March Nature Notes

Hello Lovelies ,
 here we are on the penultimate day of march so I better get on with my nature post for this month!
Lets start with Edith's illustrations from her book "Nature notes of an Edwardian Lady" written in 1905. If you have been reading my blog for a while you will know I'm doing a post each month this year based around sharing this fabulous book and the nature on my own doorstep 106 years later.......

Such beautiful paintings . It's some how comforting to find the same plants and flowers on my walks, I've noticed so much birdsong too but capturing birds in a photo continues to prove tricky :0)
 Here are some subjects that were a little easier to catch.........Lesser Celandine......

Such a pretty little flower with shiny , heart shaped leaves, possibly even nicer though are the wild primroses.......

 a lovely gentle yellow.

This picture was taken on a morning walk last week , during that glorious sunny spell..............

I love this simple little church .As you can see ,most of the trees are still bare . The hawthorn hedge in the foreground looks bare too but just this week the hedges have started to green up ...

and in some parts the blossom  is just beginning to uncurl.........

This church is situated away from the road in a  a peaceful spot......

Inside the church yard there was lots of wildlife , woodpidgeons , pheasants and squirrels ...all of these were too fast for me ! but on the way home I did manage to capture this cutie :0)............

As soon as I spotted him I froze on the spot so he didn't run away ...then I had to get my camera out of its' case which has a noisy Velcro fastening, by going really slowly, oh so slowly, I managed to do it quietly but I think I need to make a less noisy camera case !!

 I wonder how many brothers and sisters he has living in that burrow.......

Here are some March folk law sayings from the book .........

And a little bit of Wordsworth , this really sums up the best of this first month of spring to me.....

Ahhhh , spring ,welcome back .

I'll leave you with some more Lambs , firstly Edith's beautifully drawn version......

Then some I snapped last week........

These two make me smile , junior is a real "chip off the old block " :0) 

And this guy has such a pretty face ...

I don't want to wish away the months, it just makes you older !! But I am so glad spring is here .
Jacquie x

P.S. Isn't it great to be able to view these pictures in a bigger format!! I love it .
I'm so untechnical this has taken me ages to figure out , and there will be an easier way , I'm sure .
But I just thought I would share what I've discovered with anyone who doesn't know this already :0)

I upload pictures straight from my computer and use the "new" up loader , this may not be it's actual name but it's something similar . I upload pictures in the edit HTML setting and they look like a load of letters and numbers . Then you can click on the "compose " setting, shown in this picture........

This show the pictures how they will actually appear in the post.Then I discovered that if you left click on a picture , as well as it turning blue , there is a list of sizes along the bottom and you can click on the size you would like to use , I'm choosing extra large........

When I first did this the pictures overlapped the side bar so......I had to go into design..then template designer ...then adjust widths . I adjusted my entire blog to the maximum width and narrowed my sidebar to 210px and this solved the problem . I hope this helps a few of you lovelies :0)

My Patches Bag

Hello Lovelies,
My WHAT a week we have been treated to weather wise. More like May than March.
I think the change in the season has given me so much creative inspiration . I have many, many ideas in my head at the moment,  it's quite distracting.
I don't really have time to go to work or do any housework , sadly work is a must..... and housework....lets not talk about that (coughs)
During quiet moments at work I've been jotting down ideas in my little OWL notebook ......

This week my ideas were inspired by an e.mail from my friend Cath. I expect many of you lovelies receive these messages too. This is what she wanted me to see. Cath Kidston Floral Patches Bag.
Ooooh , lovely ! Just my style of bag with lots of added prettiness :0)
While I was drooling over this image my youngest climbed up on my lap , as often happens ,and his reaction was....." £65 mummy ! You could make that" .....Could I ? I don't have any fabric like this to use , but I could certainly pretty up a plain bag . I've done it before a couple of times Here and Here.
So on Wednesday I hunted round a few charity shops and  found this denim bag in a similar style.........

I popped it in the wash then removed the numbers on the corner of the flap, You could still see where they had been, but I could easily cover that. ......

Here is the inside , ummmm, not great......

Next for the fun part, rather than try to imitate Cath I came up with my own design . A little Owl made from felt, similar to the ones I made here ............

Some circle flowers and some leaves.............

Looking promising :0)
 I removed the lining from the flap and got busy hand sewing the design to my bag. Here's how it turned out ............

Oooooh , I'm so pleased with this simple project . It's been a bit of a pain to photograph as the denim seems to make the felt look all washed out. But the flowers are actually brightly coloured . I've modeled it for you so you can see what a practical handbag it is . I love being able to wear it across my body .............

Here's a close up ..........

And here you can see I managed to add a bit of floral goodness and a magnetic closure.............

I was going to line the whole bag with this fabric , but I'm loath to use too much of it as it's original 80's from my stash :0)

I did copy THIS from Cath ......

A great fun touch made with some ready made pom poms and some yarn.

Right , onwards with my crochet for a while , till another idea pops in my head :0)

My mark II  hexagons are looking so pretty and colourful , more of them next time .Have a great weekend.
Jacquie x

I'm a Lucky Girl

Hello Lovelies ,
I'm feeling all smiley and positive today . I wonder why ? Oh yes that'll be due to the warm sunny weather ...Yay :0) It's been so warm here today. My sunglasses have come out of hibernation and I even went out without any socks on today !
I've been pretty good this winter , I've mostly managed to keep the glums away by looking for the pretty things about winter.But Spring is very welcome .There's so much to take pictures of :0)
Just this week there is suddenly blossom .......

And Daffodils ....

And more Lambs :0).....

I love this shot,and feel very lucky to have gorgeous countryside like this virtually on my doorstep.

Something else I feel fortunate about is being part of the blog community.

Yesterday , after a tough day at work , I came home to a parcel .....a parcel from the other side of the world ,Australia, no less......

Yes , it was my giveaway win from the talented Jules at Little Woollie ,inside the parcel ...look what I found....

Wow !!! such beautiful work ...It must have taken ages Jules.......

I really love this flower pattern and the colours are just gorgeous ..........

I've hung it up in my conservatory and it looks right at home with the other crochet goodness.........

Thank you so much Jules , I love it :0)

Jacquie x

Have you noticed , I've managed to make my photos appear bigger ...yippee. I've been trying to figure this out for ages...lucky indeed :0)

Sunny Sunday Crochet

Hello Lovelies ,

today I've been in a happy crochet place :0)........

Sitting on my bed sewing in a few ends on my latest hexagons, whilst admiring the lovely piles of grannies on my bedside table.
I didn't want to give up on the hexagon pattern as I really like it a lot . So I've made a few using the same yarn as I'm using for my granny squares....the ones you can see in my header and I've posted about here.

Ummmmm , I love these colours ..........

Here is the begining of the next few , I'm making these production line style instead of compleating one before starting on the next, it just seems easier when all the rounds differ....less mistakes ,hopefully !

So , somehow I now have two blankets , using the same colours , on the go at the same time. It'll be interesting to see which one gets finished first !!

Whilst I was working my way through a mountain of clean laundry to put away ( all line dried ..yay) the bright sun shining in on my youngests blanket made me very happy , and distracted me from one of my least favourite jobs :0)....

I made this back in 2009 using colours he chose . Since I posted this picture on Flickr I've altered it by removing the border (which tended to curl up ) and added some more rows so it fits nicely on the end of his bed. It has no border so I can easily make it bigger if I want . I really love this happy , sunny little blanket. There's something I find  brilliantly satisfying about a giant granny square ...........

well I hope you Lovelies liked this burst of colour, I'll leave you with some more  sunny goodness and wish you a happy week :0)

Jacquie x

Looking a little Closer

Hello Lovelies,
It's been a stunningly sunny day here and on the eve of the spring equinox I really felt spring had arrived. By the afternoon the suns warmth tempted me into our sunny, south facing front garden for a little light weeding...

There's something wonderful about digging over your own little patch of earth . I can clearly recall the first time I weeded the garden of my first home, a newly built  ,very small, townhouse . I had been dreading the job and was totally shocked to find myself enjoying it so much.

Today,while I was down at ground level, I saw lots of tiny spring flowers you would hardly notice standing up (or maybe it's my eyesight!)

The Violas are self seeded and really teeny weeny, here they are next to my very pink finger for scale....

It's a great joy to have a camera that can take macro shots ....though they only turn out this good when the light levels are high ........

This is lungwort, another very small plant , but so pretty and such interesting foliage,it's a real favourite of mine and  it flowers for ages.....

I don't even know the name of these tiny spring flowers but they looked gorgeous in the sunshine this afternoon......

These Hellebore are much bigger but they are so droopy you can't see the pretty flowers unless you bend the stems a little.....

The oriental poppies are a while away from flowering yet but the foliage is growing like mad.....

The sunshine also brought the boys outside to play and they decided to take the Rabbits for their first walk of the year. Here's Dusty in her smart black harness.........

And here's Sparkle in royal blue ........

This shots a bit blurred but I had to include it.....

Don't Rabbits look adorable when the wash their faces like this , so Beatrix Potter :0)

In the background of this image you can see my poor dead Hebe , I think a lot of these plants failed to withstand the extreme cold we had this winter :0(
Oh well, I suppose it's a good excuse to buy a replacement and thankfully  I haven't noticed many other casualties.

Here's hoping tomorrow is just as nice .
Jacquie x