Thursday 18 September 2014

September

Once again time flies and Autumn is upon us - although it looks like we'll be getting an Indian summer! 
This weather is really good for us as we are still working hard on the exterior of the house; we've had a massive amount of clearing up, hired a skip which we filled to the gunwales, lots of runs to the not so local tip and we finally cleared the massive mound of earth: this time only three lorries so 60 tonnes - not bad for us!!!
We now have an enormous hole ready for the rainwater harvesting tank; so the connection from the house to this will be next..
...in the meantime Richard continues every weekend to work hard on putting the fascia and guttering in place, Our very good friend David has tirelessly helped & it's made such a difference to a fidly time consuming job!  
It's looking really nice as you can see from some of the photos. We are optimistic this job will be finished at the weekend and then hopefully we can get our final sign off!!! 



Paul has scraped the border alongside the driveway so that I could get some of my potted plants planted to save having to water them as they were struggling,  however it's like planting in concrete; horrible horrible soil. We've worked out to get 4 inches of topsoil will be two 7 yd.³ skip fulls! 

The studio is nearly up and running & I have finally unpacked all my boxes and I've tried to create areas where I can work: wet and dry - not that I have actually achieved much on the textiles front this summer! My friend Carolyn (who has OCD in the tidy department!!) helped to put my fabrics in order...

Very organised fabrics?!! Wonder how long they'll stay like that??!!! 

Sketchbooks & boxes full of inspiration...

 I did do a little cushion project: dyed some fabrics and then printed them and now I'm embroidering  before I make them up into cushions more photos to follow..

Our new editions :
we finally decided it was time to have some more chickens! As I have been enjoying using my ovens and baking a lot -  I get quite fed up buying eggs; so we have bought three chickens - Daisybelle who is a hybrid Sussex and Rhode Island Red cross and will lay 300 eggs p/a. A Copper Maran called Matilda she is a pure Breed will lay very dark chocolate brown eggs approx 230 p/a and A Buff Orpington called Bodacea (Bodie for short) she's essentially a pet chicken who will become a very large bird & won't lay much & is broody often but we're ok with what works out at approximately as 10 eggs a week!! 
Matilda the Copper Maran
Daisybelle the Daisy Belle
Bodie the Buff Orpington

Lovely dark brown Maran eggs... Can't wait!! 
Chickens from The Warwickshire Chicken Coop http://www.warwickshirechickencoop.com

My dads been attacking part of the garden that's got very overgrown; I plan to take down & reuse the trellis, put the shed behind the trees with the compost heap and have a vegetable patch here - another job for another time!!

Finally I'm quite excited as we've been nominated for an award with Whychavon Council. They have 3 categories 1.A Heritage property 2. extension or conservatory and 3.a new build.
 Judging takes place in November - unfortunately we may not be finished enough to be considered but Stuart our Architect has put us forward anyway
You can read about it here: http://www.wychavon.gov.uk/news-and-alerts/-/blogs/the-hunt-for-great-design-starts-here

And so I'll sign off again and will hopefully be back with more exciting news soon!
Wendi x