Saturday, 19 November 2016

A year on the allotment: November 2016

decaying sunflower head on our allotment plot

We were gifted some beautiful Autumn sunshine last weekend so we grabbed the opportunity to get down the allotment. There's still lots of clearing to do - it was time to say goodbye to the sunflowers.

autumn clear up on the allotment plot

tall sunflowers reach into the sky at the allotment

This year's crop had grown incredibly tall, most of them were easily ten or eleven feet high. I'm always amazed at how tough the stalks of sunflowers are, it's like felling a tree. Magoo helped to stack them into a neat pile, we always leave the seed heads for the birds and insects to feast on over the Winter months.

clearing away the decaying sunflowers at the allotment

macro photo of a sunflower seed head at the allotment

We've had a good crop of celeriac this year too. I love the smell of the leaves when you pull them out of the ground - they produce a zingy aniseed fragrance that hits your nostrils as soon as you touch them.

Who's that hiding behind the celeriac leaves?

harvesting celeriac at the allotment

Celeriac are a funny looking vegetable, but they taste delicious. One of the joys of growing your own veg is seeing a plant in it's raw state, straight out the ground. I have to say that I had no idea Celeriac produced so many roots until we started growing them. It always amazes me how a little plug plant can transform into a sturdy vegetable...

muddy celeriac roots harvested from the allotment

photo displaying the muddy roots of a celeriac plant

Now the crops are finishing, there is more exposed soil for Magoo to play with. She spent ages digging a hole where the beetroot used to be. We love seeing her enjoying the allotment, especially as we don't get to visit so much in the colder months.

young child digging in the soil at the allotment

I blogged about our butternut squash harvest in October. Magoo, ever the creative, thought they looked like little people and decided to decorate them after school one day...

decorating a butternut squash

May I present - Mr and Mrs Butternut Squash!

decorated squash vegetables

child's drawing on butternut squash vegetables

child's drawing on a root vegetable

Only problem is, I don't want to cut them up now...

I will be back in December for my final post of the year - there will be a brussel sprout update, you can't have Christmas lunch without them!

I'm always looking for new ideas for our allotment. I've put together an 'Allotment Inspiration' board over on Pinterest. I love connecting with other pinning fans, so it would be great to connect with you over there...

This week I'm linking up with:

"Country Kids" over on www.coombemill.com

"How Does Your Garden Grow" over on mammasaurus.co.uk

Friday, 4 November 2016

Crafting is my Therapy #10

Welcome to the tenth “Crafting is my Therapy” blog link-up.
I hope you’ve had a wonderful month or making and creating.

selection of therapeutic crafts

We enjoyed reading all your blog posts from the October link-up. Welcome to all our new linkers, including Hillview Embroidery and Growing Family who joined us for the first time last month.

This month I have been using vintage fabric as a template for my embroidery stitches. I find the bold, floral patterns of fabrics from the 1960s and 1970s lend themselves perfectly to hand embroidery. It offers me a lovely template to work with and the only limit is my imagination. What have you created recently? We'd love to see your crafty blog posts...

I wanted to help spread the word about Mind's upcoming Crafternoon event. The idea is to gather friends and family together to raise money and awareness of Mind's important work with mental health issues. Here at "Crafting is my Therapy" we support the idea that creativity can help to promote happiness and wellbeing. As this quote from the Mind website illustrates, crafts can absorb and distract us:

"Crafting gives me a huge sense of satisfaction. It helps me feel productive and also acts as a distraction when needed. All of which is really important for my mental wellbeing"

Hosting a Crafternoon sounds like a fun way to help support Mind, I have applied for my fundraising pack and I'm hoping to hold my own crafty afternoon very soon. I will of course blog about the event. My late-father suffered with clinical depression, so Mind's work is very close to my heart. Mental health issues affect one in four of us, it's important everyone experiencing a mental health problem gets support and respect.

If you are interested in supporting this fantastic initiative, please head over the Mind website for further info...

Have you created anything crafty this month? Sewing, knitting, crochet, painting or pottery…please join in and share your blog posts.

The focus of our blog link-up is crafting for pleasure, basically taking some ‘me-time’ to unwind in our busy lives. It doesn’t have to be a finished project, we love seeing work in progress, planning posts or tutorials too.

Grab the Crafting is my Therapy badge:

Me You and Magoo

I co-host Crafting is my Therapy with Jennifer Jain. She writes the popular craft blog Jennifers Little World
Jennifer hosts our Pinterest group board. Would you like your blog posts to be seen by over 700K followers? Craft Bloggers linking to #craftingismytherapy are welcome to join our board. It's a great way for your posts to reach a wider audience...

The “Crafting is my Therapy” linky will open on 4th November at 7pm (GMT) and stay open for the whole month – giving you plenty of time to get involved.
– You can link up with maximum of three posts per month, old or new.
– The focus of the linky is crafting for pleasure, so please don’t link up with posts promoting handmade items for sale.
– Grab the linky badge or link back to our blogs on your post.
– Please share the love and comment on other people’s posts.
– If you could share your post and the linky (using the hashtag #craftingismytherapy) on any social media channels that would be great. This will help us to grow the community. We will retweet all your posts via Twitter if you mention us (@pouchvintage/@JenniferJain )
– And finally, if you would like to follow me on Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram, you’re more than welcome! Jennifer Jain’s links are here too: Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook.




Thursday, 3 November 2016

Crafting in October: embellishing vintage fabric with stitches

vintage irish linen embellished with embroidery stitches

As someone with a huge collection of vintage fabric scraps and offcuts, it makes sense to use them in my crafting. I have been making and selling handmade homewares on Etsy since 2007 and I've always used retro fabrics. I have amassed heaps of pretty scraps and I never know what to do with them. Until I have time to sew an enormous vintage fabric quilt, I will make do with using some of it for embroidery practice.

vintage linen featuring chain stitch embroidery

vintage fabric embroidery hoop project

I find the bold, floral patterns of fabrics from the 1960s and 1970s lend themselves perfectly to hand embroidery. It offers me a lovely template to work with and the only limit is your imagination. It's also a no-stress project that you can pick up and put down whenever you want. So far I have added chain stitch around the flower and a little circle of French Knots in the middle. Over time I can add more or move onto another flower on the fabric and create new effects with different stitches.

sewing chain stitch onto vintage irish linen fabric

vintage fabric and embroidery stitches

As ever, I find hand sewing relaxing, even though I have less time than I've ever had with starting a college course in September. I also have lots of ideas for handmade Christmas gifts, but I have no idea where I will find the time. I don't like the conflict in my brain when I have ideas but no time to complete them. But it's something I hear from lots of other crafters, so I know I'm not alone. If I could find a way to go into a parallel craft universe, that would be amazing. Until then, I grab some stitching time as and when I can...

vintage fabric hoop placed inside work box

vintage fabric with chain stitch and french knot embroidery

One of the things that has caught my eye on Social Media this month are the "Crafternoon" events to raise awareness of Mind and mental health issues. I will write more about this on my Crafting is my Therapy blog post, which will go live tomorrow (Friday 4th November). You can read about organising a "Crafternoon" by following this link

I am linking up to November's 'Crafting is my Therapy' with this blog post. If you blog about crafts, we'd love to have you on board. The linky will open on 4th November at 7pm (GMT) and stays open for the whole month – giving you plenty of time to get involved.

Do you pin? I would love to connect with you over on Pinterest...

Tuesday, 1 November 2016

A year on the allotment: October 2016

butternut squash harvest from our allotment

Things continue to wind down at the allotment - but there are still crops to harvest and jobs to be done. This year we have had a good crop of butternut squash.

We thought nothing was happening with the plants, but suddenly little green fruits began to appear in August. These soon grew into much bigger squash with beautiful cream-coloured skin.

butternut squash growing on our allotment plot

Our sunflowers are at their peak in September, sadly they start to fade in October. Despite the sunflowers being past their best, they still add some warm colour to our plot in Autumn.

fading sunflowers on the allotment in october

sunflowers add autumn colour to our allotment

Our Cosmos seemed to take forever to get going this year. When they finally flowered at the end of August, they put on a stunning display throughout the early Autumn months. Better late than never...

cosmos flowers on our allotment

bright pink cosmos flower

cosmos flowers add autumn colour to our allotment plot

One thing we've never had any luck with is growing our own pumpkins. Magoo has always wanted to carve her own homegrown pumpkin for Halloween. Our plants always get eaten by the slugs. Not sure what the secret is, but lots of other plot holders had grown some enormous ones.

We had to settle for admiring other people's pumpkins this year. I noticed lots of allotmenteers grow them directly in compost heaps, so maybe that is the way forward.

large pumpkin growing in compost heap at allotment

growing pumpkins in compost heap at allotment

We were pleased to see fruit appearing on our mini-trees. So far we've only seen one pear, so we can't get too carried away. Think we might have to have an arm wrestling competition to see who gets to eat it...

pear growing on our mini fruit trees

One of the main things we need to do at this time of year is clear the plot. We seem to produce tons and tons of garden waste in October and November. We have been overrun with nasturtiums this year and they are threatening to take over the plot.

Whilst pulling loads of the plants up, we spotted a huge frog, one of the biggest I've ever seen. My Mum screamed because she hates them, I managed to get up close and grab a photo before he/she hopped off. I felt a bit bad about ripping all the plants away and ruining the frog's cosy home...I'm sure they will find somewhere else to settle.

large frog hiding by raised bed on our allotment

large frog sat by raised bed on our allotment

We were still picking fat blackberries in October, we've left the rest of the fruits for the birds. I will be back in November for my penultimate 'Year on the Allotment' blog post. If you'd like to catch up on my previous posts from 2016, you can see them here.

autumn blackberries on the allotment plot

I'm always looking for new ideas for our allotment. I've put together an 'Allotment Inspiration' board over on Pinterest. I love connecting with other pinning fans, so it would be great to connect with you over there...

This week I am linking up with:

'How Does Your Garden Grow" over on the beautiful mammasaurus.co.uk

Thursday, 20 October 2016

Sense of Place art installation at Brean Down Fort

On Sunday we set out for a walk along Brean Down, a local headland jutting out into the Bristol Channel. We wanted to visit the "Sense of Place" art installation at the Napolionic fort situated at the end of this piece of land. I had been wanting to visit for a while, but a nasty cold got in the way of our plans.

This week we were all fighting fit and raring to go. As you can see from the photo at the top of this post...Mr. M and Magoo were really raring to go! We had been talking about how the BFG would be able to jump and stride onto Steep Holm (the little island in the distance). I suggested they see how far they could jump and this photo was the end result. It has had a really positive reaction over on my Instagram feed. I think it was one of those moments when I pressed the shutter at just the right time. I love the energy and it makes me smile every time I look at it...

I've been walking along Brean Down since I was a little girl - it's an atmospheric place, bleak and beautiful all in one. I was so pleased to hear that a group of artists had collaborated to put together the "Sense of Place" installation within the wall of the fort at the end of Brean Down.

I couldn't take many photos of the actual exhibits because the Officers Quarters and various ammunition tunnels where the art was housed were very dark and my camera couldn't cope with the low light levels. If you head over to the "Sense of Place" Facebook page you can see more photos of the artwork being created and installed. You can also visit the Somerset Cool blog to see the images they captured a few weeks ago.

The fort is fascinating, steeped in history and pretty eerie. Just looking at soldiers names carved into the stone walls gives you an idea of how bored, homesick and scared they must've been. The "Sense of Place" installation attempted to tune into this history and I found it very moving. I loved the large groups of candles lighting the darkest rooms and it added to the atmosphere of each piece.

Brean Down's fort was built to defend the country against a possible Napoleonic invasion. The fort is now a ruin, but we still love walking around the buildings and have visited a few times with Magoo. The photo above shows a barrack window with views looking back at the landscape at Brean Down. People have lived & worked on this piece of land for thousands of years. This peninsula is very exposed and life must have been hard for anyone deployed to the fort...

The walk started out grey and overcast, but the strong winds steadily blew the clouds away. By the time we were due to head back the Autumn sun was shining. It was incredibly windy up on the top of Brean Down, but at least it pushed the gloomy skies away. Definitely one of our favourite walks to blow away the cobwebs...it certainly clears your head up there.

This week I'm linking up to these lovely blogs:

"Point + Shoot" over on youbabymemummy.com

"Whatever the Weather" over on monkeyandmouse.co.uk

"Country Kids" over on www.coombemill.com

Tuesday, 11 October 2016

A year on the allotment: September 2016

I'm a little behind with posting my September update. I am now training to become a Teaching Assistant and started the associated college course three weeks ago. The last time I was in that particular college was *cough* twenty years ago. As I head towards my 40th birthday this December, it's good to set my sights on a new career path and keep my grey matter ticking over.

A year on the allotment sunflowers in september

So, in between college work, a school placement and my Shared Lives work, my poor blog is getting neglected. Sadly, I don't have as much time for the allotment either, but things are winding down on the plot now, so I wont stress about it...

September was all about harvesting and sunflowers. Last year I blogged about our huge sunflowers, which were short but had flower heads like dinner plates. This year our sunflowers grew to over ten feet tall, but had much smaller flowers. Throughout the Summer our sunflowers have been covered in bees. You can see the beautiful pollen dusted all over the flower head, no wonder the pollinators love them.

pollen dusted sunflower

allotment sunflowers

We also dug up the last of our potatoes. The last bed to be harvested completely took us aback. We have never grown such big potatoes. We did put lots of coffee grounds onto that particular area, so maybe that helped. Magoo, as ever, loved digging up the spuds and was flabbergasted by their size.

The allotment has kept us in spuds throughout July, August and September. In fact I only had the need to buy our first bag of shop-bought potatoes last week in early October.

giant allotment potatoes

allotment potatoe harvest

We also did really well with our courgette harvest. We had so many and if you turned your back for five minutes they morphed into marrows overnight. One particular large example doubled up as a Snozzcumber when Magoo went into school in fancy dress for Roald Dahl day

allotment courgette harvest in september

When they weren't doubling up as Snozzcumbers, I like to roast our allotment courgettes with peppers, onions and homegrown herbs. Once roasted I mix the veg with cous cous and drizzle with plain yogurt and sprinkle with fresh mint.

roasting allotment grown courgettes

roasting allotment grown courgette harvest

We're now clearing the plot and covering the soil ready for Winter. We still have some parsnips, sprouts, butternut squash and celeriac to harvest on the plot, so I'll be back in a couple of weeks for an October update...

Before I go, I thought I'd share one more photo. Magoo took one look at our huge allotment potatoes and decided to decorate them with pieces from her Mrs Potato Head kit...as you do :)

I'm always looking for new ideas for our allotment. I've put together an 'Allotment Inspiration' board over on Pinterest. I love connecting with other pinning fans, so it would be great to connect with you over there...

This week I'm linking up with these lovely blogs...

"How Does Your Garden Grow" over on mammasaurus.co.uk

"HomeEtc" over on www.thetwinklediaries.co.uk

Friday, 7 October 2016

Crafting is my Therapy #9

Welcome to the ninth “Crafting is my Therapy” blog link-up.

I hope you’ve had a wonderful month or making and creating.

September saw our busiest month yet on the ‘Crafting is my Therapy” linky. Welcome to all our new crafters, including Elsie Pop, Relentlessly Purple, Crafty Linby and Knitting and So On who joined us for the first time in September.

This month I have been practising some new embroidery stitches. I’ve always wanted to try the Lazy Daisy stitch. It’s a classic stitch and a great one for creating texture on a piece. I have also attempted Ribbed Web Stitch. It’s quite an unusual one, a mixture of sewing and weaving. Head over to my post to see how I got on…

Last month we also held a Posca Pen giveaway. There were 15 posts (not including the hosts) added to our link-up in September. Using the random number generator, I can tell you that the winner is…Relentlessly Purple! A pack of Posca Pens will be heading her way shortly...

Have you created anything crafty this month? Sewing, knitting, crochet, painting or pottery…please join in and share your blog posts.

The focus of this linky is crafting for pleasure, basically taking some ‘me-time’ to unwind in our busy lives. It doesn’t have to be a finished project, we love seeing work in progress, planning posts or tutorials too.

Please grab the Crafting is my Therapy badge:

Me You and Magoo

I co-host Crafting is my Therapy with Jennifer Jain. She writes the popular craft blog Jennifers Little World

Jennifer hosts our Pinterest group board. Would you like your blog posts to be seen by over 700K followers? Craft Bloggers linking to #craftingismytherapy are welcome to join our board. It's a great way for your posts to reach a wider audience...

The “Crafting is my Therapy” linky will open on 7th October at 7pm (GMT) and stays open for the whole month – giving you plenty of time to get involved.
– You can link up with maximum of three posts per month, old or new.
– The focus of the linky is crafting for pleasure, so please don’t link up with posts promoting handmade items for sale.
– Grab the linky badge or link back to our blogs on your post.
– Please share the love and comment on other people’s posts.
– If you could share your post and the linky (using the hashtag #craftingismytherapy) on any social media channels that would be great. This will help us to grow the community. We will retweet all your posts via Twitter if you mention us (@pouchvintage/@JenniferJain )
– And finally, if you would like to follow me on Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram, you’re more than welcome! Jennifer Jain’s links are here too: Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook.

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