Easter

There have been eggs hunted at my Granny and Grandpa's house on Easter Sunday since time began, or certainly since I could walk.

There has never been a shortage of children and adults willing to race against the sun to find the slowley melting chocolates, and there has never been a year when all the little foil wrapped mini eggs were found. My brother and I used to delight in finding the remains of them in obscure hiding places throughout the year! 

Big Change For My Little Boy

I know it's Easter Sunday, and I really should be posting about our egg hunts and family visits, but something more important happened today. Something I wasn't at all prepared for, and something that I am still having to adjust to even as I sit here typing.

This morning produced a conversation which went like this:

Fred:  Daddy, my lego man is stuck in my hair,

Daddy:  Ok, I'll get it out. It's because your hair is too long Freddie,

Fred:  I want a haircut,

Daddy:  (To Mummy) Did you hear that darling?

Mummy:  Freddie, do you love your floffy hair, or do you want it cut?

Fred:  I want it cut

A lot of things happened quite quickly after that, and before I could think of a way out, or leave it a reasonably length of time so that he forgot all about it, we wound up in Auntie Ann's salon.

I know everyone else thinks I should have cut it ages ago, and I never intended to grow it long, but I just couldn't bear to cut off his beautiful curls.

No one else could really understand that as no one else had ever spent hours twirling his ringlets around their fingers as he breastfed.

But it was his hair, and so in the end it was his choice. To say I have shed a tear would be a lie, in truth I cried a lot, and have been doing so on and off for the last few hours!

So here he is, my big boy, my last baby, my last ringlets.

Doesn't he look so smart!

This Moment :: Lamb Spotting

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Inspired by Amanda of Soule Mama

Wishing you all a very Good Friday



These Old Hands

These hands held my mother when she was tiny, and delivered her younger brother, my uncle, when my Granny went into labour in the middle of a snow storm.

They've built kitchens and extensions and stair gates and caravans,

They've mended broken furniture, and improved things that didn't work as well as they could.

 And last week they helped me plane off the runners under some lovely old oak drawers that had decided they had fitted for long enough and were going to get a bit big for their holes.

I love my Grandpa's workshop/garage. I love the rows and rows of ancient jars with hand written labels full of every fixture and fitting you could ever want.

I love the tools all stored in their original boxes, and the piles and oddments of assorted woods just waiting to be put to good use.

My Granny says she's a 'garage widdow', I can think of worse things to be!

These hands haven't been idle in the last 88 years, and they certainly weren't going to stay put long enough for me to take a picture.

Early To Rise

Sometimes Fred gets up very very early, and sometimes that is no bad thing. Especially if it happens to be a weekend when everyone else is sleeping and it's a beautiful morning outside.

The mist in the Torridge valley was spectacular. My camera couldn't catch it, but looking over towards the moor was like looking out over a sea dotted with tiny islands.

The field at the top is the one I am trying to persuade the owners to let out as allotments.

Fred was various things on our walk, but mostly a pirate. He was wearing his pirate trousers after all.

 He declared that we were on a pirate island, and that we had to go down to the water, by which he meant the mist. We did walk down into the valley a little way, but the mist was freezing, so he quickly changed his mind.

Clearly a fair weather pirate.

Just A Little Flood

The day hadn't gone well. Firstly, the book I am waiting for still didn't arrive. I'm sure it will be here tomorrow, but I was sure it would get here this morning as well.

The craft papers I ordered may or may not be here in time for making our Easter bits and pieces as planned, as I had bought what we needed on e-bay, but neglected to actually pay for them at the time!

We went up to our friend woods this morning to put up a 5 meter bell tent I had been given by other friends. I have wanted a bell tent, specifically this exact bell tent, for at least 7 years now, so I was fairly excited at the prospect of getting it up and using it. They gave it to me as it had been sitting in the corner of a shed in a sad heap for an age,and it was doing it no good.

Unfortunately it had done it slightly more 'no good' than was originally thought, and large areas of the canvas had started to rot.
It was gutting as it looked so beautiful once it was up, even green and grubby.

The day didn't get much better until we were driving back from Bideford after dropping Fin off with his friend for the night. We had noticed the tide seemed quite high in the estuary, but as we drove along the Torridge valley we found this!

I know that it isn't entirely healthy to love floods so much but I just can't help it. I know I have said it here but the sight of a flooded river valley, or even better a flooded football pitch, really does lift my spirits.

The picture above is someones garden, and they were watching the river from their porch across the road. I stopped and asked if this was unusually high. The man smiled and said in broad Devon "no, no, does get higher, thank goodness. Tis' bootiful".

Recent Stitches and Fred-Style

There have been a few projects being finished recently, and as usual rather more being started. I still haven't finished several gift projects that are way overdue, but I did manage to make this dress for my friends little girls second birthday.

The fabric is called 'Summer's Basket of Flowers' by Moda. I bought it to make a dress for her first Birthday, but by then she had been handed down a dress I made for another friends daughter, so I decided to wait until she was a bit bigger. 

The pattern is basically the 'flowergirl dress' pattern in Heather Bailey's Weekend Sewing, just mucked about a bit with.

I am yet to deliver it, but will attempt a photo once it is on it's intended recipient. Fred did want to have his photo taken wearing it, as I used him as a rough dummy, but his brothers strongly protested.

The other recently completed projects were Fred's Birthday trousers which I posted pics of here.

We get through trousers in our house, what with mud and paint and the occasional potty training accident they are in great demand.

Fred got a pair of pirate trousers to match Jack's, and these lovely soft green cotton ticking ones. I love ticking for the boys trousers. It is just so soft yet hard wearing.

The pattern was again from Weekend Sewing, and was a roughly enoughly version of the Huck Fin Pants, although they didn't go up large enough so I upsized them considerably and added a lot of length as the originals were more like long shorts. As I've said before, if I am going to make something, especially for the smallest one, I'm going to make it big enough to last a while.

The tank top was a birthday gift from the friends who's little girl the dress above is for. He LOVES it. We are washing and wearing it, and he keeps fishing it off the clothes horse and changing into it.

This is Birthday outfit, Fred-style!

The View From Here

This is my view.

Firstly, let me say that I feel overwhelmingly blessed to have our house. It is and will be a fantastic house in a beautiful village, and for that I am really grateful.

But we don't have a garden, just a small courtyard, so to let off steam we go around the corner to the village park.

And I plonk myself on the grass with my knitting and my tea (yes, my tea, carried carefully around the corner in my largest mug) and from there, this is my view.

There are swings, and a climbing frame with slide and firemans pole, and a pitch with football goals and a rugby bar, and a basketball hoop.

But when someone calls "please come and push me on the swing" or "can you come and be in goal" I'm never quite so eager to jump up as when they call "can you come and hunt for wolves with me in the forest" or "we need you in the faerie wood for a tea party". 

Yup, this is my favourite bit, and my prefered view.

A Flying Woods Visit

We haven't been up to our friends woods for ages. I can't actually remember the last time we were here. And to be fair, we were only popping in this time as well, but it did feel so good to be back up there.



This is such a special place for all of us. And just being here in sandals and Sunshine reminded me of all the wonderful warm days of summer that are yet to come this year. All the camping and climbing and cooking and knitting and reading and playing we will do in this little piece of woodland.

And that's just here. There are so many other places that are dear to us where we spend our summer times, and so many places we haven't been yet that we hope to visit this summer.

Oooh, I can't wait!