Four Years On and Another Leap Day!

Today is a bit of a special day for me as it's 4 years ago today that I bought this house.  Nothing special about that you might think, but although it was 4 years ago it's only actually the first anniversary because the date was February 29th!

The first thing I did once I'd got the keys was investigate the shed (I'm a shed kind of girl who knows her priorities!).  It was painted a VERY bright blue (it's now cream) and had lots of interesting bits and pieces left in it and it smelt wonderful!

I didn't move in for another 5 days and at this time on the 29th Feb 2008 we were busy filling cracks in walls and preparing to paint.  I had wonderful friends who helped me and over the next two days we painted both bedrooms - changing the walls from strong colours to cream took several coats of paint and was hard work.  Then the bedroom carpets were laid and I moved in on the Thursday.

Stupidly I didn't take any pictures of the house and garden when I actually moved in, but this was the garden when I started tackling it and clearing the ground of ivy and other weeds

And this was the bathroom at the end of the first day of replacing the bathroom suite (much of the Edwardian plaster had blown and fell off when the tiles were removed!)

It's a lovely house with a very special garden and I'm looking forward to many more years of living here even though I can only mark the actual day every 4 years!

Beads and Quacks!

On Monday my neighbour tapped on the back door, holding a yogurt pot, an old jar and two old tins.  "I'm having a clear out," she said "can you use these?  They're left over from my college days."
"Ooh yes please," I replied, not even knowing what they contained but knowing that she did a textile degree.

And what did they contain?

All kinds of wonderfulness!  Old beads, new beads, old bits of jewellery, sequins, buttons and threads.

On a sadder note, her ducks (who personally wrote me notes and gave me eggs) met a very sad and brutal end on Friday night when a fox got into their run - no further details required.  We were both very upset and as she hadn't got any recent photos of them I decided to make her a little picture of them.  I had some of their feathers that I'd collected in the summer when they moulted and happily stitched away for a few hours.  But actually giving a textile picture to someone with a textile degree turned out to be harder than I'd imagined and I then spent several more hours getting colder and colder feet about it.  Eventually I plucked up some courage and gave it to her - fortunately she seemed genuinely pleased with it and quite touched that I'd spent the time making it.

Hinge (on the right) and Bracket (on the left)

Quack Quack!

What's A Cat To Do?

When the weather's like this outside

what does a sensible cat do?

Make a cosy little nest under the table in one of mum's fabric piles of course!

Just snuggle about and move stuff around, until an old pillow and a bit of prefelt are in the perfect position, then sit back and relax.

 

And only move when you've had a perfect sleep as any unoccupied space will of course be reoccupied by your brother pretty quickly!

So Nearly

My goodness it's February already, how did that happen?

I found my snowdrops this morning, hiding under some hellebore leaves.  I thought they'd disappeared (I think that every year, I really should learn!).  They're not quite flowering - but are so nearly.

Also so near to opening is this bud:

I think it's an Iris Reticulata.  I know I planted some last year, trouble is I thought I'd planted them in the front garden so I could see them when I came home each day and this one is very much in the back garden!  As there's no sign of any in the front garden I guess I thought one thing and did another!

Clematis Freckles

But these are definitely out and look so cheerful winding their way through the rose stems.