Lily | The Really Good Life

Plummy solid square crochet blanket

Posted by louisa on Monday 3 June 2013 in crochet & knitting, making | 12 comments

This is the second crochet blanket I’ve made in two months. Yes, I know it’s June and gloriously sunny outside but what can I say? I live in the north of England and I’m realistic.

While I was finishing up my Ann Perkins blanket* at the end of April, I had a huge urge to make a solid square blanket: one colour per square like Heather’s Elmer blanket.

I used Stylecraft Special DK – I don’t usually like acrylic but this is alright. In the flesh, the colours are quite nice, it’s not quite as shiny as most synthetics and it’s super cheap. I used six colours: plum, grape, mocha, raspberry, parchment (nicely off white), and claret – the latter being my least favourite colour of the set, but I think it adds a nice contrast to all the purples.

Catching up with my crafting

Posted by louisa on Saturday 23 March 2013 in making | 3 comments

2012 was my year that didn’t happen. A combination of circumstances and mood meant I achieved very little all year. It bummed me out until I just accepted it, and in comparison 2013 has been chipper and wonderfully productive.

I did a lot of embroidery and other hand-sewing in January and February – an combination of kits (to learn new skillz) and my own designs. This month has been crochet-tastic (I’m working on a big double-bed size blanket – 31 squares down, 23 to go) and I’ve also done some wet felting with resists. All Lily cares about though are the cushions I’ve made for us her.

I started them yesterday then ran out of thread so finished them today. Both days had intended to be garden days as I’ve got a whole bunch of seeds that need to be started ASAP but the eight inches of snow out there is getting in the way somewhat. I remember this week last year, sowing lots of seeds in the mini heatwave then watching them either rot in the soil or succumb to damping off when the weather turned again in April. I’ve not got anything tender on the go in the greenhouse/outside just yet though so this snow will delay things but hopefully won’t kill off much.

In case anyone is interested, the cushion covers are made from an Ikea fabric, Lappljung Randig, which is a lot nicer in person than it is on the web — and it should be because £8/metre isn’t super cheap. It’s a heavy cotton though, and it coordinates well with our grey sofa, and not just because both are covered in dog hair. (Lil is on her blue sofa in the office in the picture.) I bought the fabric back in February, on our usual Valentine’s Day visit to Ikea (it’s so quiet!) but as I nearly cut off the tip of my index finger the following morning, I couldn’t sew them until now. Two related #pro-tips:

Cushion sewing #pro-tip: Remember to open the zip before you finish stitching the final edge, else, annoyingly fiddly.

Cooking #pro-tip: Sharp, fast-spinning stick blender blades are SHARP and FAST-SPINNING.

I’ve got a strip of fabric left over, about 45cm wide and 2 metres long — I think we’ve got enough cushions now (if Lily shares) so I’m trying to think of ideas for it. I might get some fat quarters to coordinate with the colourful stripes and make a little lap quilt. That’ll have to wait its turn on the project list – I’ve got a year of craft ideas to work off first! (Speaking of which, I’ve been on Pinterest for ages for Recycle This but only just started Pinning non-recycling things – I’m louisaparry on there.)

What have you been up to?

Chickens on a snow day

Posted by louisa on Monday 21 January 2013 in chickens | 3 comments

We’ve had some snow a week now but the “proper snow” only arrived last night. We woke up to nearly six inches on the ground – and on the greenhouse, the flower beds, the steps — on the everywhere really ;) It’s still snowing now, not a blizzard but a steady fast flow.

The trees are the heaviest I’ve ever seen them, with some branches bent right over under the weight of their cold blanket. Every now and then – actually, specifically right then when I was writing the first half of that sentence – one reaches its limit and drops its load, or it flicks the snow back into the parent tree and more falls to the ground. It’s painfully pretty.

The chicken wire roof of our chicken run has slowly grown its own snowy coating too. I thought it would be very dark under there – that the (automatic, light triggered) pop hole door wouldn’t have opened and our girls would be grumpy, trapped in the coop without food or drink, but it is surprisingly light. I cleared the snow off the section nearest the path before realising about the lightness but will leave the rest for now – it’s keeping the falling snow out of the run. The structure is more than strong enough to hold up for now, though I will keep an eye on it if the snow keeps falling.

The birds are holding up well. Our three old girls were around for the harsh 2010-11 winter: if they were humans, they’d probably be going around in flip flops and t-shirts, and bragging to the new ones “cold? cold? it’s not cold! It’s tropical compared to when I was a pullet.” (Humans say that, right?) Thankfully though, none of them is actually being tested in that way – their moults feel like ages ago now and they’re all feathered up again. As if on cue: fluffy bottoms ahoy!

I’m making sure they’re kept well fed to counter the extra energy they’re putting into keeping warm – I’ve got a stash of their layers pellets in the house for making up a warm porridge as-and-when. Their drinkers were freezing last week but they’ve been ok for the last couple of days. And they’re returning the well fed gesture – we had a 100% lay rate yesterday and today — really good going! I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow is a little lower though.

As ever, Lily-dog is carefully supervising my care of the girls – insisting on accompanying me into the garden at every opportunity and checking out the wider area around the run for ALL THE SMELLS. The cats though are happy to just watch from the window.

Is it snowy where you are? If you’ve got birds, how are they doing?

How I lead a green and frugal life by Lily-dog

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 6 March 2012 in Featured, meta | 12 comments

It’s two years to the day since we brought Lily-dog home so I asked her to put some words together about how she leads a simple, green & frugal life with us.

Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Sorry, got a bit overexcited there, I do like meeting new people. Would you like me to bring you a shoe? Because I can go and get one if you like? Here! Here’s a shoe. I hope you like it. It’s my shoe. Don’t try to take my shoe! I like shoes!

Ok, ok, I’ll put the shoe down and start telling you what you want to hear. I’m not quite sure what the female feedy-huggy one has asked of me because I am a dog but I’ll try my best and will try very hard not to randomly woof. Although I am told I enunciate my woof splendidly, with a proper “wuh” at the beginning and everything. Wuh-oof.

So, yes, I have lived here for two years now and I think I lead a pretty green & frugal life. Well, a white-and-brown frugal life.

I grow my own fur so I don’t need clothes – 12 items in ’11? Pff! I had less that 12 items of clothing in 11 years! – and my fur can be composted when I don’t need it any more. I am also more than happy to snuggle underneath a duvet or a blanket too for extra warmth, no need for gas-guzzling central heating.

I do not – NOT!NOT!NOT! – like going in the car because they are expensive and noisy and sometimes involve journeys to the vets which are expensive, noisy and sometimes involve injections. If I had my way the tail-less ones would get rid of the car and we’d just walk everywhere we needed to go. Because the only place we need to go is the woods, right? Definitely NOT the vets, just the woods.

I like the woods. They are at the bottom of my garden. Walking in the woods is my favourite hobby and it makes me happy that we go there every day. If I wasn’t such a scaredy dog, I’d probably run around the woods on my own all day, making sure I’m instantly aware of any changes in smells and to check that those squirrels aren’t up to anything. Those squirrels are always up to something. That’s why they need barking at. “What are you up to, squirrels?” I say with one single well-enunciated woof. They know I’m onto them, that’s why they run.

I like eating things I find in the woods. Once I found a tuna sandwich. That was a good day. I carried it for about a minute to really savour it before I ate it. It was good. Mostly I just eat green things. My favourite green things are those sticky bud things which the curly haired one calls “cleavers” but I also like some bits of grass. The curly-haired one calls this “foraging” and says it’s a green and frugal thing but I just think of it as walking snack time. The curly-haired one is good and puts green things in pots for me to snack on in the garden too. They’re at dog-mouth height so they must be for me.

Inside the house, I am the good one. I’m the one that helps reduce food waste by SELFLESSLY cleaning up any scraps of food that drop on the floor, any food the cats might leave, and any eggs that get dropped or cracked. It has been said by a certain curly-haired person who shall remain nameless (because I don’t understand the concept of names really) that I sometimes cause the eggs to get broken by nudging them off a table or trying to trip up one of the humans when they’re carrying them up from the chickens but THAT IS DOWNRIGHT LIES. I am a good dog, I tell you.

Speaking of the chickens, they’re fascinating, aren’t they? Their home smells of such amazing things, as do their bottoms. I must admit that I did try to eat them at first (the whole chickens, not just their bottoms) but now I am just happy to watch them. Watch them and sniff them. Mmm, sniffing.

I like sniffing the cats too and they generally sniff back although I think their “eeeuggh!” faces are at least sometimes uncalled for. I do have soaks in the stream as often as I’m allowed so in my humble opinion, I’m very very clean and delightfully fragrant. And the curly one makes me have showers inside the bathroom rain box sometimes too. I prefer showers to baths, which I hear is a green thing: I like that they are shorter and don’t use as much water and that sometimes I can lick the water from the water thing. And after I’ve had a shower and am nice and clean, I help the two-legs clean the bathroom floor by wriggling on every single bit of it. No need for chemical cleaning gunk or even a mop. I’m such a helpful doggy.

I am also good at helping sort the rubbish. They sort it into “recycling”, “compost” and “rubbish” but they seem to miss that a lot of the so-called “rubbish” is actually perfectly reusable. No, I don’t mean reusable … what do I mean? Oh yes, chewable. I am very good at taking things out of the office or living room bins and “reusing” them into little tiny pieces. Sometimes it takes ages for the feedy-huggy people to get the picture: they put the perfectly chewable thing in the bin, I take it out again, they put it in again, I take it out again, they put it in again … I mean squirrels learn faster than these people. Wait… squirrels can learn things? Then they might get the better of me with their scheming ways! Oh no! I should go woof at them to make them forget!

To celebrate her two year anniversary with us, I made her a party hat – with brown-paper spaniel ears.

Some bribing with treats may have been necessary to get her to wear it.

Quite a lot of bribery ;)

Our office

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 18 January 2012 in house | 6 comments

The other day Susy of Chiot’s Run gave us a virtual tour of her home office, which she very aptly titled Where the Magic Happens. (Apt because Susy’s blog – and her new food/cooking blog Eat out of the Bag – are lovely, magical places and if you don’t visit them already, I’d highly recommend you do so!)

Despite wannabe illusionist John’s best efforts, nowhere near as much magic happens here, but I thought I’d share some pictures of our office anyway. We have both worked from home for about six years now so it’s an important space in our lives.

See that little table at the bottom of the picture? It’s 87cm square and that used to be our office in our old house. It lived in our living room and was also our dining table and, since it was right next to the front door, the place where all our junk got dumped on the way into the house. The two of us squeezed our laptops, and invariably a few cats, onto it for a couple of years — which made it all the nicer when we moved to our new house and got to have a proper, dedicated office with proper dedicated desks even if one of us can’t keep her desk tidy. That’s my actually-pretty-tidy-for-me desk on right, John’s on the left and now the little table is where our friends sit when they work from here for the day. It used to get tidied away to the far corner of the room after every visit but now we’re lazy and it stays there all the time. Thankfully the room is big enough to handle our laziness.

The room is also big enough for a sofa – which is widely regarded as Lily-dog’s sofa. The cats/us/guests occasionally sit on it but usually only if that’s ok with Lily. The sofa was an eBay bargain – we had a small budget for it but managed to find this one & get it delivered for less than half the budget – but still gets covered with old blankets to soak up the daily dose of muddy dog stench ;) I love the colour of this blanket – so vibrant even though it was my grandparents’ and thus considerably older than me!

Our office is on the “lower ground floor” of our house – our house is built on a slope so there are more floors at the back than the front – and looks out over our garden and the woods beyond. When the houses were originally built in 1897, this would have been the kitchen hence there being such a large fireplace opening:

It also means there is a “back door” opening right out into the garden, which I think is Lily’s favourite thing about the room. When it’s warm, the door stays open all day and she & the cats patter in & out all day, while we listen to birdsong & chicken noises from the garden.

We’re not very good at hanging pictures on walls for some reason so there isn’t much to share in that regard but I do like this little print John bought in London last year – socks arranged like chromosomes.