New Blog address....

After much deliberation I have decided to start a new blog (you can't change the title of the old one) as we no longer live in Wales. Here's the address ....... http://rosie-tremain.blogspot.com/

We are still making the mental transition from one place to another (well I am - Ian is another character entirely!) but the all-consuming nature of our house project makes it easier. I've been up on the roof, building pathways, driving a mini-digger (!) and generally keeping things moving with plumbers and windows etc. Ian's been taking down some massive leylandii trees, digging yet more drainage trenches, and now taking down the lounge roof. He indulged his favourite occupation of wheeling and dealing over bits of rusty metal yesterday at the Walford Cross farm sale and came home with a victorian root cutter. Perfect for 'scratting' apples to make juice!

Sadly I haven't had time for painting (except a small commission) but look forward to when I can get the paints out again and re-learn everything Rob taught us. I've created a nice curve on my woodland path thinking of the next composition for a painting......

I'll try and keep the new blog up to date ..... in the meantime ....... farewell from 'my wales'.

Shed-dwelling....

We are now safely esconced in our latest temporary home in the shed in the field. By shed I should clarify this is not some dark, poky, spider-infested place of garden tools and old lawnmowers, but a rather large - and shiny new - timber building put up by Ian and Roger as a garage, and possible future office. Who needs a house?

Here I am in the kitchen section cooking our first meal. Nothing to it - a kettle, fridge, camping stove, slow cooker, microwave, toaster........and all the appliances to rival any real domestic goddess, including as you can see my own wheelbarrow and shovel. All we are missing is a sink with taps and an oven. But Roger'll sort that out tomorrow. The patch of turquoise on the floor is not some trendy new rug from Ikea but a painting accident by my very own eco-husband who was using up old tins he found in the cupboard. The dining room.....

This is the warm room - a fully insulated 'bedsit', which by the end of today even has a phone line. The computer will soon be moving over so normal communications can resume.

And while on the subject of insulation (clearly an obsession at the moment) Barney even has his own little piece of celotex with his 'double bed' on top. Concrete can be cold for poor little indoor, underfloor heated puppy dogs.....

It's the People that count...

It's strange how quickly ones life moves sometimes, and how easy it is to get absorbed into 'today'. Sucked in perhaps. At least, our 'today' has involved rather a lot of sorting, unpacking, arranging, cleaning etc etc so perhaps it's not surprising. While writing this though I feel sad when I think of the faces and smiles and tears of people I have only just met but have already said goodbye to. Not wanting to get sentimental or sound like one of those cheesy emails that goes round and round, I want to put on record this discovery:-

WHEREVER YOU GO IN THE WORLD AND WHATEVER YOU DO IT'S THE PEOPLE THAT COUNT. Ta-da.

Hills and rivers might be beautiful - and I have spent some time with the Wye, Usk, Ithon, Tywi and Irfon this year. Towns or castles might be quaint/majestic in all their Victorian/medieval splendour - but it all pales into nothing when you think of the human beings inhabiting them. Of infinite worth.

"We shall know even as we are fully known". How many people feel they are 'known' - let alone loved by the one who knows.

Ok I realise this is one strange blog-post. What I mean to say is - it's been good - there is sadness and a sense of loss that we will no longer live in mid-Wales. Mostly we will miss the people we have started to know, and the beautiful countryside of course, but I will also miss the promise of a new beginning, the chance to be myself without the presupposition of what others expect me to be. That particular freedom is not granted very often in life - grasp it when you can.

House latest....

The roof is at last being fixed. Having initially thought we'd keep the roof it has turned out that most of it has had to be replaced due to rotten rafters and basically it's old barn-like construction. The building will hopefully be as energy-efficient as possible so we're making a 'warm roof' - ie. it has insulation between the rafters and then a whole duvet layer over the top under the battens which doubles up as roofing felt (TLX Gold).

Here's Steve fixing the new purlins - the gap in the rafters will become a dormer window in the next couple of weeks. Behind is Gotton Manor Nursing Home. Perhaps we should keep the scaffolding like some sort of giant balcony!

The first floor is in - lovely chunky beams and joists. And it has that lovely smell of bare wood. The stairs will go where the ladder is.

Upstairs - the spreading roof has been saved by re-using the old floor joists to hold it all together. You can just see where the old floor was - the line of cement blobs just below the top of the stone walls....

Downstairs, this was the one door we were planning to keep :( As the building has been taken apart we've discovered it was altered and extended very badly over the years - basically bodged - hence all the damp and cold - it was leaking like a seive. Of course having discovered this you just have to put it right... hmm not so sure about moving in in June any more...

A much better view is towards the garden. The daffs are just bursting into flower now and blossom is on the trees.

We've put up bird boxes made from offcuts ....

but the best times are when friends come to visit ...

Painting Wales...

I'm catching up with myself now. Only two more weeks of gypsy living, then we're into our lovely new wooden shed in the field in Somerset. Ian tried it out yesterday with his cousin James, and boy does the insulation do the trick. Just a little heat from an electric heater and it stayed warm for most of the next day. Now I'm looking forward to it!

Thought I'd update you on our wonderful painting class in Wales - with our wonderful and talented teacher Rob Ijbema (flattery gets you everywhere). I am still excited about it. It is great to be learning how to use colour, create light and use the brush with oils.

First we create a peachy-coloured wash to cover the white board (we do this the night before so it's got time to dry), then start by marking on a grid - lightly so it's easy to cover up.

Then paint in the dark areas of the picture. The composition is guided by the grid - never place your focal point in the middle, but on one of the lower intersections of the grid. In this picture the main focus is the stream which leads your eye gently across the painting. The horizon does well on the top line of the grid - about one third of the way down the board.

Here is the view we were painting. In terms of tone (lights and darks) you really need to convey a far distance, middle distance and foreground. Each gets successively lighter the further away you get due to the effects of the earths atmosphere. If you squint your eyes when looking at a view you can see it. Blue is a receding colour, and red comes forward.

And here is Rob. We are just using three colours and white to start with - alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue and lemon yellow. A bit of cadmium red is added now and again. Rob paints with a lot of washes - paint mixed with white spirit, rather than layering it on thickly. And he paints in one sitting - 'wet on wet'.

This is my finished attempt...... (I have a lot to learn). Any criticisms gratefully accepted.

And last weeks picture of a frosty February morning.... (I like this one a bit better)
And week 1.......

Big fat gypsy lifestyle......

Ian, Barney and I have turned into a travelling family. This week we are staying with our lovely friend Caroline in Taunton. What a great chance to go for a run.....oh i can't my trainers are in the shed at Pengotton. Well perhaps a swim instead - except my swimming stuff is at mum & dad's.

At least I didn't go to a posh meeting at Harper Adams College in an emergency blue-with-pink-squares tie bought en route from Oxfam in Shrewsbury. Actually it was probably a very trendy tie once upon a time but not exactly right with the white-with-blue-orange-and-pink check shirt he managed to find in the cupboard in our house in Wales. I think his personality carried it off though.

Seriously this has got to be the most stressful time of the whole two years since selling our house in Chedzoy. We give up the house in Newbridge-on-Wye in a month, by which time the room in the garage at Pengotton might be habitable. The Lottery paid for us to move up there with a proper removal firm but not to move back. Of course we are too stingey to pay £800 when we've got a perfectly good trailer, so every week we'll come back with another load. Then the question is where to put it all - back in storage, or elsewhere. So sorting out problems with our roof (the current issue), or getting quotes for plumbing or whatever, happens by phone from wherever. We just can't wait to have everything in one place again.

It's good to get that bit of whingeing over with..... sorry - life's all good really. The house is going well, the builder is fantastic, Ian's loving his new project, the painting course in Wales is off the ground, and Cilla and James and their children are coming to visit next week. So there's lots to look forward to - if I can first work out where I'm looking from!!

Straw bale inspiration

This week's speaking engagement for Ian was at the agricultural college Bishop Barton near Hull. A lovely friend (and fellow Nuffield scholar) offered him the use of her straw bale cottage for a couple of nights - so I decided this was the one speaking trip Barney and I would just have to go on.

Here is the cottage - built by Carol Atkinson (http://www.strawcottage.co.uk/). Note Ian rushing to get to his talk on time....

We loved the way the walls curve in and out and the cosy feel of it - the walls are so thick you can't even hear the wind blowing outside.... it brought back memories of making hay bale dens on the farm when we were children. It's built on stilts cos it floods there - she's a brave woman to build out of straw in a flood plain.

While Ian was occupied Barney and I discovered the beautiful town of Beverley, and the sweeping beach at Hornsea. I've never been to this part of the country before and was amazed how beautiful 'up north' is (apologies to any northerners who already know this). The sun was shining, the waves crashing and the ideas flowing..... could we build part of our house out of straw bales? Or even better out of cob? Perhaps we could build out of materials only found on site.....clay, wood, stone, and all the leftovers of the main build....

Oops, turn around from watching the waves and you could be in Berrow Happy Holiday Village... but a bit more precarious:-

And as a gentle reminder of the industrial north, the River Ouse (I think) at sunset with chimneys on the horizon.

Spring in Somerset

The evidence of Spring - the tiniest little snowdrops appearing after all the cold weather at Sidbrook....

and the daffs are making an appearance at Pengotton......

When it comes to house-renovations we have also come to the end of a long autumn and winter waiting for work to start. Steve and Lee are back on site and my goodness it is AMAZING how much has been done in the last 3 weeks. Here is the house as it is now......basically less than it was. (Ian keeps wishing we knocked it all down and started again but i still like what's left of the old bits).

That big opening at the end on the left will be patio doors in the kitchen diner and the big gap above will be our bedroom. It's a bit drafty at the moment.

We feel better all round now that things are on the move - but can we keep up? I have to keep up a constant supply of detailed plans and decisions about this and that, and Ian (when he isn't working in Wales or speaking somewhere) and Roger are racing against time to get the shed finished in the field so we can move into it temporarily when we leave Wales.

At the moment it has a roof, 3 walls and a floor. Who cares about electrics and plumbing? There's always the composting loo, and the camping stove in the garden shed, not to mention my parents shower just a mile away. Having watched multiple episodes of Grand Designs it could be considered almost a 'rite of passage' (or maybe some sort of penance....) to live in a mobile home or similar while the building goes on ...and on....

At least someone's home is finished.... we might be sharing with a family of sparrows or blue tits if we're really lucky....

Back to the house, for those interested - this is the window and doorway looking towards the garden. The hole above the steel lintel will have a beam inserted into it to carry the upstairs floor....

This is the same bit of wall from the outside. You can see the old ground floor windows above the new one as we've lowered the internal floors by about a metre. The bricks will be taken out and filled with stonework.

One of the beams being delivered last Friday. Steve the builder constructed a sloping ramp out of scaffolding poles and boards, and then rolled the beams down the ramp on metal rollers. He's quite ingenious. The beams came from Whitney on Wye - a little bit of Wales in our house.

It took a lot of grunting and heaving (and a few builders bums) to get the beams off the ramp and onto the floor ready for cutting notches for the floor joists and then erecting next week. We still have no idea how they are going to get them put into position and we'll be up here in Wales when it happens so could be none the wiser. It'll be like magic.

Kitchen experiments...

Ok so today I got a little creative in the kitchen up here in Wales. First an apple crumble (no skill in that...) then chocolate cake (wicked but i had all the ingredients so couldn't resist it) and then.......BUTTER. To a 21st century modern girl like me I didn't really know you could still MAKE butter - doesn't it just come in plastic boxes already done? Still, having mastered home made bread, jam, chutney and yogurt it seemed like a natural progression. And I didn't even need to invest in any antique butter pats.

First take your ingredients - 2 pints of double cream, 3 tsp live yogurt, salt.....I'm afraid I broke the 'no tescoes' rule to get this much cream...

Mix the yogurt in with the cream and beat with a food mixer until it goes past the 'whipped cream' stage and looks like yellow lumpy scrambled egg. Keeping beating until you start to see it separating into butter and buttermilk (a milky liquid). I had to call in the muscle to get it to turn....

Squish all the butter together on a wooden board, squeezing out the buttermilk and air bubbles. The buttermilk can be used by Ian to make pancakes for breakfast on Saturday morning...

Roll up the pat of butter in greaseproof paper with layers of salt (or put in a wooden butter mould if you have one). We made about 3 pats like this from 2 pints of cream!
Hey presto - real butter in trendy Cath Kidston butter dish...
One hungry man to test it out on his homemade bread - "it tastes like butter" he said. Mission accomplished...

And one greedy dog to help with the clearing up...