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West coast walk

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North west Denmark has miles of gorgeous beaches.
Huge skies, usually blue.
Some beaches have pebbles and WW2 bunkers.
This one is almost submerged.
A lone sunflower.
Sea rocket.
Sand dunes.
Heath land.
Beautiful clouds.
A mix of pebbles and sand.
For miles and miles.
And miles.
Bunker.

Off grid cabin in the woods

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My friend Alex and I rented an off grid cabin in the woods for a night, she is preparing her dogs for a long car journey so this was a perfect way to both give us a fun mini break and the puppies some car time.
It was a super cabin on the north west coast.
Logs for the fire.
So we cooked up some sausages.
My sausage cooking looks more like burning but they tasted fabulous.
The puppies were just fine after the 2.5 hour journey.

Lovely evening in the garden

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It’s been glorious weather this September so far.
My new Wisteria is doing great.
Parasol Whitetop.
Brilliant yellow.
Sedum
Perfect place to sit in the evening.
Helianthella Uniflora.
A close up of my favourite fall flower.
Michaelmas daisies another fall favourite.
It such a joy.
A pumpkin, don’t know what kind.
Pumpkin
Lots of apples this year.
It’s not save to sit under it right now, good chance of getting an apple land on your head!

You can’t tell the chicks from the hens!

Treadle sewing machine

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I was given this very old treadle sewing machine, it dates back to 1904!
Intricate iron work.
It came with lots of goodies, spools (bobbins).
Thread spools.
Wooden spools and old thimbles.
An old tin full of beads.
A tangle of threads.
All sorts of feet and some shuttles.
More bobbins.
I think these are for making biased binding.
It looks to be well used, well it is 124 years old, but will it work.
I’m having difficulty getting the cover to close.
I cleaned, oiled and dusted it, had a play around with the tension and put a new needle in and at first it was not so great but after tweaking the needle and the tension its sewing a very nice stitch.

Learning how to use the treadle was tricky so had a look at a couple of YouTube videos which really helped and now I can sew a straight line at speed, it’s incredibly fast! It will take me a little while to master it.

I’m so happy it still works, amazing really considering it’s age. I still have to try out all these feet and attachments.

Flea market last Sunday

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I went to a flea market in Aarhus last Sunday with my friend Vibeke.

Found this tiny dolls cup and saucer, so cute!
A tiny egg cup size pot, very thin and delicate.
Two little dishes from Finland.
A few doll wigs.
Monster high mash up but I love them!
A Barbie and a Skipper from the 80’s.
A little Italian doll.
A lovely Sasha Bratz doll with a baby Bratz baby, super cute.
A pair if really pretty Bratz shoes.
A frozen doll, I bought for a body swap.
Some cool boots and leggings for the monster dolls..
A box of leather and fake fur pieces for dolls clothes.

Total spend for everything , 75 kr, which is around 10 € or £8.50! Not to bad.

Tomatoes and pumpkins

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Finally the tomatoes are ripening.

They’re very late.
But a good size.
And plenty of them.
The black ones look nice but are definitely not ripe.
Not too many of the plum ones.
Some spring onions to have with the tomatoes.
The pumpkins are growing but are very late.
The ones I planted outside have hardly done anything at all, fingers crossed for a late summer.

More tatties and onions

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I only got 25 brown onions.
And 25 white onions plus 2 extra brown ones with no stalks so will pop them in the fridge with the rest of the onions I got before.
My experiments using tubs for tatties did just fine, I got this basket full from 2 of them.
Not too bad.
The soil in this two tubs is lovely, later I will tip it out into the new raised beds as they don’t have much soil.
The other two tubs did OK too but one of them had some big grubs in it, the chickens thought they were really tasty! Thankfully they did not make any difference to the tatties. The other tub had an ants nest in it. I got a half of a yellow bucket out of them. All in all they all produced the same amount, not too bad from left over small seed potatoes.
All cleared up, nice and easy to harvest and clean up was easy too.

Breeze and Slim

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Up the apple tree.

Breeze has taken up tree climbing.
At first he’s was a little scared.
But soon got to grips with it.
With a few near misses.
Loving it.
Time to come down.
Wasn’t I a clever little boy?
Slim has been unwell with a growth on the side of his face.
It make eating a little difficult but not enough to stop him eating lots of tuna!
But he is still thinner, when it gets too difficult for him the vet has told me to bring him in and we will put him to sleep, but for now he seems happy and enjoying it when it’s sunny outside or hangs out with me in the studio.

Tatties and onions

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It’s been such a changeable summer with some very hot and dry days but a lot of very wet and stormy ones. With the rain comes SLUGS! They started munching trough the onions so I have had to harvest what was left early. I put the worst of them in the fridge to use up and only got one basket of onions to store for the winter, very disappointing.

I have been harvesting the first early potatoes, again early due to the slugs, so far not too much damage underneath but the tops were totally eaten away!

A nice bundle from my first dig.
Total from the bed. I weeded it and put on a layer of compost.
These are the ones I stuck with the fork, I’ll eat them first.
Cleaned up.
These are the ones with damage or are green which I cleaned, boiled up and fed to the chickens.
I’m very happy how much the potatoes cleaned up the soil, next year I will plant onions here. But I will have to do something about the grass around the beds, I was thinking of making a path out of slabs if I can pick some up at the recycling centre.

An afternoon walk

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A lovely afternoon walk
Creeping thistle
Golden fields
Fields of daisies
Paths of gold
100’s of baby spiders wriggling about in there!
Bugs nest
There is still a lot of water laying on the ground, algae grows a vivid green.
Wild honeysuckle
Carthusian pink
Meadowsweet my favorite wild flower the scent is love honey, so delicious.
Grass seed
Wild Scabious
Perineal sweet pea
Fields of green
Home again

Lilac tunnel

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I have been growing these lilac bushes together for a few years now and finally it’s a tunnel!
From the garden to the field
I have cut a final maze in there.
Hard to see without a drone
Looking back towards the house

Chooks

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It’s hard to see the hen house the hops are rampaging all around it.
Soon it will cover their window
And I will not be able to spy on them
Whitey checking out her tunnel
Waiting for treats
They have made lots of tunnels through the hops
Soon I will have to move the fence to give them more grass to munch on

Flowers

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Pink
Wild teasel
Peach leaved Bellflower white
Peach leaved Bellflower blue.
Yellow Salsify seed head
Water butt
Pretty pots
Mellow yellow
Purple
Vivid pink
Golden Marguerite
Lovely
Don’t know the name of this flower.
Perennial sweet pea
Perennial sweet pea
A swath of golden Marguerite

Everything is growing fast!

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Tatties in tubs doing fine.
Also growing well around the poly tunnel
Onions in tubs doing great
A lot easier to weed!
Flowering pink fur apple tatties
More onions around the back of the tunnel
Lots of salad for me and the chooks!
Fruit bushes.
Blackcurrants ripening
Red currants not far behind
Gooseberry bushes.

Giant egg! Pretty flowers and a scrappy finish.

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Normal large egg on the bottom and a huge mega beg egg on the top!
Delicious on toast with homemade spicy tomato ketchup.
And a cup of freshly brewed coffee.
Totally scrappy, using up some strips of fabric and old bits of embroidered tablecloth’s.. unfinished quilt on the wall.
Finished quilt top on the line.
Close up, I love the vintage embroidery, especially the teapots, they needed quilt a bit of repair but worth it.
The bright colours of the flowers on the right really stand out, they are gorgeous.
Poppet came along to help with the photos.
Rosa ragosa, the scent is intense and beautiful.
With a lupin.
A perfect evening.
Some pillows perfect for summer.

A quilt finish.

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I have been working on this quilt for a little while.

It’s a pattern from Bec Brennan at https://sewbehome.com one of my favorite quilt designers.
A colourful quilt that had 100’s of small flying geese units, perfect for using up left over fabric from other projects.
Also a little bit of appliqué.
For the backing I hunted the thrift stores for a vintage sheet or duvet cover and found the perfect one, I took it home, washed and line dried it, it smelt so fresh when I was pressing it before preparing it for the back. I used a super soft 100% cotton batting making the quilt super cosy.
I simply quilted it all over with a buttercup flower design.
I love the simple but effective appliqué.