Little Cotton Rabbits

Christmas tree bears & a new friend

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This year it seems to be proving harder than ever to get organised for Christmas. I had so many things on my to do list for this week but on Monday Toby developed some snuffles, and although he has no other symptoms and isn't unwell in himself I felt that keeping him home from college was the responsible thing to do because the current situation has us all feeling a little paranoid and extra sensitive to other peoples coughs and sneezes. Anyway, I'm going to be deleting a few of the less essential things from my list and what doesn't get done by friday will simply have to stay undone :)

I have ticked one thing off my list today though and that is to upload a new and updated version of my tiny bear Christmas tree decorations. I first shared this in December 2008 and I thought it could use a make-over and a few new photos. The instructions are the same as they were and are very simple and fairly quick, if a little fiddly, to follow. If you wanted to make some of your own you can download the new copy of the file from here:  download now 

And you can see all of the projects that others have made over the years (including lots of sweet adaptations) over on Ravelry.

Lastly, out in the garden I have a new friend. I am still missing Kit the fox and will never forget her frequent visits over the last 2 years, but the antics of this little squirrel definitely put a smile on my face. We've had plenty of squirrels in the garden before and they have all been typically skittish and wary, but this little chap is a very friendly character and follows me around the garden. I now have hazelnuts in my pocket whenever I go outside, and he politely takes each one in his little paws before scampering off to stash them somewhere - by now he must have the largest stash in the area!

 

 

 

Many thanks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you so, so much for the host of kind, compassionate and wise comments, messages and emails that you've sent me in response to my previous post. The personal stories and experiences that have been shared help me enormously, and such a kind outpouring of friendship and support from everyone has buoyed me up no end. I will go back and read over the comments on that post, as I often do with the comments on similar posts that I've written in the past, and I know that every kind and heartfelt word of advice, encouragement and support will help me with future challenges too and guide our thinking as we go forward.

What a wonderful thing the internet is in this regard - that it can connect people and provide a space to reach out to one another. Some of the best and most useful advice that I've ever received on parenting Toby over the years has been graciously given in comments here on the blog, and I'm so very grateful to everyone who has taken the time to write. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous xx

Toby remains settled and content with school still underpinning his weekly routine and I'm currently giving myself some time off from things that require lots of concentration, like paperwork and pattern writing, and instead going with what takes my fancy at the time. I suppose it's a kind of holiday-at-home. I've been reading more and listening to music and sometimes just sitting in the garden doing nothing other than cloud watching and listening to the birds. It feels good. 

We share our garden with lots of visitors and I take a lot of pleasure from their visits. In the past we've had orphaned hedgehogs, blackbirds, friendly robins and more recently a couple of squirrels, a family of blue-tits and our resident fox, Kit. She's really made our garden her personal space and though she doesn't visit every day, she's often to be found waiting for me first thing in the morning, either sitting outside the back door, napping on top of the woodshed or stretched out sunbathing on the garden table. I feel very privileged to have been adopted by her.

I have been knitting a little too and making bodies for many of the dog heads that I knitted up for the pattern photos. I'd like to have a giveaway with some of those, so I'll be taking some pictures and posting about that soon. And tomorrow I'm off to Surrey to spend the day with Amy - she went back to her uni accommodation last month after spending the winter lockdown here with us while she finished her final pieces for her degree. While she's waiting for her results she's getting herself sorted out for the next stage in her life, which will hopefully include a job soon.

Thank you again for allowing me to share a little of life beyond the knitting here, I'm never fully sure before I click 'publish' on such a post how it will be received, and am quite overwhelmed still at the enormity of the kind response, you have my deepest gratitude x

 

springtime

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This morning I went out into the garden in my pyjamas with my early morning cuppa and walked with bare feet on the dew damp grass. Because I'm trying to conjure up a romantic image I'll gloss over the fact that I had to look very carefully before stepping, in order to ensure I didn't tread in any fox poo! The point is that the morning was warm and inviting enough for me to want to walk barefooted on damp grass and that's because at last Spring has arrived here. One of my favourite Spring things is the dawn chorus and to stand rooted in stillness and listen to the liquid golden sound of a robin or blackbird singing in daybreak is a joyful way to start any day.

The blossom on the old plum tree has been spectacular this year (I'm predicting a deluge of plums later in the year) and has been a magnet to bees, hoverflies and a few butterflies emerging from hibernation.

I've been knitting, oh so much knitting, but I can't show you most of it just yet because it's all for the new pattern that I'm working on and is not yet ready to reveal. Though I have also been trying to make a little lamb to celebrate Easter this coming weekend - hopefully I'll get her finished in time. Her dress colours are inspired by these beautiful tulips - I don't often buy cut flowers but found these irresistible.

Lastly, the reason I have to watch my step while walking on the grass has been our usual daily visitor. We've not yet seen any sign of Kit's cubs for this year but she's taking food away each time she visits, so I'm convinced that at least some have survived the very cold snap that was here when they were born. She remains as wild and cautious as ever but is content to sit 6 feet away from me and let me photograph her while she's waiting for a snack.

I hope life has been kind to you this last month, and that the feeling of hope that has been creeping into my heart with the advancement of spring has found a home with you too xxx

 

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 :)