Return of the sock

Well, firstly there is some good news - the missing sock came back! Or perhaps never left, as I recovered it from my washing machine in the next load... I'm inclined to say fish people pinched and then return it, but perhaps I just don't get enough sleep.

As promised, here are pics of the socks I made with Pam's wool, and a pair from some jolly acrylic yarn I picked up at knit and knatter last week.

As I said I have been a little down this week, I think mostly because moving here has been a big adjustment, and with all of the recent visits and sorting things out over now everything has gone a bit quiet. I have been working a lot in the garden which I think has been my downfall in a way as it has stopped me from getting out and about so much. I psyched myself up today though and walked to the family centre in Garnant. There were no other Mums there today but I had a chat with the people that run it and they explained to me the different things that they do there, and it does sound as though there is a lot to get involved with which made me feel a lot better. I also bought a Fry's chocolate creme on the way home (don't tell Will) and pretty much ate it in one mouthful, and that made me feel better too. 

Ivy and I are going to visit Pam tomorrow after the health visitor has come in the morning so I am really looking forward to that - especially as the health visitor back in Swansea always seemed to tell us off for one thing or other, I'm a little apprehensive!

I started on another pair of socks last night, though I've been meaning to sort some out for Ivy. I don't think they will take that long as they will be so small, it's just remembering to do it once the evening comes around. 

That's about it for now, as always there are a dozen things to do. Hwyl!

Plastic, tadpoles, tents

Excuse the gap of a few days - once my Dad and family went home there seemed to be endless (still are) jobs to catch up on, and now we're finally a bit more organised the weather has been far too glorious so spend time sat indoors. Also, despite the weather I have found myself a little down and muddled these last few days.
On Tuesday Ivy and I went to knit and knatter with Pam again, and I got nearly to the heel on a pair of bed socks before deciding that I didn't like the mohair-type yarn after all and didn't really feel like finishing them. They came off and a new pair in a much more 'me yarn' went on, and I'm on my way to the second toe with those. I finished a pair with some lovely wool Pam gave to me and I adored them, wore them, washed them, and then one blew away off the line in a devastating turn! I'm not holding out much hope of it coming back to me, but I think I have enough wool to knit another. Will post pictures of both when they're finished.
I have spent a little time out in the garden, though not a lot. A gravel path across the garden is the only major change - put in there so I can still get to the beans and onions as we are planning to heavily plant the space between the large bed with the wigwams and the walled area.
It was a fabulous day on Saturday. We spent the morning running around the house getting jobs done, and FINALLY unpacking the two remaining boxes of bits and bobs. Really I should have just chucked the contents as it's  nothing we've needed for the last month. I'm not quite there yet, but I can feel another purge coming on.
After that we walked out to the greengrocers in Glanaman. I've been really conscious about the amount of waste and recycling we've been producing creeping up, and it's been making me feel pretty guilty. I think there are quite a few changes we can and should make, and reducing our super market shopping is a big one. I am very eager to work towards becoming Zero Waste, if that is a possibility, or as close to Zero Waste as possible. Less waste in our foods is a part of it, and using the car less is another, although we use that very little anyway. Glanaman is about a 3 mile walk and was fabulous in the sunshine. Ivy slept in the connecta and we took the granny trolley and filled it up for £13 and zero plastic. On the way back we stopped at a pub in Garnant and had a cider in the sun, then found a slightly longer, but off-road walk back to Brynaman, and then back down to Cwmgors.
We went to Swansea in the afternoon to pick up seeds and a few shrubs. I'm hoping to come by a greenhouse and be working mainly with my own seeds next year.
Sunday, which was Mothers Day, was very nice again. Beautiful warm sunny weather and a day spent mostly out in the garden, and then in the afternoon a short walk to a place where we saw frogspawn a couple of weeks ago to check on the new tadpoles - there are thousands! We will go up again next week to see their little legs.
That's about it. I only have more pictures of the garden, so here they are!

The Start of a Garden

Blimey what a day! Wall to wall sunshine, and warm!! It has felt not like spring today, but summer definitely. My Dad and step Mum and Brother are all visiting this week - my Dad lives in the US so hadn't met Ivy yet, so this is a very special visit. We had a lovely walk this morning up the hill behind our house and admired the view, but really today has been all about the garden. At lunch we brought a big picnic out and tested out my new picnic area (!!!), and then sat in the sun a while. Even Ivy had to be stripped down as she was going a bit pink.
Not much new this week except I have spent lots of time in the garden, behold the transformation:

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It's a garden!!
The beans and onions are in as well as a lot of bulbs. I had a whole tonne of seeds to plant as well as a few shrubs but will need a little more compost first. The little walled picnic area is coming along - I have planted the blueberry and a small cherry blossom but would like another cherry blossom and a may tree as well. This will also be planted all around with flower seeds and shrubs (when I have some!) I even mowed the lawn today while Ivy played on a rug. We have a manual push mower, and I love it! We haven't had a lawn for a couple of years, so it was a joy bringing it out again for the first time!
I made a small crazy paving path with rubble collected around the garden and filled in with sand and grit, also found in the garden. After a few good rains I will fill in with more sand, and repeat until it feels firm enough. There is so much building materials and rubble in the garden that we will not need to buy anything like that. All of the bricks for my wall and the borders have been collected from the garden and there are dozens more. We've given away most of out gravel on freecycle but kept some back for digging into the soil to improve drainage, and for any other paths we may want to make. All of out plants have been either kept from previous gardens, given to us, or bought from the 'nearly dead, buy me!' section at garden centres. I only hope it continues to be such a cheap and fulfilling project!
Anyway, time to go, Ivy is everywhere. Some more snaps of the garden on this glorious day!

More blue skies and busy days

Not a lot new here today - more gravel gone and there are a few people coming over the weekend so that's good. I'd never have thought so many people would want it - and there was I worrying about getting rid of it!
I did a little digging and planting out in the garden this morning, but got a bit bored so started building a little walled area from salvaged bricks. It's a 150ft long, fairly skinny garden so I want to be a bit creative with what I put in - I thought a little walled picnic area with planters would be sweet, and fun for Ivy when she's bigger. I probably won't build it taller than 3 or 4 bricks high. There are oodles of bricks buried in the garden, and a wall at the end, which with one hard shove will happily come down. Probably this weekend Will will remove all of the wood surrounding the garden, he has plans for it and we don't like it where it is anyway. I'll plant something tall against the fence. The bank of earth has to stay there as next doors' garden is on a slightly higher level to ours.

We're also hoping to get to work next week at least picking about in the 'compost (trash) heap' at the end of the garden. It's about 15ft square and at least 6 foot high. We have decided to hire someone to remove it, but will have a good poke around first as there's a lot of treasure in there.

After Will finished work this evening I spent half an hour trying to organise my desk area which has been getting me down. A few things went in the recycling, a small box to charity, and a couple of things have been reallocated to the shed. Eventually the plan is that I can set up some kind of little studio space in the garden. At least for now I have some space I can work in - believe it or not, this is the After picture.

Will and I took a walk through the village this evening, first in one direction, and then the other. Whenever I walk around the village and see the hills I'm filled with such a sense of well-being. I think having come from a city, and having lived in one city or other all my life, I still can't believe living somewhere so peaceful could be a possibility. It was dark by the time we headed back and we walked the footpath behind the road, and saw a few big toads.

That's all today, have a lovely weekend.

Golden Rays

Lots of pictures today, I don't have time to write much as Ivy is wide awake and on a mission of destruction!
It is a blissful day today! I went to Ammanford on the bus this morning to drop of Ivy's library books, and picked up a lot of flower seeds for the garden - I am hoping to get the chance to plant them next week, if not at the weekend. (but first I have to finish digging the bed)
We are currently on mission Get Rid of The Gravel. Our front and back garden have absolutely stacks of it! We have had quite a bit of interest on Freecycle, so it's fitting them all in. Someone just took away about half a tonne, and it coming back tomorrow for more, but it hasn't even scratched the surface.

Everything is bright and gorgeous and coming back to life. My blueberry and acers are stacked with buds, and there is even a single bud on the new pear tree.
If you are quite out in the garden you can hear the water in the soil popping and shifting. Laundry is out, doors are open. Lovely.

Digging for secrets

Not a whole lot going on today, in fact I've barely been out the house (& garden) but for a short walk at lunch time with Will.
I had a lovely treat this morning of some crochet and knitting books, a couple more herb plants, and some wool I admired on her blog from Pam. The herbs haven't made it into the ground yet, but all being well will do tomorrow. In fact after doing the jobs around the house I have spent most of my Ivy-sleeping time out in the garden. It's been an overcast day with bits of spotty rain, but moments of beautiful, warm sunshine. I loved feeling the drops of rain and heat of the sun on my back, and felt truly that winter has gone. I started digging another large bed to separate what will be the flower garden from the rest of the garden - about a quarter of the whole garden. If I manage to get this dug by the weekend we will be building wigwams and planting a few climbers that are waiting in their pots and looking sorry for themselves.
While I was at it I have also been on something of an obsessive path-hunt from the previous garden. I have thoroughly trawled the lawn, and have found a few feet of path beyond the existing one leading to the shed, and lots of remnants but nothing else complete. The neighbours did say that the farmer came in and tore it all up, it was so overgrown, and I guess when he did he took the path with him. I must say I was a little disappointed as it feels like uncovering a secret, finding out how the garden used to be, but really I wouldn't have chosen to put in concrete paths myself, so all's well that ends well.
I made a big pot of carrot and cauliflower soup for lunch as I bought a sack of carrots from the greengrocer in Garnant at the weekend. That simmered away while I was out digging and we had it with pancakes - I made extra as they are a handy food for Ivy, I will freeze the rest for her and pop them in the toaster as and when. She had pancakes with miso, cauliflower and broccoli for lunch.
That's about it for today. Will is outside shoveling up some of the gravel in the garden into one place. There is literally tonnes of it, and we really hate it. I am hoping we will have some freecycle takers once we've moved it all into one place, otherwise I'm not sure what we will do.
Will took a rather funny photo while I was out in the garden - unfortunately seconds after this was taken Ivy started bawling, I think she was confused.

Another busy busy few days with one thing and another. At the weekend we removed one of the kitchen cupboards. We intend to take down the others as well in time and once we have something to replace them with, as the cupboards are a pain - you can never find anything, there is never enough room, and things get forgotten. We replaced the first one with a plate rack that I bought off Gumtree a couple of weeks ago and already the kitchen is so much nicer and more open.
Again, I forgot to take a picture to compare, but the picture from when the house was sold shows how covered in cupboards the walls are, and with our appliances and jars on the counter that didn't fit anywhere, the kitchen looked and felt very cluttered.

Much better.
The wall to the left of the place rack is empty because we are planning to remove the base unit as well when we get the chance and put our fridge-freezer there.
Will also build a large shelving unit for all of our jars etc. I still haven't really sorted it out, but already much better than having things cluttering up the counters. Once we have moved the fridge, we will slide this along.

 Yesterday I went out in the garden and planted our pear tree. I had planned just to mark out where I wanted a flower bed so I could come back to it in the week, but the first thing my fork hit was concrete. A bit of scraping and digging, and I found a section of path from the old garden, 40 odd years ago. I spoke to our neighbours who have lived here about 35 years, and they said the previous-previous owner had a wonderful garden, with lots of paths - oh heck! The family who moved in at the same time as them did nothing to the garden, and it was left for the brambles to take over. I look forward to returning it to how it was.

I'm off to knit and knatter with Pam today, I'm quite excited. I had planned to go to a baby group in the next village yesterday but Ivy refused to nap all day, and it wasn't fair to drag her out knowing how tired she was. I'm about 2 inches into one of Will's socks, with any joy I'll do another row today and he may have a pair of socks by July!
Oops, Ivy's awake, no title today!

Looks like summer, feels like summer

What a beautiful day to be busy, I'm sure it isn't this sunny and warm in Swansea!
And busy I have been, once I finally got Ivy off to sleep I ran out into the garden to finish digging the first bed. I used bricks that I found digging, and half buried around the garden to edge the border and it will be used mainly for herbs, garlic and onions, but I have also bought some bright bulbs so we at least have some colour this year - I will plant then in two or three weeks. In this bed so far are a lavender and rosemary that we have had for years and which have followed us from place ot place, three small lavenders that we took from the front garden, and some beautiful herbs given kindly to me by Pam.

During Will's lunch break today we went and had a coffee out on the grass to admire my hard work, and the wonderful weather. Ivy had a crawl around on the grass - or tried to, the uneven surface foxed her some and she spent more of her time rolling over - and we got a bit of sunshine.

I have decided to give the Artists Way course a bit of a break for the time being. With everything that needs doing in the house and garden it is impossible to find time to do both my daily pages and my weekly date, and is only bringing us stress. I have tried where I can though to make a little time for creativity and have enjoyed working on some collage ideas.

With all of that there's hardly been time for sorting out the housework, but that can wait until the next damp day.
Lastly we had a very nice dinner out in Swansea yesterday with friends for St. David's Day. We ate at a new restaurant that has opened in Sketty and offers very good vegan options. The St. David's Day menu was Welsh rarebit and laverbread, glamorgan sausages & mash, and bara brith with custard (all vegan). I finished it all up apart from a little of my desert which Will ate for me, and felt very very full. The food was lovely if a little stodgy, but it was fabulous to have proper good vegan options. There are so many places in Swansea you can eat now, I would have never thought it 10 years ago.
On that happy note I'm off to put the nappies out on the line!