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Project Roundup: Crafting with Duct Tape
Recently, I took Jake and Charlie on a trip back to America to visit family. While we were packing, Jake decided to put some of his pocket money into a seldom used wallet to bring along. Charlie wanted...
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Winter Wallpaper from Kiran Ravilious
Here is a picture of my downstairs bathroom, or loo, depending on where you're reading this. I know its not very nice to look at, but it's sort of a metaphor for what January is feeling like for me...
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Saying Goodbye to Johnny
Almost a year ago, we adopted two orphan sheep. We kept them in a pen in the garage under a heat lamp, where they were bottle fed, held and coddled. We named them Johnny and Violet. Although we're...
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Staying An Artist
This post may strike you as self-indulgent, because I'm going to write about my son and the art he makes. But bear with me for a minute, because it's also about your child, and the art that s/he makes,...
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Early Spring Walk
Sometimes I step outside my front door and pinch myself a little, for all the beauty that surrounds me every day. We've had the wettest winter on record this year in England, but that hasn't stopped...
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Here Come the Lambs...
About a week and a half ago, the boys and I walked down the road to Kitty's to see if the lambs had started coming yet. There was only one. Yesterday after school, Charlie and Michael and I went back...
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Super Easy Ikea Teatowel Hack
Now that they're playing outside a whole lot more, my three little boys are dirtier than ever. I always seem to be short of clean flannels at bath time (those are wash cloths, my American friends), so...
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The Piglets Grow Up!
Remember these guys?Back in October our Gloucester Old Spot sow gave birth to a litter of ten little piglets (top photo). Now, five months later and a winter that feels like it's mostly behind us, the...
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More Piglets!
What better way to follow up on my last post about our little piglets growing up than to introduce you to these TEN new baby pigs, who were born last month while we were away on a ski holiday in...
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Scenes From A Cotswold Spring
Oilseed rape flowers are peaking right now. In America this crop is called canola. Blackthorn blossoms mixed into the hedgerows.Fields of wheat. In July they'll be golden.Not sure who lives in here-a...
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Birds, Real and Imagined
With the spring come the birds. Right now birds are nesting and laying their eggs all over the countryside, though I rarely take the time to seek them out. These blackbird's eggs (above) happen to be...
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Honeycombs
Here's what a morning of homeschool sometimes looks like. Jake was alternating between his dreaded math homework and seeing how fast he could reassemble the anatomy toy his cousin Fred just gave him....
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Checking in With the Hives
My husband the apiarist. And my six year old, his able assistant. Yesterday they checked in with the bees to see how everything is going up there. In a word, fine. The frames are very, very heavy with...
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Blackberries, Already.
For my friends and family in America, Labor Day weekend signifies the unofficial end of summer. Here in England, it's the blackberry season that tells me summer is coming to a close. Yesterday the five...
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Plant Dyed Wool: Day 1
For Christmas last year my sweetie of a husband gave me the gift of a three day wool dyeing course with the amazing Jane Meredith. Nine months later I cashed in, and have just returned from a blissful...
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Plant Dyed Wool: Day 2, Peg Loom Weaving
On the second day of the plant dyed wool class I recently took, Jane Meredith taught us peg looming. I thought maybe all of those loom bands I'd been making with my kids all summer would give me a leg...
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Plant Dyed Wool: Day 3-Weaving on the Brinkley Loom
I wish I could tell you that I made this gorgeous wall hanging on my last day of Jane Meredith's plant dyed wool course. Alas, I did not. But I did spend most of that day learning how to weave using...
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Hedgerow Medicine
More and more, I find myself hesitating before buying just about anything, asking myself first: Can I make this? And more and more (but not always-not by a longshot), the answer is yes. My children...
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Handmade Baby Toys
My niece will be giving birth to her first child any day now. It seems like no time at all ago that my brother's phone call woke me up one morning to spread the good news of his own child's arrival,...
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A Trip to Filkins
Though I've known about it for a long time, I only just recently made a trip to the Cotswold Woolen Weavers in Filkins, which is a tiny village about 25 minutes drive from me. CWW is a bit of an...
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