Tag: New House

Four Fleece Hats

Fleecy hat

This is one of four fleecy hats that I managed to make today. I decided that I’d start my first round of sewing in the new house by using up the fabric that’s currently taking up the most room, which is a veritable mountain of polar fleece. I bought it to make hats to take to Frome in May, but ran out of time to actually make them.

Sadly, today’s four hats have not made any sort of dent in the pile of fleece, but I’ve been invited to take the Emporium to the Berkshire Autistic Society‘s Christmas Fair on December 14th, so hopefully I’ll have time to make a few more hats between now and then!

Hopefully I’ll also have time to get some better lighting sorted out in my sewing room. Its only window is six feet away from next door’s two-storey house, so it gets very little light at the best of times. In electric light it’s just awful – the hat above is actually a lovely light purple, not dark grey!

Fleecy hats

The hats are quite plain, with an oval crown and a turned back brim. Suitable for men and women, I’ll be making more of these in two sizes. I have two black and two purple so far, both 22″ which is the smaller size. I also have more colours – two greens, some burgundy, and a sandy colour, as well as black with white skulls, and pink with black skulls. Enough for about twenty-four more hats, I think! That should keep me busy for a bit.

While I’m making the hats, I’m also thinking about what kind of embellishment might suit them. I’m contemplating a brooch of some kind, perhaps something needle felted onto a matching (or contrasting) fleece background. I’m also contemplating how best to make the polystyrene heads look a little bit smarter before the fair. A coat of paint, maybe, or some sewing pattern paper. I have plans for more hats in the future, not just a mountain of fleece ones, so I want the head forms to look their best!

First Frost

First Frost

Just a quick morning note to say how much I love my new garden.

I know it will need years of work to get it looking how I can see it inside my head. But it’s going to be worth it.

The light is so beautiful, no matter what time of day it is. Right now I can see steam riding from next door’s compost bins, there are small birds flitting between all the different shrubs, and yesterday I saw a cormorant fly overhead – a change from all the red kites!

I have visions of chickens and bees, although I’m not convinced that either Paul or my neighbours will be best pleased with those plans. The lawn will gradually give way to a proper path and a rockery/alpine patch, and the borders around the shrubs will expand so that I’ll have room for dye plants.

The only thing spoiling the perfect peace and quiet is the team of builders, who are currently building five huge houses just one metre away from my shed. I can hear them all day, and see them through the gaps between the fir trees. I’m hoping that the resulting houses won’t be too much taller than the trees, as one of my favourite things is being able to look out of the window and see nothing but garden and sky.

If I could live in the middle of nowhere, I’d be happy as anything. But as that’s not possible, my beautiful garden is definitely the next best thing.

The house has been warmed, and visited

House warming and birthday gifts

This was our first non-work weekend in the new house (and I’m back at work again next weekend) so we wanted to take the opportunity to invite a few people round for a little party. The button heart wreath above was one of the many lovely gifts that people brought for us, and the ceramic heart inside it was a birthday present from one of my oldest friends.

Please excuse the graininess – every light bulb in the house seems to be the lowest strength available, but it seems wasteful to change them before they’ve blown. Though we might take them all out and save them to use up in a bedside lamp, which doesn’t need to be as bright as a dining room!

It was lovely to be able to show people round, and have enough space for more than two people to come and visit us at the same time! Nobody had to sit on the floor if they didn’t want to, there was space to mingle, and it was lovely to have everyone just popping in and out over the course of the afternoon. I might even brave my hermit-like tendencies, and invite people round again.

Robin

This afternoon we found ourselves with a rather more unexpected visitor. We’d just eaten lunch (in a dining room! at a dining table!) with my parents, and retired to the living room for a coffee. Paul went back into the kitchen to put the kettle on, and then started waving madly at us through the glass door because he’d discovered that there was a robin in the kitchen!

We didn’t take a photo, because the poor thing was desperate to get out of the house and had started flying into the kitchen window. So we opened the back door and gently herded him out. He must have come in through the open bedroom window, and flown all the way through the house into the kitchen!

Originally we’d planned to trim back the shrubs outside the bedroom window, because they’re bigger than they need to be for privacy, and they block out a lot of light. However, we’d already discovered that a lot of birds live in one of the bushes in particular, having been woken up several times by a blackbird and a wren at startling volume very early in the morning. So we don’t really want to destroy anybody’s habitat… but we’re obviously going to have to be a lot more careful about the windows in future!