Felting in Irish Sally Gardens

Yesterday I joined the lovely Rebecca from Irish Sally Gardens to learn a bit more about felting. It was a really interesting session and I got to ask all those silly questions I'd been storing up for while. I can only get so much out of a book or from reading websites and then I really just need to have someone to show me what to do and answer all those questions that just aren't covered in books, no matter how well written they are!

I arrived down to the smallholding in the lovely Leitrim just after 10 in the morning. It was a gorgeous sunny day with enough breeze to keep it a really pleasant temperature. Having met the family and heard about the rabbits from Rebecca's young daughter we sat down for a cup of tea and then set about felting. While we were doing so we had a good chance to chat about anything and everything - it was really great to meet someone I've 'blog known' for a couple of years. I'll post photos of my finished feltwork soon. I still haven't decided if I'll make it into something or just keep it as a decorative square.

After we had finished felting I got a tour of the whole place including holding a baby rabbit, seeing the chickens (and the rooster, who bravely fought off a fox recently), goats, polytunnel, raised beds, composting toilet (a work of art - Becky's hubby Dan being very talented at carpentry), oak wood and newly planted coppice, plus the lake. Such a beautiful place and so much work has obviously been put into it. We had a very tasty lunch of stirfried pork (from their pigs) and mangetout and sugar snaps from the polytunnel. How great is it that one person can start cooking while the other heads out to the tunnel to pick the rest of what's needed for the meal. I was mightily impressed with the elderflower cordial as well.

All in all a fantastic day and not only did I get to enjoy the wonderful peace and quiet, have good company, learn lots about felting and have a delicious meal, I came away with a sewing machine as well after mentioning that I share one with my sister (who will want it back when she's home from Oz and me moving to Germany might have made that a bit awkward).

Thanks again Rebecca!

Düsseldorf here I come

Well, it's nearly official - just waiting for my contract to arrive so I can sign it but I'm happy enough with the package I'm being offered and we've settled on 1 August as my start date so I have a few more weeks to get organised than I thought I would. It's very exciting and there's so much to do. Must start making lists now!

Stupid doctors

Was at the hospital today for a follow-up appointment about my foot, which still has no feeling in the toes and the same thing now starting in my right foot. After a battery of blood tests (no, Mr Consultant, just because I'm overweight does not mean I have diabetes) and extensive nerve conduction tests (complete with a massive bruise from where they stuck a needle in my leg muscle to do an extra test) there's apparently nothing wrong with me and no point in doing any further test. Come back in six months or if you develop any other symptoms. I knew I was going to be told that nothing had shown up in the tests that I'd had as I'd phoned in to get the blood tests results and the doctor doing the nerve tests told me straightaway but you still have to go to the consultant to get the results officially. I was however expecting another set of tests, you know, now we've ruled out x, y and z so we're going to test for w. But no. Just live with it. All very frustrating. I'm not in pain, which is of course good, but it's extremely unsettling to have almost no feeling in any of my toes and it's definitely not normal! Grrrr. I think I'll wait till I get to Germany to get a second opinion.

Pottering

Spent a lovely day yesterday pottering around the garden, in and out of the shade inside as well making and taking lots of phone calls. Great way to spend a bank holiday. I harvested compost from the plastic cone shaped composter I got from the council when I first moved into this house (over two years ago). Mostly I just kept putting more and more stuff into it and never turned it or anything, occasionally adding some organic liquid accelerator stuff (to use when most of what you're composting is grass) and some shredded newspaper. Then last year in autumn I chopped back a pile of branches from the fuchsia and dumped them in on top of all that as I had no time to cut them up small. So yesterday I tipped it over, harvested what was at the bottom (mostly well composted but quite dry and very little sign of worms but loads of earwigs). I got almost a full wheelbarrow full which I was pleased with.

Most of that went onto the bed in the front garden, where I also chopped back the last of the tulips and the comfrey. There are a couple of garlic plants growing away there and I did plant a few potatoes into it as well recently. Once I have seedlings sturdy enough to plant out I'm going to plant some out there are well.

I put the dead branches around the foot of the fuchsia, couldn't be bothered chopping them at the moment and they'll do there out of sight for another while. And I managed to tip the composter back into place without making too much of a mess of the last few weeks grass cuttings, which had been thrown in on top of those branches.

I kept some of the best compost from that lot to mix with bought compost and soil to pot on the seedlings I have. I planted everything a bit haphazardly at the beginning so ended up with tiny pots with loads of salad seedlings in them. Hopefully some of them will survive having been pricked out and re-potted in bigger pots. Ditto for the tomatoes. I'm not too worried about the five courgette and two squash seedlings as they were much bigger and sturdier. The leeks were very fragile though so am really not sure about them.

But the big news is that I found out this weekend that I am being offered a job in Dusseldorf (for the same company I work for now, had the interview a week and a bit ago) so it makes it that bit more difficult to be bothered if things don't survive. I may not actually move until the end of July though so I have some time to get a harvest if things go well. Of the two better established tomato plants I have I realised one had a blackfly infestation on Sunday but have sprayed it with this stuff my brother gave me (something organic) - hopefully that'll work. And then despite my really not wanting to I finished off the day by clearing up the kitchen and then, after soaking my feet, I washed all the floors and had a lovely hot shower before heading to bed. I knew I'd appreciate having done that when I got up this morning and it was definitely nice to have a clean floor rather than one with dirt and grass all over it!

Growing stuff

My seedlings have started to come up, hurray!

I only planted them at the beginning of last week and I know I'm pushing it to get anything much this summer but hopefully I'll get some salady crops (have sown mizuna, spinahc, purslane and some mixed baby lettuce seeds and they're all going great guns). Garlic seems to mostly have given up the ghost but I will try again with it next year and this time pay attention!

Beets are coming up as well, no sign of tomatoes yet, courgettes and squash are flying along and, very excitingly, some leek seedlings appeared. Will have to sit down this weekend and actually write down the types I planted so I have a proper record.

A friend gave me two tomato seedlings about five weeks ago though and I potted both of those into bigger pots last week and they're growing well. And my brother gave me some potatoes which he had chitted for me (i.e. he hadn't used them before they started sprouting so decided he had been 'chitting' just for me) and I shoved them into the ground out front. No harm in trying. I never fully dismantled the potato tyre stack I tried last year (the three tiny potatoes it yielded were blighted) and now it's got a really vigourous looking plant growing again. However, I've read many places to be careful not to let any blight volunteers (i.e. potatoes from a blighted plant left in the ground by accident) grow so have to dig that out and get rid of it. I found two or three similar ones out front but before they really started to grow so it wasn't too bad. There's a healthy looking potato plant also growing out of the compost again so may need to do some investigating of that this weekend.

I like growing stuff.

Noses and attitudes

Quick update on the whole hanky thing. I love it and it's another one of those things I can't believe I took so long to get around to. No problems with snotty dirty ones either, haven't done any special soaking, just throw them into the laundry basket and wash them with my usual weekly load. I think if I had a cold I'd be more careful and would probably soak them in water with tea-tree oil or similar while they were waiting to be washed but otherwise am happy with the way things are. My nose appreciates it too. I've been sneezing a lot with hayfever recently so all in all it was a good move.

My sister was home from Oz for a couple of weeks and we had a great time. We didn't have too much catching up to do as we spend lots of time on the phone doing that (apropos of which, can I recommend www.dialwise.ie to anyone making international calls from Ireland - my call charges this phone bill were 8 euro where normally they would be at least 40 euro and I wasn't trying to make fewer calls at all - one more thing I should have done a long time ago). However, it was nice to just sit and chat about anything and nothing. We never seem to run out of conversation and we had two really nice nights out with one of our other sisters and my brother which doesn't always work out (plus spouses). It's a big family and no matter how well we get on individually, when more than three of us congregate it's not always smooth going. :-)

They headed back to Sydney yesterday and before she left she gave me two lovely presents. One was a lovely photo frame with a little poem about sisters on it - I'm going to dig through the family albums and see if I can find a photo of the two of us when we were small to go in it. The other thing she gave me was a little card with the following on it (I don't see anything credited this to anyone so apologies if I'm reproducing something I'm shouldn't and if I am, please let me know and I'll remove it). She said she wasn't sure why but it made her think of me and I really like it. It articulates some things which I really do believe. And coincidentally the card it's on is decorated with some leaves which have a connection to our family and that makes it even more special somehow.


Attitude

Your life is an expression of your mind. You are free to will whatever state of being you desire through the use of your thoughts and words. The quality of your life is brought about by the quality of your thinking. Realise, the one thing you have complete control over is your attitude. See the affect it has on those around you. If you truly want to change your world, you must change your thinking. Reason is your greatest tool. It creates an atmosphere of understanding which leads to caring and love.

In other news the One Local Summer challenge started again and I missed the deadline for registering. I've gotten so bad at blogging regularly that may not be a bad thing. I had an interview in Dusseldorf last week so will hear back in the next week or two whether I get that job or not. It's all happening very fast so I may have a hectic couple of months ahead of me which could make keeping up with any challenge difficult.

Zero waste

Two websites of people who are attempting to live without producing any landfil waste are:

therubbishdiet

homecompostingrecyclingforum

It's interesting reading. I currently put out our big wheelie bin about once every six weeks (sometimes longer, rarely less) - if I was sharing a house with someone who was more into trying to live a sustainable life it would undoubtedly be less. However, one thing I'm very aware of is a tendency to think if it can be recycled then it's okay. I can put plastic bottles into the green bin (which goes out every four or six weeks) and bring soft plastic packaging to a local recycle centre - I do try not to use plastic but sometimes I don't put all that much effort into it I have to admit and all because I know I can send it for recycling. It's something I do have to work on. Particularly because I'm fairly certain there are no recycling plants in Ireland and everything has to be shipped off somewhere else to be recycled. It's reduce, re-use, recycle - recycle is supposed to be the last option.

Using non-disposable sanpro has defintely had a huge impact on the amount of waste I produce - have been using washable pads for over a year and just bought a mooncup to try it out. And I finally found all those cloth hankies which I knew I had. Decided months ago to stop using paper tissues, used up what I had and then couldn't find the cloth ones. Knowing I had them somewhere (they were my dad's, so plenty big enough for my nose too) meant that I didn't want to buy new ones and so I spent a couple of months using toilet roll. Which kind of defeats the purpose! Anyway, have been using the cloth hankies for a few days now and they're so much nicer. Lovely and soft and gentle and I don't have to worry about whether a particularly big sneeze is going to blow them to bits. Won't go back from this one. Would love to start using wee wipes/cloth TP but will need to see what my new housemate is like before trying to sneak that one in.

In other news, Saturday 14th June is world wide knit in public day - there is a knit taking place in Dublin so I'll be hopefully heading along to that. Check out the website to find one in your area/find out about starting one in your area.