early autumn

It's so beautiful here at the moment. There is still so much warmth in the sun whose light is soft and golden. Each morning as we drive through the village on the way to school my breath is taken away by how beautiful everything is. The colour of the trees and the way the light plays on the water. I love this time of year, it feels like a sighing out-breath after the brightness and busy-ness of the summer. It is a time to harvest the work done over the summer and it also triggers me to look inwards again; to home, and home comforts, organising and baking and knitting!

Benny and I found loads of conkers (horse chestnuts) one day last week on a trip to get him new boots. Hunting for them among the trees made us feel like we were searching for gems and precious stones and indeed we felt rich when we came home with a boot box filled with deep brown shiny treasures.

At first the conkers were people: children in a shoe box school, or prisoners. Then Garry showed them how to play conkers: stringing them onto colour cotton and seeing which conker is the strongest in battle.

The garden is slowly taking shape again, there is still so much work to be done, but we are enjoying the ripe tomatoes and abundant rocket.

 Garry built a new fence out of pallets, it looks lovely and he has plans to put some window boxes along the bottom filled with herbs or trailing flowers.

 Life has of course been full: full of the everyday, of school runs and appointments and house work, much housework!
The kids are all really enjoying school. Rebe complains about it, but she does so well and her work has become so much more interesting this year and she is bringing home wonderful homework: history, geography and even her English comprehension is interesting. Benny loves school and particularly loves Irish. When he knows the words he speaks to me in Irish too!
Joa is really enjoying pre-school and comes back each day filled with stories of what he has been doing.

 Joa drew this picture of Maggie (one of our dogs) after she had some kind of a seizure. It was pretty scary but luckily she is no worse for it and fingers crossed it was a one off event. So Joa drew her a get well soon picture. I love that he basically drew a person, but with fur! It says a lot about his relationship with dogs!

I've been drawing too:

 My art classes have started back up again (yay!). For my first lesson I took along a mackerel the kids had caught on a fishing trip with Andy. I drew it with pencil and I plan for the coming to weeks to make some photocopies of it and use all my lovely new art materials to fill in the colour.

We went to a lovely naming ceremony a few weeks ago friends of ours were having for their little son. Rebe made him this beautiful ball out of felt. It was a fairly easy little project, I helped her with the sewing machine part, but she did the rest herself. I think the pattern is from 'Making Toys for Children'.

 and I decorated this little wooden treasure box for him. Our guys still love the treasure boxes I gave them a few years ago so I thought it would make a nice naming present for him.

 Of course amid all of this (and other) goings on I have been working away on my doll waiting list.

These are a couple of dolls I finished in the last month. I have also been working pretty hard at getting my patterns ready for sale. I have had test knitters and sewers try them out for me and I am hoping that come October I will have several knitting patterns, sewing patterns for clothing and also a snuggle buddy and a 16" waldorf doll tutorial ready for sale in my etsy shop!! I'll let you know of course when they are ready :-)