Regular readers will realise that there has been something of a focus on gardening, growing, polytunnels and stuff on this blog over the last few months … in fact some might say there has been a general focus on grown stuff, given that I have decided to launch a new site focusing purely on this grown stuff, so much so that I’ve decided to call it GrownStuff.

GrownStuff.co.uk will be the repository for all my gardening posts from now on whilst MadeStuff will continue to focus on the arts and crafts, that’s not to say there isn’t an overlap though, photography remains an important part of what I do and the garden offers a wealth of photographic opportunities that interest me.  So in that vain at least I will continue to post images here that I deem ‘pretty enough’, such as this pair:

Clicking either image will take you to the new post.
See, now you get the pretty pictures without the ‘boring’ back story!

Jolene loves these wild daisies that flower in masses up and down the sides of roads, motorways and any other wild verge they can gain a foothold in … little wonder then that a small colony has established themselves in the garden!?

They are tremendously nice, although they’re currently competing with some ground elder that I’d remove if I could summon the energy and if it would stop raining for a wee while, although even the ground elder puts out some lovely wee flowers:

Still, I think we’d much rather have these ones:

I actually went a bought a close approximation of the wild daisy, no doubt a cultivar of some sort – the marguerite daisy – before the wild ones sprang up:

Anyway, that’ll be some daisies then …

In the last 4 weeks we’ve had both of our booked craft fairs whipped out from under our feet, due to no fault of our own I hasten to add.  The first thanks to the council library failing to sort out the right licence from, well, the council; the second being cancelled for who knows what reason.  It’s not like it’s the end of the world but it is just a tad frustrating!

In fact the only ‘fair’ we’ve been to recently was the Rosneath Highland Games, although that was only to spectate, not that I would struggle to throw the hammer or toss the caber you understand but I wouldn’t want to put all those big burly blokes noses out of joint by showing them up …

… I didn’t even get any decent pics of the games that I would be happy to share on here, so – I’m afraid – that means more pictures of flowers!  This remains a craft blog, honestly, even if it does look more and more like a gardening one!!

It’s pink … what more can I say!

Marigold

Rocket (I believe)

They’re white, and flowery … very pretty!

It was the lad’s birthday a couple of weeks ago so there’s a cake post waiting to be written, coming soon I assure you!

… and still I’m gripped by an inability to craft, seized as I am between an unfinished poly-tunnel and the start of the school summer holidays.

Progress on the poly-tunnel is slow, although there is at least progress with the door-frames having been erected since my last update, leaving only the base-rail to attach, the cover to apply and finally the door to attach.  On the bright side I have discovered an aquilegia hiding under a willow hedge, I’ve wanted aquilegia in the garden for an age and knew that if I was patient it would make it’s way up here from the village below.

We also have one of these (below) in the garden although, I’m damned if I know what it is …

… in fact, it’s bugging me so much that I’m willing to give the first person who can identify it a £5 discount off anything with a price-tag of £10 or more from the shop.  All you need to do is convince me that your identification is correct by providing me with a link/s to somewhere that shows pictures with the correct name attached.  Just leave a comment at the bottom.   That should be easy enough if you already know what it is :)

Also today the lad has been playing with dung beetles …

I mentioned previously that I’ve been busy putting together the poly-tunnel (amongst other things) hence the dearth of actual crafts of late, although I think the tunnel may actually qualify under the auspices that it is ‘Stuff’ what has been ‘Made’!?  Failing that Jolene has been working on a couple of bits n’ bobs that should be finished in the next few days so we might actually return to some real craft stuff soon :)

The tunnel’s steel work has been relatively simple to erect, in fact I can honestly say that the most difficult part was digging quarrying the holes for the ground tubes and anchor plates through a rock rich clay mixture.  Fortunately the father-in-law volunteered to help, and I must say it was help that was hugely appreciated, it took the whole day to finish digging the holes and get the tubes in but by the end of Saturday that part was done:

Having said that I did need to dig a couple back up the next day to re-align them, but with the soil already loosened by the previous days efforts it only took a half hour to do, unlike the solid hour it had previously taken to dig each whole.

On Sunday, Jolene and I set about putting up the hoops and although I had to dash out to get a titanium drill bit to allow us to drill holes for the screws we progressed well and we managed to get the basic frame up along with the corner stabilisers and door rails, even it did mean that I had been on the go from 9am until 7pm without any real break:

On Monday I was at it again, fortunately the lass was content to entertain herself and sat watching for most the day so that I was able to press on and attach all the crop bars and storm braces.

All that’s left to do now is put together the door frames, doors, attach the base rails and then wait for a nice calm day that happens to coincide with some spare bodies so that we can get the cover on.  Of course once that’s done I’ll need to install some raised beds and a staging area … we might actually get something growing in it by 2012!!

Aside from weeds I mean:

I’ve just browsed through the last page worth of posts that we’ve made on here and can’t help noticing that the amount of MadeStuff has somewhat tailed off of late, indeed, I currently have NO crafting projects under-way at the minute.  I’ve been too busy cutting the grass …

What I do have on the go at the moment is the building of our poly-tunnel, although I suspect that this is going to take more than the ‘couple of days’ that the instructions suggest it might take!

Meanwhile though garden has been coming along and, amongst other things I’m having to shift the wood from the wood shed so that I can tear it down (it’s falling apart anyway) and put in a chicken coop for the chickens we will hopefully get in the next few months (or next year) once I’ve sorted out the fencing.

Here’s a wee sample of some of the current blooms in the garden …

Wild poppy

London Pride

Our single aubretia bloom

I think I may be becoming a fanatic, well, maybe not quite; although I did find myself outside in the rain this morning pulling weeds and re-arranging pots!?  The garden really has quite a lure to me, being confined to quarters over the winter and suffering a wee bit with cabin fever really makes you appreciate being able to get outside … of course, being fortunate enough to live in a beautiful part of the country helps too!

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been making the most of the good weather doing some chores in the garden, like installing an outside tap (I hate plumbing with a passion) and building a retaining wall – amongst other odds and ends.

Click to enlarge

I don’t have a good history with plumbing projects going back to a project when we first moved into our current house when a plan to replace the element in the immersion tank took around 4-5 days and ended up with me having to remove and replace the entire tank, then there’s been the radiators and pipes that have burst and the cursing that occurs whenever a newly jointed pipe turns out to not be water tight … seriously, you have no idea!

Fortunately I had no such problems with the plumbing this time around … maybe I’m getting better at it.  The wall took a little longer than I had anticipated and massively more mortar than I’d have imagined was possible, it looks like it’s about to fall over in the picture but that’s as a result of some, er, clever photography.  Maybe I should find a clever photographer to explain it!

As luck would have it though the garden has some wee gems in it at the moment, and as I mentioned earlier the area we live in is beautiful.  It all helps to lower my blood pressure.  Here are a few samples of what’s going on in the garden just now:

Strawberries are beginning to flower, yum!

Black Currant blooms. Plain flowers, yummy berries!

Some pretty lilac flowers - does anyone know what they're called?

Blue Bells, except they're white ...

Pretty blue 'weed'

Black Currant (or possibly red) berries coming along nicely

You may notice that the currants feature twice, we’re fortunate enough to have quite a few and I’ve discovered this year that they’re easily propagated, something I’m hoping to do more of once the polytunnel has arrived and been assembled.  I’m not sure if it’s something we’ve mentioned on here previously but we decided to invest in large (14′ x 30′) poly-tunnel as our site is extremely exposed which can make growing much of anything extremely difficult.  More on that at a later date though.

Last time I made a post like this one the weather turned foul, so it’s with some hesitation I make another!

The weather though has improved some in the last week or two, which is great news given that we seem to have had the longest, coldest winter certainly in my memory and as the old folks keep assuring us the longest one since 1962.  Anyway, in light of the recent bout of decent sunshine I’ve been getting outside as much as possible meaning a distinct lack in crafting activities, although I do have a couple of small projects underway.

In the meantime though here is a small sample of some of the sights that I’ve been enjoying in the garden, with the exception of the rhubarb (which I used to make a fantastic apple and rhubarb crumble – yum!) everything else is wild.

Coming soon …

… some crafts!!

Spring always seems to drag it’s feet when it comes to arriving at our rural idyll so I’m sure you’ll forgive me the posting of some piccies I took yesterday when the garden seemed to be alive with bees … except for when I wanted to photograph them!

I promise you some more crafty goodness in the next few days, there are pics and posts waiting to be made by Jolene, and I’ve also been making more bonnie birds and Jolene’s been trying her hand there too.

Recently in the MadeStuff house there has been a tidying up effort.  Many of our supplies have been stored in the one room that we really need to renovate so Alasdair has been busy boxing up supplies and moving them to another room while I’ve been busy making new things out of old supplies!

Last year we had a load of photos printed for sale at craft fairs and spent many hours mounting them.  There’s only so much mounting that you can stand so naturally there were some left over.  Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been making notebooks with the leftovers and I want to share with you how to make them.

The first thing you need to do is find a nice size of photo (ours are 6×8) and remove any white space from the top and bottom.

Then you need some paper that is cut to be bigger than your photo height and width, quite a bit bigger or you’ll struggle to cut the pages square.  You need several sheets of paper (I had 7 to give my book 28 pages).

Fold the photo in half widthways and mark 1cm intervals right down the middle of the fold (on the unprinted side).  Try and leave the same amount of space at each end.

Fold your paper in half and place each sheet of paper on top of the other, with the photo on top (wrong side up).

Take a large book such as the phone book, or I used the Screwfix catalogue and open it towards the middle.  Place your pile of paper and photo so the the fold of the pile sits in the spine of the book.

Take a dressmakers pin, or drawing pin, or any sort of pin (you might have the proper tool, I don’t) and stick it through the pile of paper at the marked 1cm intervals.  Make sure each hole goes all the way through.

Once all of the holes have been made take the photo from the top of the pile and put it on the bottom, photo side out.

Take a long length of strong thread and start sewing a running stitch through the holes to sew the pages together.  When you get to the last hole, sew all the way back to the top again.  Secure with square stitches and cut the end off.  You could also attach beads to the ends for a decorative bookmark.

Close the book over and use a paper cutting knife to trim the edges square all the way through.  If you’ve got access to a guillotine then I suggest you use that to save your hands the pain of cutting through pages and pages of paper.

Put the closed notebook under something heavy to encourage it to stay closed.

That’s it…seemed easier to do than to write down so I hope that’s easy enough to follow.

I added some nice cellophane and button packaging which you could do if you want to give one of your hand bound books as a gift.