Reluctant Christmas.

Try as we might we find it impossible to ignore Christmas completely, every week in the lead up there are craft fares and we both love these.

Last week we attended one not far from where we live in a small village called Kilmovee, we had gone to this one last year and were quite impressed with some of the crafts that we had seen. This year the intention had been to buy a hand knitted hat for my sister-in -law, from a lady that keeps Jacob sheep and does her own spinning and dyeing, unfortunately she didn't have a stall this year and although there were other knitting stands there they had nothing that excited us.

Lovely turned wood gifts.

We did find a nice hand  crafted book mark, a lovely turned wooden bowl, a beautiful turned mushroom and some hand made ear rings, plus some local honey.

That more or less completed the Christmas shopping with the exception of the hat which is now being knitted for us by a friend who has a source of Organic wool, hopefully this will be done in time for the final date of posting to Canada where my sister-in -law lives. It was a very enjoyable afternoon and we met some nice people but the thing that struck us as odd was most of the stall holders were English, if it had been in a largish town we would have understood it, but this is a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. Very strange indeed.

Jumble sale find.

Today saw us at a jumble sale organised by a friend of ours in aid of the Sligo Donkey Sanctuary, we had expected a lot of people to be there but I guess there is too much else going on elsewhere, there were very few people who turned up and those who did were mainly...... you've guessed it, English. Very very strange. There was lots of  nice stuff, people had been very generous with their donations and lots of real bargains. Once again we met some very nice people who all knew the organiser and all of whom we knew by reputation and it has been decided that we will all meet up once a month for coffee and a chin wag starting off with a Solstice party on the 22nd of December. It should be fun.
Next weekend it's our turn to have a stall, organised by Knockvicar Organic gardens,

A big mix.

I have been up to my elbows making Xmas puddings, a doz in all, far too much mixture for a bowl so the wine making bucket got seconded.

Puddings done, ready for packaging.

All that remains to be done is the packaging and the essential labelling on which I can't state that the ingredients are Organic even though they are! Such are the laws of labelling. I also have to make time to make some Blackcurrant jam and to finish off some glass paintings. We won't be too bothered if we don't sell much, for us the important part is giving support to a very worthy project. We know we will sell one Xmas pudding however, it's already booked by the baker from the farmers market!
Winter veg. are now coming on,

The leeks are delicious.

we have had the first leeks,

Caulis are still looking good.

and the cauliflowers are still standing well, now they seem to be minus the extra protein so I no  longer have to soak them in salt water to get rid of the creepy crawlies.(Slugs)

A blue green house, not quite the right colour.

After twelve years of not having a green house I now have one, mainly made from re-cycled materials it has cost very little, the double glazed widows were completely free, a coat of paint is needed around the windows, ( you can't have a green house painted blue, can you?) Measuring 10X9. I will be able to bring on all of the seedlings in it, leaving the sunroom free of propagators, seed trays ect. The main reason the green house was built was to protected a grape vine that a friend had given us, but there is plenty of room for the vine to share with other things.