It's been unusually warm here too. We're still getting strawberries for crying out loud. And has happy as we are for summer temperatures in autumn i can't help think this is very wrong. Climate change deniers must be walking around with their heads buried.

So glad you're enjoying this side of the Atlantic! Ireland is a jewel. Oh and the paint on the sheep's butt is to show it has been tupped (although farmer does use his own colour to help identify). Sheep are hefted quite heavily to their own territory - if you're in the mood for a good woolly read then I recommend 'The Shepherds Life' which goes into detail about hill farming in the lake district - a mere hop, skip and a jump to my part of the woods over the Irish Sea to Cumbria! You'll be kissing the Blarney Stone before you leave?

Ah a bit of everything I love: indigo, quilting and a snoop around your beautiful sitting room.

Ah now I haven't started them on him yet - that's a plan, I think the eldest will like his stuff. Thanks!

Thank you!

Thanks!

Yeah there is a lot of dystopian stuff in teen fiction now. They like it but theres only so many versions of the end of the world, your parents are dead, who do you eat first scenario... thanks for the heads up!

Thanks!

Anyone out there got book recs for teenage boys? After years of gentle encouragement and feigned disinterest I now have two voracious readers in the house who have read most everything twice back to back and have taken to reading the backs off ketchup bottles and cereal boxes until they can find something new (a nice problem to have I know) - help?!

As I look around my own family and friends I see that the boys always fly and the girls seem to stay a little closer to home. I'm trying to brace my myself for a lonely old age!

Oldies?? Be off with you! I'm forty. Ish.

I'm in this phase of parenting too. The other week I was missing them being little so much it hurt. What can I say? The universe lets us know it's all good: the very next day we went to the farm and there were young mothers and toddlers as far as they eye could see; needless to say after five minutes of all that NOISE I was so happy to have my boys the age they are, and wishing they were still little died a fast and painless death. I love teenagers!

Dyeing wool felt is also an afternoon well spent if you're out of white yarn!

White privilege relates to the 'get out of jail card' we all carry around when it come to how those in power relate to us. Of course content of character is everything, but that means nothing when white supremacists get in power, or when you've been pulled over by the cops at a turnpike and have a gun in your neck. The privilege to walk away, to disavow this cloak in invisibility, is 'white' - because white people have the power in this land. It's not a 'complex' since it isn't a psychological trait, but a sociological description to explain how we are perceived by the State. A bit like the 'All Lives Matter' broo ha ha but when it comes to a white supremacist shooting up a mosque they're stony silent... the place of white people, especially white women, in placing Trump in the Whitehouse cannot be ignored.

Beautiful. And acknowledging our white privilege is surely the first step in transforming a lot of the mess in the world. It's a messy world. But glossing over it or trying to be inclusive when, as you say, some people just aren't built that way, makes fools of us all. No matter how much we dislike rocking the boat lines sometimes have to be drawn, and opting out of that is, again, privilege, because people of colour (and gender) have been living on the line for far too long. I remember reading a protest sign that read 'If 2016 is the first time you were afraid, then that is privilege'. It is. And telling the truth is inconvenient, and it might not get you a lot of friends, but it will get you the right ones. I'm so empowered by seeing so many high profile people speaking out these days. And talking of mis-steps and mess, I owe you (and several other people, I have to admit) an apology for sounded off on your over a post on instagram before the election over Hillary. Politics is hard subject to do well, but even harder behind a screen. I see a lot of people suffering in this world and I get incensed. I don't believe Hillary would have been good for the wider world, but being rude doesn't help either. We all want the same things even if we mess up sometimes, so please accept my apology. Like you I truly believe that more unites us than divides us, and bridges are built on understanding and love. Pity it takes a small child with a sign to have to point that out to some folks.

Denise over at Wholly Rooted is an expert herbalist who also has a family full of allergies. All her recipes are GF http://www.whollyrooted.com/food--pantry.html

Nope, my kids aren't like this. Although, in Minecraft they could skin you alive. Not sure how useful that would be during a zombie apocalypse, but that's OK. We're city dwellers ;)

Goodness, your baby girl looks like a character straight out of a picture book about autumn here! Lovely light we're getting now.

Japanese knot weed has the ability to sever house prices here. Can't imagine anyone wanting it

I hope the weather obliges for them all. I can't wait for our summer adventures to begin here too!

I think that bark is very attractive actually.

I've just finished, what seemed to me, a slow knit. Mine's a shawl (on the blog today), but it only took so long because I get having to frog it. Lace knitting? Not me. Evidently.

I have one vintage Butterick tunic pattern that I refer to time and time again - so easy and practical, although I do feel I need to shake things up. Ive got the Heron Top by Merchant & Mills cut out and ready to go, and I have a few Japanese craft books (Stylish Dress Book is my fave) that I really do want to use but have neither the mental wherewithal or time to decipher those crazy printed over a-thousand-patterns-on-one-page type patterns that come with the book....

Oh we've done this kit many times. I wrote about one herehttps://qalballah2.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/all-too-soon-they-stretch-their-wings-and-leave/ although Flickr has managed to have an embolism and lose my pictures :/

Gah, there must've been something in the air yesterday - it was exactly the same here. I'm totally frazzled even a day later. Thank goodness for valerian tea!