Managing time (or not!)

If I had to choose one sentence to sum up my life it would be "there aren't enough hours in a day" as I never seem to have enough time to do everything I want to do! There's always something I have to leave out and at the moment one of those things is my poor blog. It isn't that I haven't got anything to say; quite the opposite in fact.

My time has been split between trying to get the garden ready for Spring (which has meant dodging the heavy rain and getting out there whenever it's been fine enough to work on our heavy clay soil), keeping my running ticking over (that's easy as it's just part of my daily routine), Village in Bloom stuff (we are trying to better our Silver Gilt from last year), baking and general household stuff and crafting (yes, I know I have far too many crafts from which to choose).

Where should I start? The garden's always a good place.

Stems from a couple of Dogwoods - look at those glorious colours! It's important to cut them back if you want to get such intensely coloured stems.

Another beautiful Hellebore (whose name I've forgotten for the moment!)

Tidying up the spiky old yukka. In the trade it's known as 'brown bitting' as you pull out all the dead leaves and trim off the brown bits from the leaf tips. 

It's tough work and you have to be careful to avoid the spiky leaf-tips but it's well worth the effort.

Tilly was a tremendous help.....

...but found the whole thing rather tiring

The apple and pear trees needed their winter pruning

I love getting up close to the trees in the orchard and swoon at the amazing mosses and lichens on their branches

The horses are desperate to get into the orchard to graze the grass down - look at that mud at the field gate. It's normal to get a degree of 'poaching' (ie compaction of an area which then gets very muddy in wet weather) but most of the field is really messy and we need to get a roller on it as soon as it's dry enough to get a tractor on the field.

Sorry Esther, it's just too wet at the moment!

I trimmed off the bottom of Kizzy's tail as it was dragging in the mud.

 It wasn't wasted though as I put it by the compost heaps alongside the Pampas grass stems and Cardoon seeds and it was soon claimed by the rooks to use as nesting material. I saw them flying off with beaks full of it!

The over-wintering guests in my shed, including this beautiful Peacock butterfly, were awoken by the sunshine and I left the window open for them to escape.

This beautiful cock pheasant currently has a harem of 8 ladies to keep him happy!

I took this through the window one morning (only 5 hens there)

The ducks taking a siesta in the shade of the wheelbarrow

Sadly though, the sunny spells have been short-lived and so as soon as the soil starts to dry out the rain has made it unworkable again. As a result of this I haven't been able to lift and divide many of the perennials which need attention so I am way behind schedule. But then we gardeners always complain about something don't we.

Easter came and went with a 3:1 ratio of rain to fine weather so I stayed indoors and split my time between baking and crafting. It wouldn't be complete without hot cross buns;

They keep for several days and then I split them into batches of 4 and freeze them as a treat over the next few weeks

Our village church was looking splendid with it's floral arrangements for Easter, all done by local ladies. They are organising a Flower festival again for the summer and it's a real village affair with lots of us growing flowers from seed for the occasion.

Just a few daffodils in pots belie the amazing displays within!

Now for a bit of crafting. I haven't been knitting because my fingers have been incredibly sore as all the pruning and weeding has played havoc with my arthritis. I'm not complaining, it's just the way it is and so I adapt my activities accordingly. I can still sew and crochet without pain so all is not lost.

On the crochet front I've just started the Frida's Flower Blanket CAL but using my own selection of colours from my stash of Rowan cotton glace. There's nothing much to show after the first instalment as they are just hexagons with a raised flower motif in the middle which then frame the main floral motifs (which look very pretty indeed). I'm going to use it as a throw for the back of one of the settees in the lounge which has been bleached by bright sunlight. My motifs are smaller than then given dimensions and I will wait until it's assembled to see if I want to add any more motifs to make it bigger.

Now for a journey into crazy patchwork. I am so excited by this and am resisting the urge to just get stuck into my main project idea until I've at least experimented a bit with some test pieces. First of all I took a Craftsy course which I listened to all the way through and now I'm going back over the bits of interest and having a go with some cotton fabrics.

For this I needed my sewing machine but it's one from the 1960s which my mum gave me when I was 18 and it weighs a ton and is really difficult to move around so I've shied away from using it over the last few years. Suddenly I remembered that we'd still got my mum's slightly more modern sewing machine from the 1980s so after much searching we found it looking rather dirty and dusty having been lurking in the attic for years. I gave it a good clean-up but found there were several parts missing. Luckily I was able to find replacements online and so I now have a machine which, although basic, is more than adequate for my purpose.

I have now taken over the dining table!

There are 4 pieces to make, using different techniques, and the first piece I made consisted of charted shapes with straight edges.

The fabrics I chose are all special in their own way - the pieces with small purple flowers on are from a length of dress fabric from the 1970's (the pale side is the right side but I also liked the wrong side with the dark background), the large white and purple flowers are from a blouse I made in the 1980s, the broidery anglaise piece is from an underskirt in the 1970s, the pinky purple shimmery fabric was from an evening dress I made around the year 2000, the green triangle with the white flower embroidered is from the dressing table set from my childhood and the other green fabric with texture is part of a rather tatty tablecloth from the 1930s which my mum used on the breakfast table when I was young.

A patch full of memories!

Once they were all joined together it was time for some fun. I'd already decided I wanted to experiment using embroidery in colours from within the fabric rather than contrast colours.

A selection of possible trimmings with which to embellish it

I found this brilliant book in a charity shop on a visit to Folkestone (I must write about that as it was interesting). It has some fabulous examples of crazy quilts.

I started slowly and tentatively, adding a few bits here and there

Laying out bits and bobs before making a decision

When I finished working on the seam treatments I decided to add a few beads

These 'Big Eye' beading needles are great for teeny-weeny beads but are quite flimsy so don't cope well with thick layers of fabric. They were fine for my purpose though.

Just adding a bit of random sparkle

This is just a couple of lengths of eyelash knitting yarn with I secured with a couched thread of lurex

Just a few more beads and I was finished

My piece was rather basic and plain but for a sample piece I didn't want to waste my time as I'd rather go to town on the final project piece!

The next sampler has some curved shapes for interest and I wasn't as keen on it to begin with but once I got started I began to enjoy it much more. I used exactly the same fabrics again but in a different placement and I'm being more experimental with my embellishments this time - and thoroughly enjoying it too.

 

It's interesting how you can transform the humble herringbone stitch into something completely different by weaving a different coloured thread through it (see below for detail).

I cut the butterfly from an old table mat and just appliqued it roughly - I'd be happy if the edges frayed. The flowers were cut from a length of braid and the buttons sewn in place with the addition of bugle and seed beads.

I find hand embroidery very absorbing and a great way to lose yourself when stuck inside on a cold wet day!

Right, time for a bit more embroidery methinks..........

Oh yes, I've got the small matter of 50 miles to run a week today so please can someone have a word with the weather and order me a day that is fine and bright, not too warm and with no wind. Thank you.

A Grand Day Out

Oh yes, last Sunday was indeed a day to remember.

I completed an event to replace the Book Day challenge that I bailed out of after 9 miles and I am so glad I did this instead as it was really different. It was not the sort of event I'd usually enter though; it was one organised by the Kent group of the Long Distance Walkers Association and there were options to complete 15, 20 or 30 miles so I chose the 30.

I've never done one of these events before and I was rather worried about the navigational side of it but the lovely Bryan volunteered to guide me along with Kirsty and Liz who I've seen at a lot of events in the last 12 months and we had a n excellent day out.

With most of the running events I do there is a strict cut-off time and although there was a cut-off for this event it was much more generous to allow walkers enough time to finish (10 hours). Our strategy was to run the bits that we could, walk the uphill sections, have a good natter and enjoy the scenery and that's exactly what we did.

The event started just outside Sevenoaks, an area Mike and I used to visit frequently when we lived in London many years ago and dreamt of moving to the countryside as there are some beautiful areas around there. As it was only about 50 minutes drive I didn't have to leave at the crack of dawn either which made a nice change.

Race HQ was West Heath School, in a lovely setting, and we started and finished there. I met up with Bryan, Kirsty and Liz inside. At registration we were given a card with our number on and we had to have it stamped at each of the checkpoints.

Kirsty and Liz always look lovely and bright. Their rucksacks contained enough food to feed a family!

Bryan with his exceedingly heavy rucksack

Some of the entrants - a mix of runners and walkers with several familiar faces

There was a lovely friendly atmosphere at the start and I started to feel more relaxed about it; I'd been worrying about the navigational side of it but I needn't have worried  as the instructions provided were really clear and we had Bryan guiding us.

Photo courtesy of Kirsty as I dropped mine into a gulley when I slipped on a bridge and couldn't reach them!

Soon after the start we headed across the grounds of Knole  which was originally a medieval deer park and there were plenty of deer around as you'll see later on.

The house itself is well worth a visit as it contains some fabulous 17th century tapestries and furniture alongside paintings by Van Dyck, Gainsborough & Reynolds. Mike and I have visited there many times in the past and it was lovely to actually run through the grounds.

What I enjoyed most was the variety of the route - we went up and down hills of varying steepness, went along flinty paths, some across hard clay, some with lots of mud, across fields with hummocky grass, and along the side of hills where one leg felt longer than the other as you were at an angle rather than on a flat path!

We passed through part of the grounds of Ightham Moat another property maintained by the National Trust. If I remember correctly it has a Grade 1 listed dog kennel in the courtyard quite apart from the interesting interior and grounds.

Striding out towards St Giles' church Shipbourne across a rather muddy field

"Are you taking another photo of my bottom?" shouted Kirsty as she climbed over the stile. Tee hee!

David was either just in front of us or just behind us most of the way round.

The weather was mostly dull and cloudy with a few bursts of sun peeping through. We were just glad it didn't rain!

Quite apart form the glorious scenery, we also had a few sections along lanes and footpaths by houses and we saw some amazing properties.  The only downside for me was that on occasion we could hear the traffic roar from the A21 and the M25, aka the London Orbital or the world's first circular car park as it's famous for traffic jams!

There were 5 checkpoints en route where we had our cards stamped and our number checked against a list. The marshalls were all lovely and very friendly and there were hot and cold drinks plus goodies to eat at each one.

Poor Liz was feeling rather poorly all way round but she was such a trooper that although she had to slow down and stop occasionally she showed true grit kept going right until the bitter end. I found some of the walking bits painful as I'd developed 2 enormous blisters on the inside of each heel at around 5 miles. I managed to burst the one on my right foot, which brought immediate relief, but the one on my left foot remained stubborn and refused to oblige. I dealt with it when I got home and wondered why it felt so much better when I got rid of the fluid that was supposed to protect it?! I rarely get blisters so it was a shock but I suspect that I hadn't broken my new trail shoes in properly so I'll be wearing them a lot more in the coming weeks as I have some more off-road marathons to come.

Ouch! I should add that after I'd drained the fluid I smothered the blisters in antiseptic cream, to keep them moist, then put dressings on top to protect them and the next day they felt right as rain.

On the way back we ran on the footpath alongside the main road into Sevenoaks and then crossed over to pass through a heavy wooden door into the grounds of Knole. I wish I'd taken a photo 'cos it was like going through into a secret world.

This time we ran through the valley part of the grounds and we were surrounded by herds of deer. They are so used to visitors that they didn't pay any attention to us as we ran past and we got some lovely photos of them.

Their bottoms look like faces don't they! I'd guess that must be to confuse predators.

They were quite well camouflaged against the bracken

We finally reached the finish in 8:53 and it really had been great fun. There wasn't a medal but we were each presented with a certificate showing our finish time. This event had been all about 'time on feet' and was ideal preparation for my next long distance event.

There were refreshments at the finish too and I was very impressed at the whole event. I enjoyed it so much that I emailed the organisers to say a big thank you to everyone involved.

What's next? The Fowlmead 50 miler in 3 weeks. This weekend I'll be doing 20 miles on Saturday and Sunday and then reducing my mileage during the following 2 weeks ahead of the big one!