Little Cotton Rabbits

December light

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though we're not yet at the Winter Solstice the days now feel very short here. When I wake at just after 7am the sun has not yet risen and by 4pm it's almost dark. And though daylight might be in short supply, one of the things I love about this time of year is watching the sunrises and sunsets. We've had some beautiful skies at these times of day, sometimes all aflame and dramatic and sometimes beautifully subtle like the colours in a mother-of-pearl shell. Some days before I go to wake up sleepy Toby, I take my early morning cuppa and go out into the garden in my coat and PJs to watch the subtle shifts in the cloud colours as the sun comes up. Even at midday the sun only rises now to 16% above the horizon and on bright days this low light slants through the windows casting angled shadows across the surfaces. We've had a lot of foggy mornings and a few frosts, both leaving everything damp and dewy and the water droplets that collect on every surface (even a ladybird shell) are illuminated by this low light, so they sometimes appear like silvered glass. All small delightful things that are particular to this time of year.

Kit the fox is still a regular garden visitor and despite the fact that H removed the thick growth of cushiony ivy when he put up new fencing, she still uses the heavy duty netting on the top of the chicken run as a hammock for daytime naps. She has grown her thick winter coat now and curls herself up, tucking her nose under her tail like a duvet to keep out the cold wind.

Here inside I've been cosy with my knitting. I've been playing around with different textures for a small set of toy scarves. I've got the pattern written up but need to knit it through and check it, then will share it as a free pattern with the hope that you might still have a little time to use it for some of your Christmas animal makes. I am also hoping to get the last pictures for the badger pattern I've been working on done later today, much later than planned but I'll be back with news of that soon (ish!).

I'm behind with almost everything on my to-do list but I'm sure I'm not alone in that, it's been a tough year so we're all a little frazzled I think, and maybe if some things we had planned to do don't get done it doesn't really matter, leastways that seems to be the best way to think at the moment. 

I hope you're getting most of what you need to do done at the moment and that you then get to have some calm and relaxing time coming up over the holiday period, J x

 

The one all about Kit and her cubs

 

I know that you're most likely to be here for the knitting, but fair warning there's none of that here today. Instead this post is all about my lovely garden visitor Kit and her sweet cubs (eeeek!)

 

 

Kit started visiting my garden in February 2019. I'd see her peeking through the broken fence and managed to get a few pictures of her from a distance. She was drawn to our garden by the presence of our hens and when I wasn't in the garden she'd try every way possible to find a way into their run, causing much panic, consternation and a great many ruffled feathers in the process. But the run, built by my inventive and clever husband, defied all foxy attempts at entry and the hens stayed safe and well. I felt a bit sorry for the fox, who was very thin and scrawny, with a damaged eye and who showed such tenacity and ingenuity in her attempts to get a warm, feathery meal, and so I started to throw her small scraps of food whenever I saw her - it was always possible to know when she was around by the sound of alarmed clucks from the hens.Gradually over a couple of weeks the fox decided that the hens were not worth the bother and so stopped trying to chase and torment them and instead went close enough for them to sound the alarm, whilst seeming to understand that this would result in me appearing from the back door with something nice to eat in my hand. We found she's partial to leerdammer cheese slices, hot cross buns, raisins, cooked chicken skin, infact anything chickeny (though I never feed her cooked bones as they can splinter into sharp shards), digestive biscuits, bacon rinds but not definitely tuna, which she turns her nose up at.

Back in spring of last year she was visiting sporadically and we'd go a week or more without seeing her and then there she'd be again. I wasn't sure at that point whether she was male or female but one day in May I took some pictures of her when she visited in daylight and when I looked at them I could clearly see teats. So we knew at that point that she was A. Female and B. had cubs somewhere, and I decided to stop calling her fox and give her a name, Kit (from Kitsune, the fox from Japanese folklore). I hoped so much that she'd bring the cubs to the garden at some point and in June I did once have a brief glimpse of one cub with her but I have a feeling that the cub didn't make it as we never saw it again. Kit however kept visiting and I kept feeding her little tidbits. The hens grew bored of panic and became complacent, not even glancing up from their corn when she trotted by. I have a lovely video of Kit in front of the run and Bluebell, the biggest hen just looking at her and before we tidied the top of the chicken run ready for new fencing it was covered in a thick layer of ivy and was a favourite place for Kit to curl up and nap on, with the oblivious hens happily pecking below.

As 2019 ticked over into 2020 Kit was visiting daily and I felt very lucky to be regularly seeing such a beautiful wild creature up close.  I started to keep a note in my diary of when she visited and in mid February I noticed she was getting rather barrel-like around the middle and it soon became clear she was pregnant again. On the 1st of March she didn't visit and when she turned up again on March 3rd she was no longer plump, so we knew that she'd had her cubs and within a week her teats were clearly visible. Throughout March and April she's continued to visit daily for her regular supplementary snacks and has been coming more in the daytime perhaps while the cubs were safely napping in the den. Last monday I heard some funny noises in the garden just before bedtime and when I looked out there were a pair of cubs frolicking on the grass and pouncing on worms. I tried to take some pictures but in the dark they came out blurred and grainy and were not much to look at. We heard them again the next night and on wednesday we saw Kit with one of the cubs. But then on Thursday there was no Kit, and on Friday she didn't come, although I saw the two cubs in the garden at around 2am, and on Saturday still no Kit and no sign of the cubs and I was starting to worry that something bad might have happened to her.

On Sunday morning I woke up at just before 7am and got up to feed the chickens and just as I was coming back into the house I heard a sound behind me and there was Kit again. I was so pleased to see her and found her a snack, which she promptly carried off to a corner of the garden. There was a movement in the bushes and as she came back to enquire about further snacks a small, plump and fluffy bundle came running after her. I sat on my kitchen floor for the next 40 minutes with my camera, feeling immensely priveledged to be witnessing the scene before me as Kit washed and cleaned her three little ones: nibbling at their fur to groom out fleas; snuffling their plump bellies and licking their ears. Like all small children they squirmed and complained and played up, running off to investigate various bits of the garden and giving some of my garden furniture a nibble in the process and she was wonderfully tender and loving with them. Eventually she came right up to the back door again to see if I had one last snack and two of the cubs followed her. By the time they all trotted of into the bushes again I'd taken 240 photos on my camera. So these are the highlights :)

 

I just wanted to add that although there is a small element of trust between us she definitely retains her wild instincts and I'd never try to get close to her. She will come into the garden when we're outside too, but she keeps her distance and we never approach her but leave it for her to decide how close to us she is comfortable with. I never feed too much and do everything to ensure she does not become dependent on us or in any way tame and I only ever give food to her when she arrives, so she can take it to the cubs herself. When she first arrived I only started to feed her in order that she didn't chase the hens and this arrangement has become a satisfactory one for all involved parties, she leaves the hens in peace and, most suprisingly to me, they now ignore her :)

 

Over the last month

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pictures above are a little selection of things from the last month here:

I've been working on several new patterns: clothing patterns for the small animals, including dresses, sweaters and dungarees; more small versions of my animal patterns; a regular sized badger and there are a few other ideas that I'm also playing around with.

Spring has been arriving in our garden and the countryside around us, with blackthorn blossom, catkins and the blossoming of our plum tree.

Kit, our foxy visitor, has been coming almost every day. Back in January she seemed to be getting into lots of fights and was quite injured one morning - you can see in the pictures above her patches of missing fur and scrapes but she also had a bad limp and a broken canine tooth. She spent a day licking her wounds and curled upon top of the chicken run - the ivy-covered netting forms a comfy hammock and happily the chickens seemed oblivious and carried on life as normal! More recently I noticed that she was pregnant - she was distinctly plump around the middle and I think that she had her pups on the 2nd or 3rd of March as she didn't visit on those days and when she arrived on March 4th she was back to her skinny self. Since March 12th she's back to visiting every day for food and her teats are now clearly visible, so her cubs must be thriving. And yes, I am keeping a fox diary :)

The last month has seen unprecented times arrive around the globe and I think we’re all at least a little afraid right now. I'm trying not to shut out that fear and instead embrace it and let it guide me to socially responsible and sensible decisions. We're keeping Toby off school for now as he's vulnerable and we're practicing 'social distancing', going for our wood walks but avoiding other people. That's something we all need to be doing - not just for ourselves and our loved ones but also for the wider community. If you can go out into busy spaces less then do choose to; wash your hands often and keep compassion and kindness to others as your goal - you never know when you yourself might be in need of the kindness and compassion of a stranger.

Please let's all stay safe out there and keep others safe through our actions xxx

 

Home comforts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was the school half term break here last week and we had a fun time keeping Toby active and busy: lots of wood walks, tandem trike rides, swimming and rides on the mini steam train that he loves. Alongside our outdoor adventures there was also a little time for some indoor comforts: a couple of lazy lie-ins with knitting and tea in bed, quiet evenings by the fire and some baking of raspberry and white chocolate muffins - just the thing to come home to when you've had an afternoon in the breezy autumn woods :)

The shawl above is being knitted from Elizabeth Doherty's 'Rose Gold' pattern in sublimely soft 'Nomad' Yak DK yarn from The Wool Barn I'm hoping to finish off the lovely and unusual side-joined border this week and then it will need blocking (my least favourite part of handknitting) but with any luck I'll have it snuggled around my neck for our next wood walk, as woolly armour against those cool and intrusive autumn breezes.

I'm also busy with pattern writing, but more of that another time - for now I'll leave you with some of the pictures I've taken over the last 2 months of the fox that has been regularly visiting our garden since early spring, we've nicknamed her Kit (from kitsune) ...

 

 

An early morning encounter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some mornings I wake early and can't get back to sleep. Sometimes I read, sometimes I knit and sometimes I open the blind and watch the sunrise sky. A couple of weeks back I was leaning out of the bedroom window just after the sun had risen and was sleepily daydreaming as I looked around our garden below. A flash of orange caught my eye, peeking out between the tangle of ivy overgrowing the chicken run and I probably frowned in puzzlement, but it soon became clear that the plastic mesh netting that keeps the chickens safely contained in their run makes a rather comfy hammock for a sleepy fox.

She was completely unbothered by me opening the window and taking pictures of her and carried on dozing in the warmth of the early morning sun for 20 minutes before stretching a little, grooming a little and then setting off on an impressive balancing act along the top edge of the run  - which is a good 9ft above the path. She stopped for a quick sniff and a wistful glance at the now empty bird box that the bluetits used to raise their family in, before a lithe leap back to the ground and a silent, sure-footed and typically foxy vanishing act.

She still arrives most evenings and some mornings for snacks. We've only caught a brief glimpse of one cub and that was a few weeks ago, and though the mortality rate of urban foxes is pretty high I'm hoping they're safe somewhere and she's just keeping them well hidden. I'm still thrilled to have the great privilege of her visits, she's still completely wild, intently alert and intelligently wary of us but she does seem to appreciate the snacks!