Quick-fix crafty feel-good!

Well, I've been burying my head in the computer the last month or so working on a piece of writing / research that had to be finished to a deadline, thankfully my obliging daughter has slept well (before midnight at least!) meaning I could get it all done. The result being a book chapter written but a huge desire to get on with some crafting :D
For a quick-fix I got out an old duvet cover that had ink stains on it and liberated some of the patchwork boats and lighthouse, cutting them out, ironing and putting into frames. Took hardly anytime at all and has provided my much needed crafty feel-good fix!

I'll have to update with progress in the garden .. those tiny tomato plants have all grown up and my greenhouse is heaving but can't bring myself to get rid of any more (have passed on a couple to my neigbour along with some sweet pepper plants - no-body needs 15 sweet pepper plants!). Hopefully this will mean come the end of summer I will have plenty of tom's to keep us in stock for pasta sauce and green tomato chutney!

Hoping for lots of tomatoes this year!

Had a lovely day today with a wander down to the beach  - although the sea mist meant you couldn't really see anything! And then wandered home for the first potting on of the season. I'd sown two varieties of tomatoes (Ildi and Moneymaker) in February and also a few chilli seeds (Razzamatazz) I had left from last year. It was the first time I'd used worm compost in my seed mix and I'm really happy with the results - all the chilli seeds germinated and lots of tomatoes, with no damping off issues. I was concerned that perhaps I may end up with a lot of rogue seeds germinating since the worms do nothing to kill off the seeds that have gone in from my veg scraps, however looking at the pots with chilli seedlings in there were no suspicious intruders so fingers crossed all the tomato plants are the type I'm expecting!

Chilli, tomato and red basil seedlings

I was umming & ahhing about whether to keep the wormery - this has swayed me to keeping it ... so I better get some more worms since I managed to neglect the others :(    I also need to build a little shelter for it as when there is a downpour of rain (which is quite frequently here) enough water can get in through the ventilation holes to flood it a bit (the reason I have no worms left). There is a tap at the bottom to let the worm juice / water out but I've been a bit rubbish at draining it as often as is needed. Other than that the design of the wormery is really good. It has three separate trays which stack - so as I fill each one with kitchen waste and the worms do their job, I can add another tray. By the time I come to use the bottom tray full of worm compost / casts the worms have migrated up through the tray system so I don't need to sort them out from the compost.

Building beds

The first of three new veggie beds

This morning we finally found time to rebuild one of our veggie beds. This job has been on the list for a very long time but between pregnancy, baby and then rain (soooo much rain) it hasn't happened. Over the last few weeks I've been slowly moving, stripping and de-nailing boards to build a slightly raised bed in order to try the no-dig method! With the help of Mr Mudpixie they got cut and nailed together this morning. In total there should be three finished by the end of the week.

The no-dig method will be a new experiment for me ... I've always prepared new ground by double digging (ugh!) and followed my Grandad's example of ensuring I dig in the winter to break up the soil. Well, I've known that an alternative school of thought exists along the lines of preserving soil structure as much as possible by letting nature (worms etc) do their thing to aerate / nourish the soil - it makes a lot of sense to me - plants and wild veg grow perfectly well outside of our managed gardens without digging, in fact often the soil is in better condition. So inspired by my lack of large chunks of time at the moment I thought I'd give it a go. This bed will be filled with up to 6inches of mulch (I have bins of compost waiting to go in), I'll then grow my seedlings on in the greenhouse and hopefully pop into a happy no-dig bed.

(An inspiring site for info' re: the no-dig method is Charles Dowding's site)

It was so nice to get out in the garden today and see the signs of Spring appearing. The fruit bushes to the left of the bed above are starting to bud and there are tadpoles, frogs and newts in the pond. Feeling quite excited about the garden year ahead!

Froggy poking its head up in my slightly overgrown pond!

A tiny hat for a tiny person!

Well there hasn't been an awful lot of time for any garden grafting or crazy crafting since we have a new addition to our family ... well I say new, our little girl has been with us for four months now but I reckon that counts as new still! The great thing about little people is that you can make them little things and it really doesn't take very long - which for me is great when it comes to knitting.
I came across a really cute pattern for a hat on Ravelry which I could use some gorgeous yarn I've had lying around for ages (Noro yarn in a dusty pink colour). Has a high silk content and feels lovely and soft - just right for a baby, however I did find that it kept pulling apart in places, maybe my tension is too tight? This meant I had a fair few tidy up points at the end to get rid of all those loose ends. One day I'll hopefully manage to knit something that's as neat and pretty as the pictures but in the meantime I'm really happy with how it turned out (although I reckon I could have put pretty much anything on her head and she'd make it look cute!)