Mostly gardening.

 In October, my husband will be celebrating his 70th birthday. Not being a party animal, he wanted to celebrate by having his relatives from both sides of his family over for a get together.  We chose a Saturday in August that the majority of his family could make and we were so lucky with the weather, as we hoped to entertain everyone in our garden. we decided not to BBQ, as it meant that we would have less time to talk with everyone. Instead I laid on a buffet. Spent a lovely couple of hours going through cook books looking for new recipes to try out. ( warning- if you eat at my house I will very rarely cook an old favourite for you, I look on it as a chance to experiment.) Our relatives were the Guinea pigs for ten new recipes!


Luckily, as it was the school holidays it meant I was been able to devote a lot of my time trying to get the garden into shape. Sewing had to take a back seat.
We have planted a lot of plants over the last couple of years to encourage bees and butterflies to visit our garden. There does seem to be a sad decline this year in the butterfly population.

 This is our Antipodean garden, inspired by our visit to Australia.

I recycled this chair. We were about to take it to the tip as it was no longer white and I could not get the white plastic to clean up properly. So, two coats of paint and a few peacock feathers stencilled on, and I have a lovely shady place to sit and sew or crochet (weather permitting)

I like to crochet for about an hour each night before I go to bed, so over the last few years I have manged to create quite a few blankets. These four had been stored in a vacuum pack bag, and smelt a bit musty, so they needed a couple of hours in the fresh air. Loved seeing them on the line as it was a dull day and certainly cheered me up. As the evening got cooler, I was able to hand out my throws to keep everyone warm.  Another throw will be added to the collection in a couple of weeks as it is nearly complete, making it 12  in total.😁

My completed jester doll photos will be in my next blog, just need some decent weather to get some decent pictures.