This week we've mostly been...

Mowing.  Firstly let me say: if you ever move into a house where the 'lawn' hasn't been trimmed for years, we can highly recommend a Mountfield RS100.  I kid you not, this tiny thing (only 100cc engine), when pushed by a person (it can propel itself) can slowly, and steadily, work down a meadow.

realises she's missing an up to date photo, nips off, comes back 5 mins later with photos and video<

Okay, the video's not worth the effort, but let me share photos.

When we moved in, the house and garden looked like this:



Since then Spring crept in and turned all that brown grass into two foot long meadow.  Lovely for the frogs, crickets and birdies, bit messy looking to us and playing merry heck with my hayfever!

Well, the front lawn now looks like this:


This was my humble effort over the week:



And Jo has even started down the side of the house!  We are taking turns mowing, but my hands and wrists complain about ripping the start cord fast enough, plus all that mown grass seed is making my eyes itch like billy-oh.



And here is the little device that's making all this happen:


and this is the grass mound we're making:

Yeah, the garage is starting to get a leeeetle crowded now!  Doesn't help that there's a dead electric mower in the corner behind the bike too, not sure what to do with that, it was here when we moved so I'm wary of advertising it for someone to come take incase the NATS folks ask for it or something.


So, the rest of the week.


Tiny purple flowers down at the resouce centre.  I've got no idea what they are, but they're cute.



This is my spinning wheel, an Ashford Traditional.  It was sitting outside because I'd just spent some time brushing it over with linseed oil then wiping off the excess.  It stank to high heaven but it's now looking very happy and well fed.  Fiona and I are doing a little spinning demo at the agricultural show this Friday and the consideration is if we only have enough room for one wheel to take this one as it's more what people expect.



What else?
Alice sent us a kite!  I admit to being a bit bemused to begin with, but it is rather fun to fly.





Jo showing his skills.


Me managing to stay aloft.


A fairly common scene.  Less so with Jo, but when we took it to the beach the second time he made up for it ;)



I think this seagull had a similar accident:



I finished my Inkle weaving.  I think I might stick some D rings on it and have a new belt, but for now it's just sitting about.  My grandparents did send me some money and I spent a fair bit buying some finer threads for playing on the inkle loom, this thick cotton makes nice stripes, but anything fancily patterned looks loose and blah.



Yesterday saw me in receipt of two zwartble fleeces from the farmer up the road.  Apparently he'd like a scarf for each of his daughters I think it was, four scarves I've been told!  Last night I sorted them, pulling off the poo-ey bits and the matted bits and the bits that weren't really worth the effort.  I still had a good bit left.  Here is about 1/6th of what I have soaking in a hot bath:


The water afterwards:  Impressive what one sheepy picks up in a year.


And out drying.  The hockey sticks are to keep it put.  It'll stay in place initially because of the weight of water, but when that gets too low the wind tries to steal my fleece!  There's about 3x this now washed, the rest was nearly dry so I put it back in the mesh bag and peggd that on the line to air dry.



And that's about it.  I do have some videos too, but one of them is nearly 50MB so I'll post those later.