Bags, scraps, legs and turnips.

I've been chained to my old pal Jones again this week. Mostly making bags for the shop (they're up now, have a look!).

When I sew, I have very bad habits. There's the not putting the spare sewing feet back in the tin, not putting the sharp snippety scissors back where I can find them, leaving stuff on the floor (more about that some other time) ...oh, and this:

Pincushion, meet pins. Pins, here you go, it's your friend the pincushion. Now why can't you two get along nicely? Why can't you pins find your way back to the pincushion instead of a) dropping inside the sewing machine b) dropping onto the floor point-up so I step on you c) drop onto my dress so I stand up and drop pins on the floor and then step on them while they're point up d) disappear. I swear I must go through a pinmaking factory's entire output for a year in this house. I have no idea where they end up. Oh, except when I stand on them.

Another bad habit is this:

Can't. Throw. Things. Away. Which is how I came to have this (oh wonderful 35p IKEA plastic) box of scraps. Oh, there's more. There's an attic full of similar boxes of scraps. There's a floorboard-groan-inducing curator's dream of a fabric collection in this house. "But!" I say. "It might come in really handy!" And I keep it. Even if it's only big enough to fashion a gnat's loincloth from. 

Apparently, I am capable of some good sewing habits though. There aren't many of them. But I like my threads organised. It's chaos enough round here without having to hunt under endless boxes of fabric for the right thread. So I use a set of old transparency/slide drawers with the dividers taken out:

And the spare dividers (the numbered bits of wood you can see in the picture) I put in the top drawer so I could use it for bobbins:

The numbers don't mean anything! I am not that organised!! I love the drawers. I think they were old medical teaching slide drawers because when Mr Yaffle brought the treasure home, in one of the drawers at the back there was a slide of some poor unfortunate soul's leg...! Bleargh!

Apart from all these high-jinks I've managed to get my camera out on some walks. Doesn't happen that often because I haven't mastered the art of simultaneous lead-and-camera holding. Maybe there's a course I could go on :) Anyway, here are some fields that had caught my eye during this week's walks.

I love these stripy turnip fields. The colours! The stripyness!! The undulation! It's just asking to be turned into embroidered form! Isn't it?! I think I'm going to have to make a few more bags and get dyeing before I can justify the time spent on such a project but we'll see...Right. I'm off to dislodge a pin from my foot...

 

Autumnwatch

We all went for an autumnal walk in Priddy Mineries the other day. Here's the view from the top of the hill:

We usually stick to the paths, but you don't see much wildlife up close that way (the Mineries site is an SSSI and has so much stuff to see), so we went for a little diversion and waded through the knee-deep grass. Look what we found...

This is a fox-moth caterpillar (I think!). I've never seen a caterpillar so furry! We found that in the grass, along with some Devil's-bit scabious:

and then, as I was leaping (urgh, bit energetic, that!) from one tussock to the other, I looked round and saw this:

An Adder! I'm rather glad I spotted it before Dylan decided to sniff/lick/paw it. I've never, ever seen an adder before in my life. This one, I think, is a female, resting in the grass...not that clued up about snake habits, but I'm guessing the warm spell had brought it out to bask. I got fairly close so I could take this pic, but the moment she heard the shutter go, she turned round and hissed at me, unsurprisingly!

It was like all my birthdays had come at once, spotting that. (yikes, that phrase, when you think about it, would make you really old. I've just turned 'old enough' thanks)

After Priddy, I got around to experimenting with some reverse lens macro techniques with my camera. Basically, if you can't afford a macro lens, you can (literally) reverse the lens on your SLR (thanks, Mim for telling me this!!) and take close-ups that way. I'm not really an expert, but this wasn't bad for a first try. There are poppies out in the garden at the moment, and this is as close as a normal lens will get me:

But when I reversed the lens, I could get a little bit closer:

Then I thought I'd have a go at the flowers on the mock strawberry:

OMG, that's all I need, another hobby to get carried away with. Watch this space for some more fascinating yet ultimately pointless macro photographs :D

Finally in today's Autumnwatch, here's a squirrel visitor, who's been busy burying his/her stash of cobnuts from our tree. Believe it or not we don't get squirrels so often in our garden so I'm always way too over-excited (along with the dog) when we get one!

I have yet to find a way of turning my existing camera lens into a super-zoom lens. Damn!

Ooh, anyone been watching the Tweedy documentaries? [the link is to all three: watch them if you missed it, it's great] Very interesting...but I do wish they'd make a documentary on Welsh Tapestry. Tweed's nice enough and all that (and the programmes were fascinating)...but I'm desperate to find out more about Welsh Tapestry. Maybe I'll start a fan club and make my own programme :)

Thanks for all your nice messages and emails by the way. I'm getting better thank you! Hurrah, now I can stop discussing thyroids at great length and get back to craft blogging :D

Winging it

Butterflies! Nooooo not the Wendy Craig sitcom (btw - if you know it, I am as good a cook as Ria if ever you fancied popping round for tea. No? oh. shame that.)  - these pretty insects! (click to see it bigger like)

 

For fact fans: L-R starting with top left: Common Blue, Small Tortoiseshell, Painted Lady, Cabbage White, Peacock & Small Tortoiseshell, Common Blue, Small Copper, Red Admiral, Peacock.

I love butterflies. Can you tell? We have a massive, overgrown buddleia in the garden, and every time Mr Yaffle goes out with his pruning equipment I always run across the lawn flapping about and yelling out for him not to chop it. At all. It's covered in butterflies every year and I love it. I don't care if it's grown over the path, through the shed roof, over the allotments and into Council Complaint territory, the butterflies love it. I think they must get drunk on the nectar, as they stay still long enough for me to get really close with the camera. Unlike this creature which I snapped when I was out on the dog walk this morning:

 

A deer! You can make it out, can't you? I know I'm no Simon King but the zoom on my point-and-shoot seemed to capture it. Ish...I must've been 200 yards away (hey! that's nearly half a skein of yarn!).

Away from naturewatch and in yarny news, I've been busy crocheting (non-crochet fans look away now!).

 

It's for my pal Rosie (helloooo!!) who's expecting a mini hooman bean fairly soon. I've almost finished it, just a few more rows and all the ends to weave in. It's a ripple pattern from this book - I think it looks like a helter-skelter!

 

And here it is just before the dog came and lay on it. (only joking...it'll be free of Dylan hair, honest). Although keeping my dog off the best drapes, the newspaper, an open book, the naked sofa (get a cover on it! get a cover on it! it'll be covered in paw marks!!), new bedclothes, new jeans, new clothes, best suits, new doormats, fabric laid out for pattern cutting - well, keeping him off anything is an art in itself. With treats for bribery and a cunning plan known as 'putting my work back in the basket' I've managed to keep him off this blanket so far...paws crossed I can keep it up!