Digging for Victory

This was our garden in March. Neater and tidier but still suffering from the broken fence problem. Having finally plucked up the courage to speak to our neighbour on the right, Sandee, I discovered that she'd been thinking about getting her Dad to repair the fence anyway. And repair it he did - he made a fantastic job of it, a million times better than Miles and I would have managed on our own. And they refused to accept any money from us! Sweet, lovely people.

The installing of the new fence meant I could finally start my vegetable plot. After much sweat and toil I managed to make a very rudimentary raised bed and felt, frankly, very pleased with myself! So here we have the veg plot and new fence at the beginning of this month.
After a halcyon period during which I convinced myself that some pellets from the garden centre would be enough to deter the cats, I gave in and installed some more forceful defences. Thank you, chicken wire.I have planted a few different things: (working backwards from the foreground) various salad, tomatoes, beetroot, peas, perpetual spinach, one pumpkin and two courgettes (under the cloches), pak choi and radishes. My containers of herbs and salad are doing well, with the mint and rocket trying to out-do each other. The little cat on the doormat is Belle, Emily's friend from downstairs and one of the many local cats who think that my raised bed is a giant toilet!
I'm also trying some chillies and aubergine but they're not looking very impressive. I planted them as plugs nearly two months ago and this is as far as they've got. Oh well, at least the cats leave them alone so maybe there's hope yet!

Emily Entertainment

After a request for some Emily updates here we have a selection of illustrative portraits (which I am finally able to load having found my camera cable. Hurrah!).

As a growing cat, Emily divides her time between attacking things

and sleeping.

The purple cushion is her joint-favourite spot (the other is on Miles' desk, tucked behind the curtain). She is also good at helping me work. Here she is sitting in a surprisingly human position and looking rather sleepy .

This pose, with the crossed paws, reminds me of those primary school portraits they make you have. She should be leaning on a prop pillar!

The Ginger Giant or Kitty Kapers - part 2

Not much has been going on here apart from work, work, work. Now punctuated by sickness. Boo.

One of my many recent work things was an academic conference at which I had the excellent fortune to meet Maura of Paper Bluebird. After hearing rumours that she and a colleague were looking for fabric shopping opportunities in London, I felt like the bat logo (or pincushion logo, I guess) had been flashed on the sky and jumped to their aid! Once we got down to talking fabric I discovered that, apart from being a fascinating scholar with an interest in Victorian suburbia, she was a craft blogger who follows many of my favourite crafters too. Ah, serendipity. So lovely to make a new friend who straddles two worlds!

Away from the internet and back home, having Emily the kitten is making everything brighter. She is currently helping me mark A-level scripts by eating my biro. Being so cat focused recently, Miles pointed out that I really should share with the world the truth about Pip, my parents' ginger cat. He has been the cute kitten in the photo on my blog banner since I started writing lechatlunatique last year.




However, he is no longer a pip. He is, in fact, the Ginger Giant! Seen here with my father as a point of comparison!



He has truly become one of the biggest cats I have ever seen! Despite being the size of a small dog he is still utterly gorgeous and one of the most sweet-natured cats you will ever, ever meet. He continues to be devoted to his sister and her daughters, and takes his uncle role very seriously. He can be seen here with Emily's sister, Primrose. It's all too cute!

Kitty Kapers

Please say hello to our new four-legged friend, Emily.

Our big excitement on getting back from holiday was adopting one of Agnes' kittens, so last Sunday Miles and I went over to my parents' house and collected little Emily. She was good as gold on her tube and bus journeys, even going to sleep (I've never known any cat to do that in a carry basket!).

This week she has made herself thoroughly at home, and then this weekend she's started to explore the garden too. Although, like any kitten she spends most of her time bouncing around, scrambling up furniture and pouncing on anything that moves, she has also shown a propensity for curling up next to me while I'm reading on the sofa. Too cute!

Aloha from Hawaii

Ok, so we've actually been back from Hawaii for over a week, it's just taken me a ridiculously long time to do any posting. The island of Oahu was incredibly beautiful - just like all those pictures and movies would have you believe. We were very fortunate to be staying near what had to be the loveliest beach on the island, Kailua Beach, pictured top. From Kailua the bus took us into Honolulu in about 45 minutes. These shots are just a few from around Honolulu and Waikiki.

The flora and fauna were incredible - as just one little example, the plumeria flowers look and smell wonderful, and locals really do wear them in their hair!

A shop in Chinatown selling fresh leis.

On the craft front, there were a few examples of Hawaiian quilts in the art museum we visited.

The top fabric is cut like a paper snowflake then appliqued onto the base fabric. Typically the quilts are in bold, two-tone colours, with shapes often representing natural forms. The quilting is done in tiny, closely packed rows which echo the cut-out design. One description I came across pointed out that Hawaiian clothing did not generate scraps in the same way that 19th century American clothing design did, hence the Hawaiians did not develop comparable patchwork techniques. The echo quilting technique is incredibly time-consuming, with some designs taking up to a year to do. A possible explanation for this is that the quilts are only ever decorative - the crafts people did not have the pressing deadline of a snowy New England winter to work towards and thus could afford to take as much time as they liked!

One of my top recommendations would be Shangri-La, a breathtaking house built in the 1930s near Diamond Head by Doris Duke, an American heiress, as a home for her collection of Islamic art. This picture above just shows the pool house!

Looking at that view everyday wouldn't be difficult! If only I had a magnate's fortune!

Married!

The wedding was beautiful! In the end it went by in a flash. Wish we could do it all again.

One of the most impressive elements were the beautiful bouquets and buttonholes produced by the bridal party under the tutleage of chief bridesmaid Becca. Close ups on the bridal bouquet and one of the bridesmaids' posies:

We bought the flowers from the New Covent Garden Flower Market on the Friday morning then made them up into bouquets on the Saturday. The making was so much fun and made the flowers feel so personal. And they smelled amazing! It's a shame there aren't more opportunities in life for playing with lovely flowers!

Happy Belgian Easter

I hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend. These pictures are from my trip to Bruges last weekend (to buy booze for the wedding, which is now only 5 days away!). Obviously the Belgians are all about good Easter chocolate!

Bruges itself is best described as 'chocolate box' - very picturesque but also lived in (you can see a child's sandpit in the left-hand corner of this picture).

We visited Ypres and some of the WW1 sites as part of the weekend too - as you'd imagine, it was all incredibly poignant. This is Tyne Cot Cemetery.

And this is the Menin Gate in Ypres.

I didn't spot much of crafting interested except lots of impressive lace. A few things that did catch my eye, though: this great fabric used to cover a shop window undergoing a revamp (it's called 'Gourmandise' by Pierre Frey),

this lovely Pinocchio tape measure my Mum purchased;

and this excellent little storage chest.

What is it with European haberdasheries and lingerie in the same store? I've noticed that in France too - not very welcoming for any stray male crafters!

Flowers from the Estate

I am disproportionately excited about these daffodils because they are the first blooms from the Rodway-Eady estate. Ok, so, the term 'estate' is a little grand for our garden but I'm aiming for big things. This was how the garden stood last November when I spent about 3 hours clearing a makeshift flowerbed (with only hand-tools, I hasten to add):




The extent of the plant growth over the rest of the garden gives you a feel of what I'm up against! We share our tiny urban garden with our neighbours on the ground floor - the sink which you can glimpse in the far left hand corner is theirs. Lovely. They only use the garden for hanging their washing and sitting outside to smoke in the summer. Given that they clearly have no designs on garden design (as it were), I feel more than entitled to plant whatever I like. I'm sticking to our side for the time being, though. At the moment this is the best view.




I've installed a compost bin at the end, under the tree, and have daffodils and irises in the flower patch (there should be crocuses too, but the squirrel has munched them down to nothing!). Nearest the camera is a planter with parsley, thyme and rosemary. As you can see, the major problem is the broken fence. The plan is to replace this once we get back from Hawaii at the end of next month, and to raise the bed so I can plant vegetables to see us through the summer. I have ordered some shade-loving plants to put in the built-up concrete bed at the back which will hopefully give the garden a little more shape. For now, I'm enjoying the amazing smell from the daffodils - so much stronger than any shop-bought ones. I feel positively green-fingered!

Kitten update

The kittens have been coming on in leaps and bounds (well, mostly wobbly crawls and whines at the moment!). Here they are on 24th February:


and again on 6th March:

Obviously, they're still doing much the same things - feeding and sleeping in a kitten pile, but they have got much bigger and have opened their eyes. They'll be bouncing out of that box in no time. We have reviewed the gender situation and discovered that my original readings were wrong - in fact there is one boy and three girls (my career as a veterinarian crashes and burns before it's even started!). In the picture above, the boy is second from the right - he is the darkest and biggest. Since discovering that it is a brother and three sisters, the names coming into consideration are, obviously, Branwell, Charlotte, Emily and Anne (after the Brontës), or Chekhov's three sisters, Olga, Masha and Irina (the brother is generally called Prozorov - more a dog name than a cat name, I feel!). My current vote is for the Brontës but we shall wait and see.

Pip is still rather wary of them but is happy that Agnes occasionally wants to come out of the box and play with him in the garden - they're only really kittens themselves (Agnes turned one yesterday and Pip's birthday will be on Good Friday). Here they are on Thursday evening, back to one of their favourite positions - lounging on the breakfast bar (with Pip merrily disregarding the presence of Mum's laptop):


I'm trying to picture the poor old breakfast bar when 6 cats want to get on it!

Clever Cat

The beautiful and very clever Agnes had her kittens last Saturday! There are four, two boys and two girls. Three are dark with assorted markings, but seem to be getting a little lighter already, while one looks very much like her mother. The names are still a work in progress. At the moment Dickens is offering some inspiration, as he has done for Thornton Rodway cats for many years, although the second source, Brambly Hedge books, are coming in a strong second.

Pip seems to be somewhat confused by the whole process, understandably. However, he's not eaten the kittens so far, so at least that's a good sign!

PregnaCat and the 1001 Poses

So it seems like only minutes ago that my parents aquired the new kittens but time marches on and little Agnes is now expecting kittens herself! This has generated great excitement and the lavishing of perhaps excessive levels of attention (how many cats have you ever met that got an ultrasound?!). Anyway, as D-day draws near I have been roped in as standby nurse and have spent a few days cat sitting while Dad's been out. While I'm not sure I'd be a great help to Agnes during her delivery, it does mean that I get to witness the many, many sleeping positions she is working her way through. I guess I'd want to keep the weight off if I was that rotund.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you, PregnaCat and the 1001 Poses.

Meanwhile, on the other armchair, Pip gets in some quality time with Ted (a dismembered toy head, which, when he was little, he would sleep cuddled up to like a teddy bear).

As I think you can see, however, from the wild look in Pip's eyes, their relationship is complex!

When he's in the right mood you can get Pip to play 'fetch' with Ted. Pip the enormous cat-dog! If only I could get it on video I'm sure £250 from You've Been Framed would be mine for the taking!