The red currant thief.

When I go up the garden these days the blackbirds and sparrows and all their no-good pals fly guiltily up out of the fruit bushes with embarrassed squawks. Caught out again - red-beaked. Strawberry, redcurrant, blackcurrant and raspberry - I think of it as my equivalent to a net of peanuts. And sometimes they leave a few berries for me.

Take a look at my Little Gems.

We had one of these in our salad tonight, with Waitrose cucumber and Lidl sun-dried tomatoes. Maybe we could have had our own cucumber, but I never got round to buying the seeds. And the tomatoes are currently only about six inches high, just out of the picture.

You should keep your Little Gems well watered, I've been advised, or they will bolt. We've got very chalky, well-drained soil, and I don't think I've done the watering well enough or often enough. I don't like the look of the yellow hose snaking across my lovely green lawn. And I'm not carting watering cans all the way up to the vegetable plot. The plants must take their chances, like the rest of us, is what I say.

A giant leap forward

I thought you would all be pleased to know that I have made a giant leap forward.

The leap was made in the field of weaving, and was achieved by my drafting my own little design, which is for some curtain material.

It did not weave up exactly as I had imagined. I had not anticipated the longer warp ends showing as much as they do. This is really because I have beaten down the weft thread more than a balanced weave demands, so that the weft twill line shows more. What will happen when it is washed I do not know.

It is an "undulating twill", which in this case is made by increasing and decreasing the length of the weft floats, rather than spacing it unequally in the reed. The photo is not very clear and not very representative of the actual colour either, as the overall impression in reality is mainly blue with narrow white stripes and the blue and green are much closer in tone than they seem to be here.

The yarn has a shine to it and is also quite hairy, which makes me think it is a linen and silk mix.

The warp is sett in the reed at 16 ends per inch, but the weft is probably beaten at maybe 24 picks per inch. It doesn't undulate quite as much as I had expected, but I'm pretty pleased and proud anyhow.

The Lady, the Monkey and their love child?

The lady and the child are lying down because they are tired. And I would have to read the manual for the camera to rotate them 45 degrees. Just incline your head, like robins do.

The lady is wearing a big bonnet and full skirt, just like real ladies do.

See the following post for an explanation.

Journey to the north

Just to show that my close up photography has plenty of room to improve, here is my attempt at capturing digitally the famous monkey orchid of hereabouts.

It is really quite like a pink monkey, if you have a vivid imagination. There were loads of them, which is good as they are s'posed to be uncommon.

There were lady orchids too, and one that I thought was a military orchid (half-close your eyes and you see a soldier). However, blogger didn't want me to show these at present, so I will try again later. I read somewhere on the internet that possibly the "military" one is really a hybrid of the other two, the lady being the mummy, naturally.

My second beautiful warping mill.

As we found we were unable to move freely about the room what with all the weaving paraphernalia cluttering the place up, I sold my 3m circumference mill.

There followed a sad time when I didn't have a mill, and had to wind my baby blanket warp on to my board. I really don't like warping boards, there are too may pegs to go round. Having taken advice, and thinking long and hard - this is my replacement model.

It did very well with my latest warp - I believe a mix of linen and silk, not sure because the cone had no label.

This mill, which is from LeClerc and NEW! - I am its first owner, is much smaller, and it folds flat. We are using the extra space in the dining room for spontaneous displays of contemporary/ modern dance, whenever a catchy tune happens to come up on the radio.