Not so dull

You know, before I moved up to Scotland I cannot honestly tell you how I pictured it except as mostly colourless with dull greens and browns except for the heather but I couldn't think that would change the landscape much. There is no specific reason for me to think this only that people had often told me that it is cold, rainy and nothing really grows here. All I can say is that the people who said these things clearly haven't ever been here. This time of year there are daffodils which have been planted but the yellow of these is a pale echo of the deeply golden gorse, or 'whin' as it is usually known up here. It is everywhere and all of those seemingly dull brown and green hedges are now bursting with clusters of flowers and the hedges have become beautiful, not just functional things. What I did not expect is for it to smell a lot like coconut but the next sunny morning I am not busy I will be out there collecting some to make gorse wine. My wine making is still going well. I have racked off the fruit juice wines and the mead, although the mead is still fermenting the fruit juice wines should be ready to bottle this weekend. When I mentioned to the ladies at craft and chatter about my plans for the gorse they looked at each other puzzled until one said, "oh, the whins!" at which point they all knew the flowers I meant and they reminisced about their mothers and grannies drying the washing over the whins when the ladies themselves were children and in some cases that was only thirty years ago.

One thing that happened in the Easter holidays is that Fat Pigeon returned, in that a very fat pigeon returned to the farm and sat on the gate watching me in the mornings but soon it showed it's true colours by doing slightly different things; he is, in fact, Fat Imposter Pigeon. There are lots of large brown rabbits scampering all over the place which will make our furry assassin very happy. I have been informed by the cat that she is not at all happy that JR has been mentioned here many times but she has been mostly ignored so here is a picture of her.

JR's sleeping habits have returned to normal but I do wonder if he will start sleeping in every school holiday now. He has assumed his current preferred working position in the kitchen which is in his bed in the corner. His little toffee coloured eyebrows twitch as I type.

Now a couple of weeks ago I told you about my long neglected quilt that I made for munchkin #1 well very shortly after munchkin #2 decided he also wanted a quilt so I got a single duvet set with superheroes on and set about turning it into a TV quilt for him. After opening the seams of the duvet case and cutting off the poppers I made a 'sandwich' with the wadding in the middle and tacked it all together before hand sewing around all of the comic books, being sure the sew through all three layers. This was the 'quilting' bit. I measured the sides so I would know how much binding I would need, opened out all of the seams for the pillow case and cut it into strips 2 1/2' wide before sewing them all together to make one long strip. After trimming the quilted section I used the sewing machine to attach the binding. I was a bit surprised by the result and he loves his new TV quilt.

the finished quilt

mitred corner!! Loving these :D

Wedding planning continues and seems to be going well which is good because the time is moving in some sort of fast forward way. I have been panicking a bit about my choice of shawl pattern and have changed my mind on that a few times now so to distract myself and calm my knitting thoughts I have started another pair of socks; let's call it a cooling off period to see if I still like the most recently chosen pattern. 

I will be heading out for a walk with JR now to take another look at those whins...

Hugs from Haggis Land,

Jx