It is a very long time, like almost a year, since I have done a Castle progress update and the photos don’t show much progress but that is probably not surprising when I think that I can only work on it when it is not raining, not to cold, not to hot and I have no other commitments and I mix the mortar by hand in small batches and my hands can only do 2 batches at a time that is about 10 bricks a day, oh well castles take a long time to build and mine is no different…even though there is not a lot of visual progress on the actual castle the garden around it is much neater and looking pretty good despite the doaught conditions.
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 Another beautiful, not to hot, not to cool day perfect for working in the garden and this morning we finished cementing the path and started washing bricks to build a garden wall around the edges.
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After a few steamy hot days we have had a cool change, perfect for working outdoors and my nephew came over to help me…Originally the garden was joined to the castle wall but I have had a change of plan, firstly I thought that a buttress would be cute, then I decided to put a moat between the garden and the castle wall with the buttress as one end and then thinking that it would be nice to have a seat beside the moat, thinking small scale secret fairy garden…
…so over the last few months I have broken out a portion of the garden wall to make a path in and excavated the area, I had wanted to be able to walk down into the area but sometimes sense prevails and a lake in the area after a thunder storm suggested that I should build the level up so that water will drain out of the area…umm that meant larger amounts of concrete than I am able to mix which has stalled progress for some time…then in comes my nephew asking if I had any jobs that he could earn some extra pocket money, he is strong enough to mix the cement by the wheel barrow full which he did while I spread and smoothed it.
After a few hours I was exhausted but I am thrilled with how much we got done and he is coming back tomorrow morning to finish the path.
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My visiting family have returned home after a wonderful visit, their time here flew by all to quickly…The house seems very quite without them here.
I particularly enjoyed the company of my nearly 10 year old nephew, he worked with me in the garden and helped us build the castle And when he showed an interest in my sampler I asked him if he would like to learn some stitching, I got an enthusiastic yes and he has started his own sampler, he is a delight to teach, he has a keen eye and good focus, I only had to show him once how to thread his own needle and knot the thread and he quickly mastered running stitch and backstitch…
 It was then time to teach his little brother how to do running stitch, I don’t think little brother was understanding what he was doing but the instructions he was giving were good and it was a delight to see him wanting to share his new found knowledge.
Later that evening I was showing my brother the basics so that he could assist with the sampler when they get home, brother asked if he could have a strip of fabric to do his own sampler and a little later sister in law asked if she could have one too, I sent them home with their strips of fabric, needles and threads to get them started and we will correspond by email as to where on the net they can find instructions and may write the occassional post as a lesson for something that they want to learn.
As I said my nephew is nearly ten, his birthday is next week and we decided to have an early birthday party for him…having enjoyed his company while working in the garden I was inspired to make him a special cake that would remind him of his holiday in Canberra, and what better reminder than a castle cake…well it was really a castle ruin, I didn’t have much time to think it through so it really is a wonky castle but the overall effect still looked great.
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 When we started building the castle in my garden it was just a castle but whilst building it we have had such fun and decided that we really need to have a castle party, I suggest that it would be nice to have it while my brother will be here in July so that Lily’s cousins to could share the fun, it also gives me a deadline to have the castle finished and I respond well to deadlines.
So party planning has begun…I am being guided by Lily as to what we need for a castle party, Pennants to decorate with are on her list and today we made Pennants…Lily went through my quilters cottons and pulled out the bright plain colours, I cut the shapes and then she zig zagged the edges and stitched a hem. After they were all sitched and ironed she arranged them into a colour pie.
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This week we got another 2 rows of bricks layed which brings us up to window sill hight.
We also got the road base onto the rest of the path to the front door, once the clay paths had a hard almost burnished surface but after years of drought the clay surface has become a fine dust that infiltrates the house, the road base path has dramatically reduced the amount of dust inside.
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This week we have got another 2 rows of bricks layed (total 5 rows) as well I have backfilled the garden beside the castle and started to lay road base over the clay path.
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We have had some lovely weather this week and with Lily still on school holidays we have taken the opportunity to get more bricks layed…we are slow and would not get jobs as brick layers but we think that we are good castle builders as with 3 rows of bricks layed our castle is taking shape nicely.
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We still have to clean the cement of the top of some of the stones and polish them up a bit but even as they are our castle floor is looking good.
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The next step for paving the floor of my castle turret was to find the pieces of slate that I am using for the floor of the castle…We have layed the pieces of slate into a circle next to where they will be layed, so that we could make sure that we had enough pavers and to get a rough idea of where to lay them…
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