folksy friday - hens

My first folksy friday is going to feature hens!  Now my three are up and listed I thought it would be appropriate:

Hetty - mini hen

Myrtle - medium hen decoration/doorstop

 

Betsy - large hen doorstop

Now for the fellow folksters!

Felt Hen picture by Oosie

felt hen tea cosy

Vintage Style Pull-Along Hattie The Hen Primitive

-Swirlyarts-bandit-chicken-doorstop

Hope you like them!

Katie x

busy bee

Don't you just love it when you can get up early on a day off work and get cracking with your own creations?  Today has been such a day.

Two hen doorstops:

Two standard sized hens:

I'm really loving the new colourways!

Last, and least... I needed to make a little bag for my soapods (soap nuts) for washing:

Here is the 'flock' as it stands (or rather sits) so far:

Aren't they a colourful bunch?  Terrible photo, but its pouring down outside so the light is frankly pants today.

Now, what to do this afternoon...

lovely, lovely post

Look what I received in the post this morning - squee!

Carefully wrapped with a nice note:

And the lovely contents:

Good enough to eat I reckon!  Some of this is destined for more hens, some of it for unknown loveliness :-) 

Thanks Alice at Backstitch Shop!

sewing and weaving update

Argh its been one of those busy weeks where everyday I have thought 'I must post some more stuff on the blog' and then haven't had access to my pictures, or the time to compose my thoughts.

I had a productive day's sewing over the bank holiday weekend.  I bought myself a SciPhone (the Chinese version of the iphone) so thought I would sew myself a cosy for it in the meantime whilst I was waiting for it to arrive in the post.  I am really pleased with the phone cosy... I was a little less pleased with the phone (in fact I have sent it back as its rubbish), so the holder is now up for grabs on Etsy.... I do love the Alexander Henry spotted owl print :-)

I also thought I would have a go at customising the phone holder for a small laptop or netbook.  Here is the finished result, I think it works quite well, and matches a camera or small phone holder I made a while ago.

Next on the list was a peg bag, as ours is a horrible brown thing from the dreaded Tesco and has been left out in the rain a few too many times.  I need a better pattern for this - I think the bag bit that holds the pegs needs to be a lot deeper and I had to fudge the edges.  However, I do like the fabric, and was even inspired to embroider a peg on the front!  Excuse the fuzzy photo, I need to take better ones :-s.

Last, but not least, I would like to introduce Lucy - my pretty hen doorstop or paperweight.  I was inspired by my own hens and wanted something which was decorative, but also functional in some ways.  The material is from an old top that no longer fits me (ooh how liberating it was to cut into!) and she now happily sits on my desk.  I'm really, really pleased with her, so hopefully there will be some more in the pipeline soon for sale :-)

On the loom front, it has arrived!  She's now called Millicent (aptly meaning hard worker) and was taken to pieces and put together again in our top room.  She is a 4 shaft counterbalance floor loom, made locally in the 1970s from solid beams of mahogany.  I spent the day on Sunday cleaning her up and linseed oiling her, and she now looks a beauty.  Hopefully, if my yarn arrives on time I will be threading her up and starting to weave some samples later this week... hoorah!

This photo was taken pre-cleaning and oiling, I hasten to add ;-)

Bye for now,

Kx

how to prepare your raised beds... with a little help from the chickens!

With spring coming on stream I thought that the preparation of the raised beds was an ideal job to tackle today.  One of the beds already has some garlic and a few onions in, but the other has been empty over the winter and needed to have last year's leafmould digging in and a bit of weeding.  As the beds tend to be havens for millions of slugs (who happily munch through anything that isn't a weed, grrr) I gave the job to our three rescue hens who had a fabulous time scratching around and looking for tasty grubs.

Don't they look like they are having fun?

 

1. Helping in the raised beds, 2. Bums in the air, 3. Happy hens, 4. Jalfrezi in the raised bed, 5. Jemima looking for worms, 6. Jinny slug hunting, 7. Exploring compost, 8. More exploration, 9. The 3 Js happily scattering compost in their run

To introduce the hens, affectionally known as 'The 3 Js', they are Jinny, Jalfrezi and Jemima, three ex battery hens we got from the Battery Hen Welfare Trust in September 2008 - and they couldn't have looked much different!  

 

1. Jinny and Jalfrezi, day 1, 2. Jemima, day 1, 3. Jinny, day 1, 4. Jalfrezi, day 1, 5. Jalfrezi, day 1: with overgrown beak

I think we are probably more shocked at how awful their condition was now than we were at the time, perhaps because we were plunged headlong into chicken-keeping!  Jemima, though having the most feathers, was actually very ill when we got her.  She weighed virtually nothing and wouldn't eat anything for days so she had to be taken to the vet - and had a week convalescing in our front room!

The amazing thing about them is their instinct - they were 24 hours out of a life in a battery farm (should be enough to convert anyone to free range...), had never seen the sky, or grass, or tasted a worm, and within seconds of coming out of the basket they were scratching about as if they had been doing it all their lives.  Jalfrezi and Jinny both had problems with overgrown beaks caused by not having anything to wear them down on.  Fortunately they wore down naturally after a couple of weeks and soon looked pretty normal.

Some before and after pics to show their transformations:

Jemima (a.k.a Jimjams)

 Jinny (a.k.a. Jinny Hen)

 

Jalfrezi (a.k.a Jaffles)

 

Though it might seem daunting, the rewards for seeing our little scrawny, scraggy hens blossom into the beauties they are today make it well worth it - and I would heartily recommend that if anyone is thinking about keeping hens that they consider going for ex-batts.  They are so quirky and funny and very entertaining and we feel very privileged to have them :o)