Lazy Bones

One of the luxuries of being (pretty much) retired on account of being made redundant is that the working days are your own. Nobody chases you to clock/swipe in or makes you book holidays out of your measly allowance if you fancy a day off.  I do work round here occasionally, obviously, but I find I am an expert at winding down when a big job is completed and that 'momentous' occasion of a 'finish' comes round.

A gorgeous brawn from the pigs' heads. There were 3 such 'tubs'.
One is gone already and one in the freezer. This one made
 a handsome contribution to breakfast. Not all of it, obviously.

The latest such completion was the pigs - reared, taken on their final journey, brought home and butchered and variously frozen as joints, salted down as whole legs, cooked into dog treats (ears) or some 'scratchings' and even brawn (heads). Finally all tidied away out of sight. That was Tuesday and I have to confess to sitting down at that point and not really achieving much till this afternoon (fencing). Like I said - too good at winding down. Lazy bones.

Horse Chestnut. Needs a good frost to do
proper colour but it is trying.

It is one of the reasons why the veg garden is such a disgrace at the moment; the other being that I am also expert in what I believe the behaviour experts call "displacement activity", doing something else to avoid doing the job you should be doing. Office workers, faced with a big pile of jobs will reach, instead, for the "to do" list pad and spend ages compiling one, even adding jobs they have already completed so that they can enjoy the buzz of ticking one or two off.

Three of the ewes waiting for the ram to arrive next month.

In my case, this spring, every time I looked at the scary forest of docks, creeping buttercup, grasses and plantain which was winning in the veg patch, I then looked to my left at the huge pile of tree 'rounds' from our felled spruces and the hydraulic splitter I had borrowed. Needless to say, the logs got beautifully split and stacked and the weeds were left to grow even taller. There was building too and archery, pulling thistles in the East Field, brush-cutting in the woods or through the docks, the poly tunnel, mowing and so on. No end of ways to avoid that veg patch. When I did feel like weeding, there was always the big raised flower bed. I think that won because it is so much smaller and you could see progress and sense the end of the tunnel.

Big field mushrooms in the East Field

And so it went on; all the nice weeding weather of summer (well, there was SOME at least) came and went and still the veg patch is an embarrassment where I dare not take visitors. We even toyed with the idea at one stage of fencing it round stock-proof and letting the pigs or sheep at it.  But no, I cling to the idea that I will get stuck in one day, in my "little and often" mode (like my digging of the pond - 20 barrows (1 hour) a day across 5 months).

Soldier out for a stroll.

Some of we smallholders use volunteer labour - lads and lasses who sign up for a working 'holiday' through one of the green/organic/ecological organisations and will come and do yay amount of hours per day for you for the price of bed and board. We have a smaller scale version of that happening in spring when a friend from Kent who loves digging, weeding and veg gardening is coming here for a week. Some people whizz round in front of their 'cleaning lady' so she never sees how bad it was. I will be getting stuck into the weeding well before this guy arrives so that I can show him that I "made a start" and didn't wait round till May for him.

Nugget earns a free ranging winter by doing such a good
summer job in the bee hive dept.

Meanwhile, one worker who has definitely completed her assigned task is our one remaining rabbit, Nugget. She has done such a good job keeping the grass short around the bee hives that she has barely a leaf left and so she has earned a free ranging winter. She is very sensible and hangs around the house and buildings and must be good at avoiding Mr Fox (touch wood) because she survived last winter when she escaped by mistake and took ages to recapture. This (free ranging) is good because apart from a chunk of carrot I give her at breakfast just to keep her tame and give me a chance to check on her health (and presence) each day, I do not need to worry about feeding her or keeping her drinker topped up. She also might help with the weeding in the veg patch though I doubt it - she's never down there!

Extreme hedging

Over the last few days we have been "enjoying" the sight of someone else working hard - a local farmer brutalising his hedges with an impressive weapon. No flail-mower for him smashing the small branches in that so familiar way, leaving them shredded and a pale eye-sore. No this machine is a big and very fast-spinning circular saw on an arm that can pivot into every possible position. It slices through big ash trunks up to 5-6 inches thick with a loud "Ker-ANGGGG" and a roar of hard working diesel engine.

A 365 pic of, I think, a chunk of bog-oak but I don't really
know what species of tree it is. 

They use these things on hedges which have got away and grown up into tall rows of ash and sycamore. They slice up the sides to remove width and then buzz through all the tops sending big trunks and branches sliding and toppling down - OK if they fall into the field but requiring some rapid work with a grab to clear them off the road. In fairness these are mainly ash which coppices very well, so the hedges only look brutalised (all be it neat and boxy) round to spring time when they quickly bounce back in a healthy display of small leaves and shoots.

Nice colours from lichen and heather in Cloonargid Bog. 

The hedges don't need doing yearly when you do them this way but I can't help thinking they'd be better done little and often. Perhaps the lads have their own 'to do' lists and a rake of possible displacement activities.

The Un-Planned Harvest

The remainder of the honey extraction went well as we settled on a workable and non-messy technique. We worked our way through the four, two-sided frames at a couple or three of sides a day and ended up with a very satisfying 22 of our small jars, at 150 g (net). 3.3 kg total. These little jars come from Lidl containing their very reasonable 6-pack paté variety pack and are superbly useful for things like this. We have a lot of people eye-ing up our honey keenly and by potting it up in these 'taster' quantities, we can make plenty of them happy. Oh, and K-Dub... we did try out your method but could not get the honey to leave the honeycomb. K-Dub had suggested that if we un-capped a frame and put this into our tall fermentation bucket at an angle, then whirled it round my head, I might generate enough centrifugal force (I might mean centripetal) to throw the honey out of the comb. Well, I whirled and whirled till my shoulder was nearly dislocated and got no more than a thimble full, hence our change to the warm-gravity method described in my previous post.

Honey on ciabatta for breakfast.

In celebration of our new largesse, Liz decided to knock up a ciabatta bread to eat it on. Neither of us appreciated how sloppy is ciabatta dough and how it spreads out sideways during the rise. The 'knock down' phase prior to the 2nd proving was more a case of trying to pull it all back into one lump but in the end it went into the oven like that and came out as easily the biggest ciabatta either of us had seen. Perhaps we will divide the dough into three or even four 'loaves' next time.

This ciabatta was easily 14 inches square.
That is the oven-tray it is cosily resting in.

No matter, it just got quartered and the 4 portions will get used up via fridges or freezer as appropriate. It was delicious, especially with the honey for breakfast. It has that lovely 'big air-holes' mouth feel, a bit like crumpets.

With the honey all extracted, Liz has rounded up all the 'cakes' of spent wax with a view to washing them clean, melting and re-cooling the whole into an 'ingot' and then trying out some warm jam-jar alchemy involving coconut oil (4 parts to one part of beeswax, we are advised) to make furniture polish. I will let you know how we get on.

Brine cured pork leg joint

Our attempt to brine-cure some bacon did not go quite as well according to plan. Liz cooked it with an old favourite (Delia, I think) recipe in which the joint is slow boiled in Coca-Cola. Sounds horrific but works surprisingly well. Normally, that is. This time, though, it was superbly tender and was very edible but was possibly a tad salty, probably at our salty limit. We think that this is because although the brine cure worked well, I did not have any specific instructions for "3 inch thick round of leg" so I went with ten days in the brine, but then we got all distracted by Liz coming home, then not, then yes, and it did not get rescued till it had been soaking 14 days. Liz soaked it overnight in water but then did not do the boil, water change, boil, water change again thing as she was using the Coca Cola.

A late frost on Saturday night tries
 to catch us out

All is not lost, though. That joint will be converted into bacon'n'bean soup/stew (with no need to add salt!) and the other two joints will be soaked when they come to be used and get cooked through several changes of water. You live and learn. Any future joints will be brined for fewer days, possibly as few as 3-5. We do not need the salt as preservative, after all, as these 'bacon' joints go into the freezer. The brining is more to give us a change to 'bacon/gammon' from straight pork.

Rather white for the end of April.

A rather brutal change in the weather tries to catch us out as we get frosts, cold winds and lashing rain with gritty bits in it; proper wintry showers. It was all forecast accurately by the superb Met Éireann team, of course, which gave us a chance to go and cover up the sensitive stuff, mainly asparagus shoots, and it is too early to hit much in the way of 'set' fruit blossom (only the plum and damson seems to have got that far yet). It did hit some new emerging leaves on my poor 'baby trees' though, some sweet chestnut which has barely topped grass height yet looks badly 'scorched'. I hope it has the reserves to put out some replacement leaves.

This gap will be Goldie and Nugget's new run.

The bad weather rather pins us down for outdoor work but this week I do not mind. I am creating a new run for our giant rabbits, Goldie and Nugget in the 'gap' behind the yard wall and the sheep fence. This needs a 'bedroom' so I am back in carpenter mode building a sleeping house for the ladies which I can do in the (now) turkey house out of the wind. The chosen patch of ground is a nice lumpy-bumpy piece of rough grass into which a variety of mud, old cow poo and stone was tossed 3 years ago when the mini digger cleared our yard. We are hoping that the banks and dips will give Nugget enough to aim her well developed digging instinct at without her needing to tunnel out. She can build a nice safe warren under there away from Mr Fox if she needs to with a 'Mummy annex' for Goldie in her autumn years. There is also a wealth of good grass in there and taller stuff which will benefit from a bit of lagomorphic management. Finally one little minor hiccup in the Hubbard dept, as one of the 12 dies while we are out shopping. We have no idea why, you normally don't. Little birds go from quite happy and healthy looking one minute, to dead and cold next time you look without pausing at 'ill'. The remaining 11 all seem happy enough and are eating plenty and putting on lots of weight. More pics of them soon.

"A Tint of Whiskey"

Happy Easter. What a clever widdle
bunny wabbit is .Nugget'!

I come reeling home from the dog walk this afternoon. I have been shanghai'd by JD Bob who spotted me going past his house with the three dogs and called out to me to come in for a "cup of tay", dogs and all. This is a frequent occurrence and I love it; the dogs feel the same way because he usually plies them with fruit scone or fig roll despite my (admittedly rather light hearted) objections that he'll spoil them. We get the impression that Bob has not had a lot to do with dogs in his life but he is learning to love and trust our three and now likes to treat them and then to try a very quick and nervous pat on the head for each one.

The flowering cherry just starting.

Today, though, being Easter Sunday is one of those days days which Bob sees as a 'High day and Holiday', so he also reaches for the whiskey bottle hidden in the 'press' and announces, "I'm going to give you a tint of whiskey". He doesn't drink at all himself so this really is a special event and he promptly pours a socking great measure - a good inch deep. I know this will happen so I only ever accept when I have no more driving to do that day, as today. So, we sit and chat while I sip my whiskey and my tea and nibble on a couple of fig rolls. All very pleasant. Bob's actually just cooking his lunch, so I make sure I am good to go when that comes ready and we wish each other "Happy Easter and Good Luck now!" as is the local habit.

The main job today, though, is white washing the outbuildings as postponed from Good Friday. The weather has been as good as promised in the local 'Riabhach Days' lore (see earlier post). Once the 3rd of April was gone by, the nasty wind died away, the sun came out, the temperature shot up into the 14s and 15s and the bees have been out and flying all day and late into the evenings - well into my orchard dog-run sessions which are around 6 to 6:30 pm these days. The improvement happened at roughly dinner time yesterday, so we sat on it for the day knowing that if we waited till today everything would get a good chance to dry out. This morning we were all geared up.

Last time we white-washed these buildings (2013 see post at http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2013/04/white-rhino.html ) we were complete beginners and we were advised by our man at the local builders' providers, to use a mix of White Rhino hydrated lime and white cement. We have since been told we do not need the cement, so today we are trying out a new formula (again off the internet) which advises 9 parts water, 3 parts lime and 1 part salt. The lime is fairly noxious stuff and you need to take care not to breathe in any dust when mixing, and use eye protection all the time in case of splashes. There are plenty of those because this is very definitely a 'wash' not a paint. It is also very different from paint in that it goes on a translucent grey which just makes the wall look wet, and only changes to that bright, dusty, glaring white as it dries in the sun.

Starting to dry out here - you can still see the grey 'wet'
areas low down though.

It is all very traditional and we love doing it but we can see why most people now point up these stone walls and even render them with a smooth concrete finish, and then invest in Dulux's white 'Weathershield' masonry paint. Some of our walls are rendered and take a good coat, but others are very badly pointed and the bare stone sheds the wash badly. I am thinking that I may need to look into proper old-style lime-mortar and have a go at re-pointing these but I'd need a lot of it. The gaps between these rocks are not the neat little half inch slots of modern brickwork; some are more like 3 inches wide and deeper than 3 inches - some are actually holes right through the walls! The old lime mortar is supposed to be superior to modern cement in these situations as it lets the stonework 'breathe' and to move slightly with the frost, so that it is less likely to crack. I am sure friend Simon has had a go at this - I will have to go on a fact finding mission.

We chugged away for a long morning and got round all four walls of both buildings including me up the ladder doing the sloping "barge end gables"* and the vertical gable ends. The whitewash needs a half hour or so of 'setting' after you have mixed it, before you can paint it on (some say leave it overnight but then contradict themselves by saying that they have tried it without and it doesn't seem to make any difference). We work a system of using 5 buckets. When you run out, you mix a fresh bucket but put it at the back of the queue, and take the oldest mix from the front to use. That way all the mixes get a good half hour sitting.

Lazy Sunday Afternoon for some.

We've not done a bad job but we now wait rather anxiously while it dries and we can see any thin patches that might do with a second coat. It is, as I said, splashy stuff, but at least being completely without oil is washes easily out of your overalls and clothing. You apply it with a very 'flappy' ended Y-shaped brush and on the roughest bits of wall you are almost throwing or splatting the wash into the crevices by slapping your laden brush-end against the stone work. Very messy. Don't even think about putting down "dust sheets" to stop the splashes on the paths, they'd be soaked with whitewash in no time.

Having a rest.

Anyway, we were busy and the bees were at it hammer and tongs in the warm sunshine but everyone else seems to have gone for a lie down. I can see all 5 geese plonked down on the front lawn - not even the usual one head up, alert, keeping a look out. The sheep are all stretched out on the grass, the chickens all sleeping or dust bathing on a sunny bank. The rabbits are stretched out with their back legs behind them, presumably feeling the warm grass on their tums. I think I might just join them in their siestas. It is that kind of a day.

* I think that is the proper name - our outbuildings are in the old Irish style where the stonework goes up a bit above the corrugated roof sheeting and the tops of the walls are poured concrete into shuttering covering the thickness of the wall and the start of the sheeting.

The Five Freedoms....one too many?

Nugget likes a good dig - is she "expressing normal behaviour"?

The "Five Freedoms"; these are what high-welfare livestock management are supposed to be all about. My first small-holding 'bible', the Haynes "Smallholding Manual" by Liz Shankland phrases it quite well. "Being a responsible owner means granting your animals the Five Freedoms (she says) - a list of basic rights originally drawn up by the Farm Animal Welfare Council in the UK but now internationally accepted"

A Sussex Ponte goes broody hidden away behind the trailer
tail board. Normal behaviour?

The Five Freedoms are as follows:-

1. Freedom from hunger and thirst
2. Freedom from discomfort
3. Freedom from pain, injury and disease
4. Freedom to express normal behaviour
5. Freedom from fear and distress

Nobody would argue with any of them (well nobody I'd respect), they are all good, laudable aims and we should all work them as a bare minimum.

A Sussex and a 'Mini-buff' queue up to lay
an egg between the 'Royal Potti' chemical loo,
 the tools and an old galv bucket in the tool shed.

My header comment comes from the fact that in this 'mad house' it is the fourth which sometimes has me smiling. You know that old pub-bar sign "You don't have to be mad to work here, but it helps". My lot would have you cracking up with their "normal behaviour". Pigs, I am OK with. Like most animals they are actually social so you can only buy them now in pairs (at least) not singly and you let them romp around together, play together, bed down in a heap in the straw next to one another and so on. Rabbits too, are sociable in the wild, so you should not really have a hutch with just the one and we have tried to keep pairs, Ginny and Padfoot were in one corner, and the giants, Goldie and her daughter Nugget were kept as companions.

At last the purple sprouting broccoli is ready to start cropping.

Ask anyone what 'normal behaviour' is for rabbits and they would likely either go down the 'bawdy' route or mention digging burrows. Padfoot (now sadly no longer with us) started a lovely burrow within the run where the beehive is and we could see that it was not going to be an escape route under the wire (it was angled inwards) so we have let them carry on and they had a nice little bolt hole down there where they could escape the weather (and maybe the fox) and into which you often see Ginny dragging mouthfuls of the new hay which I bed down their hutch with. Every now and then she seems to dig a bit more soil out and produces a scree of fine soil crumbs at the entrance.

Eggs of all colours. Even the 8-9 year old Marans is back in lay
(bottom right) and her chum Min the Hin (Guinea Fowl) is adding
her contribution (bottom left).

Our younger giant rabbit, Nugget, is another digger but these ladies are in the move-able runs on the grass, so there is a risk of escapes. The urge to dig seems to take her whenever we move the run to near a tree or a fence post, as if it might be an urge to dig a burrow into between tree roots as in all the best Beatrix Potter stories. This actually suits us at the moment because she digs till her nose hits the post and then stops having failed to escape, and the bit of 'lawn' she is excavating is due to be turned soon into a garden bed, so we don't even mind the holes. 

Polly is due any day now. 

However, these two ladies are getting a new run this year, slotted in between our yard wall and the sheep fence. This piece of ground is very lumpy-bumpy having had some of the rubbish soil and grass from the yard hoyed over the wall into it by the mini digger when the yard was being cleared. It should provide an interesting environment for the bunnies and plenty of places for Nugget to harmlessly burrow. Plenty of grass to eat too. I will need to build them a 'bedroom' where they can go hide or get out of the weather. More on that when it is happening. As to the 'bawdy' side of bunny behaviour, we have stopped breeding rabbits now, at least for the moment but Charlotte down the road may have designs on borrowing the giants for such nefarious purposes. Ginny is way too old now to be bred with, she must be 7-8 years old now. 

One of our original "Lovely Girls", a Sussex Ponte.

Meanwhile the chooks have decided that normal behaviour for them is to completely ignore my neat, clean, straw-bedded, purpose built nest boxes in the bespoke coop in the nice safe concrete out-building. Oh No. They are all going to wander around and find all manner of other places to lay eggs and, in one case now, to go broody. We have eggs appearing in the tool shed (Tígín) slotted down between our old chemical toilet and some pick axes, or balanced on a paint pot nearby. One is laying in the 'baby Buffs' house, two are dropping them in a nice shaped dent in the straw inside the pig ark (that will have to stop when the pigs arrive, or the eggs and probably chickens too will find themselves eaten by the porkers). Then a few days back Liz went hunting for a tool in my wheelie-box which is wedged into the goose end of the barn behind the old trailer tail-board and spotted a pile of rather old dirty eggs and, a few inches away, one of the Sussex Ponte hens gone broody sitting on just 2 eggs. We slid 4 more under her and booked her dates on the calendar. She is a first timer despite her age, so no real harm done if she fails. If she hatches any it will be a strange combination of Sussex Ponte x Buff Orp in that clutch.

Frog spawn at 5 days old.

In the pond, the three masses of frog spawn look, to us, to be doing very well. The tiny black 'commas' are bigger each day and can now clearly be seen to have taken on the head-body-tail shape. They wriggle gently in their jelly sacs. That seems to be it for frogs this year and the adults have dispersed again as far as I can tell. We never see them except at night when I occasionally catch one out with the head torch but they are always legging it for the cracks between the stones of the 'beach' and are quickly out of sight. 

Of Bees and Brehon Law

My two whooper swans were down on the lough (again or still?) today so what ever the flying pair I reported in my last post were up to, they were not my lough couple off on their final move back to Iceland. We have them for a while yet, though we get very few of the still crisp nights in which to enjoy their nighttime bugle calls and the sounds of their splashing and chasing about. Spring is definitely coming, though. After a few days of strong winds and rain it was a lovely relief to wake up on the Sunday (8th) to still air, blue skies and bright sunshine. Very sloppy underfoot, but this sudden break gave us a chance to both get out into the garden and start to look around. We moved our 'giant' rabbits (Goldie and Nugget) to a new, grassier site out the front of the house and Liz whipped round the currant bushes and roses with the secateurs.

Garden assistants

Liz loves her roses and all the care, pruning and gardening jobs that go with them. We have quite a few and an area in the 'nursery' well stocked with new plants we are getting established in tubs and cuttings which we are trying to strike, some of which come from Steak Lady's old garden up in Portmarnock, now abandoned in the house move. A shaggy rose will always drag Liz outside even when the weather is saying stay in and knit or play on the internet but these guys have started into spring growth and stolen a march on the pruning process. Liz was heard having conversations with them apologising for cutting away all the new growth which they had worked so hard to create and reassuring them that they would thank her in the summer when they were growing into proper shapes covered in bloom. She thinks that this persuasion worked as "only one pulled my hair (Dublin Bay) and only L'Aimant scratched".

The pig area looking tidier now we've trimmed the fallen tree.

I am now only fewer than 3 weeks from my big scary Intermediate 'bee school' exam, so the study of bee books and documents, the watching of YouTube videos (one was a 75 minute lecture by a German lady to the (Irish) National Conference on bee mating biology) and the avid reading of all things bee have become part of the local focus. This includes reading the excellent Federation magazine from cover to cover  as soon as it lands and two particular items this month caught my eye (although they may be of no use in the exam!).

Naked tree trunk

One concerned how old Irish Law worked around bees as livestock. Regular readers will know that I am no historian and would hesitate to start pontificating on such a massive subject as historic legal systems, which support whole books, Professorships and PhD research, but bear with me. I can safely say that Brehon Law which existed in Ireland from way back till it was superceded by the arrival of the Normans (1169-ish) and by the coming of Roman Catholic Law is highly regarded as being solid, fair, logical and sensible. It was certainly a whole lot fairer in its treatment of the female half of the population when it came to estate ownership, dowries and marriages than the RC efforts which have followed.

'Old' Mrs Buff checks out the egg laying
potential of the pig ark. She approved.

The piece which caught my eye (Bee Keeping in Ancient Ireland by Fergus Kelly of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (An Beachaire Vol 70/3 March 2015)) was based around some luckily preserved 7th Century texts called 'Bee Judgements', thought to be the only evidence in the world of any legal framework for bee 'foraging' rights. If your cattle grazed someone else's land, then you had to pay the land owner for the grass, so if your bees foraged on the land, then you would need to compensate the owner just the same. The payments were either in swarms or honey, thus spreading bee ownership through the countryside. The beekeeper might be liable for compensation for injuries caused by his bees (stings) unless the injured party got stung while trying to steal his hive.

Poor Deefer. Denied access to 'Dad's lap, she sulked off to a pile of
wellies and tried to look as put out as possible.

If your bees started swarming, then as long as the swarm stayed on your land you owned the bees. If they took off across a neighbour's patch then you immediately lost full ownership. If you could keep them in sight you were allowed to give chase and capture them (provided you did no damage to his land) but you then owed him one third of all the honey it might make for that year. If you lost the swarm and the land owner claimed it then he/she had to give you 1/3 of the honey. Honey was, of course, the only sweetener available and was much relished (says Fergus Kelly) and valued. Nice article.

Lamb Savoyarde - a nice alternative to the hot-pots and
shepherds' pies. A lamb 'stew' layered with sliced potato.
Actually the very last of our stored Sarpo Mira.

The second piece which caught my eye is one which might interest Mentor Anne (it might even be a new one, Anne?) is in the News and Views section of the mag (An Beachaire) by Philip McCabe and concerns the possibility of honey being 'contaminated' with GMOs. This has already happened in 'canola' honey in Germany. Honey-production focused bee keepers who are pushing their hives to the limit, as well as taking too much honey and having to feed fondant or syrup, will sometimes also decide that their hives are short of pollen. Pollen is the protein and fats food for young larvae but is very difficult to get hold of, so these bee keepers use either 'pollen substitute' or 'pollen supplement' which are man made pastes mixed from "processed plant materials".

Pig trotters (Crúibíns or 'Crubbeens') glazed in mango chutney
Sweet, glutinous, sticky finger-licking good. 

As they are trying to mimic a high protein food, it will not surprise you to learn that these 'materials' are often those well known high protein ingredients, soya bean meal, maize meal and mustard. The real pollen itself is an allowed constituent of honey, so perhaps these companies thought that a little 'substitute' would not hurt. Well now they have been 'busted' and the German authorities have described them as 'completely irresponsible' and have said that anyone who uses this product ('Feedbee' made by a Canadian outfit) will risk breaking the 'zero tolerance' limit and their honey would not be marketable anywhere in the EU. We don't buy a lot of honey but I am reassured that this little tweak was stomped on so hard and so quickly.

A future knitter? Maybe not.

Finally, a bit of fun for those long evenings when you are pinned down by the 'orange warning' gales. I was gazing curiously at a bit of Liz's knitting a few days ago and wondering how this dexterous twiddling of a single strand of wool could make the wool be turned into a sheet of cloth which didn't just unravel as soon as you took it off the needles. Nothing for it but to give it a go, so Liz promptly set me up with two needles and a ball of wool, cast me on 20 stitches and gave me a very quick 'masterclass' in the fancy finger moves.

A not very square square.

To cut a long story short I got stuck in and battled through all those beginner mistakes which must be familiar to any knitter, rubbish and inconsistent tension, dropped stitches (some of which Liz rescued) and the inadvertent adding of 8 stitches to my original 20 as I worked my way up. I got to a reasonable level of competence on pure knitting before Liz had me trying to 'purl' it too, so I ended up with an inch or so of what is called 'stockinette stitch' (get me!) and was then even allowed to cast off myself. Not bad for a first effort but "square" it wasn't! For my next trick I intend to actually cast on my own square and knit it all. That might be the end of my sortie into knitting and I'm still none the wiser as to why it works, even though I know how it works.