Watering the plants

Although we live in a teeny tiny studio apartment, we do have the luxury of having a small balcony. I mean, it is pretty small, only really big enough for a couple of chairs, but we also have a row of window boxes out there. 

Unfortunately (gardening-wise) we moved to France mid-August, which isn't really the best time to be planting. We tried, but unsurprisingly, almost everything died!

Now that spring's popping up, the chives and, surprisingly, the lettuces(!) are starting to revive. The rosemary coped fine, but obviously stopped growing. We've also planted some acorns that we collected in the autumn and stored in the fridge over winter, in the hope that they will grow. 

However, our rosemary plant was getting very dry in it's spot, so we decided to move it to its own box in the hope that having more space would also encourage it to grow. So move it I did. 

The rosemary in its new spot

Our balcony is also south-facing which won't really help with the whole being dry thing. So, while I was on Pinterest this morning up popped a link to a tutorial for keeping your plants watered (find it here). I loved the idea, so wondered if I could do the same for our plants. What with our plant boxes being on the ledge of our balcony I didn't particularly want to use glass bottles (although we have several waiting to be recycled) so decided to make use of our plastic milk bottles.

What a beautiful milk bottle ;)

You can just about see the hole in the lid

I removed the label and cut off the bottom to allow me to be able to fill it while it's in the soil. Then I punched a hole in the lid to make the opening smaller.


With fingers crossed (not literally) I placed my bottle in the soil and filled it up with water. Much of it went straight through the bottle and came out the bottom of the plant box. Not what I wanted to happen. I took the bottle out, looked at the soil and decided I'd try again, maybe the soil was just too dry to start with. In went the bottle for a second time; I repositioned it slightly. This time, the water didn't drain straight through so I've left it out there. Hopefully this'll help the rosemary be happier, and if it works I'll think about putting some more in the other boxes. Watch this space. 

The bottle in situ

The wonders of Scottish records

Every so often I go and dabble in a little family history research, and this morning I decided to see if I could find any more information out about the Scottish line on my wife's side. We have a subscription to ancestry and have also bought credits on Scotlands People to try to access the information about that part of the family. 

The awesome thing about the Scottish records is how complete they are. With the English BMD (Birth, Marriage, Death) records that are accessible online, you get very little information: name, date and general area. In comparison, when you find the Scottish record that you need it gives much much more detail.

For example, I went looking for some death records this morning as we already had the majority of births, and this is the one for my wife's 3x Great Grandfather. We knew he was born in 1849 in Kirriemuir, Angus, and we had him appearing in censuses up until 1901 so he had to have died sometime after that!

Death record of Alexander Donald

With a pretty broad time range entered, there were only 16 hits on the site, enough to fit on one page and enabled me to see some details for them all.

The other very useful thing about the Scottish ancestors we've come across is that they often have pretty distinctive middle names (frequently mother's maiden names) which makes it much easier to discern whether or not they're the one you're looking for! There was therefore only one possible match.

Looking at the image of the death record confirmed this was the man I was after, as his parents are also listed, along with his mother's maiden name. I did, however, find out some new information on this record - in the column with his name, there are two spouses mentioned, and we hadn't known about the second one. This made it possible for me then to go and find the marriage record of Alexander Donald and Eliza Smith, something we may never have found had these ancestors not been Scottish!

Marriage record of Alexander Donald and Eliza Smith

Introducing the Birthday Blanket

Today is Wednesday. Wednesday is the day that Bernat releases their clues for this years Knit-A-Long and Crochet-A-Long (Today will be the second clue, released at 10am EST). As I am signed up to receive their email updates, a month or so ago I became aware of these mystery -a-longs. I was very interested in taking part.

However, I am already four months, and 55 squares, into creating a blocked blanket and it was decided that I shouldn't/couldn't do either mystery blanket. At least not now. I am however keeping the clues, just in cases.

Here's a little about the blanket I'm making:

For my wife's 20th birthday, I gave her twenty presents. One of them was Jan Eaton's 200 Knitted Blocks, with a note inviting her to design a blanket using the blocks listed, which I would then make for her.

There have been several designs for this blanket, but the final one (I hope) is this:

Blanket design

The squares so far

There is much more information (and the previous designs) here.

Off to the mountains

Time to get on with the next project, this time a cross-stitch.

This cross-stitch is Isabelle Haccourt Vautier's 'Un Jour à la Montagne', which is pretty appropriate as a representation of our time in the Alps.

We bought the chart in a sale at the very end of last year with money given to us as a wedding present :)

I've assembled my materials ...

... and already made a start

Putting together the Very Pink Jumper

So, it is done, the Very Pink Jumper is complete!

Three weeks after starting, and I'm actually pretty proud of the first jumper I've ever made :)

Sewing up the shoulder seams 

Shoulder seams complete

Sewing up the side seams

Trying it on, side seams complete

Sewing in the sleeves

Finished jumper! :D

Upgrades

I'm meant to be focussing on getting the Very Pink Jumper done, but keep getting distracted by the iPad, now that I've discovered I can draw on it better than I expected!

Starting off with Sketchbook Express, I decided that for £2.99, the upgrade to Sketchbook Pro was worth it. This was the first amendment I made to my iPad art-making process.

The second was to construct a stylus for my iPad. I found that while I could draw with my finger, I was missing the use of an implement, and so after some investigations, mostly on youtube, I found that it was possible to make your own. My favourite! :)

A quick hunt around our little apartment gave me the required materials - a sponge, scissors and an old biro. The casing specifically had to be metal to make the stylus work, something that I did not have, so I made use of an old biro refill. Quite simply, I sewed a piece of sponge around the base of the refill and cut it to shape, simples!

The finished stylus

It's not the prettiest of styluses, but it does the job pretty well, I think.

Here are a few of the images I created with these upgrades:

Right, so, back to the Very Pink Jumper - I will get more of it done today!

Rediscovering my iPad

For my birthday in 2009, I asked for -and received- a wacom Bamboo Fun. These are some of the pictures I created with it:

Since that summer, when I drew a fair amount, I haven't really used my tablet, and I didn't bring it with me to France. I found myself with the urge to draw so decided to try my hand at using my iPad to create. These are the first couple of quick pictures I've produced, using the Sketchbook Express app:

I'm hoping that now I've started with this again that my drawing can get better in this digital form.

Longer than expected

When I started the Very Pink Jumper, I made myself a target of two weeks, which upon reflection may have been a little naïve. Well, it's been two weeks, and it's not finished. Instead, there's the entire front still to be knitted!

Last night I finished the sleeves, so now I'd best crack on with the front to try to get it finished while it's still cold over here.

So here's the new target, one more week to get this jumper finished - we'll see how I get on.

Sleeves :)

Yay, post

I love post, quite simply love it. 

So, having received a little yellow slip in the letterbox yesterday afternoon, I bundled myself up against the softly falling snow and the cold air and made my way to La Poste. I knew what my package would be, I'd ordered it a week and a half ago - my new Family Tree Maker software :)

Since arriving in France, my wife and I have worked a fair amount on our combined family tree - no small task when you consider that we both don't really know our fathers, and have step-fathers along with many siblings, and close cousins. It makes for very many branches of a tree! But all ones that we're interested in finding out about, none of this following the male name back and ignoring all the wives - in fact we've found they often have the most interesting stories. 

Anyway, so back to today, I picked up my package, hurried home to make a cup of tea and get installing.

Gotta love a good parcel :)

Now, it's time to play :D ... before returning to the knitting of the Very Pink Jumper!

Beginnings ...

So we're six months into a year abroad in France with my wife of seven months and I've had a lot of time to myself what with my very limited French and therefore lack of ability to find a real job here. I volunteer, but only for two hours a week so very quickly the year turned into my opportunity to focus on a variety of craft projects. 

During this time I've joined Ravelry, and have very much enjoyed charting the progress of my knitting, but have thought about all the other crafty things that I enjoy and how I'd like to be able to do something similar with those too. This is where blogging came in. I figured that might be the best way to document everything.

So, I'm midway through my very first knitted jumper (among other projects) and the weather here has been very very cold, resulting in my fingers not wanting to work - not very useful of them! This leads me to procrastinate (something I'm ever so good at doing) and figured now was as good a time as any to start this going :)

The Very Pink Jumper so far