Website, sewing, sheep and baby fish

Gosh poor blog, I've neglected it. But with good reason, I'm now mostly over at my new business website Magatha Bagatha  - please pop along and take a look (and you can sign up for the newsletter too, if you'd like to stay in touch.)

I'm so pleased with my website and very grateful to Lindsay, of LJ Computers, who designed, built and hosts it. I didn't know there was so much involved with setting one up and it's been lovely to have a calm, guiding hand throughout the process. Those who follow Lins' blog Multi generational living and life in Wales will know she's been through a tough time recently. She refused to stop work on the website while she went through her treatment and used it to take her mind off things. She's amazing. Get well soon Lins.

My business is still very much a baby business but it's definitely taking up a lot of my time. There's a lot of sewing to be done, of course. At the moment I'm working on a baby heirloom quilt for a client....

Cornish fishing boats

..and a large Doctor Who quilt-along quilt which I envisage to be the one we hide under while watching the TV on Saturday evenings. This is a big task with two paper-pieced blocks per month, with the final one due next February.

My Tardis

Meanwhile the sheep having been taking up a lot of time too - first shearing, then giving the lambs Soil Association-approved anthelmintic medicine (I so much prefer that word!) and then treating them against fly strike. This involves bringing the flock down and into the yard and when they don't want to go there, they won't. You can coax, shoo, shout and bribe and it won't work (until they're ready). It definitely brings out the shouty redhead side of me, which is usually well hidden!

Squished up waiting their turn

In other news, I dug a pond in the garden. Brian acquired a rigid pond liner from Freecycle ages ago and I finally found time to install it. It "just" took a two feet deep pond-shaped hole, a few bags of sand and some found bits of slate to hide the edges. It took a day and cost just under £8. I stocked with with plants from our other wildlife ponds - marsh buttercups, yellow flag iris, water forget-me-not and water crowfoot - and inoculated it thanks to a big trug full of pond weed from Lins' pond.

The weed came with passengers...

Tiny baby koi carp

... baby koi carp, which caused much joy and excitement when we spotted them. The pond's a real time-waster - we spend ages staring into its depths. It's astonishing just how quickly wildlife has occupied it in the two weeks it's been there. Pond skaters were there almost immediately, followed by great diving beetles and other swimming beetles. Damsel flies have visited it to oviposit and there are all kinds of larvae wiggling about. I've stacked slates around the shelves at the edges because our families of sparrows think I've dug them an extra large bathtub.