Lino cutting, raspberry jam, farewell ducklings and a bit of a teasle....

I have carried on with the next stage of Dijanne Cevaal's lino cutting online course and am pleased with these two reverse image leaf prints - they look rather African to me. I must say I am completely hooked and have ordered more lino and a couple of different Jacquard colours ... this will lead to dyeing more fabric - oh no!

I think I'm quite keen to print some sort of stylised teasel from the garden next. That will be fiddly to cut - should I book a place at Accident and Emergency in advance?

The ducks have been gently captured and taken to a local wildlife lake where they swam off happily on to a more appropriate expanse of water than our little back garden pond where their mother had set up home.

We miss them but seem to have acquired two guinea pigs in their place!!

I've made a big batch of scones and raspberry jam from our fruit. It knocks spots off shop bought jam and is so simple:

RASPBERRY JAM
Making a few small jars of jam doesn't have to take all day or use special equipment. This recipe can be prepared in the time the scones are cooking.
Preparation time :
15 minutes
Cooking time :
20 minutes
Total time :
35 minutes
Makes: 3 x 200ml jars
Ingredients
450g raspberries450g granulated sugar
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 170°C, gas mark 3. To sterilise the jars, place 3 thoroughly clean 200ml jars on their sides in the oven for 10 minutes. Then turn off the oven, leaving the jars inside until the jam is ready to pot. Place 2-3 saucers in the freezer to chill.
2. Rinse the raspberries. Place in a pan and cook over a gentle heat for 2-3 minutes until the juices are just beginning to run.
3. Add the sugar and stir over a gentle heat for 1-2 minutes until the sugar has dissolved. Then increase the heat and bring to a vigorous boil for 5-10 minutes.
4. Remove from the heat and test the jam by dabbing a little on one of the cold saucers. Cool for a few seconds, then push the jam with your fingertip. If it wrinkles, it has reached setting point. If not, boil for a further 2 minutes then test again. When the setting point is reached, spoon the jam into the jars. Cover the surface with a disc of waxed paper and seal with a lid. Label and store in a cool dark place for up to 3 weeks.

Isn't this hover fly amazing. He was on a Verbascum in the garden this morning. I love the lacy wings and the colourings.

In which the Mad Mummy tries to cram everything she ever wanted to do all into one day because the kids break up from school tonight....

No work today and the children break up at 4pm and are then here for seven and a half weeks...

Most Mums would be getting nails and hair coiffed. Oh no, not me. I have been a whirling dervish as I have made lino prints and red currant jelly at the same time. It can be confusing as you imagine.
I am doing an online lino cutting course with Dijanne Cavaal at the moment and I made the first prints today. It's all a lot easier than I remember school lino cutting ever was. The lino can be warmed in the oven (along with the jam pots) and is lovely and soft to cut. The cutting tool is sharp and glides through the grey matt lino beautifully unlike that hideous shiny brown stuff that I seem to remember (my art teacher would say I have "false memory syndrome" but I beg to differ Kate!!). That stuff used to make the cutter slip and slide and head right for the main artery between one's thumb and first finger whereupon it became instantly as sharp as a dagger and sliced lovely gouges from one's fingers causing the printing paper to have an instant hand-dyed red effect!

Anyway this is much better and I'm happy with my first results.

Here's a little picture of one of the wild ducklings in the garden (see posts labelled Mallards).

Oh yes, and can anybody tell me how a massive bowl of red currants yielded half a pot of measly jelly??

I wanted chicken but I got duck....

This year once again there have been ducks lurking in the garden from time to time (see last year's mallards links). I never knew there was a nest until Sunday when I parted some the same hostas as last year. There was Mrs. D hiding her eggs away again. After the cuffuffle last year we really haven't wanted this and have been chasing any of the birds who landed here away recently. I need to be clear here that we live in suburbia in a house with a walled garden so any unfledged ducks are trapped (i.e. until they are about 3 months old and ripping the place to shreds!). However here are the merry little band of ten after hatching this afternoon with proud Mum.

Another duck turned up on Sunday on the FRONT doorstep with nine babies who had walked down the steps into our coal bunker and of course couldn't get up again. I lifted them out, put them in a box and freed them in some bushes to follow their mother off to another garden. Did you know mother ducks fly at your eyes when their young are in danger. Good job I wear specs!

But really as you can see I only want chickens. Hmmm still sticking to the fabric ones.

The cat looks nice in it's antique pine frame. Perhaps I'll make some mallards next in honour of our "plague"...

Dying Happily

Had fun today with Procion dyes by Omega. Used some tips from Ineke Berlyn's book and dyed a nice variety from red, yellow and blue powders.

The weather was dry all afternoon for a change and I could complete the process. I dyed calico and various undyed threads for inspiration at some time. It was a relief to do this in the garden without the pesky mallards pecking at my heels!

We are off to Wales tomorrow for a week so I hope to gather some landscape memories for pieces to use these fabrics up! Have packed sketch books, camera and the hollyhocks piece to put together. Also I'm going to try my hand at knitting!!

Buzzing and Quacking

My mind is racing and I wake up so early with a rush of ideas that I'm always up by 6am. This has been further stimulated by visiting the NEC Festival of Quilts in Birmingham. I went two days running and only saw half of what was there. The variety of work was stunning and there were so many textile stalls with inspirational bits and bobs and new products.


I ended up parting with serious money for an embellishing machine made by Babylock which has just come on the market and is basically a 12 needle felting machine. I opened it yesterday and straight away made these flowers and have roughly placed them here on a background that I have made this week of silk waste which I have embroidered together through disolvable film. The piece is inspired by the multitude of hollyhocks which were the regional plant in the area of France we stayed in this month. I'm working on the stems and more flowers today and then I can stitch it all together...



This is one of my favourite quilts at the NEC

It's very peaceful.






...and this one was in a winning category made by a group and was really vibrant.









A quick update on the mallard ducklings:

All seven remaining have been storming our house recently and I have often felt as if I'm in some kind of Alfred Hitchcock movie. They are nearly full grown and have eaten every slug and snail in the garden and have started to strip the plants. Yesterday we lured them into the rabbit carrier with seed and I transported them to a big lake nearby where they swam off together happily. They will have more food there and space to learn to fly without going through my greenhouse window!
The picture here shows marauding birds tapping incessantly on our window. One got through the cat flap!!

Ducklings Take Over The Garden

No sign of life on Thursday evening from the eight eggs and then, blow me, all eight eggs had hatched and there were eight ducklings on the pond by 9a.m. on Friday morning. It's incredible how they know how to forage for food, swim and run straight away!

I spent most of the day terrified that some predator or another would capture these tiny mallards. I chased away a magpie, my cat, a neighbour's cat and seen a hovering sparrowhawk 100 feet up in the sky, but we have made it through the whole weekend now with no casualties.