Effing rain!!

I don't want to be a right old moany face about it but I'm hormonal, therefore feel entitled to moan if I like.  Don't get me wrong in many ways I love rain, the verdant greens, the slate greys of paths and 'making the garden grow' etc but I want to be in my bare feet and flip flops.  I want to have all the windows and doors open and if I cannot, I'd like them to be closed without needing to coory under a blanket or worse, switch the heaters on.  I want to have meals in the garden and hang the washing out, have a view of billowing sheets and hear the birds singing.......
All that list of 'I wants' needs is addition of a goose that lays golden eggs.

SIGH

My boys finish up school tomorrow and I am hoping the weather improves.  I am Scottish, I do not expect a lot, just please please please PLEASE, let it be dry for a spell.

Urgh!!!  Moan moan moan!
I'm off to get on my exercise bike and see if my mood improves.  I have cakes to bake later and cannot be this cross whilst baking, cakes need love to rise people!

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Let it pour and pour.....

The rain is never ending today.

I love never ending rain.  No indecision, no dithering over a bit of rain or a bit of cloud or a bit of sun.  The decision is made, the answer clear; it will rain and rain and rain. ' Dreich' it is and I love 'dreich'.  'Dreich' is meant to be cold and miserable and yes some days 'dreich' certainly captures the feeling the weather induces, but today it feels right.  I even walked with my Biscuits to school just to be out in it.  Colours are popping, particularly green and I do love our garden in the rain.  

It is small and no matter that I sometimes yearn for more space I feel cocooned in it, comforted and at peace whether in it or looking at it and today it is a pleasure to see it out there.  There is enough space for a table and chairs and for the fun and frolicking of trampolining and it is ours, all ours.

I am not, however, a natural gardener.  I very much like a garden that looks untouched and left to grow however it pleases; walls of ivy or clematis, alive, grasping to hold on to what ever it touches. I find it utterly romantic and am happily lead into thoughts of fairy tales and magic.  Of woodlands and homes in hollowed-out trees of hidden lives behind hidden walls, lonely princesses and curious strangers.  I just cannot bring myself to constrain and control.  I am absolutely sure there are sound gardening reasons why you should but, for me, it feels wrong.  I surrender to their need to climb, to cling and take comfort in the wall of green, vivid life.  

I also love the stones we have; weed suppressors but, for me, they take me to wild Scottish beaches.  They are battered and bruised by the North sea and for their trouble give forth their intense colour and patterns.  Something they barely give up in the dry.  Hidden treasure.  I imagine being at a Scottish beach today.  Of  being soul cleansed by the severe wind and the certainty I am alive because I feel so much.  

I spend a lot of time in solitude; in my head.  I am by nature a brooder and often I marinade in things I shouldn't but I am also a romantic, an optimist and see things in a skew-wiffy way always enrobed in my imagination.  Always reminded of songs or things I have read or feelings I have had, of love and of living, of the nature of beginnings and of endings.

Today I am content and fit to burst, all because of the never ending rain and the view of it's power over our garden and, in oh so many ways, over me.

X

Halt!! Hoot goes there?

Hello lovely ladies on this March Monday, I'd say bonny Monday but it's blowing a gale and pouring, really p.o.u.r.i.n.g with rain here in my part of Scotland.  Spring did seem to have sprung earlier this morning, the walk to school was delightfully sunny if a little chilly, still I'm indoors, it's relatively warm (off to hunt for slippers) and I'm filled with cappuccino.  I've been a wee bit crafty, as in partaking in some crafting as opposed to getting up to mischief you understand (well a little mischief!) making the above owl brooch for a lovely lady at my boys' school nursery where I pretend I have a career, as a Librarian on Wednesday mornings, my boys both went there and somehow I still help out, it is a lovely place to spend time and three/four year olds are adorable.  So the lady in question has a birthday next week so after spotting the owl a while ago here, I thought I'd whip one up.  He has funny googly eyes with beads as I couldn't cut such teeny circles, wishing I had mini brads (so ordered some from paper-and-string).

I made cushion covers yesterday while the men folk went on a boys day out to Our Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh and listening to a Doctor Who story CD....

Hamish feeling shy!

It's the two bigger patchwork ones and yet again something else done in the shades of milky coffee.  

I did get those cupcakes made eventually, vanilla with lime and coconut buttercream and the one I ate (not saying a word about others scoffing them!!) was delicious and most worthy of being photographed......

.....one of the photos I took reminded me of those dutch oil paintings of fruit so I had a play at Picnik.

Not quite as ornate as I wanted but still effective?

I also got some of my wool stash out.........

......in mind to making some of these.......

 .......from a pattern purchased from Ysolda, here.  

My 'like a little sister' friend is expecting a wee girl in June and won't these be perfect?  I'm also thinking of making a patchwork quilt for the cot inspired by these.......

.......from Cath Kidston's Sew book.  I have an inclination towards applique ducks as once, many moons ago, said friend played a duck amazingly well, spookily well in fact, named Quackers in a Panto.  It's lovely to think I can make pretty things in pink and buy pretty clothes, stripes and polka dots.  I get away with stripes (I do love stripes!)obviously with my Biscuits but not dots. 

Goodness what a long post, time for lunch me thinks!

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