Chatting – Page 3 – No More Mondays

Charlie and the cushion

June 23, 2019September 13, 2019 by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Baking, Chatting, Sewing

Inspired by CreationsCeeCee YouTube tutorial about being stuck creatively

I started painting for the first time in ages this morning. I’d stumbled upon CreationsCeeCee on YouTube and was inspired to get my paints out and dabble (as above).

Cats and the vet

Jess has had some problems recently and was having a follow-up exam. Turns out she has diabetes and is now on insulin. Apparently, cats can go into diabetic remission so fingers crossed that this won’t be a long-term, chronic condition.

The second visit was with a stray cat who seems to have adopted us. His visits have become daily over the last 6 months (he has been coming around for over 18 months). The poor thing is always beaten up. Scratches, bites… and he’s dirty and hollow-legs-hungry. Yesterday, he was limping and dripping small drops of blood as he walked. We decided to take him to the vets and get him seen to.

We also decided if he wasn’t chipped, we’d have him spayed and take him in.

He wasn’t chipped so we let the vet do a full check on him. He was screened for FIV, treated for worms and fleas, had a bite to his leg stitched up and his other scratches and wounds cleaned and treated. A shot of long-lasting antibiotics and he was done. We’ve called him Charlie.

In between vet visits, I kept myself occupied with a couple of projects. The first was to run up a cushion and use the last of this lovely watercolour animal fabric. Charlie likes to stretch out on the cushion and have a good nap.

And bake a batch of cherry bakewell cupcakes.

Easter treats

April 22, 2019September 13, 2019 by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Baking, Chatting

Can’t believe Easter has been and gone. Seems like Christmas was only a month or so ago.

The garden is starting to bloom:

I tempered a bar of Aldi chocolate – which is really nice – and made the egg above. I stuck on some fondant flowers and… ooh la la. A lovely little egg.

I bought a few egg ‘boxes’ to fill with little chocs from Ikea and other places.

Help the bees

April 7, 2019September 13, 2019 by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting

To find out more about helping our buzzy little friends out, have a read of this easy guide: Irish Times.

Fondant rainbow

February 24, 2019September 29, 2019 by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting, Crochet

Have got kitchen refurb going on so no baking going on until it’s done. It’s in okay shape but the new flooring isn’t fitted for another week and a half and the concrete down at the moment is grim.

I did have a play with some fondant.

I also made the little cloche hat and applique crochet flowers:

Gracie

July 11, 2018September 25, 2019 by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting

Here’s Gracie.

It’s a cat’s life, eh?

Around the garden and back again

July 1, 2018September 15, 2019 by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting

This is a picture of a tealight house in my garden. I love the grassy seed heads growing wild around it – so delicately pretty. Look at the gorgeous shadows they cast on the white roof.

And here:

Beatrice.

Probably going back to the hive for some breakfast 🙂

The bees also love this purple flower. I think it’s Purple Toadflax.The bees like it and that means it earns its keep in the garden. I have patches of clover and lawn daisies galore (love, love love lawn daisies) that the bees love even more than I do, so they stay, too.

The Hydrangeas are starting to outrageously burst out in riots of hot pinks around the garden front and back. Mine are huge and become massive bushes of colour. They are gloriously ostentatious, enjoy being centre of attention. No modesty whatsoever. They would show their knickers through the letterbox if you let them 🙂

I also have Petunias, Honeysuckle, Fuscias, Campanulas, Sweet William, succulents, Hebes and loads of others that I cannot name.

Hebes – coming into flower.

I tidied the sewing room and found several pieces that I’d done on linen that were too small to do anything sizeable with but too charming (IMHO) 🙂 to throw away. Like this one:

Simple stitches – Fly Stitch, Running Stitch and, my all-time dimensional favourite, the French Knot. The wooden spool had some fancy twine on it once and was a nice thing to keep but very plain once the twine was used up. Now it has a delightful hand-stitched linen wrap – and doesn’t it look well?

I’ll be doing something similar for this smaller one. I enlarged the hole to sit the scissors in:

**Update**

I was contacted by somebody telling me that the bee is a Wool Carder. I’m not sure but there is a biodiversity site in Ireland asking for sightings of this bee so I’ll send a pic and a few details and find out. Úna FitzPatrick at ufitzpatrick@biodiversityireland.ie

Dandelions

June 17, 2018September 15, 2019 by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting

There’s no disputing the tenacity of these weeds. Their taproots go down to the devil’s doorstep, I swear. Yet how delicate and pretty are those seedheads? Pure fluffy white bobbles of loveliness. But those bobbles blow off…

I cut them with lovely full seedheads and give them a good shhuzzhh of hairspray and pop them in a little teapot for display.

Dandelions are prolific, too but I refuse to use any form of chemical weed killer. Just more contamination. I try to do my bit to encourage some bio-diversity in my garden. Bee, butterfly and insect-friendly flowers and shrubs with a small area uncultivated for ground-burrowing bees. There’s also a small clump of nettles reserved for butterflies to lay their eggs.

Changing the subject, last night I went to see the legendary and wonderful Jerry Fish.

Next week am going to see Further Ted and there’s to be a Lovely Girls Competition! I’ll be practicing my lovely laugh all week.

Right now I’m sitting here with a home made facepack (Rose Water and Glycerine, Castor Oil, Multani Mitti (Fullers Earth but sounds much more exotic in Hindi) with Aloe Vera gel. Very attractive! A contender for the Lovely Girls Competition???

Now for a shower and shampoo. This party’s over. I’m going home.

Mind your bees wax

June 7, 2018September 24, 2019 by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting

Lots of bees buzzing around a cotoneaster in the garden giving me good opportunities to get some photos of them.

Look at the veining on the wings. They look like cathedral windows. Love the fuzzy jacket. If you’re very gentle, you can stroke a bumble bee. I have. I use my little finger and stroke with the side rather than the finger tip and just stroke the fuzzy jumper area-keeping right away from that abdominal posterior… 🙂

The cotoneaster is covered with tiny blossoms so there were loads of flowers to pay a visit to.

Time for the off. Chocs away! Pretty much a vertical takeoff – they don’t have the sleek aeronautic physique of a Harrier jump jet but they’re efficient and manoeuvre with amazing agility. Harriet jump-jets 🙂

Remember the bag of wooly bits I ordered from Amazon for stuffing the rabbits and Tilda dolls? It arrived today.

It’s huge! Ignore the mess. I tidy up when I’m finished but leave everything out until I’m done.

Time to finish stuffing Tilda’s legs and body and get her done. Stuff to do! 🙂

Tilda’s Tool Set

June 1, 2018September 15, 2019 by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting

This week I have made three Tilda dolls.

I got me a set of hemostats – used in surgery to control bleeding by clamping veins and arteries. In the doll-stuffing world they grip the stuffing and the long nose lets you get into the tiny creases and crevices that need filling.

Spring flowers

May 9, 2018September 15, 2019 by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Chatting

Spring is here, at long last. I see birds carrying little bits for their nest building activities; twigs, fluff, scraps of fabric.

The garden is coming to life. A few weeks ago I dead-headed the large and numerous hydrangeas… that is such a chore but they pay me back when they come into bloom in a riot of cheer-leader pom-poms later in the summer. Before they burst onto the scene, lots of little things are poking their heads above ground and saying hello to the world.

Bluebells, daises and bright yellow poppies are popping up around the garden…

Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch?!

Two of them chomping away on my pink-thingummy potted plants! I left them to it. I have a soft spot for snails.

Forget-me-Nots are everywhere! They make for bright blue splashes of colour and brighten things up beautifully. Things are coming along nicely.

There was time to bake some lemon cupcakes with lemon butter cream icing:

These were flavoured with real lemon (juice and zest). I give them a sprinkle of edible glitter. A bit of sparkle is fun any day of the week, as far as I am concerned.

Words

I still have a passion for collecting words. Kummerspeck is a German word which means grief bacon: it is the word that describes excess weight gained from emotion-related overeating.

Drachenfutter – literally translated as dragon fodder – are the peace offerings made by guilty husbands to their wives.

Then there’s ‘die beleidigte Leberwurst spielen’ – meaning to pout in a proper sulk and translated means to play the insulted liver sausage.

My favourite is Backpfeifengesicht – a face that just screams out for a slap or a fist in it.

Brilliant words.

A couple more, this time from the Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities:

Twankle – to play idly on a musical instrument

Scurryfunge – to hastily tidy a house – like when you just get a call to say somebody’s just popping round

Panshite – a state of panic, confusion or uproar

Thrimble – to grudgingly repay a debt

Twarvlement – circuitous, long-winded speech

A bit hard to casually drop into a conversation but still useful to know. 🙂