I bought one of these today – Robby Eco Wash Ball http://www.amazon.com/Robby-Wash-Blue-Laundry-months/dp/B003AKTHOW
it wasn’t the wash ball I was planning on buying, but while Hannah was at her swimming lesson, I went to the new “Arenas” shopping centre – it used to be one of Barcelona’s bull rings, now it’s been converted to a delux shopping complex.
I found an “Eco / Bio / Natural” shop on the lower level, and as well as unsweetened bio cranberry juice it had these wash balls.
I’m hoping it will reduce washing powder usage…we’ll see!
The sniffy nose
I have a sharp sense of smell at the best of times, but pregnancy seems to augment this sense…off the chart in fact – to the point where you can smell an ant’s fart from 100 paces…And I have a head cold right now!
Ironically, I seem to have become re-attached to 2 perfumes by Guerlain that I’ve had at home and hardly used in the past year or so – L’instant Magic and L’instant de Guerlain, now – “PUFF”, they are back in my nose’s good books. But neither of them are exactly subtle.
They smell like Japan on a warm summer evening to me (eh, not a city, more of a “floral countryside” warm summer evening – before anyone makes a smart comment), an intoxicating mix of jasmin and orange blossom that I could happily sniff at all day. Like a young girls’ yukata come to life in gorgeous rich, vivid floweryness. The L’instant de Guerlain is slightly lighter in scent…I wish there was some kind of Blog option for Scratch-and-sniff.
I have a little cloth beside my loom with some perfume on it…I’m starting to wonder if I’m getting addicted to it – but without a doubt, these scents are influencing my current colour pallet.
I’m pregnant, I have a cold and Hannah has started school….I have LOTS of excuses!
But I don’t really care if anyone wants a reason for my silence, shit happens – and blogs aren’t top priority when you are throwing up every day, your 3-year-old has hit “toddler-dom”, school, wakeful nights and tantrums all at once…and recently I have a sinus head cold to make me feel like crap.
There have been a couple of other pregnancy related maladies to complain about but I’ll keep those to myself (those who can guess what I’m talking about, can chuckle or commiserate, as they see fit)
But I did manage to fit in some weaving! (HA!)
I may I had started the first of these warps, a scarf, 2 neck warmers and a shawl. They’re off the loom now and being finished as time allows (and as far as I can stay awake in the evenings). I also bought some gorgeous buttons and silk / viscose lining to finish the neck warmers – luxury a go-go and warm taboot.
Friday Weaving
My cold and chest infection are abating and I’ve actually had time to do some weaving. Not much, but a few hours is better than nothing, so I won’t complain.
I’m hoping to get 2 scarves (skinny, bright autumn / winter scarves) out of this warp. And to make sure the colour and texture variation of the weft keep them fresh and distinct.
There are two wool boucles in the warp – and one is noticeably much softer than the other. This is a bit disappointing, they both cost the same. The slightly rougher one is pure wool, with a lovely mix of colours, but I guess you can’t have jam on your egg.
Rain forecast for this weekend, and Carrefour are delivering this afternoon, so hopefully I’ll get more weaving done. I should (could) do some housework, as that has been sorely lacking recently. But arse to that. The thought of hoovering doesn’t exactly inspire me right now – the dust bunnies will be free-range for another weekend.
Oh, and the potty training has been a great success, Whoopee!
Well, so far, it’s been a big success…we’ve been at it a week, and after day 1 she seemed to have fully grasped the concept – We’ll see if this continues and what the verdict is going to be after several long bus, plane and car journeys for these weddings we’re off to in June and July.
Not to mention church services, and wedding receptions.
I might have changed my mind after all that.
Reading too much
The sad truth and hard reality of hand loom weaving in Ulster, especially around south Down / South Armagh.
I actually spoke to John McAtasny in 1994/1995 when I came home from art school and was looking to buy a loom. He called as he saw my want ad in the local paper – not because he had one for sale, (he wasn’t going to part with the ones he had!) but more for curiousity…like a ping in the darkness to a fellow soul involved in a dying tradition.
All tied up! – And “Only eat what your great-grandparents would recognize”? – ehhh, maybe.
My warp is tied up! Now is the time I should be weaving, but I’m here – (as I keep saying, you can blog, or weave…not both).
Well, my cold is worser and worser and it now resides in my bronchial passages, and I’m writing to you now under the influence of some serious drugs. But sitting at my loom requires a wee bit more energy than even the drugs can muster.
However, a quick minor curiousity…I read something I partly agree with, and partly think is rubbish – i.e., “Only eat what your great-grandparents would recognize”. The idea being, to eat healthy wholesome foods, that are fresh, natural and nutricious.
A great concept – and in principle, to be followed. Sitting on the sofa, drugged up to the eyeballs, I had time to ponder this – Imagining myself on Fathom, 100 years ago – What would my diet be if I followed this concept?
On the “Excellent” plus side: Seasonal= gooseberries, raspberries, wild strawberries (a few bushes, but exist), blueberries (by the ton!), blackberries (also by the ton), cob/ hazelnuts. Lamb, eggs, fish & shelfish (salmon, mackrel, trout, herrings – fresh and smoked/salted- and maybe perch, oysters, muscles, cockles, winkles), chicken, pork and rarely, beef. Apples and pears infrequently (they don’t grow on Fathom mountain, but they do grow in N. Ireland)
On the “Good” side: Fresh milk, buttermilk, butter, some cheeses, porridge, potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage, leeks, rubarb, wheaten bread, soda bread, “brack” (kind of sweet bread) …honey maybe
On the “inevitable” side: Whiskey, stout / porter (i.e., Guinness, Murphys), Poteen, Navy Rum.
On the “realistic” side: The daily fare would have been potatoes, porridge, carrots, buttermilk, onions and cabbage. An irish strew, made from mutton a few times a week. Fish, probably on a Friday. Everything else would have been very dependent on season and availability. And in hard times, availability might have been very low.
All sounds very healthy, right? (I think so too), but see what is missing?
tomatoes, oranges, grapes, brocolli, cauliflower, green beans, kiwis, avocadoes, pomegranite, peppers, yogurt, asparagus, ….GARLIC, CHILLI – ANY KIND OF SEASONING??
And a lot of other things my drugged-up brain can’t think of now.
When I read the list I wrote of what my great-grandparents might have eaten (and I’ve spent longer than I should have done recently, thinking about great-grandparents!), I was impressed, and realised why these “Fathom-ites” were so long lived. But it doesn’t change the fact that they would have run screaming from an avocado and thought a pomegranite was the spawn of the devil. Seasoning would have been rare and potatoes, carrots & porridge would have made up about 80% of their daily foods.
Thanks, although I love my irish foods, I’m also glad of new flavours
Even so, my healthy diet didn’t save me from this crappy cold, did it? So much for, garlic, organic pomegranites and cherries…(moan moan)
Potty Training, head colds and warping
It’s been one of those weekends and it’s not over yet:
- We started potty training yesterday – after 4 pairs of knickers in less than an hour I was dispairing of the whole thing, and started thinking that Carrefour nappies weren’t so expensive, and we could pay for them until she was about 8 without any problems…today has proved to be much better, with 3 poos and all but one pee in the potty. The offer of a chocolate button for every accurately aimed and delivered poo and pee seems to work wonders
- I’m dosed with the cold. A nasty head cold that is hurting my throat, blocking my ears and nose and generally making me feel miserable. That and the fact that I’ve not left the apartment since friday evening (i.e., potty training duty)
- I got my warp threaded ….so I guess I should say it’s been a productive weekend after all!
at last I uploaded – Spring & Summer fruits!
at least that’s what the colours read like! Raspberry, cherry blossom, honeysuckle, hot pink, fuscia, fuzzy peach…
either that or a list of cocktail names!
They’re now on Etsy and the next warp (in slightly darker shades of pink) is on the loom. As we’re potty training this weekend, I have my doubts about how much weaving will get done – we’ll see
Going back to my Roots – deep and muddy
This has very little to do with weaving, but perhaps it warrants a bit of space on my blog as it took up so many of my evenings in January and February this year (time when I could / should have been weaving!).
In December last year (that would be, “super freezing December”), when I was home, I needed keys cut, so I went very early in the morning to a key cutters in Newry – while waiting for them to get organized, I noticed a brochure for an exhibition in the local museum, on the Merchant Navy and Maritime History in Newry & Mourne.
Are you still with me?!
This was curious, mainly as my grandfather and great-grandfather had been in the merchant navy – and the best thing about this little brochure was that it had lots of old pictures. Newry from its hay-day and photos of seamen long dead.
So, back to the key cutting shop.
They couldn’t help me with my keys – but that didn’t matter, the brochure sparked interest as I found a picture marked “lamp trimmer – “Patrick O’Neill – Fathom”. I’m from Fathom (a wee townland on the side of an inhospitable hill that is now called “Fathom Mountain”). The curious thing is, my grandfather was called Patrick O’Neill, and he hailed from Fathom. And O’Neill is not the most popular name for Fathom (“Hollywood”s on the other hand, are as populous as the rabbits!…I’m also a Hollywood – so I can’t say much, can I) He didn’t completely look like my grandfather – but there were similarities, and the ears were definitely O’Neill ears!
So, armed with knowledge that there had been an exhibition, I headed up to the museum in Bagnal’s castle to see what I could see… (and to warm up, as it was bloody freezing).
The exhibition was long gone, but I did get my own brochure which started a curious paper trail.
The nature of Newry, and probably most of Ireland, is still quite insular – families have been there for, literally, generations. We might be potato eating peasants, but most of us can easily trace back 4 generations or more. I knew we were no exception to this rule, but it was a curious thing to find out the details. Something I’d never been too bothered about.
The Patrick O’Neill in the picture was not my grandfather, but either an uncle or an older cousin (unfortunately Irish are not very inventive about their names, and believed in big families – hence “Patrick” occurred regularly in multiple generations…I’m sure at the time they all knew each other apart!)
My grandfather’s father, Hugh, was also in the merchant navy and served as a Fireman on the SS Scotia, he never seemed to be home during census time though and popped up in boarding houses in Dublin or onboard ship… (No bad thing according to accounts from my mother and my uncle, he was not missed – but that’s another story).
My great-grandmother ran the small farm they had on Fathom (where our house is built now), and raised 3 daughters and a son (my grandfather).
Her parents lived in the farm across the lane. In fact the land her farm was on was given to her by her father in the late 1800s. Her brother lived next door (in the field that we’ve always called “the bramble field” – it’s just full of bucky briars and blackberries). Her mother, (so, my great-great grandmother), née Jackson, came from the other side of the hill.
The land my parents live on now, was owned by my great-grandmother’s grandmother – who probably got it from her father. Her name is on the freeholders list for the Griffith’s tithes for 1861; and her father’s name is listed as freeholder for most of the surrounding land.
You see, little or nothing to do with weaving. (They had sheep, maybe they wove or spun…that link is tenuous though).
I started to understand the fascination that some people seem to have for tracing back their ancestry. It was like digging in a Lego box for that ONE brick you know is in there somewhere! With clarity, I could go back as far as 1861, to find weddings, births, deaths, census records and freeholders list. Beyond that there was sketchy information going back to 1811.
What I did discover overall, was that the Fathom peasantry were well fed, long-lived (living well into their 70s, 80s and in some cases, 90s) and held relatively large pieces of land. They were a mix of Catholic and Church of Ireland – and (by their names) appear to have intermarried more than modern history might lead us to believe. Some families (both Catholic and CoI) had servants and farm hands listed in the censuses – indicating that they were not exactly living on the bread line. The names of the servants / farm labourer were local to Newry, but not indigenous to Fathom…funny though that you can see there names there now – so a few of them got lucky! My uneducated guess is that this trend started during the famine (the “Famine” is to blame for everything in Ireland!), cheap labour in need of food and work.
Another curious thing – they married late, had relatively moderate sized families (for the time) of 4 – 8 children AND (and this was surprising to me), from correlating the births / marriages / deaths and the census records from the townland, you could see that the infant mortality rate appeared to be relatively low. The most poingant of these facts for me were looking at the details for my great-grandmother Lyons (née Campbell) who lived in Newry. In the 1901 census, she’d delivered 7 children with only 3 still living. My Fathom g-grandmother delivered a total of 5 children – 4 lived to old age and grandparentage. This issue wasn’t specific to Mrs Lyons, it appeared to be an unfortunate trend.
On this I have no concrete evidence, but for myself, I concluded that healthy woman, NOT marrying in their teens or early 20s, who worked on a farm, had slightly smaller families, but healthier pregnancies / babies…(either that or as a lot of the men went to sea, it acted as a natural birth control method). Was this a backlash to the famine or a regional trend? Healthier environment, diet, quality of life? No idea.
The names from the early records of the late 1700s and the early 1800s (PRONI freeholder records) are the same family names as appeared in the Griffith tithes of the 1860s for the region – so my simple conclusion was that these people survived the famine relatively well. Relative, that is, to the surrounding counties and Newry Town which was decimated by the famine – I’m not saying any of these people had it easy – Fathom is an inhospitable granite hill, covered with heather, gorse, forest and bog – on paper, you wouldn’t have thought it was a place to thrive.
So, why am I boring you all senseless with this (eh, “all” – 3 or 4 people?!) – well, as my grown-up paid job involves research and digging for information, it naturally armed me with a wee bit more cunning when it comes to rooting out information – and for this reason I’m listing here the sources I used and some tips on how to use them efficiently before you have to start putting money on the table.
FREE / GRATIS / NO CHARGE
Direct search link to the Freeholders records in PRONI
http://applications.proni.gov.uk/Freeholders/default.aspx
The Irish census of 1901 and 1911 which greatly enriches any details you can get from the above sources.
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/
Griffith’s Valuation (All Ireland, detailed by family name, individual, townload, parish, county – Also has an exceptional map overlay function to display old tith maps with current maps – truely an online gem and free)
http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml?action=nameSearch
Free site, that is apparently global – I’ve only focused it for Ireland. Results are poorly displayed but resources are very complete and comprehensive. DON’T refine your searches too much or you will end up with nothing, as the source is free, it’s easier to start broad and browse through the results. Best used to clarify or refine details you get from the Census, Griffith, PRONI and Roots Ireland.
https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/list#page=1&countryId=1927084 (specifically searching within Irish records)
Selection of pictures and records of Irish merchant Navy. There are a few images, all very interesting – but there are more details in the records database.
http://www.irishmariners.ie/
Place names, family names and other little interesting details – A useful site to augment the hardcore records from official sites: Relevant to Co.Down ONLY
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~rosdavies/PLACENAMES/AfrontPage.htm
Place name search in Ireland, will also search (very accurately) Townland names, both anglicized spelling and gaelic
http://www.logainm.ie/
Irish ordnance survey Maps – interactive Online, with visible layers of older maps
http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,591271,743300,0,10
Ulster ONLY townloads (This is NOT complete…my own little townload is missing!) but it’s free, and if your townload is here, it’s a good start.
http://www.bob-sinton.com/townlands.php
http://www.ulsterplacenames.org/celebrating_ulster’s_townlands_exhibition.htm
PAY for Actual Records:
Now, you need to put money on the table here – but if you maximize the sources above, you can get the most bang for your buck from this site:
http://www.rootsireland.ie/
Registration is free, searching is free, and basic listing results are free. IF you filter accurately by parish, townload, county, name (remember the variation in spellings), you could be lucky enough to limit results to 3 or less. Correlate your results with a further search in the familysearch.org page (based on names / dates visible here).
I’m sure you’ve heard this before if you are looking for ancestral records, but from my experience here are the main kickers:
- The general populous of Ireland – and notaries alike – were inventive about how they spelt their names, and the same person could exist with 3, or more, different spellings for their surnames. Try multiple spellings, with spaces and without (where Mac / Mc / o’ is concerned it becomes more work – but stick with it)
- Remember that lots of christian names were abbreviated too – or changed slightly if there were multiple people in one family with the same name (Patrick, big Paddy, Paddy Og, wee Paddy, Pat – they could one person, or 5 “Patricks” within the same family – You need multiple pieces of evidence to cross reference your names) OR (and this is worse!) children named for their parents, but were actually known by their second name – i.e. “Ellen Rose” named after her mother Ellen, but all her life called “Rosie” or “Rosaleen” (wee rosie): Her birth cert, would say “Ellen Rose” but a death cert., or grave stone record might say “Rosie”…you need to collect all the evidence and then work out age, marriage, parentage etc to confirm they are who you think they are.
- Townlands and parishes are very important for Irish records. Unless someone actually lived IN a town, they are of less importance for classifying residential location – and may or may not appear after the Townland, but before the county in an address – IF they appear in the information. The Griffith’s site has the map function that can show you Townlands, but it can be tricky, if you are outside Ireland, to know what TL your family would have hailed from. I would recommend, IF you know the full name of a person, then use the census search, along with County to filter and find the townland, and maybe parish. This will then allow you to refine your searches in the Roots Ireland and Family Search pages. Basically if you can’t confirm a townland, you’ll have difficulty confirming you’ve found the right person!
- People may be buried, married or baptised in parishes other than their own. Keep in mind that if you are looking at records from the late 1800s and then records from the early 1900s and comparing things with modern times, then churches may have been built or destroyed, meaning people would have had to travel further (or not) for their religious activities.
- Actual birth date, date of registration and date of baptism might not all happen together. In rural areas a baby might have been born in January, but not registered until February, March, April (depending on weather and available transport). The same for baptism…Don’t look at the date of registration, but at the actual birth date.
Pink Flush
Just Weaving 