Clean Sweep

Hello everybody, I am having a good clean sweep, so bare with me while I do this and then I have so much to say about what we have been up to over the summer. Partly to keep track of my life for my own slightly degenerating memory and more importantly because Toby asked, "Mum why haven't you updated your thingy lately?" No proper answer son, apart from I know how important this site is going to be over the next year for you.

Life’s a Gamble

Remember all the excitement about broody eggs and me whizzing off and purchasing 6 Bantam eggs. Well they took a little bit longer to reach me than I was expecting!! But in the mean time curiosity got the better of Buddy and he just had to poke is nose in and have a look to what was going on – a big no, to a broody chicken and within half an hour of that little incident, she was off the eggs never to return.

Still it was a gamble ... some you win, some you lose.

But Paul came up trumps with this ...


A very dusty Brinsea Octagon 10 Incubator, so after a good clean...





Paul told me the eggs should last up to 14 days if kept in a cool’ish’ place and I turn the eggs, (I have kept them in the box, so I am turning the box) periodically throughout the day, every day.



There were six lovely little bantam eggs in the box.


But on closer inspection, I found this ...



I am sure it didn’t get broken in the post, as the crack was on the in side but I have now had the eggs for a week, so I can’t go back to the supplier and say anything.

So down to 5 eggs, which I have placed in the incubator, it seems I should have sterilised everything first, opps, sorry eggs .... didn’t get any instructions until I did a search on line ... after having set everything up!

Oh well, as I said “life’s a gamble ...”

But I did find this very informative site about chickens and all you need to know, so thought I would share with you, if you are interested of course.

But if you can see I am doing something wrong or you can give me any more advice, I would greatly appreciate it.

The upside is all three chickens are now laying; we have been giving the most recently laid eggs away. Giving away! Well my thought process is, I will get my friends and family hooked on scummy fresh eggs, having already said that I will charge a little, to off set the chicken food costs!

Pay it Forward

I cut my neighbours grass as they suffer from hay fever. That is a return for me being sent an Interview Knits from Natalie at the Yarn Yard as she had two copies. Unfortunately I never did receive the magazine as it got lost in the post, such a shame. But I still wanted to repay the very kind gesture.

Knitting

I have completed my first monkey’s sock apart from the kitchener stitching, which will be saved until I have a quiet half an hour. Just now need to find the repeat of pattern, if that is possible with such a colourful yarn so that I can hopefully make the finished socks look similar.

I have never knitted a sock in a week, not even a month, six months being my average, I have knitted 3 pairs, and a couple of singles – having not got round to doing the second one ‘yet’, so not really a sock guru.

Therefore your guess is as good as mine to whether I get ‘second sock syndrome’ or the time to finish the second sock anytime this year.

But you must of guessed I am so chuffed with myself ... I finished a sock in a week - yay!

Year End

Last week was very much a hard week at work, however this was off set by lots of playing, it seemed that all the things I do, had come together in just one week, why does that happen; for weeks you have no social live and then it all comes together in one exhausting week?

I was getting up extra early in the mornings to do any chores and to arrive at work for 7:30am; this gave me a little bit of quiet time before the all the woodworking machines got turned on.

I needed to accomplish 4 major tasks, that had to be finished by the Friday, however to be able to do these tasks, several other jobs had to be completed first, like having every account reconciled from the bank accounts, credit cards and loans, you name it, it had to be reconciled.

If you do wages as part of or all of your job, then you will have had to submit all the P.A.Y.E., submissions for ‘year end ‘ 2007/08 by Saturday May 31st. (Note for me : NEXT YEAR IS THE 19 MAY - REMEMBER 19th!!) For me this means writing out 40 P60’s by hand, with no mistakes, or if I do make a mistake, I have to start a fresh one.

I was able to complete the on-line submission with no issues what-so-ever, unlike previous years by Tuesday afternoon, then on to finalising all of May’s worked hours and calculate everybody’s pay and submit to the bank for paying. The next big task was to make sure that all suppliers invoices, tallied with the appropriate suppliers statements. May is also work’s end of VAT quarter. Normally as soon as the invoices are sorted, it is just a short job. However QuickBooks has completely upgraded their VAT software and I could not get it to calculate properly – groan, however after much shouting at the computer, I managed to find before and end figures, did some math’s and have submitted a hand written form.

Every quarter, Gary and I have a small competition to who can get the nearest to the amount that has to be paid to HM Customs. This quarter I won, which means Gary meant a pound in the Prospect Hospice Box.

My final job was to submit all the bill payments for the bank to make the BACS payments.

I did it all and I am sure that the fact that I had such a lovely week helped me through.

Monday night, I finished Noel's socks off, I had completed the first sock including a terrible example of kitchener stitch, however sitting very quietly by myself, in the small gap between me getting home and everybody else on a Monday evening, I sewed up the second sock - quiet is the answer, I did a much better job.

Noel's socks - taken at this angle, so that I could use the wall as a back drop!

Tuesday I decided to join a Monkey Sock KAL on the CTnY Forum and that evening, I cast-on and knitted about 7 rows of the rib and then realised that it should have been twisted rib, so I frogged it all, again.

Wednesday evening, Poppy was sleeping over Kaan’s, so Noel suggested we go out to dinner, we decided to go to the local pub, the Iron Horse, because at 8 pm at this pub is where I have a fortnightly village knit/craft get together. It also happens to serve nice home-made food. We had a lovely meal together and then Noel, disappeared (he didn’t want to bump into any of the group) at 7:50 pm, I carried on knitting. I re-cast-on the monkeys and this time remembered to do the twisted rib and managed to do; 2 pattern repeats.

Thursday, started with me following Noel to the garage to get his car MOT’ed, then Noel dropped me off at work, and he went back and collect Kaan and Poppy; as they were all going to spend the day together, starting with the cinema and watching the new Indian Jones film, which they all really enjoyed, then on to Pizza Hut for lunch before going climbing together.

After work, we collected the car, it had passed, such a relief, with just the cost of a bulb (and the four new tyres we had bought the week before!!)

Thursday evening, I met up with Kate and Louise at the pub, (none of us had heard from Sprite64, which is a shame as we were then not sure what to do – hope you are reading this Sprite and you can let us know if you still want to join in), a lovely meal was had by all and a great time while we did ‘show and tell’. As we are all members of the forum, out came 3 monkey’s, which made us giggle, Kate’s were a plum with a splash of pink colour, Louise’s were a white, black and beige colour and then mine.

Friday afternoon, a bit later than planned as it had taken me longer to sort the VAT out, I went round to Ruth’s and caught up with all the family and showed her this blog!! Noel and Poppy went off to climbing the wall at West Swindon’s Leisure Centre and came back and picked me up at 5 pm. We had a relaxing evening at home together as a family and I carried on knitting.

And then Saturday, which broke with glorious sunshine, I travelled down to Hillier’s Arboretum, Braishfield, Hampshire to meet Linda. We had a lovely day together chatting, we are members of Hilliers, it gives us some where to go, when we just want to chat, away from husbands, children, ironing etc etc ... you know the sort of place. In between eating, drinking and walking I took 160 photographs of the plants; this is just a selection of what I took ...

More knitting ...

Yesterday was spent relaxing and knitting (progress photo below), while we watched the DVD; The Golden Compass. Poppy explained to me that her daemon was a Monkey, so I thought I would see what mine was; you can agree or disagree by following this link:


It was also the first day that all three chickens had laid eggs on the same day! One egg was so fresh that it was sticky and very warm.

My monkey sock as of going to bed Sunday evening!

Clever Chickens

They have seemed to have settled down quite quickly really, but they still don’t like me going near them – shame, but lets give them some time.

During the day, they found their food and drink, and their nesting box, there was defiantly two flatten areas of straw in the box and the dark coloured chickens were happy on their perch.

I wouldn’t normally give my poultry names, I don’t even give my car a name, it’s car – final and chickens well they are there for laying eggs etc ... however the bronze coloured chicken, I have decided to call Mrs B. B = Bronze or Broody. The idea came from my Nana who l lived with for a while and she was illiterate, so struggled with the writing of her name. She went into service at 14 and was still working as a house keeper / cook well into her late sixties. She was always known as Mrs D.

Mrs B is broody; she has come to me broody and just wants to sit, which is one of the reasons I have decided to give her a name.

This is not a problem, but I have had to make some decisions very quickly and take advice from Paul.

This is the plan; to get parrot box down from the loft, line it with straw and use it as a nesting box for Mrs B, place two supermarket eggs in the straw and then move Mrs B as it is getting dark tonight. This will keep her broody. In the meantime I have ordered; 6 Blue Lace Wyandotte Bantam Eggs for £16.00, free post and packaging. The guy will collect them over this weekend, and send them on Tuesday to my work, so that I will get them Wednesday morning. Then I will swap the naff eggs for the fertilised eggs and then just wait and pray that I get hens and not cockerels!

I didn’t expect it all to happen so quickly.

Last night the chickens put themselves to bed, very clever; I just had to shut the door. I picked up any left over food and there was only a little bit and the drinker, so that I hopefully won’t attract any unwanted furries and also making life easier in the morning.

Hannah and Buddy were very interested but very well behaved, I am using a shaker bottle when they get to interested, and the command ‘leave’, lets hope they learn to ignore them very quickly. Hannah has seen chickens before but it is all new for Buddy.

This morning, I had company, Jill, she is such a scaredy cat that I am not too worried but she is obviously finding the chickens interesting, need to be carefully if/when we get chicks!

I now have a new morning routine; which goes a bit like this; Noel, let the dogs out into the garden for their ablutions, and then took them out for a walk. I refilled the feeders and drinker and went and got the chickens up, still with a bit of clucking going on and Jill for company. So that when the dogs came back home everything was quiet and the dogs were non-the-wiser – she says ...

But look what I got out of the nesting box this morning ...

I was so excited and it put such a big smile on my face. Noel and I have decided that scrambled ‘fresh’ eggs are on the menu for lunch time (we have some eggs in the fridge from Paul's chickens to make a decent size meal) – yum.

Chickens

Oh my goodness, it has been like preparing for a baby, and then just waiting and waiting and then all of a sudden it all happens in a flurry.

This morning Paul (my boss) managed to catch 3 of his free range Welsummer hens (not quite a true breed colour; thier legs should be yellow and thier feathers, brown), the other two hens that I am getting were a bit skitty and he was unable to catch them this morning. He put the 3 in a sack and brought them into work, they were very quiet sat in the foot well of the van. I had arrived early so that the chickens had the least amount of time in the sack. I then lifted them into my car and drove back down the hill, to home. I unlocked the front door and Hannah decided that this was the morning she would make her escape.* So I placed the chickens gently down in the hallway and went back outside and opened my car up, which thank goodness Hannah just jumped in, no great chase up the hills – actually it worked out really well as I then knew she was safe in the car and Buddy in his cage. Enabling me to carry the chickens into the back garden and safely place them in to their bit of garden, so that we can all get a customised to each other.

First thing this morning I went to the base of the hills where a tree had been cut down, I noticed this yesterday when walking the dogs. I picked up two cut off branches and took them back round home, purpose being; that the chickens could have a couple of natural perches to sit on.

After gently opening the sack and letting them step out one at a time, they quickly moved away from me, they were slightly jumpy as I stood up and walked back through the fence. The bronze coloured chicken was quite noisy, so I scattered some corn, having already placed a feeder and drinker down before they arrived. I then went into the conservatory and watched them all get busy, scratching around. I left them quiet and hopefully quite content.

It is all very exciting, well for me, maybe not for them. Now just have to wait for my first egg; it is going to be so ... well just ... brillent.

I have had my heart set on Blue Laced Wyandottes but to buy new is quite expensive and having never kept chickens before, it was a little bit off putting. I have kept ducks so do have a little experience of poultry but I wanted to learn more about chickens before going head long into expensive chickens.

Paul has lots of chickens and said "he had about five that were the wrong colour, but perfectly healthy in every other way and would probably charge me £3.00 a chicken". They were hatched last year and are already laying. Bargain, which is why I have Welsummers and not Wyandottes!!

My aim in the future is to get some Wyandotte Bantam eggs and put them under one of the hens if, or, more likely, when one of the chickens gets broody.

*When ever I have taken Hannah up the hills, she must enjoy it so much that, the very next time, I walk in the front door she is waiting to run out. At first and very several times afterwards, I would follow her up the hill however last year I decided and it was ‘horrible with worry’ but I just let her go. Eventually after about an hour and after a huge downpour a very kind neighbour on the other side of our tiny housing estate brought her home. I repaid this kindness with a good bottle of wine! Now she runs out the door, runs for about 15 foot (3 meters), stops, turns round, and looks at me. I ignore her, walk straight to the car, open it up and she jumps in, simple.

Knitting

Poppy is going to Barcelona on a music department school trip in July and it is going to be hot, very hot.

So a new summer wardrobe was discussed and as a result a couple of little summer cardigans needed to be produced.

We chose this pattern (a free download from Garnstudio) and I bought this white cotton yarn from Scandinavian Knitting, at £1.45 a ball it is excellent quality for a great price. Toby is based very near to the home of Bruce who runs Scandinavian Knitting, so he very kindly drove over to the house and picked the yarn up for me, and while he was there, he had a play with their new black Labrador puppy.

I have knitted the sleeves (as shown in the photo below) and I decided to make them a little shorter than the pattern states, so that they fit to the elbow. As I really do not like knitting sleeves, I have decided to knit them first, then the two fronts, that way I am just left with the back piece, that way, I feel that I am nearly finished. The yarn is knitting up lovely and looks so crisp, clean and white just what every girl needs for an evening in Barcelona.

On a rare trip to the shops in town, this week, (I really do not like shopping), I had a browse at the magazines in WHSmiths and spotted this book, made up of Alan Dart knitting designs in. I am not normally a toy maker but this has some lovely patterns in, including the Yuletide Gnomes.

Aren’t they just adorable? I just know I would like some sat around the home at Christmas time.

Throw-Away Society

In the post last month we received, as part of our English Heritage Magazine and newsletter, a voucher for 15% off at Homebase for last weekend. As we had quite a shopping list, Noel and I decided to make the most of the discount.

We bought; felt for the chicken house, small wire fence to finish off the new border, wood chip, compost, bell cloches, a few bedding/pots/hanging basket starter plants, 3 grow bags, 2 grow bag trays and 6 strawberry plants. Not bad for 40 minutes of shopping at a total of £175.00 after discount. After picking ourselves back up off the floor and being complemented by the guy on the till about the fact that Noel and I work very well as a team (wasn’t that nice of him to say), we piled it all into the car – just and set off for home.

The result of newly cleaned out and nearly planted pots; and instead of over crowding the patio with all the pots, like I did last year. I have placed them around the garden, partly to stop Buddy running through the shrubs and also to brighten up dull/dark areas with colour.

A couple of the many pots

The new border all planted and finished off; Noel had to do a lot of hard digging through the very wet clay to turn it all over before any planting could be done. He is very patient with me; because I am so fussy on the positioning of the plants, which we had bought last month and had been test placed and moved and moved and moved again before the planting actually took place.

New Border

Sorry about my shadow!

Strawberry Plants

These tomato plants were grown from seed by Llew and he gave them to me last Friday, his have already doubled in size since planting out.

Now I will explain my title; after having a fantastic weekend sat in the sun and generally getting the garden back up to scratch, we needed to do a dump run, of thick clay with bits of sad tufty, ‘never (has yet, after 4 years) going to grow properly’ grass. I was dreading the wait at the recycling depot, however as luck would have it there were just 10 cars in front, so only a comparatively short wait – great. We even got a space just 2 away from the particular container we needed to throw the green or as it was and very embarrassing we got shouted at: "‘soil’ bin". Then this happened, I am sure you can picture this; two parking spaces away a car pulled up with a 'tall' Japanese man, who parked his car. I watched him take from his boot (trunk) and throw away two Photmiums and two Fatsia Japonica’s, I stood in the middle of the path, with my ‘scardy cat hat’ on, my mouth wide open watching him throw these plants away, they were perfect, the leaves were all immaculate, the root balls, clean and tidy. He must of been a gardener, he had to be ... Then out of his boot came a 5 foot (1.5 meters) bamboo, now I knew this was over a £100.00 ($200.00) from the garden centre, at this point I plucked up the courage and asked “are you throwing thatttt awwayyyy”, “yes” he said, “I have 3 altogether”. “Please may I have them”, “of course, you should have said earlier, you could of had it all” – I let out a GROAN (but my insides were screaming), “why are you throwing all this away, you could sell it”, “my garden is to small and the plants to large”, he replied, no reason given for just throwing them away, perhaps I should not have asked.

I gave one of bamboo plants to another man who saw what I was doing and very politely asked if I wanted all three, I just couldn’t be that greedy. So that particular bamboo was placed in the front seat of a open top sports car, never did manage to see where his partner sat, but that plant was taking priorty, I was more lucky ours fitted in from the back of the car and I just had to keep the ends from tickling Noel's face as he was driving! But all the way home I could have spit at what I let go in the ‘green’ container. I hate going to the dump, I hate what people throw away, it really gets to me, however if I hadn’t of gone I would not have come home with over £200.00 worth of bamboo.

We put one each side of the new chicken house. The chicken house now looks very different since it has left the workshop. It has has had two coats of creosote; one on all sides before being assembled properly and then the outside again. I looked like I had an amazing tan, why is it, I manage to paint me as well as the thing I am suppose to be painting. I even had a big boiler suit on to protect me. The roof has been felted, which Noel has done an excellent job off. With the help of Toby we laid 7 paving slabs, which we were given my our neighbour who has just had their garden 85% paved over, leaving a lovely shrub/flower border round one edge. They have decided to do this because the grass is so poor and soggy and always looked a mess. The bricks are a left over from a small wall being built a few years ago. So at a very low cost we think the chicken area is looking very posh.

However the next day I was retelling my sad story to my boss and workshop manager and would you believe this; Llew (Workshop Manager), had gone to the dump on Saturday and he just missed a guy tipping away over half a dustbin of Lego away – LEGO how could he.

Chicken House

The nest box is at the rear and there is ladder that fits into the door way. With a perch inside. Just need to make a dust bath and place down the drinker and feeder.