Posts Tagged ‘domestic goddess’

Sunshine and lollipops

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

I managed to miss Woolapolooza entirely this weekend. There was a rather hasty exit beaten to Tipperary on Saturday morning, and we didn’t get home ’til Sunday evening. Nothing big and bad, just family stuff that couldn’t be dealt with over the phone.

It was a fantastic weekend, weather-wise. My cat didn’t appreciate it though. Perhaps it’s something to do with all that fur he has.

kitty

He found shelter in some of the many, many plants and bushes in my parent’s garden.

The butterflies, on the other hand, were loving the sun. I’ve been noticing a distinct lack of butterflies in recent years, but they’re all over the place at the moment.

butterfly

Yesterday was a bank holiday here, and to be honest, I didn’t get up to much. Made the apparently obligatory visit to a garden centre, where I ate ice cream and bought some organic herbs and compost to repot at home. I hate buying little packets of over-refrigerated herbs in supermarkets when they’re so easy to grow. Even though we’ve a big back garden, it’s basically a wilderness, so the herbs are in a plantpot garden. They seem to be settling in well.

lemon-thyme

Lemon thyme

and tarragon

tarragon

You may think that I’m being a little over the top in calling our garden a wilderness. I assure you, I am not. The grass is more than waist high, as are the dock leaves and buttercups.

buttercups

There’s a whole ecosystem going on in there. So much so that I’m feeling pangs of guilt at even contemplating phoning the landlord to have him come along with his lawnmower. …or tractor, at this stage.

Today has been most productive, due in no small part to the still-sunny weather. It’s a complete shocker to have a long weekend in Ireland where it’s not raining like monsoon season. Having good weather for it, and good weather with no end in sight, is a revelation!

drying-off

Yarn was dyed…

bread

…bread was baked.

Not much of that bread left, mind. My first attempt at proper yeast bread. Very nice it is too, especially with some real butter and honey drizzled on top.

Speaking of which…..

Lions and tigers and bears…oh my!

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

Well, something like that anyway.

The lions were off being lions and were distinctly not cooperating for the camera. Bloody celebrities.

The bears were cute as all hell and I’d like to take one home.

redpanda

Yes, technically the is a bear. A red panda bear!

The tigers, much like the lions, were off sleeping and being far less pose-y than is necessary for blogginess. Durn cats.

The day at the zoo was fab. It’s so much removed from the last trip I made there when I was 12 - it was really like a different place. Huge open areas for animals, and plenty of places for them to hide from the bad weather when it arrives. Or cameras, in our case. We had a picnic lunch with a rather fabulous guest

pretties

…and naturally had to stop off at the city farm, where the pigs were sleepy

piggies

but the sheep were more than helpful.

sheeps

Yes, I realise that this makes me a massive knitting nerd, because I went to the zoo and saw sheep. Personally I found it more than a little disturbing that a “city farm” has become part of the zoo because some people have never seen a sheep up close. Or a cow. Or a pig.

I am a firm believer in knowing where your food comes from, especially if that food has a face. I die a little inside when stories about kids thinking that hamburgers come from McDonalds or Tesco and are shocked when it has to be explained to them that actually, it’s a bit of a cow (though given the meat content of a lot of sausages and burgers, not that much. Urgh.)

But I digress.

My “welcome to the umemployed club” paperwork arrived this week, which was strange. Even though I knew it was coming, it made things all the more real. This reality was added to in bright technicolour when I spent most of Thursday in the social welfare office, sitting around and waiting to be seen by someone who would tell me that I didn’t need to fill out an AB form, but an aB form and could I go back to the end of the queue. After three hours of sitting around feeling like I was in the waiting room from BeetleJuice, I was starting to despair in humanity and the Irish Government. Surely if these offices are that understaffed in every major town in the country, they could, oh, I don’t know……hire some of the huuuuuuge numbers of people who are standing around twiddling their thumbs to do some of the work?

The upcoming elections here are going to be epic. Absolutely epic.

Other things I’ve been doing over the last week or two (other than blogging…..no biscuit): cleaning. Lots of cleaning. Huge amounts of decluttering. Quite a bit of knitting.

shrug-folded

It’s another One Skein Wonder, in my own organic merino. ‘Cos I may as well get some squishy for myself!

I’ve also taken up the Tangled Yoke again, and it’s going fabulously well. I didn’t manage to get the photo off the camera before the battery died though, so that will have to wait til my next post.

I’ve been doing some dyeing as well, both custom orders and some new skeins for the store, which will be going up this evening. Here’s a sneeky preview

cathbad-2

A strange, up-and-down sort of fortnight, overall. I’m not sure if things like “getting all (yes, all!) of the neverending laundry finished” and “going dust bunny hunting under the bed” count as being blogworthy though. While I’m feeling rather accomplished about tackling these tasks that I’ve been putting off for an embarassingly long amount of time, they hardly rank as exciting.

Well, maybe just a little…