Hedgehog Rescue!

 

 Above is a little bunch of roses from our garden to thank the lovely Mary for all her good work helping our one eyed, resident hedgehog, Nelson. My neighbour and I kept spotting him wandering around in the day which is a sure sign that things are not good. I spoke to Mary and she said that it can mean that the hedgehog can't consume enough through the night. Nelson looked very thin and small and had a rather nasty looking lump in his eye. We managed to catch him and, with the help of three excitable children, took him to the hedgehog hospital!

He's been there of six weeks, had his eye treated and was fed up (with food, not bored!). He he is on his return!!

Isn't he beautiful? We put him in the hedgehog house with a mountain of mealworms... Sometimes we hear him snuffling about in the evening if we wander about in our garden which is nice. Just call me Kate Humble.

Nelson's bijoux residence....

Walking in Avebury

Our lives have been incredibly busy lately. A combination of this and a substandard internet connection have resulted in a forced stay-cation from Blogsville. However, I'm now back with a camera full of creativity just waiting to be uploaded...

Our work load over the last few months has been relentless. Mr Inky and myself are exhausted both physically and mentally from all the stuff we've had going on. More about that in another post...this one is all about a lovely, rejuvenating day out yesterday at the neolithic stone circle, Avebury.

We come here a lot as it's not too far from where we live. We don't profess to be druids but you really can feel a wondrous sense of calm and well being here even when there are masses of people (and sheep) wandering and wondering along side you. We come here when we are unsettled and facing change and the solid, ancientness of these stones seem to ground us.

The undulating landscape is lovely and very inspiring for an arty bod like myself. I love the colours in this picture...the yellow cornfield against the blue sky and green grass...

The stones form huge circles and inner circles which are enclosed by deep ditches and high, chalky banks which are great for running along, the only risk is sustaining an embarassing injury from slipping on a fresh sheep poo (there is rather a lot).

 
This path leads to a monumental collection of 'Lord of the Rings' type trees which were very mythical looking.

When we arrived there we saw a lady chanting a spell by one of the trees and a mother and son whispering words of prayer. We felt that we needed to be quiet and respectful here like when we visit a church or stately home. These beautiful trees certainly commanded the same respect. The ribbons hanging from the branches are peoples wishes...

Under the trees was a man playing the billabong. It was a welcome a soundtrack.

The little girl tied a ribbon onto one of the roots...

...and wished that she would grow fairy wings.

I wonder what these wishes are?

 This one is my secret, yellow wish..

Some wishes were more permanent...The, somewhat, raging Pagan in me tells me that this is tree abuse, the typographer, however, says it could be art...

...talking of art, these knarly roots are are a joy to behold, never ending, interlocking...

Imagine seeing huge, protruding stones when you open your bedroom curtains!

Not a rain cloud in sight... we enter another week fully refreshed!

Washi Tape Cake Toppers!

When the Little Girl gets back from pre-school we have just over two hours of peace before we need to start the school run...and then chaos seems to reign! Our peaceful afternoons are my favourite part of the day because we have a rule only to do lovely 'Little Girl' type things such as wrapping bits of ribbon around barbie dolls, colouring, drawing family members (all with long eyelashes and lipstick) etc.

The Little Girl's favourite thing to do, however, is cooking and we have progressed from jelly to fairy cakes. Such are her cake baking skills that age 3 she can break eggs perfectly only getting a tiny bit of shell in the mix...which adds a bit of crunch! To our cakes we usually add pink icing made with icing sugar, a bit of water and pink colouring but we had a bit of white chocolate left in the cupboard so decided to use that.

We melted the chocky and then added a glug of double cream turning an ordinary cake topping into a very posh sounding 'ganache'. This basically means that the chocolate is quite silky looking and sets sticky rather than hard. We added 'micro' chocolate eggs and hundreds and thousands...yum!

Next stage of the decoration are the flags. The Little Girl is as equally excited about a plain sheet of A4 as her mother and set to making a 'no expense spared' white paper flag...

...and promptly selected the largest cake as her own...that's my girl!

Now if any of you arty/crafty bods out there in blogland have not heard of Washi tape you're in for a treat. It's basically decorative masking/paper tape which is ever so slightly transparent. Go to the Washi tape website for inspiration. Washi tape is brilliant for young children because you can rip it and re-stick it.

Anyway...we decided to make little flags for our cakes. Just cut a little piece and stick on the top of a cocktail stick....

Fold it over so it sticks to the other side and snip a little triangle out to make a flag shape...

Looks gorgeous on little cakes..!

Stone Lettering

I've always loved this quote and spent a long time last year drawing the lettering for this piece.

It kind of marks a turning point for me because for 10 years I've been drawing formal roman alphabets and consequently have become a bit obsessed with 'getting them right'. By 'right' I mean that the proportions of every letter are perfect, the space within and surrounding each letter is balanced etc.

Whilst I understand that it is essential to have strong foundations when developing a skilled craft, and the key to breaking the rules in art and craft is to know those rules inside out, it has left me with a slight nervous twitch every time I do something which bends formality a bit...will it look rubbish? Will my peers snigger at its childishness? Am I producing something new and exciting or odd and confusing? I think that this is quite common insecurity for arty, crafty bods.

I started to find that the longer I spent 'perfecting' something, the worse it starting to look!

My friend Judith helped me. She wondered why I was trying to recreate a perfect letterform. Was it because I was trying to make the letters look like they hadn't been hand drawn? Fine... if I had intended that but what was my intention? For me it is to create a beautifully formed letter, beautifully DRAWN, not typed on a computer. I realised that to me, the visual beauty in a letter created by a human hand (rather than a machine) is in its imperfections which, in turn, make that letter pleasing to the human eye.

...And so eventually, with a lot of messing about,  this lovely quote by William Morris became some thing beautiful for my house! The lettering is my variation on a roman capital. It's a bit wonky on purpose as I adjusted the letters to fit and didn't drawn any lines to follow which I think is interesting.

Finally, Judith said that I must look at the work of David Jones ...
 

A lot of his work was purchased by the Tate in the seventies. It's a beautiful and free exploration of roman lettering created, I think, with pen strokes like the 'versal' lettering used in ancient bibles and religious texts. Its imperfections are beautiful and very inspiring.

Weekend Sunshine

The sun shone all weekend and gave me a little spring in my step...boing!

It seems, as I'm getting older, that the change in seasons affects me more intensely. I do love the change from autumn into winter, relishing a crackling fire and a dark evening, as much as when spring bursts forth. However lovely it is, though, warming my toes by the fire and all that, there is a low point at the end of February when I've really have had enough. I'm so fed up with wet, dark, grey weekends and a house full of children who don't want to go outside because it's too wet or cold or....dark!

My barren garden looks quite lovely in the winter as it's full of teasles and birds but it looks even more beautiful in the summer when it burst with flowers...and nettles, brambles, ground elder etc!

Two beautiful crisp days this weekend lifted everyone in our household and reminded us that the most wonderful thing about living in the countryside is being outside and the freedom of all the outside space we have by our house.

We have two huge gardens which wrap themselves around our home, doubley enclosed with a network of ancient yew trees...like a big hug. In the winter the garden seems to turn into a huge muddy moat, a defence between our house and the car park, calling small children to muddy their lovely clean school clothes. In the summer it is like entering a secret, magical place which calls kids to climb it's trees, make dens and have and adventure. It makes adults stop, smile, relax, wander and feel a whole lot better about their own gardens (because they have a lot less weeds!)

Wandering around our sunny, winter garden, stripped back to it's bare bones, made me realise what I love about living where I do and what I'll miss when we move away....

I love the bubbled stain glass of my front door against the rough oak pillars of the porch, the washed out distressed iron water butt against the cream cotswold stone walls and the woven willow....

I love all the textures, contrasts between rough and smooth, old and new, man made and natural.

Old enamel lettering, partly rusted looks lovely and provides an interesting contrast to the plants and trees.

I love the colour of rust...I bought this piece of iron from a car boot sale when I was very heavily pregnant and then dragged it back to my car!

Roll on spring!

Geocaching Adventure

Every Sunday Mr Wild Ink and I suggest to the children that we go on a lovely, long, rambling walk. It's a great thing to do as a family because we talk, giggle, jump in a few muddy puddles and get back home feeling like we truly deserve a hot chocolate/cup of tea/biccy/DVD etc. Recently our suggestion of a Sunday ramble has been met, not with enthusiasm, but a whole load of moans and groans. The whining continues throughout the WHOLE walk making it not a thing of pleasure but a miserable chore for everyone.

I felt that our local walks needed an injection of something new and exciting and I'd read about 'geocaching' in a newspaper article a few years ago. It's basically an international treasure hunt with a huge following. All round the world 'caches' have been hidden ready and waiting to be found.

After logging on to the site and registering for free we were delighted to find that loads of caches were hidden along the footpaths near where we live. We downloaded the app on my phone and followed the GPS reading which helped to navigate us to the caches.

After a longish walk, our GPS told us that we had indeed hit the spot so the children began searching high and low. We looked under big stones, piles of sticks and then the big boy spotted this in a rotten old gate post.....

It was a 'nano' cache!!!! The children were so excited (as were the adults!!). 

We unscrewed the lid and wrote our details on the log ......then replaced it where we found it ready for the next geocacher to discover.

We marked it on the app as having found it then searched online for the next nearest cache which we found in no time. This proved to be even more exciting as it have little things to swap in it (the website has suggested you bring with you a few nic-nacs). The kids chose a badge, we left some marbles for the next intrepid explorer, logged it as found then searched for the next one...

...and found it! This was an even bigger cache and the children were quite beside themselves with excitment. The brilliant thing is that all these exciting boxes are all over the place but unless you're 'in the know' you would never be able to find them. We felt like we were part of a secret and elite club!

Loads of interesting things in this one!

We logged it and left feeling very excited and quite addicted!!

Fortified by some chewy sweets found in my ancient raincoat (no GPS required), we set off home feeling like we'd had a proper adventure and had, without a doubt, earned our hot chocolates! x

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

My car battery is getting on and, consequently, if the temperature drops below 5c my car will not start.

This is very frustrating because I need to get everyone out the house and in the car by 8.15 and when Mr Wild Ink leaves for work at 6am and there are no residents at home in our village I cannot jump start my car. Every moment of my day is accounted for so this week there is no time to get a battery until the weekend.

Also my washing machine in the shed keeps freezing up so I can't wash clothes for a week AND we've run out of logs.

Normally these things wouldn't faze me but with all we need to do with our house renovation, it's just more things to sort out...

When I sat down (at 11.30pm!!!) last night my heart was warmed by this lovely photo taken by Charlotte. I had a read through her lovely, lovely blog and felt all the stresses of my day unravel.

I then had a little nose at Jane Brocket's fantastic blog which, like all her books, is such a pleasure to read. It's what I love about blogging... reading a snippet of someone else's life. A guilty pleasure for me, like eating chocolate...but low in fat!