn't just randomly destroying the house - he is network cabling so that we can have proper internet in all the rooms in the house etc...

Also the compressor was the best buy EVER! It now unsurprisingly has a hole saw attachment.

Last but certainly not least - Jeany has been wanting to do some more of her candle making for ages, in sorting the attic I discovered just how many candle ends we had accumulated - to be fair friends do post her candle ends to melt down.

This is her main craft activity that she does with Alaric, and it is also her little business which she started years ago now 🙂

Infact the square moulds that came with the starter kit that... erm... started it all broke, so this is the last batch of square candles until she sells some candles and buys a square mould with the money.

It was a pretty epic weekend to be honest.

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!

How I’m managing my life with emacs org-mode (by alaric)

It's no secret that I'm a busy person; often, when I decide to do something, a few years pass before I actually get to do it. So the only way I keep afloat is by the judicious use of computers to track my task lists. I rely on automatic systems to make sure I always know what I need to do today, and what are the most important things I need to do "sometime" that I can do right now. There's no way I could keep all that in my head without forgetting about things and letting people down, or feeling stressed because I'm juggling too much in my mind, or not being able to find the best thing to do when I have a free moment.

As I've mentioned before on here, I want a personal information management system based on predicate logic, so I can express complex relationships between things easily, and tell the system how to infer knowledge automatically. However, "build one of those" has yet to hit the top of my TODO list, so for now I'm using emacs' legendary org-mode. This lacks the rich semantic power of my proposed PIM, but it's already implemented and has a nice editing interface 🙂

A few people have asked about what I've done, so here's my attempt to document it.

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New Year Walk 2015 (by sarah)

A new year is upon us and after a night of much fun and poetry writing and the such like it was time to do lots of DIY and go for a walk. We went to the Forest of Dean. We love walking but it has not always been a possible pass time, this year we hope that will not be the case.

In all aspects life is exciting and uncertain at the moment but in good ways and Mary is starting to actually like walks through trees though she was still very glad to get back to the car much to Jean's disappointment - she wanted to run around in the "wilds" more.

We found a dragon pretending to be a tree - no really!

Alaric got stares and stares and stares (there were a lot of people about), I don't know if it was the three pairs of legs, the cloak, pink/purple hair or the Christmas Pudding hat - he say's they looked like they were worried he was a weirdo who would eat their dogs or something - I don't think he was wrong. The girls loved it.

I thought he looked brilliant - he said the Christmas Pudding hat was the least surprising of the combo for the norms 🙂

We found a river - it had been bound - like the rest of the forest.

It is sad and wonderful at the same time.

We thought on resolutions and projects and goals and wants and wishes as we walked round the lake.

One of mine is I want to post my stuff here more rather than being sucked into Facebook - having said that there is a 2015 Walks album but I plan to post one or two pics from each walk only - we plan on there being a lot of walks. People have been asking me to do more of the poetry photo twitter things I sort of started doing accidently this year just gone - ah what happens when you get a smart phone.

My camera is a bit broken so it started to act up at this point - but there were birds - lots and lots of them - they seemed happy 🙂

I love the muted colours of winter - greys and browns that seem smudged together and expectant.

Some of the birds were walking on water - there was some ice but not sure if they weren't just birds that do that - with the surface tension. It was still a wonder what ever.

The day light was beginning to go bringing the first day of the new year to a kind of close - we are expectant and awed by this year already and what ever happens it will be busy but fluid, adaptable and hopefully lovely.

There are writing projects and events including being guest poet and lunching a comic book - there is cuddly science and knitting, metal work and house decorating, there are friends and family and climbing. Mary and Jeany are progressing at astounding rates something that should not slow. We look forward to sharing parts of their adventures as they explore the world around them.

Happy New Year.

Day 23 – Blondie (by sarah)

I am actually happy with this painting - had to be done in two lots though with drying time inbetween 🙂

Also Alaric is blonde and has a pudding hat and I have a new onsie which I'm sure there will be plenty of picks of over Christmas 🙂

Big thanks to our friend Nicky 🙂

(photos)