Friday 21 August 2015

Harvest time...

Anyone asking me how much honey I've had this year is going to get a slightly odd answer.  This year my main crop harvest is slightly under 5'3"...


That 9 supers, averaging 30llbs each, is about 270 llbs.

Anyone (mad) enough to be attempting to harvest that amount of honey in one day needs a plan of action...
Starting above with dust sheets to protect the kitchen floor and also a tank to settle the harvest in, a couple of trays to uncap the frames in, the extractor and plenty of buckets...

 

 




Now the latest word from local beekeepers who have already harvested this year is that the honey looks particularly dark and thick this year.  My bees seem to have fed on the same forage as everyone else's as it was very slow to drain out of the extractor....

 



So I resorted to tipping it forward after each batch of frames, this was my view for much of the afternoon...


I figured out pretty quickly that if I filled the filter to the top...



... it would have drained through by the time the next batch of frames had stopped spinning...

So by the time I was half way through...

 
I was truly multi-tasking...

Uncapping..

 

loading the extractor...


Draining and filtering...

 

And filling buckets...


and after about 10 hours ( I did stop for a bit of lunch & tea) I was finally down to the last few frames... 


But I do have something worthwhile to show for my efforts...


I'd better order some jars now...

Shhhhn secret quilting project in progress...

I can't believe its two years since I made this quilt, its fair to say there was a fairly big pile of left over bits...


They've been needing to be made into another quilt for some time...but no inspiration came along.  Then a conversation with the original quilt's owner lead to the revelation that her mum had a big birthday in 2015, and had always admired the original quilt, was there enough fabric to make a small sister quilt version?

Of course, as I had a full 15 months to make the quilt between our conversation and the birthday I waited a full 11 months before I got started...
Finally spotted some inspiration in a magazine and got started in May....


 Better clean the fluff from the bee bunting out of the machine before I get started...


First to draft the centre "medallion".  Baking parchment, pencil, ruler and squared paper are perfect for the job...

 

 

Four pieces together make a medallion centre....


I toyed with the idea of turning all these tiny scraps into a dinky border...

 

But they were just too tiny so I abandoned that adaptation and returned to the pattern.... half square triangles becoming a string of flying geese for the first border to the central medallion...

 

 

It was mid June by the time I made more half square triangles into whirligigs for the second border...




A further white border and I had to admit this was as big as this quilt was going to get, time was running out...


Thankfully I had both a piece of wadding and a piece of backing fabric that were big enough to get it to the next stage of actual quilting...

 

I had a fabulous day quilting in my friends garden, I was kept fed and watered (ok cake'd and tea'd)


And was able to push on and completed the quilting in one day...

 
 

I have to say..I'm loving this wandering butterfly pattern....


It was much admired by the end of the day...


You can tell that I was focused on getting this completed as I didn't manage to take any photos of binding the quilt.  Let me just confess that binding was made easier by the fact that I completely over estimated the amount I needed for its big sister so actually had enough left over to bind this one without making any new binding.  (You can see it rolled up on the top left side of the first photo in this blog)

So it was the beginning of August when it needed to take a trip through the washing machine to wash out all those pencil quilting marks...


and as we were experiencing some typical August weather it had to dry on a rack...


before being pinned to the living room carpet for 24 hours to block it straight.


It was then carefully wrapped in two plastic bin bags (!) to deliver it through more typical August weather a whole 48 hours before the BIG birthday.

I understand it was much admired and coo'd over when presented to its new owner.  She is a lovely lady and I hope it keeps her toes warm in bed for many more birthdays to come.

Saturday 8 August 2015

Shaunientiering - Bristol -Part2

I suppose it was inevitable.
But the family enthusiasm for tramping around a city to find interestingly decorated statues of an animated Plasticine icon had been worn out by part 1 of our adventure.
So part two of this expedition around Bristol involved just two of us.  Thankfully Nicki is very tolerant of my beekeeping enthusiasm so when I said,
"There are four of them decorated in a beekeeping theme"
She said,
"Well lets plot a route to find those four and take in as many of the others as we can on route, we can please ourselves how long it takes and stopping for tea and cake along the way may be compulsory..."

So off we set...there were 70 in all, we were committed to finding four... here are the ones we found along the way....

Baa-wulf
Beach boy


King Arthur of Lambelot & Excalibaar

Leaving behind the fabulous combined flower and edible leaf flower beds...

 





and climbing the hill towards the university and art gallery buildings...

 





Loving the cut work on this one - showing off the fluttering tea lights inside...

Arabian lights
Arabian Lights - side view



Baaack to the drawing board
 

Back outside we found...

Thunderbirds are go
Rex


And hiding behind Bristol's answer to the Trevi fountains...

 

Flock 'n roll
From Dusk till Shaun




And some bees snuck onto Dusk till Shaun's legs...


back to the historic dockyard walk....

On the Waterfront
Jarsberry Ram


Sgt Shepherd
Lotus


Absolutely loving this one - clearly inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean and complete with seagull in his hat...

The Pirate captain
 


Shaun bean
Justice Lamb


King of the carnival
Life Aquatic


Just before lunch - we found our first "official" bee themed Shaun....

Green poems for a Blue planet

 

After lunch we found these by the historic market and St Stephen's Church..

Honey


loving the more stylistic, less cartoony bees on this one....


Moving on...

Wooly Wonderland

There's actually a couple of crochet techniques on this one I can do!!!

 




Back into the sunshine of the main shopping areas....

Knit wit
Lily


Bagpus Shaun

 Rather taken by this quilting themed one (must be the hexagons)

Cecilia
 


Please stand by
Shaun on the cob



Lamb chop
Loving that this Maisy mouse one is right outside the children's hospital to whom all the funds raised from the trail will go

Maisy and friends
 





I don't remember bees in the books I read to my boys..but I'm not going to argue...


We drove past Tutti Fruitti (so no photos) on the way out to Clifton to find .....

Bumble

 
Rather surprised to find myself liking this pastel one quite as much as I do...

 
 

Then on to Cribbs causeway shopping centre to find...

Shrek Shaun

And some flocks of smaller Shauns decorated by local school children, some absolute crackers in this lot!

 

 

Did you spot it?
I couldn't possibly miss this one...


And finally, a fitting end to a hap-bee day shaunientiering.....

Bee-dazzled

 look at that sparkly bee nose!! and all over dazzling bee-tastic pattern!!!



One very happy, very hot and sticky and in desperate need of a cold drink bee-dazzled beekeeper...


Full kudos and appreciation to the non-Shaunientiering male family members who ensured that we arrived home to Bar-B-Q and ice-cream cake.  All of which was super yummy.
And for the record...I'm fairly sure I counted 32 found!
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